As a reminder, here’s a screenshot of HubSpot’s organic traffic drop, based on Semrush data:
Among the endless reactions and perspectives, two former HubSpot employees shared five good reminders about SEO strategy.
1. SEO takes time
Pruning content and focusing on E-E-A-T were among the many obvious remedies SEOs pointed out following the news of HubSpot’s apparent organic traffic decline.
Well, these aren’t simple tweaks for a brand the size of HubSpot. They’re massive undertakings, according to this LinkedIn post by Bianca Anderson, HubSpot’s former SEO strategist (who is now manager, organic growth for hims and hers):
“When HubSpot began optimizing for EEAT, it required overhauling processes in a way that significantly slowed the output of net-new content AND optimizations. Additionally, pruning a blog at HubSpot’s scale, with thousands of articles, is no small task and takes extensive effort to execute effectively (and SMARTLY).
“…fixing this kind of thing isn’t an overnight process. It’s not as simple as mass redirects. This type of work can take YEARS to properly execute.”
This may feel like an obvious observation for many of you reading, but Anderson made an important point about how volatile Google’s algorithm has been lately:
“Algorithm updates over the past two years have been unprecedented in their volatility (I know we all know this, but just want to emphasize) — it’s been an onslaught. Major brands like HubSpot and WordStream, are feeling these changes deeply.”
3. There is no shared definition of ‘content quality’
Google is not the sole arbiter of quality, according to this LinkedIn post by Braden Becker, former principal growth marketing manager at HubSpot (who is now the global SEO lead for Faire):
“I believe their quality standards are vastly more sophisticated than they were when I was working on the HubSpot Blog, and the company is surely paying a little for that. But just because Google makes a grand decision on a big website doesn’t mean the victim objectively deserved it.”
Becker highlighted another key point about quality:
“There’s a difference between ‘quality’ and ‘the most helpful answer’ to a given search term. I think Google consistently focuses on the latter, despite not always being clear about that.”
“You try to do what’s right for the business at the time. What worked, we kept doing. And what didn’t work, we stopped doing.”
Anderson added:
“From what I’ve seen, TOFU (top-of-funnel) non-ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) targeting content seems to be the most impacted. Is this partly the result of a wide-scale strategic de-prioritization? Maybe. I don’t know.
“What I do know is this: HubSpot has been actively working on this long before these traffic declines became more publicly known.”
Traffic and revenue are not the same thing, as Anderson pointed out:
“Traffic is cool, but it should rarely be a leading metric of success (especially now). Conversions or other core KPIs that drive business matter far more.”
Bottom line. Peter Rota, senior technical SEO manager, HUB International, made several great points in this LinkedIn post. Of note:
We can only see a portion of what happened – we don’t have Google Analytics or Google Search Console data.
We don’t know how many of these keywords brought meaningful visitors.
We don’t know whether any of this lost traffic impacted their sales/revenue. We might get more insight Feb. 12 – that’s the date when HubSpot is expected to release its Q4 results.
Rota added:
“In SEO, you can literally do everything right, and one day, Google could be like know what, we’re changing things. No site is truly ‘white hat,’ and everyone thinks they’re doing amazing SEO until you get hit.
“We all have access to the same public data, but the reality is that the SEOs who are working/ worked at HubSpot only know the true story of what happened.
“So, stop giving advice, stop thinking you know better. They literally wrote the book on inbound marketing and have taught many of us SEO or we’ve learned something from them.”
Google Ads recommendations often spark debate among advertisers.
While some are highly situational and require careful consideration, others can actively harm your account’s performance.
However, some recommendations offer valuable insights or significantly improve results when applied effectively.
This article explores the most common recommendations:
Those that should be ignored because they typically do more harm than good.
Those worth evaluating for the insights they provide.
Those that are almost always worth using to optimize your campaigns.
Recommendations I always ignore
Some recommendations are so poor that they are instant dismissals.
On rare occasions, one might be useful. However, spending hours looking through them all to find a single good one is a waste of time.
Optimize your budgets
Google is good at math. Their automated bidding generally works well. However, it seems they can’t do math regarding budgets.
Raising your budget by $46,200 per week to receive $35,600 more in conversion value is a quick way to go out of business.
After reviewing all 50 of these recommendations, I found that every single one would have caused a significant drop in ROAS or doubled the CPAs. In some cases, the CPAs were 10 times higher.
That’s why I always ignore budget recommendations.
Add broad match keywords
Broad match has its place, but only after carefully evaluating your account.
No one should blindly use this match type because it was a recommendation.
If your lost impression share budget is greater than 10%, and you primarily use exact and phrase match, adding broad match usually worsens your performance.
Your bid strategy dictates how well broad match will work for a campaign. You must evaluate your bid strategy before using broad match.
Some Google Ads recommendations are always worthy of evaluation.
These are my favorite recommendations that cause me to examine the account in more detail.
Remove conflicting negative keywords
Keyword conflicts occur when one of your negative keywords is blocking one of your keywords from showing.
These are always worth fixing, though fixing doesn’t always mean removing the negative keyword. Sometimes, it involves pausing the keyword instead.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t check negative keyword lists for conflicts.
In about 90% of accounts I review, lists older than five years contain at least one conflict, and sometimes even thousands.
Many people ignore this recommendation because they want to temporarily block a keyword or aren’t sure if they want to show for it or not.
However, these keywords can still receive impressions and clicks.
If the search term matches your keyword and the negative keyword isn’t in the search term, the keyword can still show an ad.
This means you are showing for keyword variations but not the keyword itself.
These should always be examined and action taken to pause the keyword or remove the negative keyword.
Make your headlines and description more unique
I don’t care about ad strength since lower ad strength ads often outperform higher ad strength ads. I also ignore the recommendation to add more headlines.
Fewer headlines reduce the potential combinations, increase the data for each ad combination, and often improve your CTR and conversion rates.
However, most of the RSA recommendations are useful.
The recommendation to make your headlines and descriptions more unique often means you:
Have too many headlines related to the keywords in the ad group.
Don’t have enough CTAs, USPs, or benefit statements in your ads.
Adding a variety of assets generally improves both CTR and conversion rates.
When you see the recommendation to make your headlines more unique, examine your headline assets.
Then, make the necessary adjustments to ensure you are using a variety of headlines and not just headlines related to your keywords.
If you get a recommendation to include popular keywords in your headlines but already have two or three headlines with keywords from your ad group, it may indicate your ad group has too many disparate keywords.
In this case, consider splitting your ad group into smaller ones.
Review your keywords and check if your headlines match them well. If some keywords aren’t well represented in the ad, move them to a new ad group with more relevant headlines.
Always use
Some recommendations are always worth using. These are usually related to missing keywords, ads, or extensions.
Add extensions to your ads
Accounts grow and change, and it’s easy to miss something.
Almost everyone wants to use the sitelink and callout ad assets.
When I see this recommendation, I generally add the appropriate ad extension.
There are some exceptions, such as a recommendation to add the call extension to an ecommerce account.
Most accounts want to use several extensions, so it’s worth examining when you see a missing extension recommendation.
Disapprovals
Ad extensions or ads that have been disapproved don’t show. It’s a good idea to examine your disapprovals and fix them so they can be displayed.
These are straightforward recommendations. View what is disapproved, fix it, and resubmit it for approval.
The best way to see your top recommendations
The repair category offers the most useful recommendations, but the card view makes it difficult to identify which campaigns or accounts need the most attention.
Switching to the table view provides a clearer, at-a-glance overview of all your campaigns or accounts.
The table view will show your campaign or account and the number of ad groups without ads, keywords, or other disapprovals.
The table is highly efficient, allowing you to spot issues, address them, and move on to the next campaign.
Among Google’s recommendations, the repair category is the most valuable to review regularly.
Decoding Google Ads recommendations for smarter ad management
Overall, Google Ads recommendations often have a poor reputation, as many seem designed to push advertisers to spend more or surrender control over their accounts.
This has led many advertisers to tune them out entirely.
However, hidden within these recommendations are valuable insights that can genuinely improve performance.
The next time you encounter a recommendation, don’t dismiss it outright.
Instead, evaluate it carefully to see how it could benefit your account.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Google-Ads-Optimize-your-budgets-kDAe7s.jpeg?fit=669%2C539&ssl=1539669http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-01-27 14:00:002025-01-27 14:00:00Top Google Ads recommendations you should always ignore, use, or evaluate
Want more buyers and sellers from Google without relying on Zillow or Redfin?
Or more leads for listings that support your cold-calling and door-knocking efforts?
Then, become skilled at real estate SEO.
SEO is about ranking your site in search engine results pages (SERPs). This will attract qualified buyers and sellers to your agency.
Just look at Campion & Company, a small real estate agency in Boston. They outrank Zillow for high-value property searches like “Burrage Mansion.”
And that’s just one keyword.
This agency ranks for 19K different search terms on Google—all driving potential buyers directly to their listings.
All thanks to SEO.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to conduct keyword research for high-intent terms, create lead-generating content, and dominate the local SERPs.
But first, let’s take a closer look at the benefits of SEO.
Why Is SEO Important for Real Estate Sites?
Real estate SEO helps your listings show up in search results when people look for homes online.
This includes Google Maps when people search for things like “realtor” in your area.
Why does this matter?
According to a study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 100% of Americans who bought a house in 2024 used the internet to search for a home.
And more than half (52%) of recent buyers found the home they ultimately purchased online.
SEO lets you reach these buyers when they’re actively looking to buy.
But it’s also a cost-effective way of capturing online demand.
For example, the cost-per-click of a Google ad for the keyphrase “real estate companies in West Palm Beach Florida” is $5.67.
But SEO can get your business to appear directly under those ads without spending a dime.
This puts you in direct control of lead generation. Which means no more relying on expensive ads or third-party directory sites.
Sounds ideal, right?
Now that you’ve seen what real estate SEO can do for your business, let’s start with the most important first step:
Conducting a quick technical audit to see if Google can actually find your website.
(Because if it can’t, other SEO strategies don’t matter.)
Step 1: Make Sure Google Can Find Your Property Listings
The best way to check if Google knows your site exists?
This will tell you which pages from your site are in Google’s index, which aren’t, and why.
Some red flags to watch out for:
Your indexed pages WAY outnumber your actual pages (this usually means Google’s finding pages it shouldn’t)
Google’s only indexed a fraction of your pages (meaning potential clients can’t find most of your listings and services)
Important pages show up under “Error,’” “Valid with warnings,” or “Excluded”
Not sure why Google isn’t indexing your pages?
The “Why pages aren’t indexed” report is your friend here.
It’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong—like a redirect error or improper canonical tags—and how to fix it.
If you have unindexed pages, you can manually request indexing.
This is super helpful for new listings you want to appear ASAP.
Pro tip: Don’t have the time or desire to handle SEO issues? Delegate them to a pro. A skilled website manager can tackle indexing issues, implement fixes fast, and keep your site climbing the rankings—while you focus on closing deals.
Step 2: Find Keywords That Drive Leads
To increase leads, you need to show up on Google for the terms homebuyers search for in your area.
But it’ll take a strategic plan to beat the big real estate directory sites.
For example, here’s what the search results look like for “Raleigh homes.”
Directory sites dominate the SERPs, including Zillow, Realtor.com, and Redfin.
Enter a neighborhood into the search bar and click “Search.”
The tool will return a list of keywords and important metrics for each one.
This includes:
Search volume: The average number of monthly searches for a specific keyword in Google
Keyword difficulty (KD): A score from 0-100 that estimates how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for that keyword
Search intent: The primary purpose or goal behind a user’s search query—informational (learn), commercial (compare/buy), navigational (find site), or transactional (take action)
While the list will typically include some long-tail keywords already, you can add filters to narrow it even further.
Here’s how:
Select the “KD %” filter and type “0-50” in the custom range.
Then, click the “Intent” filter and select “Transactional” and “Commercial.”
Filtering this list for “Commercial” and “Transactional” will limit the list to terms people search when they’re looking to buy a home.
Now, you have a list of long-tail keywords you can use to optimize your property page.
For example, “boylan heights raleigh homes for sale” receives 40 searches a month and has a keyword difficulty score of 3, meaning it should be super easy to rank for.
It also has transactional intent, which tells you these searchers are ready to buy.
Even better?
The SERP for this keyword is a mix of directory sites and local realtors, so you know you’ve got a shot at ranking.
Now that you’ve got your target keywords, it’s time to use them strategically on your property pages.
Step 3: Optimize Your Property Pages for Conversions
It should describe the page’s contents and include the main keyword.
It doesn’t have to be the exact keyphrase—you can use a variation of your target keyword in your H1 like We Know Boise Real Estate did.
H2s are the main subheadings that go underneath your H1 to organize your content and make it easy for readers to find what they’re looking for.
Include the location name in some of your page’s H2’s as well:
This makes it crystal clear to search engines exactly what this page is about, which increases your chances of ranking.
Just ensure your page headings read naturally and avoid keyword stuffing.
Include Internal Links
Internal linking connects your location pages together, helping you rank higher in search results.
It also keeps website visitors engaged longer as they explore other pages on your site.
For example, We Know Boise’s Barber Valley page includes hyperlinks to every other neighborhood in East Boise:
When you click a neighborhood, it takes you to a dedicated page on We Know Boise’s site for that location.
This lets Google understand the relationship between these pages on your site.
Which will help you rank for your target keywords—and ultimately land more leads.
Pro tip: Don’t gate your content. Requiring visitors to provide personal details to view property listings can negatively impact your SEO efforts. Many potential clients will hit the “back” button and head to one of your competitor’s sites instead, reducing your chances of ranking.
Create Detailed Listing Pages That Convert Browsers into Buyers
The more information you provide on your property pages, the more likely visitors are to book a viewing.
It also helps with lead qualification, as they’ll know upfront if the listing is likely to be a fit.
Include:
A detailed description of the property
A description of the local amenities
High-quality images of the entire property
A map showing the property’s location
Look at the big directory sites for inspiration when creating your listings.
For example, Trulia includes high-quality images and essential information like address and price prominently at the top of the listing.
They follow this up with a “Local Information” section that includes a map, description of the area, and information on local restaurants, shopping, and schools.
Next, comes the “Home Highlights” at a glance, such as the HOA fee, price per square foot, and how long the property has been listed.
Then, an expandable drop-down menu with even more details like the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and more:
Trulia also showcases what locals say about the area to give prospective buyers an inside look into the area:
Notably, they also include an interactive mortgage calculator set to the home’s listed price.
Doing something similar will help you get more leads from your property pages.
Step 4: Dominate Local Search Results with Your Google Business Profile
Search “[your location] real estate agents” in Google.
The top organic result is almost certain to be a Google Local Pack—a SERP feature that appears for location-specific searches—featuring three local realtors:
It goes without saying that you should prioritize landing in one of those three spots through your real estate SEO strategy.
This is especially vital for a local realtor since the rest of the organic results are likely to be dominated by directory sites:
Here’s how to optimize your site to appear in the Local Pack for your area:
Enter your business name, category, location, and contact information
Verify your business by the method offered to you by Google (usually by a phone call or a postcard sent to your business’s address)
Fill Out and Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Once your Google Business Profile is verified, fill it out with as much information as possible—including all the areas you have listings:
Add plenty of high-quality photos of your team, current listings, and properties sold.
Do this regularly to show Google you’re a legitimate business worthy of ranking at the top of the Local Pack.
Plus, it’ll help sell your company to potential clients—and agents who might be looking for a new agency.
You also have the option of writing a brief description of your business, which will appear under the heading “From [your business’s name]’:
Include target keywords in this section.
Things like:
[Your area] real estate
[Your area] homes for sale
[Your area] real estate agent
[Your area] realtor
Encourage and Respond to Customer Reviews
It’s good practice to ask all your customers to leave you a review on Google.
After all, 35% of people say a real estate agent’s reputation is the most important factor when they’re choosing a realtor to sell their home, according to NAR’s study.
Plus, the more positive reviews you receive on Google, the more likely you are to appear in the Local Pack for relevant searches.
Your business’s overall rating and review highlights will appear on your Google Business listing:
As a best practice, respond to every review you receive on Google.
This includes the positive ones:
And the not-so-positive ones:
This will show potential clients that you care what people have to say about your business and respond to their feedback.
It’s also another signal to Google that you’re a well-run business that deserves to sit at the top of its local results.
Get as Many NAP Citations as You Can
NAP (name, address, and phone number) citations are a huge deal when it comes to local SEO.
The more websites that list your company’s NAP correctly, the more confident Google is that those details are correct—and that you’re a legitimate business worth sending searchers to.
But manually adding and updating citations isn’t a good use of anyone’s time.
Instead, use a tool like Semrush’s Listing Management, which automates the process.
By connecting your Google Business Profile, the tool will automatically distribute your details to vital directories for your industry.
Search your business to find out how many correct NAP citations it has online:
The tool will show you where your NAP details are listed incorrectly—or not at all to help you improve and expand your presence.
Use Google Posts to Advertise Property Listings
Google Posts are updates that appear at the bottom of your Google Business Profile.
They’re the perfect place for you to advertise your latest listings.
Plus, Google is less likely to display your Business Profile at the top of local search results if it’s inactive. Which means making a Google Post about each of your new listings will help you rank in the Local Pack.
Create a Google Post by clicking “Add update” in your dashboard:
Step 5: Start a Blog to Establish Your Agency as an Industry Leader
Rank for more keywords and strengthen your site’s authority by creating a blog.
Write High-Quality Blog Content
Blog content can drive highly relevant traffic to your site.
The key is finding topics homebuyers are actively searching for online.
Search for your service area in the tool, such as “Cambridge MA.”
You’ll see an Overview report with keyword data.
Click “View all keywords” under the “Questions” report.
Now, you’ll see a list of questions people ask Google about this area.
Including the search volume for each term, intent, and keyword difficulty.
Review the list to find questions that would make great blog post topics.
Ensure they’re relevant and aim for low difficulty and moderate search volume.
For example, “What is there to do in cambridge ma” gets 320 searches per month and has a low keyword difficulty score of 20.
This means it should be fairly easy to rank for, which is especially important if you have a new site or one that lacks authority.
Create Neighborhood Guides
Neighborhood guides are a tried-and-true way to rank in the SERPs. (Note: these can work well as site pages or blog content.)
For example, Trulia created a neighborhood guide for every neighborhood where they have listings.
That subfolder drives 611.2K visits to the Trulia site each month.
And it has 11K backlinks:
These pages work.
And your content marketing strategy should revolve around them.
But how can you compete with Trulia, Zillow, and Redfin’s neighborhood pages?
With high-quality, comprehensive content that highlights your local expertise.
For example, New Orleans real estate agency Crescent City Living has a neighborhood guide that outranks all the directory sites for “Seventh Ward New Orleans”:
How’d they do it?
Well, compare Crescent City Living’s guide to Trulia’s, and you’ll see significant differences:
Crescent Living’s page was clearly written by someone who knows the area.
It describes Seventh Ward’s colorful Creole cottages and beloved Marching 100 band.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-01-23 12:01:282025-01-23 12:01:286 Steps to Win at Real Estate SEO
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective paid channels helping businesses increase visibility and build awareness.
If you’d like to learn about the state of PPC in 2025, find the latest data on PPC usage, most used ad platforms, and PPC benchmarks, we’ve curated a list of 24 essential PPC statistics to help you answer these questions.
General PPC Statistics
Among surveyed pay-per-click (PPC) marketers, Google (98%), Facebook (76%) and Instagram (70%) are the most widely used advertising platforms (Statista)
Here’s a full breakdown:
Digital Advertising Platform
Share of PPC Professionals
Google (excluding YouTube)
98%
Facebook
76%
Instagram
70%
Microsoft (Bing)
67%
YouTube
67%
LinkedIn
48%
TikTok
31%
Pinterest
24%
Amazon
17%
X (Twitter)
15%
Reddit
11%
Apple Search
11%
Snapchat
9%
Quora
4%
Yandex
2%
Baidu
1%
Yahoo! Japan
1%
Other
6%
Among PPC practitioners with a monthly budget between $50K and $500K, Google, Facebook, and YouTube are the top 3 most used advertising platforms (PPCsurvey)
Here are the exact numbers:
Ad Platform
Adoption ($50K – $500K PPC budget)
Google (excluding YouTube)
99%
Facebook
79%
YouTube
75%
Instagram
74%
Microsoft (Bing)
73%
LinkedIn
46%
TikTok
28%
Pinterest
20%
Amazon
15%
X (Twitter)
11%
Reddit
10%
Apple Search
7%
Snapchat
6%
Quora
4%
Yandex
1%
Baidu
1%
Yahoo! Japan
1%
Other
8%
73% of B2C marketers stated their organization used PPC advertising in the last 12 months (Content Marketing Institute)
64% of B2B marketing professionals say they used PPC advertising at their organization in the past year, which is only behind the usage rate of social media advertising at 73% (Content Marketing Institute)
93% of marketers say pay-per-click (PPC) as a marketing channel is “effective” or “highly effective”, making it the 2nd most effective channel after content marketing (96%) (eMarketer)
Only 10% of surveyed marketing professionals identify PPC as a primary focus for their budget allocation (eMarketer)
Among surveyed marketing specialists worldwide, 49% claim it became harder managing PPC campaigns today than 2 years ago (PPCsurvey)
Among in-house teams, the average monthly PPC spend is $950,000, while freelancers usually manage an ad budget of around $575,000 per month (PPCsurvey)
Here are the exact numbers:
Monthly PPC spend
In-house
Freelancer
More than $3M
5%
3%
Between $500K and $3M
14%
10%
Between $50K and $500K
41%
38%
Between $5K and $50K
29%
33%
Under $5K
11%
16%
According to surveyed B2B marketers, PPC advertising ranks as the most effective paid channel for content marketing activities, with 61% of respondents citing it as effective, followed by social media advertising (49%), and sponsorships (48%) (Content Marketing Institute)
Search Ads Statistics
Paid search spending in the US is estimated to reach $124.59 billion in 2024, showing an 11.1% year-over-year increase (eMarketer)
The average cost-per-click for advertisements on Google ads stood at $1.16 (eMarketer)
The average cost per click for search ads across multiple industries on Amazon was $1.50 (eMarketer)
The average benchmark bounce rate for paid search is 43.9% (Contentsquare)
The average click-through rate for Google search ads is 3.17%, based on data collected from multiple industries (WordStream)
On average, paid search campaigns are reported to generate a conversion rate of 2.55% (Contentsquare)
Paid search accounts for 29.7% of total media ad spending in the US (eMarketer)
Analysis of over 43 billion website visits found that paid search accounts for 23% of traffic share, behind direct (27.6%) and organic search (26.7%) (Contentsquare)
The share of new visitor traffic attributed to paid search is 27.6%, which is more than any other marketing channel (Contentsquare)
Paid search accounts for 39.5% market share of digital advertising, more than any other advertising format (display, video or audio) (IAB)
In the US, Google dominates the search advertising market, accounting for 50.5% of the total search ad spending (eMarketer)
Amazon’s share of the overall search ad spending in the US is 22.3% (eMarketer)
75.78% of Google’s revenue came from advertising in Q1-Q3 2024 (Alphabet)
AI Use for PPC Statistics
75% of PPC professionals say they use generative AI at least “sometimes” for writing ads. Other common use cases include keyword research (60%) and writing emails (52%) (PPCsurvey)
Here are the exact numbers:
Use Case
Share of PPC Professionals Who Use AI at Least “Sometimes”
Writing ads
75%
Keyword research
60%
Writing emails
52%
Audience research/analysis
48%
Writing/editing scripts
45%
Landing page optimization
41%
Generating insights and suggestions
41%
Strategy
38%
Campaign creation
38%
Reporting
31%
Among PPC professionals that use AI at least “sometimes” for writing emails, 71% claim they’re satisfied with results generated by AI (PPCsurvey)
Use Case
Share of PPC Professionals Satisfied with AI Results
It provides data and insights that will help you target the right keywords for your audience.
More data isn’t always better.
So, focus on the key metrics: search volume, keyword difficulty, and search intent.
Search Volume: The average monthly searches for a keyword
Keyword Difficulty (KD%): A measure of how hard it is to rank for a keyword. It’s based on the link profiles of the top 10 ranking pages.
Search Intent: The purpose behind a user’s search query. It’s categorized as transactional, informational, commercial, or navigational.
Stick to these essentials to guide your keyword strategy effectively.
Define Commercial Opportunities
The commercial value of a keyword varies for each business.
What may be a high-value commercial keyword for a competitor might not be for you.
For example, let’s say you have top-rated resorts in Mexico. You might see “all-inclusive resorts in Mexico” as a valuable keyword.
Now, imagine you manage one outdated, overpriced resort there. Your chance to profit from this keyword is likely much weaker.
When evaluating a commercial opportunity, ask: Will this page convert visitors?
Categorize each keyword into the following:
0. Not Likely: We don’t offer anything related to the user’s intent
1. Unlikely: We offer something related to the user’s intent, but it doesn’t directly address the user’s needs
2. Potential: We offer a solution that could meet the user’s intent
3. Likely: We provide the best solution for the user’s intent
This approach helps focus your efforts on the most commercially valuable keywords.
Pro tip: Before using a keyword, check its intent. Analyze the top-ranking content in the search results. A keyword like “Mexico vs. Ecuador” might seem perfect for a travel site selling flights to both. However, a quick Google search may reveal that the user intent is related to soccer, not travel.
By knowing what users want, you can avoid irrelevant keywords. This will ensure your content matches user intent.
It also increases your chances of ranking and converting.
Step 3: Create a Keyword Map
Once you’ve gathered your keywords, the next step is to build an SEO keyword map.
Here’s how:
List existing pages: Use an SEO spider tool like Screaming Frog. It will list all existing pages.
Filter irrelevant pages: Remove any pages that won’t serve as SEO landing pages. Focus only on those that have the potential to drive organic traffic.
Pair pages with keywords: Use Google Search Console (GSC) to find queries that generate the most clicks for each page.
Assign target keywords: Assign one keyword from your research to each relevant page.
Avoid keyword cannibalization: Target each keyword with only one page. This prevents competition between your own pages for the same search query.
SEO for travel websites often involves optimizing destination-specific and service-related keywords.
These efforts help drive organic traffic to your site.
By mapping keywords to pages, you’ll have a clear strategy. It’ll help you optimize existing content and find gaps for new content.
Step 4: Form a Content Strategy
With your keyword research and keyword map in place, it’s time to create an SEO content strategy.
To maximize organic revenue, prioritize content targeting bottom-of-the-funnel keywords.
These are high-intent keywords where users are closest to making a booking decision.
By focusing on this stage first, you’ll drive more immediate conversions and revenue.
Target Commercial Keywords
In your keyword sheet, filter for keywords with commercial scores of two or three.
This filter will give you keywords with high commercial intent. They’ll match what you offer.
Think “Cancun resorts,” “flights to Hawaii,” “Las Vegas hotels,” or “Punta Cana excursions.”
For each keyword:
If a landing page is ranking, optimize its content to boost performance
If none of your pages are ranking, decide whether to create a new landing page or optimize an existing one
Finally, create a timeline and roadmap for implementing these optimizations.
This helps ensure steady progress toward your content goals.
Build Topical Authority
After covering your commercial keywords, it’s time to move up to the middle of the funnel.
Focus on keywords like “things to do in Miami,” “best time to visit Japan,” and “best beaches in Puerto Rico.”
These keywords are primarily informational and have lower conversion rates.
Cluster these topics to help search engines understand your content.
You’ll signal to search engines that your site is a trusted travel resource.
Blog pages often cover these topics best. But you can use landing pages if they fit your strategy.
Create a Topic Map
Up to this point, your SEO content strategy has been based on keyword data.
Now, it’s time to explore new topic ideas by leveraging topic maps.
To do this, use an AI tool like Claude or Chat GPT to uncover relevant topics for specific destinations.
Here’s an example of a prompt you can use:
“Please provide a table listing the key topics related to travel in Mexico. The table should have three columns: categories, subcategories, and subtopics. Each subtopic should have its own row.”
Then, copy your topic map to a sheet. Use a ChatGPT plugin like Whimsical Diagrams to visualize it.
Use the following prompt: “Generate a mind map from this table: {paste table}.”
Repeat this process for each destination you serve.
Add any new topics to your content roadmap.
Cover a wide range of content that appeals to search engines and your audience.
This approach fills gaps in your strategy. It keeps your content fresh and competitive.
Tap Into the Travel Content Loop
The travel experience is cyclical.
Here’s how the journey typically unfolds:
Inspiration: “That’s beautiful, where is that place?”
Education: “Tell me more about this place”
Booking: “Let’s go there”
Inspiration again: After the trip, the traveler dreams of new adventures. This sparks the loop once more.
Travelers constantly seek beauty, adventure, and new connections.
Your content strategy should reflect this ongoing loop.
To build a successful travel content strategy off the back of this loop, think beyond SEO. This is especially true for inspiration, where social media is vital.
SEO is about fulfilling a need for information.
So, focus on education and answering users’ specific questions.
Inspiration, however, often comes to people when they’re not actively searching for it.
That’s why inspirational content must be:
Visual and destination-focused
Pushed to users, igniting wanderlust
Once the audience is captivated by a destination, they might seek more information. That’s where SEO comes in to guide them further down the funnel.
When planning content, ensure synergy between inspirational and informational content.
For example, let’s say you publish an SEO-optimized article like “The Best Time to Visit Costa Rica.”
Coordinate with your social media team to release visual, inspirational content.
This integrated approach keeps your audience engaged at every stage of their journey. Whether they’re exploring on social media or searching for information online.
Step 5: Establish a Content Creation Process
Your content strategy is ready.
Now it’s time to establish a streamlined content creation process.
Here’s how that might look:
Keyword selection: Choose primary and secondary keywords based on your content calendar
Writer briefing: Provide clear, detailed briefs for high-quality content
Write: Focus on comprehensive, unique content that goes beyond top-ranking pages
Edit: Align with the brand’s tone and ensure scannability
Optimize: Fine-tune for SEO—headings, body content, internal links, and meta
Add photography: Use images that follow guidelines and enhance user experience
Publish and promote: Share across social, email, and other channels to maximize reach
Translate: Expand reach by targeting non-English keywords
Pro tip: After headlines, image captions are the most read by users. Add a commercial message or a call to action to your image captions. It will help boost engagement.
To AI or Not AI?
When it comes to your content creation process, a key question is how much of it should involve AI.
The answer depends on your goals.
One thing is certain—it’s tough to stand out in a sea of mass-produced AI content by just publishing more AI content.
Craftsmanship and authenticity are what make content truly stand out.
“To beat AI, become more human.” – Wesley van der Hoop, PPC + SEO at Unique Vacations Ltd.
For example, let’s say you’re writing about “the best restaurants in Amsterdam.”
Instead of simply copying the list from TripAdvisor, go beyond the surface:
Experience the destination firsthand
Talk to locals and uncover hidden gems that aren’t widely covered
Engage with restaurant owners. Try their signature dishes. Share deeper insights than current online articles.
AI should play the role of an assistant, not the solution.
That said, AI can still assist in the content creation process.
It can help create content briefs, structure the content, and suggest data points.
This lets writers focus on the human elements. They can craft unique, authentic content that AI cannot replicate.
In this hybrid approach, AI handles repetitive tasks.
Meanwhile, your team focuses on insights, experiences, and personal connections.
Step 6: Set Up Tracking and Measuring
Begin by measuring your current performance to understand where you stand.
Define and track both macro and micro conversions. Use your travel site’s analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics 4).
For most travel websites, the macro conversion will be bookings and revenue.
Micro conversions may include actions like account creation or requests for more information.
They can also involve newsletter sign-ups, brochure requests, and travel guide downloads.
Once tracking is set up, integrate SEO tools like Google Search Console (GSC).
Use a rank tracker to gain deeper insights into what’s happening on the SERPs.
Finally, create easy-to-understand dashboards that blend different data sources. They let you track progress and show results to stakeholders at performance meetings.
Step 7: Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Local SEO is essential for improving visibility.
It’s particularly important for attractions, restaurants, bars, and accommodations at popular destinations.
Google can struggle to determine which of your pages to prioritize.
It can also lead to crawling, indexing issues, and loss of link equity.
In severe cases, it can also trigger manual penalties.
The seven most common types of duplicate content on travel websites are:
Destination descriptions: Frequently reused descriptions of popular travel destinations across multiple accommodation pages
URLs with filtering parameters: Filtering options (e.g., “?sort=price”) generate different URLs. These may show similar content.
Pagination: Ensure paginated lists of destinations or accommodations are distinct or canonicalized
URLs with UTM parameters: Parameters like “?utm_source=social-media” track traffic. But they can also create duplicate content issues.
Split URL tests: A/B testing may create duplicate content. It does this by generating alternative versions of the same page.
Dynamic URLs with session IDs: When indexed, they can cause duplicate content issues
M-dot URLs: They’re rare today. But if used, link them to their desktop versions.
Use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to identify duplicate content. Mitigate it by implementing canonical tags.
Use Structured Data
Structured data helps search engines better understand and display your content.
For travel websites, this can lead to rich results like pricing and star ratings.
These features can help boost click-through rates.
Structured data can also improve your site’s rankings.
How?
By providing search engines with clearer context for your content.
Pro tip: To further enhance SEO, implement structured data using the LocalBusiness schema. This helps search engines understand and validate your business information. It includes key details like category, location, and operating hours. Properly structured data can positively impact your rankings in local searches.
Step 9: Optimize UX with a Mobile-First Approach
Users have been living in a mobile-first world for some time, and Google was quick to follow.
Travelers may book on desktop. But they often make the decision to book on mobile.
Focus on quick load times and ensure strong Core Web Vitals performance.
Search engines like Google favor fast-loading content.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-01-23 11:57:472025-01-23 11:57:47How To Improve Your Travel SEO In 10 Steps
Search engines want to show users the most accurate, up-to-date information possible, which may lead to changing the order of search results.
For example, “best restaurants near me,” results change as you move locations, new restaurants open in your area, or customer reviews change.
Also, changes to ranking algorithms may reorder search results drastically.
When Google updates its algorithms, it usually offers guidance to site owners in its Search Central Blog.
Presenting the Best Answers
Search engines show more than simple links.
They display special SERP features to present answers quickly and enhance the user’s experience.
For example, a user searching for “sugar cookies” may be looking for recipes, nutritional facts, or a list of ingredients.
Google returns varied results to satisfy all of these potential intents.
But a user searching for “buy sugar cookies” has transactional intent.
Google returns product results to make it easier for users to locate key information about the product.
SERP features can make the search experience more enjoyable for users.
Common types include:
Popular Products: A list of products with key information like price, reviews, and shipping information
Organization: A knowledge panel with key information about a business like founders, history, social media profiles, and more
Local Business: A knowledge panel featuring key information about a local business like address, phone number, and hours of operation
FAQs: A list of questions and answers about a topic
Paid search results may also appear at the top of the SERPs.
To qualify, sites need to set up Google Ads campaigns and bid for specific keywords.
AI Overviews, featured snippets, and People Also Ask boxes often appear for informational searches.
Like this:
These features deliver quick answers and can increase visibility for pages that earn these placements.
Turn Your Search Engine Knowledge into Rankings
While many factors could be at play, understanding how search engines work is an essential first step to helping your content rank higher for the keywords that matter most to your audience.
Armed with this knowledge, you can boost your site’s visibility and get your pages in front of the right people.
The next critical step?
Making sure your website’s technical foundation helps search engines efficiently crawl, index, and rank your content.
Check out our technical SEO guide to optimize your site for better search visibility.
A new “Used since” column reveals when assets were added to Google Ads accounts, giving advertisers crucial historical context for managing their creative assets.
The addition of this timestamp feature addresses a common pain point for digital marketers who inherit or audit accounts, as they previously had no easy way to determine how long specific assets had been in use.
Details. The new column appears at the asset level within Google Ads accounts, providing a clear date stamp for when each creative element was implemented.
Why we care. Understanding the timeline of asset implementation helps you track performance over time and maintain fresh, relevant creative content.
First seen. This update was first seen on PPC News Feed.
What’s next. This feature could signal Google’s broader commitment to increasing transparency and giving advertisers more tools for historical analysis of their accounts.
Bottom line. For agencies and in-house teams managing multiple accounts or transitioning between account managers, this feature streamlines the process of understanding asset history and planning creative refreshes.
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At the start of 2024 – a year that undeniably transformed the SEO landscape – we were primarily focused on Google and eagerly watching how AI might reshape organic search.
As we begin 2025, the picture has become clearer.
AI is no longer a looming possibility; it’s a central player, albeit in ways few of us fully anticipated.
And while Google continues to dominate much of the search landscape, I believe the focus for SEO professionals is shifting.
It’s becoming less about optimizing for specific channels and more about understanding and serving the user – wherever and however they choose to engage.
This shift represents a fundamental change in SEO, moving from keyword-centric strategies to user-centric approaches.
Here’s how my team and I are preparing for the challenges and opportunities ahead in 2025, including:
AI Overviews have seen significant shifts, with results increasingly resembling traditional SERPs – a predictable outcome given both are powered by Google’s algorithms.
In contrast, LLM-based search is a space Google hasn’t monopolized.
Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s Gemini are all in the mix, with new competitors emerging regularly.
These non-Google LLMs rely on diverse algorithms, leading to variability and uncertainty in their search results.
Rather than chase undefined targets, brands should focus on what has always worked, especially over the last few years: digging into true user understanding and delivering content that anticipates and addresses their informational needs.
It’s meat-and-potatoes stuff, but the way and where we deploy that content have changed somewhat over the last year.
LLM-based SEO vs. social search
One thing we know for sure is that AI is changing how people interact with search.
More users are getting AI Overviews, and in a more proactive shift, more people are using LLMs for their search activity.
LLMs represent a shift toward combining multiple sources into one (e.g., synthesizing 100 articles into a single response).
Social search offers the opposite: unique human perspectives from platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
While AI-generated content (e.g., automated LinkedIn responses) is common, it’s often easy to recognize and less engaging.
Content from these platforms has been appearing more frequently in Google’s traditional SERPs and is now starting to surface in LLM search results.
In short, users are willing to engage with mass-aggregated content and human perspectives.
To me, that’s a pretty interesting trend that puts a spotlight on brand SEO – to make sure people find what they should see when and where they’re searching for your brand.
A good, strong brand should be able to flow across touchpoints, wherever those might be.
Yes, non-brand keywords are still a big piece of SEO, but both pieces are important in 2025.
Great SEO in 2025 will optimize user experience over a fully mapped, more three-dimensional customer journey that includes more platforms than Google.
Google remains a strong indicator of what matters and continues to dominate most search activity, but I expect this to become more dispersed as 2025 progresses.
With that in mind, the questions an SEO needs to address are changing.
You should no longer start with “Which keywords should I try to rank for?”
Better questions now start with user behavior, such as:
“If a user begins a search on Google or LLMs, what can my brand do to show up and provide value?”
“What kind of content are people looking to consume on Reddit and TikTok?”
“What kind of information are people looking for LLMs to provide?”
I’ve already mentioned the need to focus on brand search.
Along with that and user behavior, I’m encouraging my clients to invest in community engagement (wherever their particular communities are).
Those offer opportunities for a very different level of connection brand-building.
I’m sure there’ll be the usual wave of yearly predictions, so I’ll be brief with mine.
LLM platforms like Perplexity will gain traction
Perplexity is poised to build significant momentum and market share.
Its user experience and quality have been impressive so far, and it continues to improve rapidly.
Community engagement will drive business growth
For B2B and ecommerce/B2C, engaging with communities will become a crucial growth strategy.
While AI content will advance and become less formulaic, there will always be demand for high-quality, differentiated content that showcases unique and creative human perspectives.
As AI content grows, it will highlight the value of authentic, smart voices.
Video content remains a powerful tool for standing out
Video continues to offer a unique opportunity to differentiate, as AI has yet to make significant advances in this medium.
Brands focusing on high-quality video and strategic deployment on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn can expect strong engagement in 2025.
SEO in 2025: Focusing on users, platforms, and content
User understanding will be the driving force behind successful SEO in 2025 and beyond.
With users exploring more search platforms than ever and a growing number of algorithms to navigate, gaining visibility will be both complex and challenging.
However, the better we understand our users and their behaviors, the more effectively we can engage them and drive meaningful results for our brands.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Evolving-SEO-for-2025-What-needs-to-change-800x450-9xXyM5.png?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1450800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-01-21 15:00:002025-01-21 15:00:00Evolving SEO for 2025: What needs to change
In SEO, we often operate under the assumption that more is better: more content, more pages, more keywords, more traffic.
The expectation is that more of these elements will lead to more revenue.
With generative AI, this belief has only grown stronger, enabling content production at an unprecedented scale. But what if more isn’t the answer?
The pursuit of maximalism has led to significant challenges.
Google now penalizes excessive, bloated content, and what once seemed like a straightforward strategy is proving detrimental.
This isn’t just an algorithmic issue – users are overwhelmed, conversions are declining, and trust in brands is eroding.
We’re creating content faster than ever, yet the results are diminishing. In many cases, we’re doing far more than necessary. The solution doesn’t lie in adding more but in doing less.
This brings us to an ancient principle, via negativa (the “negative way” or “way of negation”), rooted in Neo-Platonic philosophy and medieval theology.
Nassim Taleb highlights that what we know can be disproven, but negative knowledge – knowing what doesn’t work – is enduring.
To truly understand what works, we must first identify what doesn’t. This process of inversion is critical.
This article will challenge the notion that more is always better in SEO. We’ll explore:
Why via negativa works.
The pitfalls of excess.
How to regain control if your content strategy has gone too far.
Real-world examples will illustrate how less can be more.
Subtraction in action: Why it works (and why we resist it)
Brands have progressively minimized their logos to leave only what is essential:
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Digital technology has made our lives more abundant, much like Picasso adding detail to enrich the image of a bull.
But at some point, there’s too much, leading to distraction from what truly matters.
Consider cooking as another example. Japanese cuisine is known for its simplicity, removing unnecessary elements to highlight original flavors.
When reducing a sauce, the goal is balance – neither too thick nor too thin, but just right.
What about SEO and content marketing?
Great information architecture and navigation are simple and intuitive, aligning with the principle of “Don’t make me think.”
Great content is as long as necessary and as short as possible to (increase information density and) emphasize each part instead of diluting it.
Successful domains have only as many URLs as needed to attract the right traffic, not the most.
So why do we still believe more is better and struggle to do less?
Fortunately, scientific studies answer this question. Here are the core ideas to explain our shortcomings:
We add more because it’s easier to identify what’s visible and ignore the rest (unlike mountains of paper in an office – an example from Gerry McGovern’s “World Wide Waste”).
We don’t think of subtraction easily, as it requires more cognitive effort.
We default to instinctive solutions, creating a self-reinforcing cycle because the “idea to add” becomes more cognitively accessible if more people discuss it.
Neglecting something beneficial in the long run can cause long-term damage.
In SEO, this damage manifests in distinct ways that compound over time if unchecked.
The problems of addition over subtraction in SEO and how to solve them
Maximalism in SEO presents three core problems:
An insatiable appetite for more is a red flag.
Google no longer tolerates mediocre content.
Overemphasis on SEO gains leads to imbalance.
Let’s examine each of these in turn.
Controlling our appetite
A great example of our hunger for more being a problem is programmatic SEO and AI content.
By AI content, I mean pushing out articles like McDonald’s does to burgers – average at best and not suited for a gourmet.
Google’s John Mueller said regarding programmatic SEO:
“I love fire, but also programmatic SEO is often a fancy banner for spam.”
We often see Google as a mountain to climb, with generative AI or programmatic SEO acting as a performance-enhancing drug.
However, Google is not just a mountain; it’s a volcano.
By focusing too much on reaching the “summit,” we overlook warning signs and take unnecessary risks, which ultimately lead to our downfall.
What are the risks?
An unnatural surge of new pages within a short time frame.
Too many new pages relative to the rest of your site.
Ignoring advice from Google spokespeople.
I know this is controversial, but there are indications that rapid, excessive actions may not align with Google’s interests (right now).
We often have an insatiable appetite. Being too hungry and not knowing when enough is enough creates problems.
“’Enough’ is realizing that the opposite – an insatiable appetite for more – will push you to the point of regret. The only way to know how much food you can eat is to eat until you’re sick. Few try this because vomiting hurts more than any meal is good.”
– Morgan Housel
Takeaway: Anyone can quickly create low-quality content, but few can create extraordinary content. Focus on creating content that is 10 times better, not 10 times more.
Serving Google our best meal since they don’t want our junk food
Three changes in the last two years dramatically changed our playing field:
Thresholds for brand signals increased.
Indexing became harder.
Google developed technical “allergies.”
There’s no direct proof for the first point (yet), however, there are two pieces of evidence:
Tom Capper theorizes that “helpful content” is a smoke screen. Google increased the threshold for brand signals. High domain authority, but low brand authority is a red flag (and helps to sort the cesspool of primarily SEO-supported domains).
Mark Williams-Cook points out that site quality and predicted site quality must have been all over the place with the influx of AI content, so Google changed this.
Some domains experienced short-term success but were filled with poor-quality content, lacking oversight and nutritional value.
If we break the system or find loopholes, Google behaves like the government.
There may be short-term arbitrage opportunities. (Emphasis on short-term as neither the government nor Google appreciate attempts to deceive them.)
By ignoring good advice for too long, we tend to fly too close to the sun and eventually burn. Here’s a great example of a domain that didn’t listen:
We often hear impressive stories like, “I created 16,824,973 articles with just a few clicks.”
It sounds great on paper, but we rarely hear about the failures.
It’s nicer to talk about how well we did versus how we miserably failed and destroyed our brand reputation.
We only hear about the planes that survived the war.
The solution we often propose is to fix the most-hit spots. What we miss is that the planes that didn’t return were hit in areas where survivors weren’t.
Google doesn’t have unlimited capacity. According to what we know, the Google index is static (about 400 billion documents).
Gone are the days when Google seemed like a ravenous beast, eager to consume everything.
With AI, we produce more stuff, so the quality bar for content to be indexed has to increase.
Technical SEO doesn’t directly grow your site, but for larger sites, mistakes can have serious consequences.
In the last two years, Google has become increasingly finicky.
Here’s an anonymized example of a large client domain with multiple indexing issues related to unintended parameter pages:
We don’t want to put Google into anaphylactic shock.
Pushing out more (bad or mediocre) content quickly might sound good, but it’s likely not what Google wants. It’s as if Google has new nutritional standards that we’re reluctant to follow.
Takeaways:
Focus on building your brand. Start by reading “How Brands Grow” by Byron Sharp.
Only serve Google your best dishes (content) and regularly check your menu (URL portfolio).
Ensure a solid technical foundation – it’s like the basics in cooking. For large sites, monitoring is a must-have, not a nice-to-have.
Avoiding imbalance caused by overfocusing on SEO gains
Another thing we forget: SEO isn’t everything. One-sided nutrition neither works in real life nor in SEO.
We used to commission our content just like competitors, but with a 10% premium (known as the skyscraper technique).
Some still think holistic pages are the way to go. Let’s assume this was still the case and ask some questions:
What are the side effects of adding more content to an article?
Do these articles convert better than they did before?
How much better do you actually rank?
Common side effects include:
A decrease in conversion rate as the article is meandering off path.
Diluted brand perception due to a focus on “more” rather than “better.”
Users are getting lost and not finding what they came for.
Searchers don’t want to devour “Infinite Jest” (which is 1,088 pages long) like articles all the time.
I like to follow the formula of Stephen King, which is that the second draft is the first draft, but you get rid of 10%.
“If you count the words in bestseller books, average the count, and then write the same number of words in your own book, will it become a bestseller? If you make a phone that has the same dimensions as a popular smartphone, will you sell as many as they do? I love spreadsheets, but numbers aren’t everything.”
A guide on “how to create X” doesn’t need an explanation of what X is, because people looking for this already know X. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t actively be searching for it.
This is a classic SEO and content marketing armchair problem I’ve faced many times. I’m not exempt, either.
Early in my career, I told a B2B client to write all these articles. Looking back, such articles are often alienated from the actual target audience.
If you rank lower, you must compensate for the loss of traffic in conversions to maintain the same financial outcome.
When you sort a list in decreasing order (like CTR of organic traffic by position), “the value of the n-th entry is often approximately inversely proportional to n,” according to Zipf’s Law.
Basically, it means Position 2 will have half the value of Position 1.
Assuming we have a CTR of 25% for Position 1, Position 2 should have around 12.5%.
If you drop from Position 1 to 2, you have to make up for it by doubling conversions. This sounds like a lot. There’s a caveat, though.
We shouldn’t just look at organic traffic.
An increase in conversion rate means every traffic source should convert better, while more organic traffic is… well, more organic traffic.
Here are a few assumptions and an example:
Organic search gets 1,000 page views (Position 1), the other channels 2,000 (= 3,000 in total).
Conversion rate is low at 0.5%, so 5 from organic and 10 from other channels (= 15 in total).
Making the article better (in spite of SEO), you drop to Position 2; however, your conversion rate increased by 50%.
Now you get 500 page views from organic search (Position 2) and the conversion rate sits at 0.75%.
You have less traffic and fewer conversions from organic search now (3-4 instead of 5).
But, in total, you get 18-19 conversions instead of 15.
The example is simplified. But even if you drop organic conversions, you can still make more money if you consider the bigger picture.
Instead of eating each ingredient one by one (all channels as silos), you combine all flavors into one perfect bite (all channels working as unified clockwork) – the way Japanese cuisine intends.
Takeaways:
SEO isn’t everything – you want to win, with or despite SEO.
Better rankings = more traffic ≠ more conversions.
You can offset worse rankings with improved conversions.
If things get out of control on a domain level, we face two situations:
Having excess weight.
Having shed that weight, preventing the relapse.
I suggest the following solutions to become and stay lean long-term.
Getting rid of the fat cells (= content pruning)
To determine if your domain is overweight, I’d check a couple of metrics:
The % of indexed pages that should get organic traffic but haven’t for 3 months: A value of > 10% is something you should investigate.
The % of pages with no organic traffic: Anything > 70% would pique my interest.
The % of pages Google doesn’t want to index: If your sitemaps only contain pages to be indexed, more than 30% in “Crawled – currently not indexed” seems too high.
If you see those red flags, consider a content pruning project.
This doesn’t mean you should just go out there and delete old stuff or URLs that “aren’t good for SEO.”
If you just delete things, you might hurt your domain more than you would like:
In this case, content was simply deleted.
Given that this is a publisher domain reliant on ad revenue, it likely had a significant impact.
Content pruning doesn’t just mean deleting stuff. It can also mean:
Or Progressive (moving pages from a subdirectory to a different domain):
As mentioned earlier, SEO isn’t everything. Here are some example metrics I’d consider.
For SEO:
Traffic + Impressions.
Number rankings (in top 3).
Backlinks.
Contribution to the business model:
Conversions (micro and macro).
Revenue.
Is it an important part of the customer journey?
User behavior (in relation to comparable page types – don’t compare apples to oranges):
Time on page (relative to estimated reading time)
Bounce rate
Indicators of “a good session” (= this will most likely be custom events like sessions with 3 articles read for a publisher)
Editorial quality:
Has an author?
Article/H1/title length.
Number of (original) images/videos.
Last modified.
Readability.
Links to internal and external sources (e.g., to back claims up).
Tip: Create your own compound metrics. A high CTR is good, but doesn’t matter if post-click outcomes are poor. Prefer a combination of CTR and “happy users.”
I define thresholds for all metrics. If met, the URL goes into a whitelist (= “don’t touch yet”). I can’t tell you what good enough is; it depends on your domain. There isn’t a cookie-cutter template.
URLs not on the whitelist get points based on the outlined metrics.
Then, you look at the total average, and everything below average continues to the next workflow step.
Then, you assign different “deletion criteria.” Here are three examples:
Less than 250 words + title/H1 with ≤3 words.
No author + updated over four years ago.
Both.
This way, you can identify articles most likely to be empty calories, aka terrible content, if they meet all your criteria.
After that, I wouldn’t delete anything yet but look for opportunities to compare it to similar content to find potential redirect targets or ways to improve multiple articles by combining them.
Once your domain is fit again, the biggest mistake is becoming a victim of the jojo effect.
Keeping the weight away means changing the environment in a big way
Bad habits, like creating subpar content, often stem from environmental problems, such as the wrong incentives (e.g., a boss wanting higher traffic numbers) or mindset (e.g,. “SEO is everything”).
Ozempic can help you lose weight, but the weight was a symptom of underlying habits (like overeating and lack of exercise).
We can’t just treat the symptoms; we must attack the root cause.
Here are examples of issues that lead to content pruning and how to prevent them:
Editorial departments working in disconnected teams: Often due to organizational structure. While you can’t change this overnight, you can advocate for more collaboration rather than conflict.
SEO not engaging with other departments: It’s partly your responsibility to initiate conversations. Listen and understand others first, before seeking to be understood or asking for favors. Your goal is to show how you can help them.
Lack of content management guidelines: Creating content is one thing, but managing it is another. Content management needs clear guidelines, such as how to handle different lifecycle stages. If these don’t exist, explain their value and benefits to others.
Unfortunately, I can’t give you the exact blueprint for every problem.
In any case, you can be an advocate.
Avoid “telling others what to do,” which will likely lead to resentment.
Instead, try to see things from the viewpoint of the people around you.
Content pruning, like any SEO initiative, runs on an empty stomach if you don’t work on the underlying systems.
The best SEO initiative is the one we don’t need.
There’s a fair argument for content pruning (or Ozempic, if necessary, for faster weight loss).
However, you must work on the underlying systems, or you’ll repeat this over and over again:
Making the cut: Doing less to achieve more can be a viable strategy
More can be better, but it doesn’t have to be. There’s great power in the art of subtraction.
Anyone can create a lot of mediocre content and do more at the click of a button. Only a few can reduce and drive more results at the same time.
As Michael Porter puts it, “the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
You have to make decisions.
What I didn’t know for a long time is that “decide” comes from “decidere” in Latin, meaning “to cut sth. off.”
Via negativa is a strategic mental model and symbolizes cutting off what you don’t need. So the obsession with quantity as our default option must die.
Understand: More isn’t always better. Less isn’t always worse. Do less but better for your best work.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Several-logos-of-different-brands-and-how-they-simplified-their-logos-over-time-CsI2te.png?fit=600%2C473&ssl=1473600http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-01-21 14:00:002025-01-21 14:00:00The art of subtraction: How to do more with less in SEO
SMX Advanced, the premier conference for experienced senior-level search marketers, is hosting its first in-person event since 2019 – this June 11-13, 2025, at the Westin Boston Seaport!
We’re excited to bring the most advanced SEO, PPC, and AI tactics to the search marketing community – and here’s where you come in.
Search continues to change at a break-neck pace as we learn how to integrate AI into our processes, optimize for AI Overview and other generative engines, and stay ahead of Google algorithm updates. On the PPC side, getting the information needed to make data-driven decisions is getting even harder, and we have fewer things we can control.
If you know how to solve complex search challenges and have implemented leading edge techniques, we want to hear from you. Even if you’ve never spoken at SMX (in-person or online), consider submitting a session topic idea. We are always looking for new speakers with diverse points of view.
The deadline for SMX Advanced pitches is March 5. The earlier you submit proposals, the better. Spots fill up quickly.
Here are a few tips for submitting a compelling session proposal:
Make sure it is a truly advanced topic geared toward intermediate to advanced search marketing professionals.
Present an original idea and/or unique session format.
Include a case study or specific examples.
Be realistic about what you can present in 20 minutes.
Provide tangible takeaways and a plan of action.
Include what an attendee will be able to do better as a result of attending your session.
Read our guide to speaking at SMX for more details on how to submit a session idea. If you’re ready to get started, begin by creating your profile and submitting your session pitch.
If you have questions, feel free to contact me directly at kathy.bushman@semrush.com. I’m looking forward to reading your proposals!
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/smxa25-speaker-pitch-OG-800x450-o1ob3a.png?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1450800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-01-21 13:30:002025-01-21 13:30:00Want to speak at SMX Advanced in-person? Now’s the time to submit your most advanced session ideas.
