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Aja Frost on AI search, content strategy, and AEO success metrics

November 4, 2025/0 Comments/in Search Engine Land, Web Design News/by

Google’s AI Overviews and AI-driven search are reshaping content creation, SEO, and user behavior.

As we watch this fascinating evolution of search – and continue to debate what we call this new marketing discipline (HubSpot is opting for AEO, or answer engine optimization) – I interviewed Aja Frost, senior director of global growth and paid media at HubSpot. Some of the topics covered in our interview:

The need to redefine success metrics for AEO, prioritizing visibility and share of voice
HubSpot’s experimental journey, including creating hyperspecific, data-rich content and optimizing for LLMs.
Traffic directly from LLMs converts about 3x better than traditional search traffic for HubSpot.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Danny Goodwin:
Hey everybody, this is Danny Goodwin, editorial director of Search Engine Land, and, today I’m being joined by Aja Frost. We have an interesting discussion coming up about GEO, AEO, AI, and all the good hot topics. It’s great to meet you Aja. ’cause I’ve actually never, uh, run into you on the conferences or anywhere. So it’s really nice to connect with you.

Aja Frost:
You know, Danny, I was gonna say, it’s nice to see you, which is my go-to if I’m not sure whether I’ve seen someone, I met someone before. I figured we had met because we definitely run in the same circles. But I’m delighted to be finally, officially making your acquaintance.

Danny Goodwin:
Absolutely. Before we dive in for the people watching or listening, do you want to introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Aja Frost:
Yep. I am Senior Director of Global Growth and Paid Media at HubSpot. Global Growth is our catch-all for top-of-funnel non-paid demand, which largely translates to SEO and now AEO. And I’ve been at HubSpot for a little over nine years, which is about eight years longer than I thought I would be. For those who don’t know, HubSpot is the customer platform that powers 268,000 teams. And it changes, I would say, as a company, every few years, which is what has kept me there. I think we have had a really interesting journey to this point, and we are embarking on what I believe is the most interesting era of SEO, AEO, and really marketing yet.

Danny Goodwin:
Absolutely. So, yeah, it is a very fun time and you’ve been around for a few years at this point, so very curious to get your take. So, we had SMX Advanced a while back, our conference returned in person and at that point in time I’m like, oh, this whole a AEO versus GEO versus whatever we’re gonna call a debate – it’s gotta be settled by the time like October, November comes around. And I’m surprised that it has not still been settled. So I’m curious from your perspective, where do you stand on that whole name debate? What are you calling it, you know, this new form of SEO, or if it’s some, even if you consider it a new form of SEO, you know, has been GEO, AEO, some people call it AI SEO. What are you kind of calling this practice right now internally and, and why have you settled on whatever term that is?

Aja Frost:
Yeah, great question because this was the topic of much debate internally at HubSpot. I think we debated all of the names that you just mentioned and probably 10 more. And we ultimately landed on AEO, or answer engine optimization, because we think it best reflects how people are using AI and what businesses/brands should be doing in response. So I think SEO, you wanted to rank in the results, like that was pretty clear. Now you wanna be a part of the answer. And so answer engine optimization is the tactics, the plays that you run to show up as part of that answer. Also, it just sounds cooler than GEO in my opinion, but we’ll see how long the debate rages on. I have learned not to underestimate how long people in our particular world can spend haggling and debating this type of thing.

Danny Goodwin:
Yes, I know it’s, it’s sort of like subdomains versus subfolders. If you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know what that means and how long that debate has been going on. And I can’t even tell you, uh, more than a decade, I’m safe in assuming. Whatever we call it ultimately or whatever it gets decided it is called, this does feel like a big transition point for search from traditional ranking search to AI search is more about retrieval. So for you, how has it changed the way you’re thinking about visibility and strategy?

Aja Frost:
Yeah, we are very much thinking about AEO as an evolution of SEO, which I did my homework and I’m just a Danny Goodwin fan, so I know that I think we’re on the same page there. And yes, that was an intentional pun. I think one thing that has actually always been a very HubSpot philosophy is do what’s best for the customer. And that’s always overlapped really neatly with our SEO strategy. It’s also what Google has preached for many years – do what’s best for the customer. You may miss out on some short-term wins, but in the long run, your site is going to perform better. And that is at the heart of our AEO strategy. I also think that the three buckets of plays that we’re running are familiar from SEO.
So the what hasn’t changed, but the how has, and I’ll go a click deeper there. Those three buckets for us are content, technical, and offsite.

Our content for AEO looks fairly different than it does for SEO. It’s much more specific. It’s much nicher and deeper. It’s structured differently. It’s written differently. But it’s always intended to be what’s best for the customer or best for the reader.

The second bucket is technical. And again, I think that Google indexes/ingests content differently than AI bots do. And so we need to adjust our technical strategies to match while not doing anything that’s harmful for GoogleBot, because of course we still care about Google.

And then offsite, one thing that is probably the clearest from SEO to AEO is the emphasis on brand mentions rather than links. And so we’re really shifting our offsite strategy to be much more about positive mentions in the places that AI is training and citing versus getting backlinks on high domain authority websites.

Danny Goodwin:
That is a big shift. I think still a lot of people aren’t ready for. So much of the stuff the tactics have been ingrained for – and I forget, how long have you been doing SEO roughly?

Aja Frost:
I’ve been doing SEO for a little over a decade.

Danny Goodwin:
So SEO is probably about near 30 years old at this point.

Aja Frost:
Oh, Danny, we didn’t say we were gonna talk about my age on the podcast.

Danny Goodwin:
Hey. But yeah. Um, sorry about that.

Aja Frost:
No, they’re all good.

Danny Goodwin:
So yeah, I mean, it’s just like, there’s this kind of, this whole playbook I think that a lot of people are attached to. And change is scary for a lot of people. Rethinking that stuff is important because nothing is static. And especially right now things are just kind of chaotic. The amount of changes we’re
seeing, it’s crazy.

Aja Frost:
Oh my God. Change is so scary. I think change is scary for us. We also had the pressure of not just figuring this out for our own internal strategy, but for figuring it out for our customers. The strategy that we are shipping right now, I have a very direct line to our VP of product for our marketing hub. I also spend a lot of time with the head of product for content hub. Those two products basically represent your website and content strategy and HubSpot. Everything that we’re doing. I’m telling them about the stuff that’s working, the stuff that’s not working, so they can turn that into product learnings as quickly as possible. I think it is terrifying and exhilarating and exciting all at once.

Danny Goodwin:
Yeah. And with that change, I think there’s a lot of rethinking about how we define success, right? So AEO is not going to be the same success metrics that we had with SEO. So how are you actually
thinking about that right now? It used to be like, how many links can I acquire? But what are you thinking about now? What’s important? Is it visibility in a AI answers, getting citations or mentions the actual conversions from the traffic, which again, is not as large as traffic from search, but – there is debate over whether it’s higher quality at this point, which maybe we’ll get into a little bit later. How are you sort of defining success with AEO?

Aja Frost:
This was also a topic of much debate, and we actually published the results on our Loop Marketing page.
We have a new scorecard for how companies should be thinking about marketing in the age of AI. And AEO, which fits into this loop marketing framework has a few new North Star metrics.

The first, and the one that I would argue is the most important, is visibility. And it’s visibility and not traffic, or not citations, because visibility is what’s going to ultimately inform whether someone converts. And they might not convert in that session. They’re probably not gonna convert directly from their interaction with the LLM. We know that LLMs just are really bad at navigational search. And so they’re probably opening up a new tab or maybe two days later, five days later, going to the website. But the, the visibility is what informs what we care about, which is the conversion. So that’s number one.

That takes, by the way, a lot of education with your exec leadership. And I am very lucky to work at a company, whose leadership is deeply embedded in all these conversations, and I think gets it. But if you are at a company where your CEO is not reading Search Engine Land, it’s definitely worth doing a deep dive to help them understand why visibility is the number one.

Second is share of voice. So what is your visibility like relative to your competitors? And I think that’s a really useful benchmark. I know that there was a lot of coverage back in mid-September when ChatGPT really turned down the dial on visibility for brands. And if you are just looking at visibility, you might think, oh, something’s going haywire with my strategy. If you look at share voice and share voice is constant or growing, you know that you’re doing the right thing, agnostic of some of the algorithmic changes.

Then we get to mentions, or sorry, mentions goes into visibility, then we get to citations. How many times is your website used as a source in answer engine responses? And I think this is really important. I think a lot of brands go after citations first. I’m putting it third on our list. I think it is important because if you get the citation, what we have found is your average ranking and the response and the sentiment of that description, they’re both better, which makes a ton of sense. If you control the source,
you’re always gonna say the nicest things about yourself and put yourself first. If you overindex on citations, however, you’re gonna miss out on a wide swath of visibility that I think is pretty critical.

Danny Goodwin:
You’ve done a lot of experimenting, which I want to get into in a minute, with optimizing for LLMs and AI-generated answers. What ways do you see SEO and AEO being similar? And then maybe where do you see them separating a little bit?

Aja Frost:
Yeah, I think this goes back to what I was talking about – solving for the customer or doing what is good for the end user. I think that is shared for SEO and AEO. And one of the questions you probably get, ’cause I get it all the time, is, well, if I do this for AEO, will it be bad for SEO? And my answer is always no. If you are doing, if you were rolling out an AEO strategy that is good for the end user.

So an example of what would be bad for the end user would be burying secret instructions in content for an AI agent. A good thing would be creating really helpful specific content that’s going to answer a really niche query that someone is asking ChatGPT. And as long as you are solving for that end user, I think
that you’ll benefit in both disciplines. You’ll, benefit in answer engines as well as Google.

And then I think the three higher level categories of plays are similar, but where I think things get very different are, again, the content is just, we’re going from these very broad, high level topics, these ultimate guides, which HubSpot – this is a, I don’t know, a dubious claim to fame. But when I started an SEO at HubSpot, then I was telling the blog team what keywords I thought we should target and, and recommending search friendly titles. And I really liked Ultimate Guide. I just thought it sounded nice. So every title I recommended was Ultimate Guide, this Ultimate Guide that. And then of course, a lot of websites started using Ultimate Guide, and now I’ll click through the SERPs and I see Ultimate Guide. I’m like, I think this is my fault.

So you’re going from the ultimate guide to, you know, this is the exact use case that this exact persona wants to accomplish, and here’s how to do it, and here’s some original data that we’ve gotten from customers just like you. And if you come from an answer engine, it’s gonna be tailored exactly to what we know about you. And so it’s a very different style of content and content journey.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. ’cause I, I feel like, and I’ve, I had this conversation not publicly, but there were conversations after the whole bruhaha about all the traffic. HubSpot lost when that, that came out on, I don’t even remember what month that was this year, earlier probably in the spring. And just how much traffic they were losing. Everybody was losing their minds over it. And I was like, wow. You know, you kind of forget the influence that HubSpot had on content marketing as a whole. Your playbook that you guys came up with was used by so many other websites. Like there’s just, you know, repurposed for their specific topic or niche or whatever. But yeah, like HubSpot, that playbook was huge for a lot of years. Right. I think that’s, that was started like right before COVID around that time and then just sort of exploded., Is that the right timeframe?

Aja Frost:
I think it depends on what you are talking about. If you’re talking about inbound, inbound I think is really at the heart of the web. At least for a lot of companies that were publishing educational content and inbound goes way, way back. I think we have always been very much a build and public company and, and we share our successes and our strategies along the way. Which is what we’re doing right now with Loop Marketing. I think that has led to a lot of companies saying, oh, this was really successful for HubSpot, I’m gonna adopt it as well, which is good. That’s what we wanted.

But I also think that when we started seeing declines from the emergence of AI Overviews and the changing nature of Google, that was a bit of a bellwether for what I think a lot of websites are now seeing. And so one response could have been, oh, we’re not gonna build in public anymore. We’re gonna be very cagey about what we’re doing and what’s working. So that doesn’t happen again. But that’s obviously not what we’re doing. We’re trying to be even more transparent and helpful. I really hope and believe that loop marketing, which is not a replacement of inbound, but meant to be, again, an extension of and, and a really helpful framework for companies can play that role.

Danny Goodwin:
So just going back to that, that traffic drop. I was basically told it was about an 80% traffic drop and you kind of helped the company through that. And now in LLM world, HubSpot is the most cited CRM, is that correct?

Aja Frost:
Or the most visible CRM

Danny Goodwin:
Most visible. Okay. Gotcha. All right. And, and obviously this is, again, this is a fairly new technology. So, when you were starting to approach optimization on LLMs and AEO, how did you start that journey? Like, what were the first few things that you maybe either thought about or tried that did or did not work?

Aja Frost:
Yeah. Well, the first thing I did that I would really recommend folks do if they don’t have an AEO function already stood up was I, um, pulled together some of the ICS on our team that were already doing a lot of experimentation and research in their own time. In my day-to-day, I am usually working
with managers or directors. I’m not super close to the work. But I knew that I needed to be really close to this and really help guide it. And so I said, the three of us, we’re gonna meet once a day. We are going to launch one experiment per week if we can. I’m working with the dev team so that whatever we need to do, we can execute as quickly as possible. And so we took a very experimental mindset from the get go.

What we started out with was how do we scale good quality data-rich content? We had been thinking, and I think most people thought about content, maybe in a month you put out 30 pieces. If you’re a news publication, you could be putting out hundreds. But we’re thinking in multipliers of tens most teams. And I think we need to be thinking in multipliers of hundreds or thousands. And so with the team, I wanted to figure out how do we create that content? How do we start relatively small? So like batches of 10, generated with AI reviewed by a human, and then how do we scale that over time? That I think has been very successful.

We’re still experimenting with the types of content that get the most visibility in answer engines. And so that’s what a lot of experimentation revolves around. We also did a lot of what I think of as good clean AEO. Making sure that we were using all the available schema types across our website, making sure that things were really well structured and that we’re leading with the answer. And each section of the page is semantically complete and things are formatted in a Q and A format. You know, a lot of things that I think are now becoming like the standard AEO playbook.

Danny Goodwin:
So you mentioned content types. I know there’s been a lot of noise about how some people are abusing top X lists – the top 10 best insert thing here. Is that the sort of stuff you’ve been playing around with? When you say content form, is there anything you can share about what you found that works maybe better?

Aja Frost:
Yeah, so I’m not thinking so much about top X for Y, although I think that that still very much has a
place in people’s content playbooks. But what we’re really experimenting with is – Danny,
what’s the last thing you did research with ChatGPT to buy?

Danny Goodwin:
Oh, to buy?

Aja Frost:
Yeah.

Danny Goodwin:
Uh, it’s, it’s probably researching to find a hotel for Christmas.

Aja Frost:
Okay. Find a hotel for Christmas. So the context that ChapGPT is going to have when it recommends a hotel for you is probably about how much money you typically spend based on some demographic data it’s collected about you, if you’ve done any hotel research in the past, where you’re going, obviously how long you’re gonna stay. Hotels, we wanna provide the answers for all of those contextual clues. So if I were a hotel and I was trying to show up in answer engines, I would be creating content that spoke to your particular persona type and your particular use case. Now, I think the challenge is doing that without that content being duplicative or spammy. And to do that, this is what we spend a lot of time on. What are all the data sources that we can ingest to feed these systems essentially, so that all the content is unique, it’s grounded in what we know the persona needs, and it’s not repetitive from page to page.

Danny Goodwin:
As, as you’ve gone through this process, were there any maybe big surprises like, oh my God, I didn’t think that would work. Or is there just like any kind of aha! moments, um, as you’ve been doing all this optimization for AI answers?

Aja Frost:
The hardest part has been the measurement. I think that we are still very much as an industry, and I know this ’cause I talked to a lot of AEO vendors, figuring out how to correlate the actions that we are taking with specific visibility increases. And it’s highly dependent on the prompts you are tracking. I think that leaves the room for uncertainty and ambiguity because what if you’re tracking the wrong prompts? Or what if you’re tracking the right prompts, but not enough of them? It’s far less clear to say “I did X and Y happened” than it was with SEO. And even with SEO, you know, we couldn’t run A/B tests. We are always doing look backs. There’s so many variables at play.

I talked about education with execs around why visibility is the most important. I think the other really important piece of education, not just for executive leadership, but for, SEO/AEO teams is getting comfortable with less data and fewer direct lines between what we’re doing and the results. So that’s been, I don’t know if that’s been surprising ’cause I think I knew going in that that was going to be hard. But as we’ve progressed and we’ve done more and more teasing apart, the impact of individual experiments has gotten harder and harder.

Danny Goodwin:
So I heard through on background of getting this interview set up that you sort of have a formula for getting ChatGPT to recommend a brand. So I want to hear all about that. What can you tell us about that?

Aja Frost:
Well, I think that many of the best tactics that we are successfully using are ones that I’ve already mentioned. So we’ve spent a lot of time talking about hyper-specific persona-centric content. What we’ve talked about a little less is the off-site tactics that we’re using. And what we’ve done is identified ChatGPT and Google, because those are priority engines, we’ve identified their top training and citation sources. And then we have put together a concerted strategy to show up as positively and frequently as possible in those places. And two big areas for us have been YouTube and Reddit, which probably won’t surprise anyone as being very influential for answer engines. I can go a little bit more into some of the things we’ve done there, if that’s useful?

Danny Goodwin:
Yeah, I think so. There’s been some research done around how heavily cited Reddit and YouTube and a few other sites are. So yeah, I’d be kinda curious to know, like from a strategic standpoint, maybe like how you guys are approaching Reddit and YouTube.

Aja Frost:
Yeah. Very different strategies for each and one big learning for us, I wouldn’t say this is in the last year because we’ve been very active on both platforms for several years, but, um, treating every social
media platform as its own beast and really getting to know the lay of the land and understanding the culture and the rules and the unspoken rules before we engage. I mean, that’s just a general best practice for any community or social media site.

But on YouTube, uh, we have a large slate of owned channels from Marketing Against the Grain and HubSpot Marketing, to how to HubSpot, science of scaling. It really runs the gamut. And we, the global growth or SEO AEO team works really closely with the teams creating those conthat content to weave in organic mentions of the products where they make sense and make sure that we are creating content on topics that we know answer engines and people care about. We also have a lot of creator partnerships with folks who speak to our relevant audience and somewhat similar playbook there. We want organic, relevant, contextual mentions of HubSpot.

Danny Goodwin:
So that’s like influencer marketing, that sort of thing when you say creator?

Aja Frost:
Yeah. I think you could call it influencer marketing. I mean, we, we sign, um, multi-month sometimes one-year contracts with creators and, and say, you know, we will pay you X, Y, Z and, in exchange you will create content on these wide topics. Well, we give them a lot of editorial freedom, but you know. You’ll mention HubSpot in X videos, that sort of thing.

And then on Reddit, it is a much more advocacy and community-centric approach. And I should have shouted out HubSpot Media on the YouTube front. They are a fantastic partner to my team. On the Reddit front, we work really closely with HubSpot community, another internal team. And in the last year we became the co-moderator of HubSpot’s subreddit. And we have spent most of our time making that subreddit as productive and engaging as possible because what we’ve seen, which is really interesting, is that the more activity that happens in our HubSpot, the more positive mentions of HubSpot there are across Reddit. Because basically you’re creating a team of advocates who are really excited about your brand, your product, and then they organically go out into conversations on our sales, our marketing, our CRM, and they say good things about HubSpot. So, very, very different strategies, but both focused on getting the right people to say nice things about HubSpot.

Danny Goodwin:
I think we touched on this a little bit earlier. Google search versus traffic you get from AI engines, it’s very different. It’s not as large. We’ve actually reported, in the last couple months, three different stories basically saying that traffic that you get from LLMs is either worse or about on par with Google search in terms of converting. I’m curious what you’ve seen there. Do you see that to be the case or do you see quality traffic coming through?

Aja Frost:
Yeah, the traffic that directly comes from LLMs converts at about three times better than traditional search for us. So we’re definitely seeing higher conversion rates. And I, I’ve read the SEL stories. I was looking at the one you most recently published, which was like 900 e-comm website over the course of a year. I shared that with my team last week. I was curious whether the difference in conversion rates had anything to do with the difference in the type of product and the buying journey. Like, I think by the time someone is coming to hubspot.com from an LLM, they’ve done a lot of research, at least that’s what our analysis suggests. And so they’re much readier to convert than someone who might in the old world have been coming to the blog to download an ebook on content marketing. It’s been another really fascinating area to watch the industry debate because I’ve also seen several different, uh, different stats.

Danny Goodwin:
Right. Yeah. Again, it’s very early and these are not large scale studies, it’s just sort of anecdotal I guess we would say. But any data, I think is useful ’cause at least it gets people thinking about all of these things and it’s gonna always go back to, it depends. It may be different for ecomm versus B2B or whatever the case may be. I think there’s still a lot that’s going to change and where AI is now. I even today was seeing somebody saying we’re at peak AI already. Like really? Like it’s, it’s two years old. Like, come on.

Aja Frost:
Yeah. I would disagree with that. Yeah. I think there are, to your point, some things that could be step function increases in conversion rates. Obviously instant checkout, that’s huge. I think that, yeah, I mean this was obviously over the course of a year and I do remember seeing in the study that conversion rates had increased over time, maybe as people got more comfortable or familiar with ChatGPT. But instant checkout’s huge. I don’t know what adoption for Atlas is going to be or for any of these ad browsers to be fair. But agent mode or agentic checkout would definitely improve conversion rates. So I think we’re at the very early innings of this.

Danny Goodwin:
Where do you think AEO as a practice will be at maybe a year from now? Do you think it’ll be kind of its own thing? Do you think it’ll be part of SEO and is there anything that you were maybe kinda excited to see happen from ChatGPT or some of these other engines that could make these systems even better?

Aja Frost:
I think a lot hinges on when Google makes AI Mode more of the primary search experience. I don’t believe that you are going to get an AI-powered answer for every search. My belief is for navigational queries, at the very least, you’re probably always gonna have something that feels like the traditional SERP and that it gets you from point A to point B very quickly. But I think for a lot, if not most other searches, you will probably be in some form of AI Mode and at that point, SEO and AEO become merged because there is no real traditional SERP to optimize for anymore.

Danny Goodwin:
Yep. Exactly. That’s sort of been my problem with this whole naming debate. If you’re gonna call it AI SEO, what happens if that search engine goes away? There’s no more, there’s no more SE in SEO.

Aja Frost:
Totally. Yeah. But yeah, and also that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Like I don’t wanna stand up and and say I am an AI SEO.

Danny Goodwin:
Right. Exactly. So if you could maybe give people one AEO type of experiment you think maybe they could run before the end of the year to kinda get a feel for it or just anything that you think might be helpful for them to kinda experiment with. Is there anything maybe you could suggest to people like, try this tactic or this strategy or whatever?

Aja Frost:
I think if you want a real project, then I would try creating those hyper-specific, very persona-focused pages. I think if you’re looking for something that you could run with and get live by the end of the week, use one of the many query fan-out tools that are available online. Take a page that already exists on your website, plug like a, a likely reasonable query that would lead someone to that page into a query fan-out pool, and then assess whether your page answers or has content for all of the subqueries that that pool provides. And if it doesn’t add them and then see does your visibility for that head question increase.

Danny Goodwin:
Awesome. Any final thoughts? Anything we didn’t talk about that you’d love to comment on or leave people with some parting words of wisdom?

Aja Frost:
Yeah, I would, I would be remiss not to direct people to hubspot.com/loopmarketing. We have spent a lot of time on AEO. Of course, AEO is one of the tactics in this new growth framework for the AI era, but there’s a lot more that we believe businesses can and should be doing to not just survive but thrive. Check it out. I think there’s a lot there.

Danny Goodwin:
Awesome. And just, just for anyone who’s listening and doesn’t know what is loop marketing like, can you give us just a quick overview of what that is? ’cause you mentioned a couple times.

Aja Frost:
Yeah. Loop marketing is a growth framework for businesses. There are four phases: express, tailor, amplify, and evolve. Each of those four phases has a host of plays and tactics. But the general idea is that, as the web changes, as folks go from progressing through this ever narrowing funnel to
getting an answer in an LLM, then going to your Instagram, then reading a review and, and really having like a much more messy, much less linear journey, we need a new framework for marketing. And so this framework is an ever-evolving, much more flexible dynamic framework.

Danny Goodwin:
Right. So it’s sort of like that old bendy straw, the messy middle as Google put it, I think. Right?

Aja Frost:
Yes. Yes. I will say messy middle came up many times in our conversations around the loop.

Danny Goodwin:
Yeah. Awesome. Alright, well that is all the time I have for you for today. It was a great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. Look forward to seeing more from you in the future and wishing you nothing but success heading forward.

Aja Frost:
Thanks so much, Danny. This was really fun.

Danny Goodwin:
All right. Thanks. Aja. Bye everybody.

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Social and UGC: The trust engines powering search everywhere

November 4, 2025/0 Comments/in Search Engine Land, Web Design News/by

AI search isn’t killing SEO. It’s forcing it to evolve into a new, multi-platform discipline called search everywhere optimization, where social and user-generated content (UGC) are the new trust engines driving discoverability.

When I presented this concept at brightonSEO San Diego, what stood out wasn’t just the excitement around AI.

What stood out was the unexpected convergence of ideas across sessions. You might expect every talk to center on AI, yet a broader shift was quietly taking shape.

Five standout voices – Wil Reynolds, Josh Blyskal, Samanyou Garg, Ross Hudgens, and Ashley Liddell – all surfaced similar insights about where search is headed.

Across these discussions, one message echoed clearly: social and UGC now shape which brands audiences trust and engage with.

Below are four recurring themes from those talks, along with post-event insights from each speaker on how marketers can apply a search everywhere mindset.

1. Search is not a platform, it’s a behavior

Search no longer lives in one box – and users aren’t just Googling anymore. They’re discovering through:

Conversations.
Communities.
Creators.

While AI platforms are becoming part of that journey, much of it still happens where authentic discussions thrive: Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram, to name a few.

Search has never been more multi-platform, multi-touch, or multi-intent.

Marketers must now adapt to fragmented journeys that may start socially, evolve through AI, and end in branded discovery.

Garg, founder and CEO of Writesonic, said it well when he recently shared with me:

“Your website is no longer your main asset – your presence across the entire web is. Brands optimizing only for Google are missing 40% of their audience who’ve already moved to ‘search everywhere.’”

My presentation defined this concept as search everywhere optimization, emphasizing that success depends on SEO, social, PR, and brand teams working together to drive unified discoverability.

Other speakers echoed these points, even if they used different language.

Liddell defines this similarly as “search everywhere” – where social, brand, and search operate together to drive discoverability.
Hudgens said, “Social is evolving to become the new open web,” citing data showing traffic and engagement growth from social ecosystems.
Blyskal quantified the behavior: AI platforms cite Reddit and YouTube way more than any traditional websites. More proof that discovery has evolved beyond Google’s SERP.

In speaking with Blyskal, head of AI strategy and research at Profound, he noted:

“Search everywhere isn’t a trend anymore, it’s reality. Our data shows that consumers are asking ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity the same questions they used to ask Google, but the answers are being built from fundamentally different sources. UGC platforms like Reddit now drive more influence in AI recommendations than most corporate websites because they represent unfiltered human experience at scale.”

2. UGC and social content drive modern discovery

User-generated content and social discourse have become the connective tissue of search.

From product reviews to LinkedIn posts to Reddit threads, these conversations shape what AI and many humans believe to be authoritative.

Social platforms are now the front door to search intent, sparking curiosity and building interest that eventually leads users to branded and organic experiences.

Blyskal’s analysis of 40 million AI search results found Reddit to be the single most-cited domain across ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity.

While some shifts have occurred recently, he confirmed on Oct. 21 that “Reddit is still the most cited website overall in AI and is still second in ChatGPT.”

Garg echoed this finding, noting that Reddit and other community-driven content dominate citations across industries – a clear signal for marketers to engage where real conversations happen.

Liddell’s award-winning BullyBillows case study demonstrated how social-first content can drive measurable SEO impact, including:

A 65% rise in brand searches.
A 195% increase in “brand + keyword” searches.
A 139% lift in revenue.

Reynolds likewise emphasized the value of social resonance, recommending that marketers invest in content that performs well on social platforms, even if it underperforms in organic search.

Seer Interactive’s own data backs this up: while social generates 89% less traffic than search, it produces 20% more leads.

Together, this data proves that social and UGC are not just amplification channels. They’re search inputs themselves, and a core component of search everywhere optimization.

In a follow-up conversation, Hudgens – founder and CEO of Siege Media – remarked:

“Search traffic to LinkedIn pages is up significantly, and I expect it to continue to grow, eventually coming close to Reddit and Quora in impact on B2B. Brands need to be considering how they show up and contribute on LinkedIn in order to best impact all search surfaces.”

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3. Preference outranks ranking

Visibility alone no longer wins.

Many are seeing this firsthand in their analytics – clicks are declining even when rankings remain steady.

The real goal now is preference: being chosen, not just seen.

Both humans and AI systems increasingly value authenticity and consensus over keyword precision and link quantity.

Today, search visibility depends as much on how others describe your brand as on the content you create yourself.

Liddell frames this shift through the lens of preference = authority + trust + relevance.
Reynolds highlights the rise of community platforms – LinkedIn, Reddit, Slack, and WhatsApp – urging SEOs to focus on spaces where people share content with personal endorsement, offering more genuine reach than traditional formats that dominate the SERP.
Hudgens describes the 2021–2026 content marketing evolution from “high DR (domain rating) links” to “high influence mentions,” signaling that social proof and reputation now act as the modern PageRank.
Garg quantifies it: AI now weighs third-party mentions three times higher than a brand’s own website.

In short, as search engines are learning to mirror people, they trust signals, not tactics. This is the preference component of search everywhere optimization.

Liddell, co-founder and Search Everywhere director at Deviation, summarized it nicely to me, sharing:

“Brands can’t win on rankings alone anymore; they win on trust. Modern discovery happens where people talk, not where algorithms dictate – and that means investing in authentic UGC and social visibility is as critical to search as backlinks once were.”

4. Search everywhere success starts with breaking down silos

In 2025, silos remain one of the biggest obstacles to growth.

Many of our clients experience this firsthand – and other industry experts agree that maximizing discoverability now depends on cross-functional collaboration.

Search teams can no longer operate in isolation. PR, brand, and social teams all feed the trust loop that AI, search engines, and users rely on.

Future success will depend on these groups meeting regularly, sharing ideas, and aligning on shared goals.

My presentation emphasized building cross-channel roadmaps with social, content, PR, and paid to ensure each team’s efforts reinforce each other.
Hudgens showed that the future of content marketing lies in blending PR, organic social, thought leadership, and SEO – creating compounding impact instead of treating them as separate channels.
Reynolds underscored the need for shared metrics, measuring impact not in rankings but in trust, reach, and conversion.

The new search equation runs on trust

While the speakers offered diverse perspectives, they all agreed on one central truth: search success is shifting from gaming algorithms to authentically earning audience trust.

Reddit posts, offsite reviews, social media, and third-party references now serve as critical trust signals – not because they link, but because they validate and build confidence in a brand.

This shift – evident across all four takeaways, from breaking down silos to valuing preference over ranking – underscores a broader reality: search isn’t something people do anymore.

It’s something they experience, everywhere.

The brands that will thrive in this new era won’t be those with the most backlinks or the sharpest keyword strategy, but those whose audiences genuinely connect with and vouch for them.

Read more at Read More

5 Google Ads tactics to drop in 2026

November 4, 2025/0 Comments/in Search Engine Land, Web Design News/by

Over the past year, Google Ads has increasingly embraced automation, shifting the account manager’s role in both practice and strategy.

The granular control and transparency we once took for granted are rapidly disappearing.

As 2026 approaches, it’s time to face reality – five PPC tactics are falling out of favor in the new era of automation.

1. Relying on phrase match keywords

Once the go-to option for advertisers who weren’t ready for a broad match strategy but wanted to expand search volume, phrase match has recently fallen out of favor.

Google continues to redefine how match types work.

Because Smart Bidding and broad match rely on multiple intent signals, these signals now match user intent more accurately than phrase match did under the same strategy.

When targeting a specific query, exact match tends to provide stronger control, while phrase match often returns ads for irrelevant searches.

As a result, phrase match has become both too limited to scale an account and not precise enough to maintain the level of control advertisers need in a keyword match type.

2. Skipping standard shopping campaigns

Although Performance Max has been Google’s main focus for some time, advertisers continue to see strong results from testing standard shopping campaigns.

This became even more apparent after the ad rank update at the end of 2024, which removed Performance Max’s built-in priority over standard shopping.

Since then, standard shopping campaigns have outperformed Performance Max in many cases.

Standard shopping also provides greater channel control and a clearer attribution path, as conversions typically come from direct clicks within the Google Shopping network.

While Performance Max now offers campaign-level search terms, standard shopping has long provided both that data and impression share insights at the product-group level – valuable for benchmarking and understanding competitive performance.

If you’re concerned about brand safety, standard shopping is the safer choice. It helps keep your ads off irrelevant or inappropriate placements across the Display Network or YouTube.

3. Making GA4 your primary conversion action

Remember the days of Universal Analytics, when Google would always advise advertisers to use UA conversion tracking as the primary metric?

It seems the guidance has gone back and forth ever since.

Ideally, your main conversion metric in Google Ads should align with account conversions to deliver real-time data signals for Smart Bidding.

GA4’s tracking pixel doesn’t provide that freshness – imported GA4 events are delayed in processing.

Additionally, GA4 attributes conversions to the date the conversion occurred, whereas the native Google Ads tag attributes them to the date of the ad click.

Third-party tools such as Elevar or Analyzify often provide the most reliable setup for accurate conversion tracking.

If a third-party solution isn’t feasible, Google increasingly recommends the Google and YouTube app as an alternative.

It’s relatively easy to configure, but avoid syncing products or shipping settings during setup to prevent duplicate products or overwritten shipping details in Merchant Center.

GA4 should still be linked for audience building and secondary reporting, but it’s best not to use it as the primary conversion metric.

It simply doesn’t deliver the real-time data accuracy needed for optimal Smart Bidding performance.

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4. Letting Performance Max capture branded terms

Performance Max campaigns tend to favor branded queries, so it’s important to segment branded terms rather than allowing them to run within broader campaigns.

This matters most when aiming for incremental traffic growth, not just conversions you would have earned from branded searches anyway.

Performance Max prioritizes easy wins, bidding heavily on branded terms and often inflating campaign-level ROAS, making results appear stronger than they actually are.

Separating branded traffic into a dedicated brand search campaign provides more control over both budget allocation and bid strategy for those terms.

However, there are factors to consider before excluding branded terms from existing Performance Max campaigns.

Doing so can affect performance, and the right approach isn’t one-size-fits-all.

Review:

The campaign’s age.
History.
Contribution to overall performance.
The share of brand traffic it drives.

In large accounts, for instance, if a single PMax campaign is responsible for most conversions and spend, it may be unwise to exclude branded terms immediately.

Likewise, in accounts with limited budgets, keeping branded terms within the same campaign may still make sense.

5. Over-pinning responsive search ads

The pinning debate has been around for a while, but more advertisers are now leaning toward fewer responsive search ad (RSA) assets instead of over-pinning existing ones.

This helps maintain control over messaging while still giving Google enough flexibility to test which headline and description combinations perform best – without overwhelming the system with endless variations.

And yes, the question always comes up, “What about my ad strength?”

Realistically, ad strength should be treated as a guide for creative quality, not a direct measure of performance.

While it can highlight issues such as limited variety or missing keywords, it does not directly impact ad rank or quality score.

Ad strength is a diagnostic tool, not a KPI.

Chasing an “excellent” score by stuffing headlines and descriptions can easily result in weaker performance for the sake of a vanity metric.

Don’t fight the machine – feed it

As 2026 approaches, the most successful account managers will be those who adapt to the new landscape.

The goal isn’t to fight automation but to feed it the right data.

Focus on high-value inputs and let automation do the heavy lifting – the most profitable PPC practices are the ones that save time, not consume it.

Read more at Read More

Does Your Website Need an LLMs.txt File? + How to Create One

November 4, 2025/0 Comments/in Web Design News/by

There’s been a lot of buzz around llms.txt.

But no major AI platform has confirmed that they use it.

Not yet, anyway.

And there’s no evidence that any major large language model (LLM) actually uses it when crawling.

So, why are some SEOs and site owners already adding it to their sites?

Because LLM traffic is projected to explode over the next few years.

Google and LLM Unique Visitor Growth Projection (Moderate Case)

Which means AI models could soon become your biggest traffic source.

Remember: robots.txt was once optional, too.

Today, it’s essential for managing search crawlers.

LLMs.txt could follow a similar path — becoming the standard way to guide AI to your most important content.

In this guide, you’ll learn how llms.txt files work, the key pros and cons, and the exact steps to create one for your site.

You’ll also see different llms.txt examples from real sites.

First up: a quick explainer.

What Is LLMs.txt?

LLMs.txt is a plain-text file that tells AI models which pages to prioritize when crawling your site.

This proposed standard could make your content easier for AI systems to find, process, and cite.

Here’s how it works:

You create a text file called llms.txt
List your most important pages with brief descriptions of what each covers
Place it at your site’s root directory
In theory, LLM crawlers would then use the file to discover, prioritize, and better understand your key pages

For example, here’s what Yoast SEO’s llms.txt file looks like:

Does LLMs.txt Replace Robots.txt?

Short answer: No.

They serve different purposes.

Robots.txt tells crawlers what they’re allowed to access on a site.

It uses directives like “Allow” and “Disallow” to control crawling behavior.

LLMs.txt suggests which pages AI models should prioritize.

It doesn’t control access — it just provides a curated list. And makes it easier for crawlers to understand your content.

For example, you might use robots.txt to block crawlers from your admin dashboard and checkout pages.

Then, use llms.txt to point AI systems toward your help docs, product pages, and pricing guide.

Here’s a full breakdown of the differences:

	LLMs.txt	Robots.txt
Purpose	Provides a curated list of key pages that AI models may use for information and sources	Sets rules for search engine crawlers on what to crawl and index
Target audience	LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity	Traditional search engine bots (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.)
Syntax	Markdown-based; human-readable	Plain text, specific directives
Enforcement	Proposed standard; adherence is not confirmed by major LLMs	Voluntary; considered standard practice and respected by major search engines
SEO/AI impact	May influence AI-generated summaries, citations, and content creation	Directly impacts search engine indexing and organic search rankings

Layout and Elements

So, what goes inside this file — and how should you structure it?

LLMs.txt should be created as a plain-text file and formatted with markdown.

Markdown uses simple symbols to structure content.

This includes:

# for a main heading, ## for section headings, ### for subheads
> to call out a short note or tip
– or * for bullet lists
[text](https://example.com/page) for a labeled link
Triple backticks (“`) to fence off code examples when you’re showing snippets in a doc or blog post

Yoast – LLMs.txt with a #heading and list

This makes the file easy for both humans and AI tools to read.

You can see the main elements in this llms.txt example:

# Title
> Description goes here (optional)
Additional details go here (optional)
## Section
- [Link title](https://link_url): Optional details
## Optional
- [Link title](https://link_url)

Now that you know how to format the file, let’s break down each part:

Title and optional description at the top: Add your site or company name, plus a brief description of what you do to give AI systems context
Sections with headers: Organize content by topic, like “Services,” “Case Studies,” or “Resources,” so crawlers can quickly identify what’s in the file
URLs with short descriptions: List key pages you want prioritized. Use clear, descriptive SEO-friendly URLs. And add a concise description after each link for context.
Optional sections: Consider adding lower-priority resources you want AI systems to be aware of but don’t need to emphasize — like “Our Team” or “Careers”

To put all the pieces together, let’s look at some examples.

Here’s how BX3 Interactive, a website development company, structures its llms.txt file:

It features:

The company’s name
Brief description
List of key service pages with URLs and one-sentence summaries
Top projects and case studies
Citation and linking guidelines

BX3 Interactive also includes target terms and specific CTAs for each URL.

If adopted, this approach could shape how LLMs reference the brand, guiding them toward BX3 Interactive’s preferred messaging and phrasing.

LLMs.txt files can also be more complex, depending on the site.

Like this example from the open-source platform Hugging Face:

It organizes hundreds of pages with nested headings to create a clear hierarchy.

But it goes well beyond URL lists and summaries.

It includes:

Step-by-step installation commands
Code examples for common tasks
Explanatory notes and references

This way, AI systems would get direct access to Hugging Face’s most valuable documentation without needing to crawl every page.

This could reduce the risk of key details getting missed or buried.

Keep in mind that the ideal structure depends on the scope of your site. And the depth of information you want AI to understand.

Further reading: Vibe Marketing: Hype, Reality, and Real Case Studies

Is LLMs.txt Worth It?

The jury is out.

It’s possible that an llms.txt file could boost your AI SEO efforts over time.

But that would require widespread adoption.

No major AI platform has officially supported the use of llms.txt yet.

And Google has been especially clear — they don’t support it and aren’t planning to.

LinkedIn – Kenichi Suzuki – Use of LLMs.txt

But big players like Hugging Face and Stripe already have llms.txt files on their sites.

Most notably, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, also has an llms.txt file on its website.

If one of the leading AI companies is using it themselves, it could mean they see potential for these files to play a bigger role in the future.

Note: While Anthropic has an llms.txt file on its site, it hasn’t publicly stated that its crawlers use or read these files.

Bottom line?

Treat llms.txt as a low-risk experiment, not a guaranteed way to boost AI visibility.

Potential Benefits

Right now, the benefits are theoretical.

But if llms.txt catches on, you could benefit in multiple ways:

Control what gets cited: Spotlight your blog posts, help docs, product pages, and policies so AI tools reference your best pages first instead of less important or outdated content
Make parsing easier: Your llms.txt file gives AI models clean markdown summaries instead of forcing them to parse through cluttered pages with navigation, ads, and JavaScript
Improve your AI performance: Guide AI models to your most valuable pages, potentially improving how often and accurately they cite your content in responses
Analyze your site faster: A flattened version of your site (a single, simplified file listing your key pages), makes it easier to run a keyword analysis and site audit without crawling every URL

Key Limitations and Challenges

The skepticism around llms.txt is valid.

Here are the biggest concerns:

No one’s officially using it yet: No major platforms have announced support for these files — not OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, or Anthropic
It’s a suggestion, not a rule: LLMs don’t have to “obey” your file, and you can’t block access to any pages. Need access control? Stick with robots.txt.
Easy to game: A separate markdown file creates an opportunity for spam. For example, site owners could overload it with keywords, content, and links that don’t align with their actual pages. Basically, keyword stuffing for the AI era.
You’re showing competitors your hand: A detailed llms.txt file hands your competitors a lot of info they might have to use dedicated tools to get otherwise. Your site structure, content gaps, messaging, keywords, and more.

Further reading: 6 AI Content Tools Worth Using

How to Create an LLMs.txt File in 5 Easy Steps

Creating an llms.txt file is pretty simple — even if you don’t have much technical experience.

One caveat: You may need a developer’s help to upload it.

Step 1: Pick Your High-Priority Pages

Start by selecting the pages you want AI systems to crawl first.

Pro tip: Don’t dump your whole sitemap into your llms.txt file. Focus on your most valuable pages — not an exhaustive inventory.

Think about the evergreen content that best represents what you do — your core product pages, high-value guides, FAQ sections, key policies, and pricing details.

For example, BX3 Interactive lists this web development service page first in its llms.txt file:

Why? Because it’s a core service they offer.

And by featuring it in llms.txt, they’re signaling to AI crawlers that this page is central to their business.

Step 2: Create Your File

Next, open any plain-text editor and create a new file called llms.txt.

Options include Notepad, TextEdit (on Mac), and Visual Studio Code.

Pro tip: Don’t just list bare URLs. Add a brief description for each one that explains what the page covers and who it’s for. This context could help AI understand when and how to cite your brand.

Not comfortable with markdown formatting?

Ask your developer to handle it (if you have one).

Or let an LLM do the work — ChatGPT and Claude can generate these files instantly.

Here’s a prompt to get you started:

Create an llms.txt file in markdown format using this information:

Company Name: [Your Company Name]

Company Description: [One sentence about what you do]

Important Notes (optional):

[Key differentiator or important detail]

[What you do or don’t do]

[Another key point]

Products/Services

URL: [https://yoursite.com/product-1]

Description: [What it does and who it’s for]

URL: [https://yoursite.com/product-2]

Description: [What it does and who it’s for]

Blog/Resources

URL: [https://yoursite.com/blog-post-1]

Description: [What readers will learn]

URL: [https://yoursite.com/blog-post-2]

Description: [What readers will learn]

Company Pages

About: [https://yoursite.com/about] – [Company background and mission]

Contact: [https://yoursite.com/contact] – [How to reach you]

Pricing: [https://yoursite.com/pricing] – [Plan overview]

Format this as a proper llms.txt file with markdown headings (#, ##), bullet points (-), and link syntax.

There are also llms.txt generators you can use.

For example, Yoast SEO lets you generate an llms.txt file in one click, complete with markdown.

Remember, the structure isn’t set in stone.

Include your most valuable pages, accompanied by descriptive summaries.

Then, customize the layout based on what matters most for your company.

Step 3: Upload the File

Where your llms.txt file goes depends on what it covers.

For a site-wide file, upload it to your root directory: https://[yoursite].com
For documentation only, place it in its respective subdirectory: https://[docs.yourdomain.com]/llms.txt

You might need a developer’s help for this next step.

They’ll log in to your hosting panel, navigate to your public_html folder, and upload the file.

Once it’s uploaded, you’re ready to test.

Step 4: Make Sure It Works

Open a new tab and type in https://yoursite.com/llms.txt.

If you see something like this, you’re set:

Want to go a step further?

Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to verify the file is crawlable and automatically check for any technical issues.

Step 5: Keep It Fresh

Your llms.txt isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it file.

Schedule a review every few months:

Remove outdated pages that no longer represent your best work
Add new content worth spotlighting as it’s published

This ensures AI systems always see your most relevant content.

Further reading: LLM Seeding: A New Strategy to Get Mentioned and Cited by LLMs

Should You Use an LLMs.txt File on Your Site?

As SEOs like to say, “it depends.”

If setup is quick and you’re curious to experiment, it’s worth doing.

Worst case, nothing changes.

Best case, you’re ahead of the curve if AI platforms start paying attention.

In the meantime, don’t neglect proven SEO fundamentals.

Structured data, high-authority backlinks, and helpful content are what help AI — and traditional search engines — understand, trust, and surface your pages.

Want to boost your AI visibility now?

Check out our AI search guide for a framework that’s already working.

The post Does Your Website Need an LLMs.txt File? + How to Create One appeared first on Backlinko.

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Google Local Services Ads vs. Search Ads: Which drives better local leads?

November 3, 2025/0 Comments/in Search Engine Land, Web Design News/by

Google gives local businesses two main ways to generate PPC leads online: Local Services Ads (LSAs) and Search campaigns.

LSAs are pay-per-lead campaigns – for actions such as calls, messages, or booked appointments – with a quick setup process that involves verifying your business. After that, Google automates most of the ad and keyword setup.

Search campaigns are more complex but offer far greater control over ad copy, keywords, and optimization.

Understanding how each format works – and when to use them – can help you get more qualified leads and make smarter use of your ad budget.

Most advertisers use both and shift budgets based on which delivers better long-term results.

Getting started with Google Local Services Ads

LSAs work for businesses of all sizes, not just those with small budgets.

For small business owners, LSAs offer an easy way to set up and run ads quickly.

This is one of the few ad formats where following Google’s setup instructions can actually work well.

That’s not the case for Google Search campaigns, which are far more complex and often waste spend when relying on Google’s automated suggestions.

Small businesses can prepay a few hundred dollars to test results.

While LSAs offer fewer options for control, customization, or optimization, they can work well for very small budgets.

They don’t require as much active management as Search campaigns – though they aren’t completely “set it and forget it” either.

Larger companies can also benefit from testing LSAs alongside other ad formats to compare results.

However, not all industries are eligible, so always confirm availability before allocating budget.

During setup, review all details carefully – including company information, service areas, and specific services – rather than assuming Google configured them correctly.

You have limited control over ad copy and keywords, since Google automatically determines relevant terms.

As Google’s documentation notes, “there is no need to do keyword research as relevant keywords are automatically determined by Google.”

This can work in your favor – or lead to irrelevant traffic – because you can’t define your own keywords.

Reviews are especially important in this format, as they appear prominently and heavily influence results. Collecting legitimate, high-quality reviews is critical for success.

To evaluate performance, connect third-party tools to track and qualify leads.

A basic CRM can help you measure how many leads convert into customers.

Platforms like HouseCall Pro and ServiceTitan can also integrate booking features, letting customers schedule appointments directly through your LSAs.

Dig deeper: Advanced Google Ads tracking for local service companies

Getting more from your Google Search ads

Google Search campaigns are more complex but offer a wider range of features for setup and optimization.

On top of setting business hours, target areas, and other details, Search campaigns give you greater control over ad testing, assets, keywords, match types, bidding strategies, and more.

Testing with just a few hundred dollars is not recommended. These campaigns require active monitoring and frequent optimization to perform well over time.

Unlike LSAs, you can add negative keywords and test a wide range of terms to identify which are most effective and profitable.

A/B testing ad copy and landing pages is also possible, giving Search campaigns much more scalability.

When starting, test a small budget using phrase and exact match keywords only, even with manual CPC bidding to set your maximum bid per click.

This offers tight control for new accounts, though it’s typically a temporary setup before switching to automated bidding and broader match types.

With larger budgets, you can immediately use automated bidding and broad match keywords.

Begin with broad match keywords using a Maximize Conversions bid strategy, then add a target CPA (tCPA) once performance data builds.

In industries with high CPCs, set up portfolio bidding to include both a tCPA and a maximum CPC bid.

Microsoft Ads includes this option natively in its tCPA setting, so portfolio bidding isn’t required there.

After running a Search campaign for two to three months, begin expanding and refining based on performance.

Add new campaigns and ad groups to test additional keyword and ad combinations, aligning each with specific landing pages to maximize lead generation – something not possible with LSAs.

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.

See terms.

Combining LSAs and Search campaigns for stronger results

As with any advertising channel, it’s essential to regularly evaluate lead quality using a CRM and call tracking tools, such as CallTrackingMetrics or CallRail.

When running both LSAs and Search ads, compare leads from each to assess performance.

LSAs often face lead quality issues, despite being pay-per-lead campaigns.

Google continues improving spam filtering and invalid lead detection for LSAs, but the system still isn’t perfect. Invalid leads can be disputed.

Ad positioning also differs between the two formats. LSAs typically appear at the top of the page, though fewer of them are shown compared to Search ads.

Showing in multiple placements isn’t a problem, but you should continually evaluate cost per lead, lead quality, and lead-to-customer conversion rates for both formats.

Dig deeper: How to expand your reach with reverse location targeting in Google Ads

Expanding beyond LSAs and Search campaigns

For larger budgets, several other Google Ads campaign types are worth testing. These can support lead generation directly or help build local brand awareness.

Display, Video and Demand Gen campaigns can generate leads on their own or build brand awareness for top-of-funnel audiences.

They work well for higher-priced products or services with longer sales cycles, and for lower-priced services that rely on staying top-of-mind – such as plumbing or AC repair.

Performance Max campaigns can also deliver strong lead volume.

However, because they extend beyond Search, it’s essential to monitor lead quality through your CRM and compare it against Search and LSA performance.

With Google Analytics and Google Ads tracking multiple touchpoints before a conversion, you may see fractional conversions.

For example, 0.5 for a Video campaign and 0.5 for a Search campaign – indicating that both contributed to a single lead.

While not a perfect system, this data provides useful context for how different campaigns interact across the customer journey.

Test and compare

Both small and large businesses can benefit from testing LSAs, and all should consider running them alongside Search campaigns to compare results.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach – both formats can be profitable when properly tracked and optimized.

Dig deeper: Google Ads for SMBs: How to maximize paid search success

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Quora SEO: How to Drive Traffic and Build Authority

November 1, 2025/0 Comments/in Web Design/by

If you’re still ignoring Quora as part of your SEO strategy, you’re missing out on serious visibility. It’s recorded 27 million daily users on average, spanning a variety of different industries and demographics.

Here’s what’s changed: Quora has evolved beyond backlinks and referral traffic. The platform now helps you build topical authority, earn citations in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and position your brand where real conversations happen. Google’s algorithm updates prioritize forums and discussion platforms in search results, which means Quora answers can rank for valuable long-tail keywords your website might never touch.

The platform rewards marketers willing to show up with substance. You can reach new audiences, test messaging, and boost your search presence without spending a dime on ads.

This guide breaks down how Quora works, how to optimize for both Quora and Google, and how to turn your answers into long-term authority assets.

Key Takeaways

Quora ranks in Google for thousands of long-tail keywords, especially question-based queries that trigger People Also Ask boxes and AI Overviews.
High-quality answers build topical authority that compounds over time, signaling expertise to both human readers and AI systems.
Consistent participation earns AI citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other tools reshaping how people find information.
Use Quora to uncover content gaps, validate messaging, and attract qualified referral traffic to your owned properties.
Quora is a long-term authority strategy, not a quick traffic hack.

How Does The Quora Platform Work?

Think of Quora as a massive crowdsourced knowledge base where expertise meets curiosity. Users ask questions on nearly every topic imaginable, and subject matter experts provide detailed answers.

The platform’s algorithm surfaces the most helpful responses based on upvotes, views, and engagement. Well-written answers rise to the top, earning visibility both inside Quora and across Google’s search results.

For marketers, this creates a powerful opportunity. Quora answers frequently appear in Google’s People Also Ask sections, featured snippets, and now AI Overview citations. Your insights can reach audiences far beyond the platform itself. Google’s recent emphasis on forum content means Quora threads show up in the new Discussions and Forums SERP feature for many queries, as shown below.

Quora in Google's discussions and forums section.

How Quora Supports SEO

SEO happens everywhere now, not just on Google. You need visibility on YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, and platforms like Quora.

Here’s how Quora fits into your broader SEO ecosystem:

Google visibility for long-tail queries: Quora threads regularly rank on page one for specific questions like “how to improve domain authority for a new site” or “best affordable keyword tools for agencies.” Answer these questions well, and you gain indirect visibility in Google without competing against established authority sites.
Internal search traffic: Quora has its own powerful search engine. Users type detailed, conversational queries that mirror natural language searches. This creates a goldmine for keyword research and discovery. Pay attention to which questions get high follower counts and engagement in your niche.
AI citations and references: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI search tools pull insights from Quora discussions. Well-crafted answers with credible information can position you as a trusted source in AI-driven search results. This matters more as AI tools handle an increasing share of information queries.
Topical authority signals: Regular participation in specific topic areas builds your visibility both on Quora and beyond. Google and AI systems recognize consistent, quality contributions as trust signals. This feeds into your broader authority-building strategy across all platforms.
Brand discovery: People actively searching for solutions on Quora are often in research mode. They’re comparing options, evaluating approaches, and looking for expert guidance. Your presence here puts your brand in front of qualified prospects at a critical decision-making stage.

How To Optimize For Quora

Treat Quora like any other content channel. Success requires strategy, consistency, and a structured approach.

Keyword Research for Quora

Start with Quora’s search bar. Type keywords relevant to your niche (for example, “content marketing strategy” or “technical SEO audits”). You’ll see trending questions, follower counts, and related topics instantly.

Cross-reference these with traditional keyword tools. Use AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest, or Semrush to identify question-based queries that overlap with popular Quora topics. Look for patterns in how people phrase their questions.

Focus on long-tail keywords that sound conversational. Questions like “what’s the best way to find broken backlinks for a small business site” perform well on Quora and often rank in Google too. These specific, detailed queries attract qualified traffic.

Take a look at how these research queries translate into actual Quora questions below.

You can see in this example how many followers certain topics have, which indicates high interest and traffic potential.

A post on the SEO strategy section of Quora.

Monitor trending questions in your expertise areas. Set up notifications for topics you want to establish presence. Jump on new questions early since first responders with quality answers often capture the most upvotes and visibility.

Pay attention to seasonal patterns. Some questions spike during specific times of year (tax questions in March and April, for example). Plan your content calendar accordingly.

Optimize Your Quora Answers

Every answer you post should accomplish two goals: educate your audience and elevate your brand. Here’s how to nail both:

Structure for readability: Break content into short paragraphs. Use subheadings to organize longer answers. Add formatting like bold text, italics, and bullet points to help readers scan quickly. White space matters.
Lead with your strongest point: Answer the question directly in your first paragraph. Don’t bury the insight. People scroll fast, and you need to hook them immediately.
Use keywords naturally: Sprinkle relevant phrases throughout your answer, but write for humans first. Forced keyword stuffing kills credibility and engagement.
Back up claims with data: Reference statistics, cite reputable sources, and share personal experience. Specificity builds trust. Instead of saying “most marketers struggle with this,” say “a 2024 Semrush survey found that 67% of marketers cite link building as their biggest SEO challenge.”
Add visuals when helpful: Screenshots, simple charts, and annotated images break up text and illustrate complex points. Quora supports image uploads, so use them strategically.
Link with purpose: Include one or two contextual links to your content, but only if they genuinely add value. Avoid promotional links that feel like spam. The goal is to be helpful first, promotional second.
Know the Quora rules: Quora has limits on self-promotion. Any sort of self-promotional link or content that isn’t a part of a useful answer to the question is not allowed. Essentially, you want to make sure that the reader can get the gist of your answer without having to go to an outside site.
End with a clear takeaway: Summarize your answer in a sentence or two. Give readers a clear action step if relevant.

Build Authority on Quora

Authority compounds over time on Quora. The algorithm tends to reward consistent contributors who provide detailed, authentic answers. Your visibility grows as you publish more quality content and earn engagement.

Here’s how to accelerate that growth:

Focus on your expertise areas: Answer questions where you can provide genuine insight. Don’t chase every trending topic. Depth beats breadth. Pick three to five topic areas and dominate them.

Optimize your profile: Use a professional photo that matches your other platforms. Add your credentials and expertise in your bio. Include links to your website, LinkedIn, or other professional profiles. Make it easy for people to learn more about you. Take a look at how I’ve set up mine below.

Be consistent: Set a schedule and stick to it. Answer two to three questions per week minimum. Consistency signals commitment to the platform and keeps you visible in your topic areas.

Engage beyond answering: Upvote helpful answers from other experts. Comment thoughtfully on discussions. Follow relevant topics and contributors. This activity boosts your profile visibility and helps you stay current on trending questions.

Respond to comments: Engage with people who comment on your answers. Thank them for thoughtful additions, clarify misunderstandings, and build relationships. This interaction signals quality to the algorithm.

Track your performance: Monitor which answers get the most upvotes, views, and shares. Double down on topics and formats that resonate. Let data guide your content strategy.

Repurposing Your Quora Content

Nothing you write on Quora has to stay on Quora. Smart marketers extract maximum value from every answer.

Transform your strongest responses into blog posts. If an answer on “SEO for SaaS startups” gets hundreds of upvotes, that’s validation the topic resonates. Expand it into a comprehensive guide on your site with more examples, case studies, and actionable frameworks.
Repurpose answers into LinkedIn posts. Pull key insights, add context for your LinkedIn audience, and drive engagement on a platform you own. Same content, different format and audience.
Create short-form video content. Turn popular answers into 60-second explainer videos for Instagram Reels, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts. Visual content extends your reach to audiences who prefer video over text.
Use Quora answers in email newsletters. Share your most valuable insights with subscribers. Add commentary on why the topic matters and how they can apply the advice.
Mine Quora for content gaps on your site. If you’re consistently answering questions about a topic you haven’t covered in depth on your blog, that’s a clear signal to create that content. Quora reveals what your audience actually wants to know.
Track referral traffic from your Quora profile. Use UTM parameters on links to measure which answers drive the most qualified visitors to your site. This data informs both your Quora strategy and your broader content priorities.

Quora and Search Everywhere Optimization

SEO doesn’t live on Google alone anymore. People search for answers on Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, and Quora. Your brand needs visibility across all these platforms.

That’s the essence of Search Everywhere Optimization. You build presence across multiple platforms so your brand stays discoverable regardless of where users search.

Quora fits perfectly into this strategy. The platform lets you demonstrate real expertise while earning brand mentions that can feed into AI and traditional search ecosystems. Every quality answer strengthens your topical authority across the entire web.

The long-term play here is authority, not traffic spikes. The more consistently your name or brand appears in high-quality discussions across platforms, the more trust signals you send to Google, AI engines, and potential customers. Referral traffic becomes more diverse and resilient over time. Ideally, you should see a combination of a variety of different sources.

Quora referral tactic in Google Analytics.

Source

Diversification protects you from algorithm changes. A Google core update might tank your organic traffic temporarily, but if you’ve built authority on Quora, Reddit, and other platforms, you maintain visibility and traffic from multiple sources.

Think of it as building a moat around your brand. The wider and deeper your presence across platforms, the harder it becomes for competitors to outrank or outmaneuver you.

FAQs

How to use Quora for SEO?

Focus on answering relevant, high-traffic questions in your niche consistently. Structure responses with keywords, insights, and occasional links to your content. Build authority over time through regular participation. Think months and years, not days and weeks.

Does Quora help SEO?

Yes, but differently than traditional tactics. Quora builds topical authority, attracts referral traffic, and can earn citations from AI tools that influence modern search rankings. The impact is indirect but powerful for long-term visibility.

Conclusion

Quora SEO is a long-term visibility and authority strategy, not a quick traffic hack.

The marketers winning on Quora treat it as a core part of their content ecosystem. They show up consistently, add real value, and build trust over time. The compounding effect of this approach creates lasting competitive advantages.

Start by answering one question this week in your area of expertise. Then keep going. Track what resonates, refine your approach, and watch your authority grow across platforms.

Need help building a comprehensive Search Everywhere strategy that includes Quora, Reddit, and other emerging platforms? NP Digital can help you create a plan that turns visibility into measurable growth.

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Law Firm Digital Marketing Strategies

October 31, 2025/0 Comments/in Web Design/by

There are over 1.3 million licensed attorneys in the United States. Tens of thousands of law firms are fighting for the same clients. The legal market is saturated, and potential clients start their search on Google or an AI platform like ChatGPT well before they pick up the phone.

If your firm isn’t visible in those searches, you don’t exist.

That’s where strategic law firm marketing makes the difference. This guide breaks down the digital strategies that actually work for legal practices. You’ll learn how to attract high-value clients, build trust in a skeptical market, and grow your practice without relying solely on referrals.

Key Takeaways

Legal marketing requires compliance with bar association ethics rules that don’t apply to other industries.
Digital strategies like SEO and content marketing generate qualified leads at a lower cost than traditional advertising.
Trust signals (reviews, credentials, case results) matter more in legal services than almost any other field.
Multi-channel campaigns combining organic visibility, paid ads, and reputation management deliver the best ROI.
Tracking performance metrics helps you invest in what works and cut what doesn’t.

Why Do Law Firms Need Marketing?

Running a law firm without marketing is like opening a practice in the desert and expecting clients to find you. They won’t.

Your potential clients are researching multiple firms before making contact. They’re reading reviews, comparing credentials, and looking for proof that you understand their specific problem. If you’re not actively managing your online presence, you’re losing cases to firms that are.

Marketing does three things for law firms:

First, it creates visibility. Your ideal clients need to know you exist before they can hire you.

Second, it builds authority. Publishing helpful content, earning positive reviews, and showcasing your expertise all signal that you’re credible and trustworthy.

Third, it drives qualified leads. Good marketing doesn’t just bring traffic. It brings people who actually need your services.

Word of mouth still matters, but it’s no longer enough. Potential clients want to verify that word of mouth online before they commit. Your digital presence is how they do that.

What Makes Law Firm Marketing Unique?

Legal marketing operates under constraints that don’t apply to most other industries:

Advertising Restrictions: Every state bar has rules about what lawyers can and cannot say in their marketing. Some prohibit guarantees about outcomes. Others restrict testimonials or case results. You need to know your jurisdiction’s rules before launching any campaign, or you risk disciplinary action.
High-Stakes Decision Making: Hiring a lawyer is personal. Clients are dealing with divorces, criminal charges, business disputes, or injuries. They’re stressed, skeptical, and risk-averse. They won’t hire you based on a flashy ad. They need proof that you understand their situation and can deliver results.
Longer Sales Cycle: Legal services aren’t impulse purchases. Potential clients might research for weeks or months before reaching out. Your marketing needs to stay in front of them during that entire window, building trust over time.
Practice Area Complexity: Marketing for personal injury law looks different than marketing for corporate law or family law. Each practice area attracts different clients with different concerns. A one-size-fits-all strategy doesn’t work.

These factors mean legal marketing has to be clear, ethical, and focused on building credibility. Aggressive tactics backfire. Shortcuts can get you penalized by Google or your state bar.

Digital Marketing Strategies For Law Firms

Digital marketing is where law firms win or lose new clients today. The strategies below consistently generate results for legal practices. Each section includes specific tactics you can implement, along with real examples of how firms are using them effectively.

Law Firm SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) helps your law firm show up organically in search results without paying for every click.

SEO is the foundation of sustainable legal marketing. Unlike paid ads, organic search traffic is free once you’ve earned those rankings. The challenge is that legal SEO is competitive. You’re up against established firms with years of content and backlinks.

Here’s what works for legal SEO:

Optimize on-page elements for both users and search engines. Your title tags should include your primary keyword and location. Meta descriptions should summarize your value proposition and include a call to action. Header tags should structure your content logically, making it easy for both readers and search crawlers to understand the page hierarchy.
Create location-specific landing pages for every city or region you serve. A firm with offices in multiple cities needs dedicated pages for each location. Don’t just change the city name and duplicate the content. Each page should include location-specific information: local laws, nearby courts, testimonials from clients in that area, and details about your physical office.
Build high-quality backlinks from reputable sources. In legal SEO, links from other law firms, legal directories, local news sites, and educational institutions carry more weight than links from random blogs.
Fix technical SEO issues that hurt your rankings. Slow page load times, broken links, duplicate content, and poor mobile optimization all damage your ability to rank. Run regular technical audits using tools like Screaming Frog or Semrush to identify and fix these issues.

The screenshot below shows what winning local legal SEO looks like. The firm’s Google Business Profile appears in the map pack with reviews, photos, and complete business information. This placement is critical because the map pack appears above organic results for local searches.

Results in Google for "Law Firm in Portland."

Social Media For Law Firms

Social media content helps law firms stay top of mind, humanize their brand, and reach potential clients where they already spend time. While social platforms aren’t primary lead generation channels for most legal practices, they play an important supporting role in your overall marketing strategy.

The key to legal social media is providing value without crossing ethical boundaries. You can’t share confidential case information. You can’t make misleading claims about results. But you can educate, engage, and build relationships.

Here’s how law firms use social media effectively:

Focus on platforms where your target clients are active. For consumer-facing practices (family law, personal injury, criminal defense), Facebook and Instagram work well. For business-focused practices (corporate law, employment law), LinkedIn is more effective. YouTube works across the board because video content explains complex legal topics better than text.
Share educational content that addresses common questions and concerns. Post short explanations of legal concepts, updates on relevant laws, and tips for handling legal situations. A criminal defense firm might share “Your Rights During a Traffic Stop” or “What to Do If You’re Served with a Lawsuit.”.
Use video to make legal topics accessible. Short-form video performs exceptionally well on social platforms. Film yourself explaining a legal concept in 60 seconds. Show your office and introduce your team. Record client testimonials (with permission and following bar rules). Video humanizes your practice and makes you more relatable than competitors who only post text and stock photos.

Engage with your audience through comments and direct messages. Social media is a two-way channel. When someone comments on your post with a question, respond promptly and helpfully. When potential clients reach out via direct message, direct them to schedule a consultation. This responsiveness builds trust and can generate leads.

Law Firm Content Marketing

Content marketing helps law firms educate potential clients, demonstrate authority, and improve SEO.

Content marketing works for law firms because legal services are complicated. Potential clients don’t understand the process, the timeline, or what to expect. They’re searching for answers before they’re ready to hire anyone. If you provide those answers, you become the obvious choice when they’re ready to move forward

Here’s what effective legal content marketing looks like:

Create detailed blog posts and guides that address specific legal questions. Don’t write generic fluff. Write content that actually helps someone understand their situation. A family law firm might publish “What to Expect During Mediation in a Texas Divorce” or “How to Modify a Child Custody Agreement.” These are specific, actionable, and demonstrate expertise.
Build practice-area-specific landing pages that target local searches. A personal injury lawyer in Miami needs a page optimized for “Miami car accident lawyer” that explains Florida’s comparative negligence laws, statute of limitations, and what damages clients can recover.
- The screenshot below shows exactly this approach in action. Notice the clear table of contents with headers focusing on different aspects of the probate process.

Develop lead magnets like checklists or downloadable guides. Offer something valuable in exchange for an email address. A criminal defense attorney might offer “10 Things to Do If You’re Arrested” as a downloadable PDF. This builds your email list and establishes authority.
Update old content regularly to keep it accurate and relevant. Laws change. Case precedents evolve. If your blog post from 2019 references outdated information, it hurts your credibility and your SEO. Review your top-performing content every six months (as a start) and refresh it as needed.

Paid Media for Law Firms

Paid search ads let law firms appear instantly at the top of Google for high-intent keywords. Unlike SEO, which takes months to build, PPC delivers immediate visibility. For competitive legal markets, paid media is often the fastest way to generate leads.

Legal keywords are expensive. Terms like “personal injury lawyer” or “DUI attorney” can cost $50 to $200 per click in major markets. That’s why your campaigns need to be highly targeted and conversion-optimized. You can’t afford to waste budget on broad, low-intent traffic.

Here’s how to make paid media work for legal services:

Use geo-targeted campaigns to focus on your actual service area. If you’re a divorce lawyer in Austin, don’t waste budget on clicks from Dallas or Houston. Set tight geographic boundaries around the areas where you can take cases. This reduces irrelevant traffic and improves your cost per lead.
Bid on high-intent keywords that signal immediate need. Someone searching “hire DUI lawyer tonight” or “emergency custody attorney” is ready to act now. These keywords cost more, but they convert at higher rates than informational searches like “what is a DUI.”
Set up call-only campaigns for mobile users. Over 60% of legal searches happen on mobile devices, and many users prefer to call immediately rather than fill out forms. Call-only ads display a phone number instead of a website link, making it easy for mobile searchers to connect with your firm right away. The example below demonstrates this perfectly. The firms use location extensions (address and map), call extensions (phone number), and sitelink extensions to maximize their ad’s real estate and provide multiple paths for potential clients to take action.

Results for "clearwater personal injury lawyer."

Track conversions beyond clicks. Use call tracking software to measure which keywords drive phone inquiries. Connect your PPC platform to your CRM so you can see which campaigns generate actual consultations and signed clients, not just website visits.

Law Firm LLM Marketing

AI-powered search is changing how people find legal help. Tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews pull information directly from web content and display it without sending users to websites. For law firms, this means your content needs to be structured so AI can find it, understand it, and cite it.

LLM marketing means optimizing for these AI-driven search experiences. You’re not just trying to rank on page one anymore. You’re trying to become the source that AI tools reference when someone asks a legal question, whether it’s on or off Google.

Here’s what actually works:

Write content that directly answers common legal questions. Don’t bury the answer three paragraphs in. Start with a clear, concise response, then expand with details. AI tools favor content that gets to the point quickly.

Use schema markup to help AI understand your content structure. Schema tells search engines (and AI) what your content is about: whether it’s a how-to guide, a FAQ, a service page, or something else. This makes it easier for AI to pull the right information.

Focus on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness). Google’s search quality guidelines emphasize these factors, and AI tools are trained on similar principles. Showcase your credentials, cite your sources, and demonstrate real-world experience with the cases you discuss.

Target long-tail, question-based keywords. People ask AI tools questions the same way they’d ask a lawyer: “What happens if I get a DUI in California?” or “How long does a divorce take in Texas?” Create content that mirrors these natural queries.

Look at the example below. AI Overviews now surface legal information directly in search results by pulling from multiple authoritative sources. One way a personal injury firm could earn placement for a query like this is by publishing comprehensive guides that answer common accident questions with clear structure and proper schema markup.

An AI overview result for a legal question.

Email Marketing For Law Firms

Email marketing is one of the most underutilized channels in legal marketing. Many firms assume people don’t want to hear from lawyers via email, but that’s not true. If you’re providing value, people will open your emails.

Email works because it keeps your firm top of mind during the long decision-making process that legal services require. Someone might visit your website, read a blog post, and then not be ready to hire you for another three months. Email lets you stay connected during that time.

Here’s how to build an effective email marketing strategy for your law firm:

Segment your email list by practice area and stage in the client journey. Don’t send the same email to everyone. A personal injury lead who downloaded your “Car Accident Checklist” needs different content than a business owner who attended your webinar on employment law. Segment your list so you can send relevant, targeted messages.
Create automated email sequences for lead nurturing. When someone downloads a lead magnet or fills out a contact form, trigger an automated sequence that provides additional value over the next few weeks. For example, a family law firm might send a series of emails covering “Preparing for Your First Divorce Consultation,” “Understanding Texas Community Property Laws,” and “What to Expect in Mediation.”
Share valuable content in your newsletters, not just promotional messages. The email example below gets this right. It includes a personal message from an attorney, links to recent blog posts, a featured case study, and upcoming events.

An example of legal marketing from a law firm.

Source

Always include a clear call to action. Every email should guide recipients toward a next step: schedule a consultation, download a resource, read a related blog post, or call your office. Make it easy for interested recipients to take action.

Law Firm Reputation Management

Your online reputation can make or break your ability to attract new clients. Studies show that 97% of consumers read online reviews before choosing a local business, and legal services are no exception. Potential clients research your firm’s reviews before reaching out.

Reputation management is about actively monitoring and influencing what people find when they search for your firm online. This isn’t necessarily about hiding negative feedback (which is impossible and often unethical), but building enough positive reviews and content that a few negative comments don’t dominate your online presence.

Here’s how law firms manage their reputation effectively:

Ask satisfied clients for reviews at the right time. The best time to request a review is right after a successful outcome, when clients are most grateful and engaged. Make the process easy by sending a direct link to your Google Business Profile or preferred review platform. Don’t offer incentives for positive reviews (this violates most platform policies).
Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative. Thank clients who leave positive reviews. For negative reviews, respond professionally and avoid getting defensive. Your response shows future clients how you handle criticism and difficult situations.
Monitor your firm’s online mentions across the web. Set up Google Alerts for your firm name and key attorneys. Check legal directories, social media, and review platforms regularly. If you find inaccurate information or fake reviews, report them to the platform. If you find negative but legitimate feedback, use it as an opportunity to improve your client experience.
Showcase testimonials and case results on your website, social media, and Google Business Profile (while following bar association rules). Look at the example below. This firm has over 500 reviews with a 4.8-star average, demonstrating consistent client satisfaction over time. The reviews are recent, which carries more weight with potential clients. The visible

Law Firm Website UX

Your website is often your first impression with potential clients. If it’s slow, confusing, or unprofessional, you’ve lost them before any real interaction happens. Good website UX (user experience) makes it easy for visitors to find information, trust your expertise, and contact you.

Law firm websites need to balance professionalism with accessibility. You want to appear credible and authoritative, but not intimidating or corporate. You want to showcase your expertise, but not overwhelm visitors with legal jargon.

Here’s what makes a law firm website effective:

Use clear, prominent calls to action. Every page should make it obvious how to contact you. “Schedule a Free Consultation” or “Call Now” buttons should be visible without scrolling. Include your phone number in the header of every page, especially for mobile users who want to call immediately.
Keep navigation simple and intuitive. Potential clients should be able to find practice area pages, attorney bios, and contact information within two clicks from the homepage. Avoid dropdown menus with too many options. Use clear labels that describe what visitors will find (not clever marketing language that confuses people).
Display trust signals above the fold. Show your credentials, years of experience, number of cases won, bar memberships, and awards in prominent locations. Potential clients need to see evidence of your expertise and track record before they’ll trust you with their case.
Optimize for mobile devices. Your website needs to load quickly, display correctly on small screens, and make it easy to call or fill out forms from a phone. Test your site on multiple devices to ensure the experience is smooth everywhere.

Measuring Your Law Firm Marketing Success

If you’re not tracking results, you’re guessing. Law firm marketing requires measurement to know what’s working and where to invest more resources.

Here are the key performance indicators every law firm should monitor:

Website traffic and traffic sources: Use Google Analytics to track how many people visit your site and where they come from (organic search, paid ads, social media, referrals). This tells you which channels drive the most visitors and helps you allocate budget effectively.

Keyword rankings: Monitor your positions for target keywords using tools like Semrush or Ubersuggest. Track both your overall visibility and specific rankings for high-value terms in your practice areas. Regular ranking reports show whether your SEO efforts are paying off.

Lead volume and quality: Count how many leads you generate each month through different channels (contact forms, phone calls, chat messages, consultation requests). But don’t just count quantity. Track lead quality by measuring how many leads turn into consultations and how many consultations become clients.

Cost per lead and cost per client: For paid campaigns, calculate how much you spend to acquire each lead and each new client. This ROI data helps you decide which campaigns to scale and which to pause. A channel that generates cheap leads but low conversion rates might be less valuable than one with higher costs but better-qualified prospects.

Review volume and ratings: Track your review count and average rating across platforms over time. Growing review volume signals that your reputation management efforts are working. Declining ratings indicate potential service issues that need attention.

Use tools like Google Looker Studio to build dashboards that centralize all this data. Having everything in one place makes it easier to spot trends, make decisions, and report results to partners or stakeholders.

FAQs

What is law firm marketing?

Law firm marketing refers to the strategies and tactics used to attract, engage, and convert clients for a legal practice. It includes SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media, and reputation management.

How do you market a law firm effectively?

Focus on your ideal client. Build trust through content, reviews, and clear communication. Invest in SEO and paid search to get in front of people actively looking for help. Track your results and adjust as needed.

How much does law firm marketing cost?

Costs vary based on location, competition, and strategy. Solo attorneys might spend $1,000/month, while larger firms can invest $10,000+ monthly. Start with what fits your goals and scale as you grow.

Conclusion

Effective law firm marketing separates the practices that grow from those that struggle. Visibility, credibility, and consistent lead generation don’t happen by accident. They require strategy, execution, and ongoing optimization.

Start with one or two channels where your ideal clients spend time. Build your foundation with SEO and a strong website. Add paid advertising for immediate results. Strengthen your reputation through reviews and client testimonials. Track everything so you know what’s driving results.

If you need help building a marketing strategy that brings in qualified clients, NP Digital’s consulting services can help you develop and execute a plan tailored to your practice.

Ready to grow your firm? Let’s make it happen.

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Roofing Marketing Guide

October 30, 2025/0 Comments/in Web Design/by

The U.S. roofing market hit $23.35 billion in 2024, and competition is fiercer than ever. With over 96,000 roofing contractors registered nationwide, you’re not just competing with the shop down the street anymore.

While 79% of homeowners still find roofers through word-of-mouth, 62% also go online. And here’s the game-changer: many of those searches now happen through AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews before homeowners ever see a traditional search result.

Search interest in “roofing companies” grew 107% year-over-year. The roofing business has always been built on trust and reputation. What’s changed is how potential customers find you and decide whether to call.

This guide breaks down the marketing strategies that work for roofing companies in 2025. No theory, just the tactics that help you get found and hired.

Key Takeaways

Roofing customers make decisions based on urgency and trust. Storm damage creates immediate need, while planned replacements involve months of research and multiple contractor comparisons.
Local visibility matters more for roofers than almost any other industry. Homeowners rarely hire contractors outside their service area, making hyper-local SEO and Google Business Profile optimization essential.
Your online reputation competes directly with word-of-mouth referrals. Homeowners check reviews before calling, and a strong rating can override even a neighbor’s recommendation.
AI search tools now answer roofing questions like “how much does a roof replacement cost” before showing traditional results, changing how you need to structure content to get cited.
Roofing marketing must address both emergency repairs and planned replacements. Your strategy needs to capture homeowners searching “roof leak repair now” and those researching “best roofing materials” six months before they’re ready to buy.

Why Do Roofing Businesses Need Marketing?

72% of roofing contractors expect sales growth in 2025, but hoping for growth and planning for it are two different things. Marketing is about making sure you’re visible when a homeowner’s roof starts leaking or when they’re ready to replace those 20-year-old shingles.

67% of homeowners say online reviews are extremely or very important in their purchasing decision. That means your reputation online matters just as much as the quality of your work. Maybe more, because prospects check your reviews before they ever meet you. When you look for a roofer in your area, reputation signals like ratings and reviews are front and center in the SERP.

Marketing also keeps your pipeline full during slow seasons. Storm damage creates spikes in demand, but you need a steady flow of leads year-round to keep crews working and revenue stable. Without marketing, you’re reactive. With it, you’re in control.

The roofing companies that invest in marketing don’t just survive. They grow, scale, and dominate their local markets. The ones that don’t? They’re competing on price alone, and that’s a race to the bottom nobody wins.

What Makes Roofing Marketing Unique?

Roofing sits at an unusual intersection in home services. Half your leads need you right now because of storm damage or leaks. The other half are planning six months out, researching materials and comparing quotes.

Most roofing demand comes from re-roofing, with the median U.S. home age nearing 40 years. That creates a predictable replacement cycle, but it also means homeowners treat roofing as a major investment. They’re not impulse buying. They’re checking multiple contractors, reading dozens of reviews, and asking neighbors who they used.

Trust matters more in roofing than almost any trade. You’re asking homeowners to spend $15,000 to $30,000 or even more on something they can’t see once it’s installed.

The buying cycle also varies wildly. Emergency repairs convert in hours. Full replacements take weeks or months of consideration. Your marketing needs to serve both audiences without confusing either one.

Digital Marketing Strategies For Roofing

The tactics below aren’t theory. They’re what actually works for roofing companies competing in local markets right now.

Each strategy addresses a specific part of the customer journey. LLM marketing and SEO capture homeowners in research mode. Paid ads grab emergency leads when speed matters. Social media and content build trust over time. Email nurtures prospects who aren’t ready to buy today. Reputation management turns past customers into your best salespeople.

You don’t need to master all of these on day one. Start with the channels where your best customers are already looking, then expand as you see results.

Roofing SEO

SEO puts your roofing company in front of homeowners during their research phase, weeks or months before they’re ready to get quotes. 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby visit a business within a day, making local SEO critical for roofing contractors competing in specific service areas. Businesses that appear in the Google 3-pack see a 34% higher click-through rate compared to other organic results.

Here’s what drives SEO results for roofing companies:

Optimize your Google Business Profile completely. Fill out every section of your Google Business Profile, choose “Roofing Contractor” as your primary category, add secondary categories like “Roof Repair Service” or “Metal Roofing Company,” and upload photos weekly.

Target service-specific local keywords. Create separate pages for “roof replacement [city],” “storm damage repair [city],” and “roof leak repair [city].” Don’t lump all services onto one generic page. Homeowners search for specific solutions in specific locations.
Build consistent local citations. List your business on Angi, HomeAdvisor, BBB, and roofing-specific directories with identical NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information everywhere. Inconsistent listings confuse Google and hurt rankings.
Create location-specific content for each service area. If you serve multiple cities, build individual pages for each location with unique content about local roofing challenges, weather patterns, and building codes. Don’t just swap city names in template pages.

Roofing Social Media

Social media isn’t optional for roofing companies anymore. Social media content now ranks prominently in Google search results, meaning your Facebook posts and YouTube videos can appear when homeowners search for roofing services. 89% of consumers will buy from a brand after following it on social media.

Some roofing companies might avoid social media because they don’t want to be on camera or don’t know what to post. But social media isn’t about you. It’s about showing homeowners what to expect and staying top of mind when their roof needs work.

Here’s how roofing companies should use social media:

Post project transformations consistently. Before-and-after photos of completed jobs prove you can solve problems. Show storm damage repairs, full replacements, and material upgrades. Too much promotional content is a major turn-off, so focus on showing your work, not selling your services.

An Instagram page for a roofing company.

Feature your crew, not just roofs. Show your team working safely, explain the process, and humanize your brand. Homeowners hire people, not companies. Let them see who shows up to their house.
Create educational content about local roofing issues. Post about how local weather affects roofs, when to replace vs. repair, and what homeowners should look for during inspections. Educational content positions you as the expert.
Respond to comments and messages immediately. Social media is a customer service channel. Homeowners asking about pricing or availability in your comments expect fast responses. Slow replies lose jobs to competitors.

Roofing Content Marketing

Homeowners research roofing projects for months before hiring a contractor. Content marketing puts your company in front of them during that research phase, building trust before they’re ready to get quotes.

Content works differently for roofing than other industries. It’s not about entertainment. You’re educating homeowners who need to make a major financial decision about something they don’t understand. Most people replace a roof once or twice in their lifetime. They don’t know what questions to ask.

Here’s what roofing content should cover:

Create buying guides specific to your region. Write about which roofing materials work best in your local climate, how local weather patterns affect roof lifespan, and what building codes homeowners need to know. A guide for Florida roofs looks completely different than one for Colorado.

Break down the replacement process. Explain timeline expectations, how crews protect landscaping, what noise levels to expect, and how homeowners should prepare. Demystifying the process reduces anxiety and objections during sales calls.

A graphic explaining the roofing process.

Address insurance and financing. Homeowners want to know if insurance covers storm damage, how to file claims, and what financing options exist. Content that answers these questions captures leads who are ready to move forward but need help with payment logistics.
Show your work through project galleries. Before-and-after photos with detailed captions explaining the problem, solution, and materials used build credibility better than any sales copy.

Roofing Paid Media

Paid ads put your roofing company in front of homeowners at the exact moment they need help. When someone searches “roof repair near me” at 8 AM after a night of heavy rain, that’s not casual browsing. That’s intent. PPC advertising captures those high-intent leads before they call your competitors.

For roofing and gutters, the average cost per click can be expensive compared to other home services, but the payoff justifies the cost. Well-optimized campaigns can bring in up to $8 for every $1 spent, especially during storm season when demand spikes.

Here’s how to make paid ads work for roofing:

Separate emergency from planned replacement campaigns. Someone searching “roof leak repair now” needs different messaging than someone researching “best roofing materials.” Create distinct campaigns for each stage of the buying cycle with appropriate landing pages when someone clicks through from a paid ad. The examples below show that path down the sales funnel.

A local search for roof leak repair now.

A landing page from a sponsored ad on a roofing website.

Use location targeting aggressively. Bid higher on zip codes you actually service. Storm-damaged areas command premium ad costs, but they also convert faster. Adjust bids based on weather patterns and recent storm activity.
Track phone calls, not just form fills. Most roofing leads call directly from mobile search results. Set up call tracking so you know which keywords and ads generate actual conversations, not just website visits.
Add negative keywords religiously. Exclude searches for “DIY roof repair,” “roofing jobs,” and “roofing materials wholesale” unless you serve those markets. Wasted clicks drain budgets fast in high-CPC industries like roofing.

Roofing LLM Marketing

AI SEO for roofers helps roofing companies appear in answers from large language models like those that power ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. When a homeowner asks “What should I do about a roof leak?” or “How much does a roof replacement cost?” they’re not always clicking through to websites anymore. They’re getting answers directly from AI.

Market projections suggest that LLMs will capture 15% of the search market by 2028. That’s not replacing Google, but it’s changing how homeowners research roofing services before they ever pick up the phone.

When homeowners search for roofing services, AI-generated overviews now often appear before traditional search results, answering questions with cited sources. Getting your roofing company included in those citations means more visibility even when prospects don’t click through to your site.

Here’s what works for roofing companies optimizing for AI search:

Answer specific questions directly. Create content that addresses exact homeowner concerns like “How long does a roof replacement take?” or “What causes shingles to curl?” AI tools favor sources that give clear, complete answers.
Use structured data. Add FAQ schema and How-To schema to your pages. This helps AI understand what your content covers and makes it easier to cite you as a source.
Build topical authority. Cover one roofing topic completely rather than surface-level content on 20 topics. Write comprehensive guides on roof types, materials, and local weather considerations specific to your service area.
Keep information current. AI tools generally pull from fresh, accurate content. Update your pricing guides, material comparisons, and storm preparation advice regularly with current information and timestamps.

Email Marketing For Roofing

Most roofing jobs don’t happen immediately. Homeowners research for months before getting quotes, then take more time comparing contractors. Email keeps your company in front of prospects during that entire decision-making process without requiring constant manual follow-up.

Email marketing is one of the highest ROI channels for roofing companies. Unlike social media where algorithms control visibility, email lands directly in the inbox of people who actually want to hear from you.

Here’s how to use email marketing for roofing:

Segment your list by customer type. Emergency repair leads need different messaging than planned replacement prospects. Past customers get maintenance reminders. Property managers receive commercial service updates.
Send seasonal maintenance reminders. Email past customers before storm season with inspection offers. Send fall gutter cleaning reminders. Winter ice dam prevention tips. Timely, helpful emails keep you top of mind when they need work again.
Nurture leads who requested quotes but didn’t book. Set up automated follow-up sequences for prospects who got estimates but haven’t committed. Share financing options, customer testimonials, and limited-time offers to move them toward a decision.
Build your list with valuable content. Offer free roof inspection checklists, seasonal maintenance guides, or storm damage assessment tools in exchange for email addresses. Gated content attracts qualified leads who are actively researching roofing services.

Roofing Reputation Management

Your reputation online directly impacts whether prospects call you or your competitor, especially when considering high-stakes decisions like roofing. Reputation management for roofing companies means actively controlling what homeowners see when they research your business. One bad review on the first page of Google can cost you thousands in lost jobs.

Here’s how to manage your roofing reputation:

Ask for reviews immediately after job completion. Send a text or email with a direct link to your Google Business Profile while the customer is still happy. Timing matters. Ask three days later and response rates drop significantly. Be sure to have a section for relevant testimonials on your site as well.

Respond to every review, good and bad. Thank customers for positive reviews and mention the specific project. For negative reviews, acknowledge the issue publicly, explain what happened, and offer to make it right. Future prospects read your responses.
Monitor review sites beyond Google. Track Angi, HomeAdvisor, BBB, Facebook, and Yelp. Homeowners check multiple platforms before calling, so you need consistent positive reviews everywhere.
Address negative reviews offline first. Call unhappy customers before they leave public reviews. Solve the problem directly. Many will update or remove negative reviews if you fix the issue quickly.

Measuring Your Roofing Marketing Success

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Marketing without tracking is just hoping things work. What you are looking to focus on may vary based on short-term and long-term goals.

Track these metrics to understand what’s actually driving results:

Cost Per Lead (CPL): Divide total marketing spend by number of qualified leads in your service area who are ready to book. If you’re spending $500 per lead when competitors spend $150, something’s broken.
Lead-to-Customer Conversion Rate: How many leads become paying customers? Even a slight improvement from 2% to 4% can double your leads without increasing traffic. Track this by marketing channel to see which sources close.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): For every dollar spent on paid ads, how much revenue comes back? If you’re spending $5,000 monthly on Google Ads but only booking $3,000 in jobs, you’re burning money.
Website Conversion Rate: Track phone calls and form submissions separately. Most roofing leads call directly from mobile search, so call tracking matters more than form fills.

Use Google Analytics, call tracking software, and your CRM to monitor these metrics monthly. Set up dashboards showing performance by channel so you can cut what doesn’t work and double down on what does.

FAQs

How do I market a roofing company?

Start with local SEO and Google Business Profile optimization since most homeowners search for roofers nearby. Get reviews systematically after every job. Run Google Ads targeting emergency repair keywords and service-specific terms in your area. Post project photos and educational content on social media. Build an email list to nurture leads who aren’t ready to book immediately. Track which channels produce the best leads and focus your budget there.

What is roofing marketing?

Roofing marketing is the process of attracting homeowners who need roof repairs, replacements, or inspections and converting them into paying customers. It combines local SEO, paid advertising, content creation, social media, email marketing, and reputation management to capture leads at different stages of the buying cycle. Effective roofing marketing addresses both emergency repair needs and planned replacement projects with different strategies for each.

Conclusion

Roofing marketing isn’t about choosing one tactic and hoping it works. It’s about building a system that captures homeowners at every stage, from the first Google search to the follow-up email six months later.

Start with what matters most for roofing: local visibility. Optimize your Google Business Profile, get reviews, and make sure you show up when homeowners search for help. Layer in paid ads for emergency leads and content for long-term trust building.

The roofing companies winning in 2025 aren’t the ones with the biggest trucks. They’re the ones who show up first online, prove they’re trustworthy before the phone rings, and stay in touch until homeowners are ready to buy.

Need help building a complete marketing strategy? My marketing consulting services can help you dominate your local market.

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The Merits of Developing KPI Frameworks For Achieving App Success

October 29, 2025/0 Comments/in Web Design/by

If you want to understand how your app is performing, tracking the right app Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is essential. From downloads to in-app conversions, like newsletter sign-ups or subscriptions, KPIs provide crucial insights into how your app aligns with your goals.

In this post, we’ll guide you on how to define the most appropriate KPIs for your app, and how to structure them within a framework. This approach will empower you to understand your app’s performance at a glance and uncover actionable insights to fuel growth and long-term success.

Key Takeaways

Building a KPI framework gives you a structured way to organize app performance metrics, helping you see the bigger picture rather than isolated data points.
Five primary (level 1) KPIs – reach, activation, engagement, retention, and business-specific – form the foundation of an effective framework.
Supporting (level 2) KPIs provide diagnostic detail, explaining why higher-level metrics perform as they do and guiding optimization decisions.
A clear four-step process- defining purpose, mapping the user lifecycle, identifying the right KPIs, and ensuring measurability – keeps your framework actionable and aligned with business goals.
Regularly analyzing and segmenting KPI data enables smarter decisions, from refining acquisition strategies to improving retention and revenue outcomes.

What Is a KPI Framework?

The KPI framework is an essential tool in app marketing, offering a structured way to organize and analyze your app’s KPIs. In app marketing, these indicators help evaluate different aspects of an app’s success, such as user acquisition, retention, engagement, revenue generation, and overall app performance. The KPI framework helps you understand how different KPIs work together to drive growth, optimize user experience, and achieve long-term success.

Examples of common metrics and KPIs to track.

Why You Need a KPI Framework

To get any real value from your app KPIs, you need to view them holistically, rather than in isolation. They need to be mapped into a framework that highlights the relationships between them and how they impact one another. A well-structured KPI framework offers you this consolidated, 360-degree view of performance, ensuring that all lower-level KPIs are in place to support your overriding “North Star” metric (a key metric that aligns with user value and business growth and is used to track overall success).

Let’s explore the key metrics that should be included in a well-structured KPI framework.

Breaking Down The KPI Framework

The KPI framework that we have developed at Yodel Mobile is built around five “level 1” (primary) metrics.

Level 1 metrics are the main indicators that show how well your app is doing overall. These metrics give you a big picture view of important areas such as user growth, engagement, retention, and their impact on your business goals. Think of these metrics as the foundation of your KPI framework. They directly connect to your app’s main objectives and your most important measure of success, the “North Star” metric.

Here’s how we break down the level 1 metrics:

Reach (e.g., total app installs)
Activation (e.g., the number of users who complete onboarding)
Engagement (e.g., Daily Active Users (DAU))
Retention (e.g., Churn Rate)
Business-specific (e.g., Customer Lifetime Value (LTV))

Each of these level 1 metrics is supported and driven by a corresponding set of “level 2” metrics, which provide a more detailed breakdown. The level 2 metrics offer valuable insights into the specific factors driving the performance of level 1 metrics. Acting as diagnostic tools, they help to explain why level 1 metrics are performing as they are.

A breakdown of level 1 and level 2 metrics.

Measurement Framework

Let’s explain each metric in more detail.

Reach

These are KPIs that sit within the reach section of the framework and focus on acquisition and exposure. They help measure the effectiveness of efforts to attract and engage a broader audience. Examples at level 1 could include the number of installs and web visitors, while level 2 elements could include web-to-app conversion, splitting your installs by paid, owned, or earned channels to measure the effectiveness of efforts from various sources.

Activation

Activation metrics focus on a user’s initial engagement and the process of turning new users into engaged users by guiding them to experience the app’s core value early in their journey. This could be during the onboarding process, or later, as they use the app. Level 2 elements here might include specific actions such as a user registering their details or completing a required task. For example, in a language learning app, this could involve completing a quiz to set the user’s language proficiency level.

Engagement

Engagement metrics capture how actively and frequently users interact with your app and its features, shedding light on the depth of their involvement. Level 1 metrics can include Daily Active Users (DAU), Weekly Active Users (WAU), or session duration, which provide a broad understanding of user activity. At the level 2 stage, these metrics become more specific, for example, for a subscription app, this could be the number of users who start a free trial, indicating early-stage engagement and their interest in the premium offering.

Retention

Retention metrics measure how effectively an app keeps users returning over time, assessing its ability to maintain a loyal and engaged user base. The level 1 metric here could be day 1, day 7, day 30 retention (the number of users still active in the app 1/7/30 days after installing it). Level 2 metrics could be feature-specific, tracking how often users return to specific features within the app (e.g., viewing content, making purchases, using premium features). For example, in a music education app, the Monthly Lesson Return Frequency could measure how often users return to complete a lesson each month.

Business-specific

A business-specific KPI is a high-level metric that reflects the unique goals and performance indicators of a particular business. These metrics are directly tied to the organization’s strategic objectives, such as revenue growth, business health, or customer acquisition, and are designed to track progress in areas critical to the business’s success. Supporting level 2 metrics provides detailed insights into the factors influencing the performance of the level 1 KPI, offering a clearer understanding of what drives results.

Leveraging the KPI Framework to Drive App Growth

By breaking down the KPI framework in this way, you not only gain a clearer picture of how each element impacts overall performance but also create a roadmap for improving user acquisition, engagement, and retention.

Let’s say that you have established that you need 100,000 installs per month to reach your LTV KPI, based on the conversion rate of new users to paid subscription. If you’re falling short of this target, you can adjust your strategy by increasing your advertising budget or analyzing which channels are proving the most effective.

Regularly monitoring and adjusting your level 1 and level 2 metrics ensures that the app stays aligned with both user needs and business objectives. Ultimately, this approach helps refine strategies, drive growth, and work towards achieving the North Star metric, delivering long-term success for the app.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Successful KPI Framework

To create a successful KPI framework that will help you align your app’s goals with measurable actions, follow this four-step process.

Step 1: Define your App’s Core Purpose

Define what the core purpose of your app is, the real value it brings to its users. This will help in specifying the KPIs that best measure how effectively the app fulfills its purpose and delivers on its promise.

Step 2: Map the User Lifecycle

Look at key points in the user lifecycle and at how they link to your business goals and objectives, in order to define the right KPIs for your app.

Step 3: Identify the Best KPIs to Focus on

To do this, focus on KPIs that are truly going to have an impact on the business. Don’t overwhelm yourself with too many metrics, as they can obscure actionable insights. And while every KPI is important, the maturity of your app will dictate where you place most emphasis. So, for a new app, the focus is often on reach, aiming to achieve those initial install KPIs. For a more mature app, concentrate on optimizing for retention.

Step 4: Make sure that Your Goals are Measurable

In order to gauge the progress of each KPI, whether that’s downloads, signups, or conversion rates, every KPI needs to be measurable to ensure that you can assess your progress against it.

And remember that the KPI itself is really no more than a goal and one that can be achieved in a number of ways. What really counts is understanding the mechanisms and the levers you can pull to achieve it. You have to drill down into the KPI and ask yourself: “What actions can I take to influence this KPI? What factors in my control will impact it the most?” If the KPI is about generating revenues, for example, the key driver might be making sure that people are subscribing, or at least committing to a free trial that leads to a subscription.

With that in mind, you can optimize the flow of the app, the onboarding process, and your comms strategy, to support this goal effectively.

A step-by-step guide for creating a successful KPI framework.

How to Successfully Analyze Your Data and Make Informed Decisions

You’ve successfully created your KPI framework – great! But the next crucial step is learning how to read and interpret the data effectively. Without actionable insights, even the best framework won’t help you achieve success.

Digging deeper into the data relating to your KPIs will help you to make more informed and strategic decisions. For example, you might segment your users by OS (Android or iOS) or subscription plan, such as monthly or annual. Breaking things down in this way will help you establish useful facts such as:

iOS users are 3x more likely than Android users to convert from a free trial to a paid subscription.
People on monthly subscriptions are twice as likely to churn as those on annual subscriptions.
The users you acquire through paid channels show much worse retention levels than those you acquire organically.

Once you understand these issues, you can try to address them. For example, if you discover that iOS users are more valuable than Android users (as mentioned in point 1), you can adjust your paid advertising strategy to prioritize iOS users.

Use the KPI framework to give you the big picture, then segment your data to really understand how your various KPIs are impacted to different degrees by different types of users.

Additionally, leverage this data to conduct A/B tests. For example, you might test two different paywall designs to see which drives higher conversion to a free trial.

Once you have your KPIs mapped out, platforms like Mixpanel will allow you to build a dashboard that calls out each of them. So, you create charts, add them to your dashboard, and quickly identify changes. If retention, frequency of usage, or the number of purchases drops, these changes will be immediately visible, allowing you to diagnose and address the issues promptly.

Turning Insights into Strategy

It’s really important to have a well-structured KPI framework that aligns with your business goals, that those goals are measurable, and that for each KPI, you understand the factors in your control, the levers you can pull, that will impact them.

Putting all of this in a framework is much more useful and instructive than just listing it all out in a spreadsheet. The framework allows you to see the link between different KPIs. It’s scalable, so it’s easy to add additional metrics into the mix. And it helps you to stay agile in terms of understanding how the business and the app are working and then making adjustments based on the data that you get from your KPI analysis. Think of it as a framework for success. In short, every app should have one to be ready for the future of ASO.

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How to Use Marketing Attribution to Take Your Business to the Next Level

October 28, 2025/0 Comments/in Web Design/by

Marketing today is more complex than ever. With so many channels, touchpoints, and customer behaviors to track, figuring out what actually drives conversions can feel impossible.

That’s where digital marketing attribution comes in. It shows you which marketing efforts are working and which ones are wasting your budget.

Without attribution, you’re guessing. With it, you can make data-backed decisions that improve return on investment (ROI) and help you grow faster.

This guide breaks down what attribution is, how different models work, and how to choose the right approach for your business.

Key Takeaways

Digital marketing attribution tracks which channels and touchpoints drive conversions, so you know where to invest your time and budget.
There’s no universal “best” model. Each attribution approach has strengths and tradeoffs based on your goals and customer journey.
Single-touch models (like first-touch or last-touch) are simple but miss most of the buyer journey.
Multi-touch models give you a fuller picture but require more setup and analysis.
The right model depends on your business goals, sales cycle length, and how customers interact with your brand.

What is Marketing Attribution?

Marketing attribution is how you figure out which marketing efforts actually drive results.

It assigns credit to the touchpoints (ads, blog posts, emails, social posts, webinars) that influence someone to convert.

Think of it as connecting the dots between your marketing spend and your revenue.

When someone makes a purchase or fills out a form, attribution helps you trace the path they took to get there. That insight helps you optimize campaigns, improve ROI, and stop pouring budget into channels that don’t work.

But here’s the problem: most marketers either don’t track attribution at all, or they oversimplify it. Only 28% of marketing professionals say their attribution strategies are very successful at achieving strategic objectives. The stakes of misattribution are high as well, potentially costing companies money and time:

A graphic showing ad spend wasted due to poor attribution.

Attribution models set the rules for how credit gets assigned across different touchpoints.

Some give all the credit to the first interaction. Others focus on the last. More advanced models weigh every step of the journey.

Understanding how these models work is the first step to using them effectively.

Why Marketing Attribution is Important

Marketing attribution matters because without it, you’re not measuring performance. You’re guessing.

It connects campaigns to conversions, showing you which efforts drive real impact and which ones drain your budget. The thing about it is it’s also getting harder. Less cookies to rely on and the presence of AI are notable factors.

On top of that, today’s buyer journey isn’t linear. People bounce between search, email, ads, and social, often across multiple devices. Without attribution, you miss the big picture.

That’s especially true if you’re running multi-channel marketing strategies. You might be getting results, but you can’t tie them back to the right touchpoints.

Take a look at what channels marketers are the most confident in when it comes to attribution:

A graphic showing confidence in attribution accuracy by channel.

Email and paid top the list. But here’s the thing: without proper attribution, you can’t tell if any channel is actually driving growth for your business, or if you’re just following what everyone else is doing.

Attribution also improves ROI. When you know what works (and what doesn’t), you can reallocate spend with confidence.

It gives marketing teams clarity, sales teams better leads, and leadership the data they need to make informed decisions.

Bottom line: attribution turns marketing from a cost center into a strategic growth engine.

Types of Marketing Attribution Models

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing attribution. Only what fits your business best.

Attribution models fall into two categories: single-touch and multi-touch.

Single-touch models give full credit to one touchpoint, like the first click or final conversion. They’re simple to track but miss most of the customer journey.

Multi-touch models spread credit across multiple interactions. They take more effort to set up but give you a clearer picture of what drives revenue.

Let’s break down each model so you can find the right fit for your goals.

Option #1. First-touch attribution

The first-touch attribution model applies all the ‘credit’ to touch points that lead a visitor to your website for the very first time.

A graphic that says how first-click attribution definition works.

Source

That holds true even if they don’t make a purchase, subscribe to your email list, or complete any other converting action.

This model is all about the very first part of the customer journey. It’s the first few steps someone takes to visit your site for the very first time.

That’s why it works best for marketers who are focused on demand generation and lead forms. You want to see which actions are driving that very first connection with your brand.

A good thing about this model is that it’s pretty simple to put into effect with Google Analytics.

But, since this model only really focuses on one single touch point, it tends to over-prioritize a channel that might not be the most important.

In other words, the initial social ad used to drive traffic is important to an advertiser or brand marketer. However, it’s not all that helpful to people who are analyzing bottom-of-the-funnel conversions, that generally lead right to a sale or conversion.

The first-touch attribution model also doesn’t actually uncover what made a customer buy, so it doesn’t really allow for a whole lot of optimization.

Option #2. Last-touch attribution

The last-touch attribution model is the exact opposite of the first-touch attribution model, hence the name.

It’s often the “default,” go-to model for most marketers. It gives all the credit to the final touch point before someone buys.

For example, if a customer clicks a retargeting ad and buys, last-touch attribution credits that final ad, even if they interacted with your brand five times before that.

A graphic showing how last-touch attribution works.

Source

This model puts all the attention on the very end of the customer journey. The items are “in their carts,” so to speak.

This model is great for short sales cycles or conversion-focused teams.

But it ignores all of the factors that influence a customer’s journey to purchase by putting all of the attention on the final interaction.

If you’re using Google Analytics, try looking at Last Non-Direct Click instead. It skips direct visits (like people typing your URL) and highlights the last true channel that drove them in.

A graphic showing how non-direct click attribution works.

Source

Option #3. Lead-conversion touch attribution

The lead-conversion touch attribution model assigns 100% of the credit to the interaction that generated a lead.

A graphic that shows how the lead-conversion touch attribution model works.

Source

It’s a popular option in B2B and lead-gen-focused businesses because it gives a clear signal: which campaign, offer, or page got someone to convert.

This is helpful when you’re trying to understand what sparks initial interest, especially if you’re optimizing for marketing qualified leads (MQLs) or sales-qualified leads.

But like other single-touch models, it only highlights one moment in a longer journey.

That means it misses the role of earlier awareness-building and any post-lead nurturing that helps close the deal.

If you’re using this model, be careful not to over-prioritize top-performing lead channels at the expense of brand-building or retention tactics.

It works best when used alongside other models that measure pipeline movement or final conversions, not as a standalone view.

Option #4. Linear attribution

The linear-attribution model splits credit up evenly across every touch point of the customer journey.

A graphic that shows how the linear attribution model works.

So, if there are five touch points, every touch point gets 20% of the credit. For ten touch points, each touch points gets 10%, and so on.

This model lets marketers make the best of the customer journey as a whole and optimize the entire picture, rather than just focusing on one touch point.

But, since it gives credit to all touch points evenly, some high-performing points will get less credit than they deserve, and some low-performing ones will get more.

Still, it’s a good starting point for teams who want a more balanced look at what’s working across their funnel, without needing complex analytics setups.

It can also serve as a baseline model for comparison when testing more advanced multi-touch approaches.

Option #5. Time-decay attribution

The time-decay attribution model gives more credit to touchpoints that occur closer to the final conversion.

In this setup, the last few interactions (like an email click or retargeting ad) carry more weight than earlier touchpoints.

A graphc showing how the Time Decay Attribution Model works.

This model makes sense for longer journeys, where timing and momentum are critical to pushing someone across the finish line.

It also reflects how user behavior changes closer to conversion. Someone may browse casually at first, but act with more intent later.

However, time-decay can undervalue the early-stage marketing that sparked interest in the first place. That means awareness efforts like content or top-of-funnel ads may look less effective than they really are.

If you’re running nurturing campaigns or have a long sales cycle, time-decay can give you insight into what’s accelerating purchase decisions, even if it doesn’t tell the full story.

Option #6. U-shaped (position-based) attribution

The U-shaped attribution model, also known as the position-based attribution model, gives 40% of the credit to the first and last touch points.

Then it splits up the remaining 20% among each of the touch points in between.

A graphic that show show U-shaped attribution works.

This setup recognizes the importance of both the entry point and the final push, while still accounting for the journey in between.

For example, if someone finds you through a blog post, returns via email, then converts after clicking a retargeting ad, both the blog and the ad would receive the highest share of credit.

This model is a popular middle ground. It highlights the two most critical steps without ignoring everything else.

This model might give inaccurate credit to the first and last touch points in the customer journey, though.

They receive a large, fixed percentage. So you might still see some over-reporting on both ends of the journey.

Still, for many teams, U-shaped attribution offers a practical balance of simplicity and nuance.

Option #7. Custom or algorithmic attribution

Custom, or algorithmic, attribution starts to get technical.

A data scientist creates and builds a model for attribution that matches the customer journey of a certain business in a precise way.

These models analyze your actual conversion paths and weigh each touchpoint’s impact accordingly.

That means your attribution is specific to your business, your audience, and how they buy.

It’s by far the most accurate model, but also the most complex to build.

You’ll usually need a data science team or an advanced analytics platform to get started. That makes it tough for lean teams or smaller organizations to implement.

Still, some platforms now offer algorithmic models out-of-the-box, giving you smarter attribution without having to build it from scratch.

If your marketing is already scaled and data-driven, this model can reveal deep insights you’ll never get from basic reporting.

Option #8. Rules-based attribution

Rules-based attribution lets you define how credit is assigned across the customer journey based on your own logic, not a fixed formula.

For example, you might assign 20% of the credit to first-touch, 20% to last-touch, and distribute the remaining 60% based on engagement or funnel stage.

A graphic showing how fractional attribution works.

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This approach gives you more control and customization without requiring advanced AI or machine learning.

It’s especially useful when you have a clear understanding of your sales cycle and buyer behavior, or when you need to align attribution with internal KPIs.

The downside? It’s still built on human assumptions. If your weighting is off, your data might mislead you.

Rules-based attribution works best for marketing teams that want more flexibility than single-touch or rigid multi-touch models but don’t have the resources for full algorithmic setups.

Option #9. W-shaped attribution

W-shaped attribution is a multi-touch model that assigns credit to three key moments: the first interaction, the lead conversion, and the opportunity creation.

Each of these gets 30% of the credit, with the remaining 10% spread across other touchpoints.

A graphic showing how w-shaped atrribution works.

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This model is particularly useful for B2B marketers who track leads through a defined sales funnel. It focuses on the moments that signal serious interest, not just casual engagement.

For example, a user might find your blog via search (first-touch), download a gated guide (lead conversion), and attend a webinar (opportunity creation).

W-shaped attribution highlights these hand-raising moments while still acknowledging the rest of the journey.

Downside? It assumes every journey fits that mold. Not every customer goes through clear-cut milestones, especially in shorter or less structured funnels.

If you’re managing long, complex buyer journeys, this model gives you more granularity than U-shaped without requiring full customization.

Option #10. Data-driven attribution

Data-driven attribution uses machine learning to assign credit based on how different touchpoints actually contribute to conversions, not predefined rules.

Unlike linear or position-based models, it adapts over time based on real behavior.

Platforms like Google Analytics and certain CRMs offer this as a built-in model, making it more accessible than full-blown custom attribution.

The system looks at all conversion paths and analyzes what works best, distributing credit accordingly.

This gives you a more objective view of what’s really influencing performance, without the bias of manual weighting.

Of course, the quality of your attribution is only as good as your data. Inaccurate tracking, broken events, or missing conversions will lead to flawed insights.

How To Choose the Right Attribution Model for Your Business

There’s no single “best” attribution model. The right choice depends on your funnel, goals, and how much data you have access to. Here’s how to approach it:

Map the Customer Journey

Start by understanding how people discover, engage with, and convert on your site.

Look at your customer journey mapping or analytics tools to spot patterns in behavior. If most users follow a simple path, single-touch might work. If they interact across multiple channels, you’ll want a multi-touch model.

Define Actionable Goals

Your attribution model should help you make better decisions, not just report on past performance.

Are you trying to lower acquisition costs? Improve lead quality? Shift budget to better-performing channels?

Pick a model that aligns with your strategic focus.

Prioritize Lead Quality

Don’t just track what drives volume. Focus on what drives high-quality leads or customers.

Website traffic and leads are common examples, but those are vanity metrics if they don’t convert into revenue.

Attribution tied to lifetime value (LTV), conversions, or revenue will give you far more insight than clicks or impressions.

The best attribution models connect marketing activity to actual business outcomes, not just top-of-funnel metrics.

Test and Adjust Over Time

No model should be static. As your campaigns evolve, revisit your attribution model regularly.

Consider running model comparisons inside tools like Google Analytics or your CRM to see how attribution shifts under different assumptions.

Common Digital Marketing Attribution Challenges

Even with the right model, marketing attribution isn’t always easy to get right. Here are some of the most common roadblocks teams run into:

Incomplete or inaccurate tracking: If events aren’t firing properly or conversions aren’t tagged, your data will be flawed, no matter what model you use.
Cross-device behavior: A user might research on mobile but convert on desktop. Without unified tracking, you’re missing part of the journey.
Platform silos: CRMs, ad platforms, and analytics tools don’t always talk to each other. That can lead to duplicate or fragmented data.
Lack of internal resources: Attribution often requires analysts or at least someone who can set up and maintain tracking, and not every team has that bandwidth.
Misaligned KPIs: When sales, marketing, and leadership define “success” differently, attribution insights can get lost or misused.

Solving attribution challenges often means improving operations, not just picking a better model.

Attribution Model Reports in Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) includes built-in attribution model reports that help you compare how different models assign credit to your conversions.

This is a powerful way to explore which marketing channels contribute most to your results and how your view of performance changes depending on the model you choose.

You can find attribution reports in GA4 by navigating to:

Reports → Advertising → Model Comparison

There, you can select multiple models (like last-click, first-click, linear, or data-driven) and view side-by-side results.

This helps you spot where credit might be over- or under-assigned based on your current model.

For example, your email channel might perform better in a linear model than a last-click one, revealing a need to rebalance budget or expectations.

Even if you’re not ready to commit to a new attribution approach, GA4’s model comparison is a low-risk way to experiment and build attribution literacy.

Additional Attribution Software Options

Not every team needs a custom attribution setup, but the right software can make a huge difference.

Platforms like SEMrush, HubSpot, Google Analytics 4, and Wicked Reports offer built-in attribution tools to help you get started without hiring a data science team.

SEMrush and HubSpot are especially helpful for combining attribution with broader campaign management and reporting.

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For more advanced needs, tools like Dreamdata or Funnel.io can integrate data across multiple platforms to give you a unified view of the buyer journey.

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The key is making sure your tools match your actual marketing complexity. If you’re not tracking conversions accurately or aligning on KPIs, no tool will magically solve that.

Use software to simplify attribution workflows, not replace strategy.

FAQs

Attribution in marketing refers to how credit is assigned to different touchpoints that lead to a conversion.

Whether it’s a first-click blog visit or a final retargeting ad, attribution shows you which parts of your funnel are influencing behavior and how to optimize for more impact.

What attribution model approach is mainly used in marketing?

Last-touch attribution is still the most commonly used model, mostly because it’s simple and built into most ad platforms and CRMs.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the best option. Many teams are now moving toward multi-touch or data-driven models as campaigns get more complex.

Why is attribution important in digital marketing?

Attribution gives you the visibility to connect marketing efforts to actual business outcomes.

Without it, you’re just guessing what works. With it, you can prioritize the right channels, improve ROI, and cut spend where it’s not performing.

What is an example of attribution in marketing?

Let’s say a customer first finds your site through organic search, then clicks a retargeting ad, and finally converts from an email offer.

Depending on your attribution model, credit could go to the search, the email, or all three.

That model determines how you report success and where you double down in future campaigns.

Conclusion

Now that you understand how marketing attribution works, you can focus on the right touchpoints without all the guesswork.

This means no more wasted spend on channels that aren’t moving the needle.

Choose between first-touch, last-touch, lead-conversion, linear, time-decay, position-based, or custom attribution models to determine how your efforts contribute to conversions.

Just remember: no single model works for every business. The right choice depends on your campaign goals, customer journey, and how you define success.

Start with a basic model, then build from there. Use tools like Google Analytics or customer journey mapping to improve visibility across your funnel.

Test often, stay flexible, and evolve your strategy as your data improves.

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