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SEO for Plumbers: How to Rank Higher & Get More Customers

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Want to know why some plumbing businesses dominate Google’s first page while others struggle to get noticed?

It’s not luck.

These plumbing companies all focus on the same core SEO strategies.

Take Deer Valley Plumbing Contractors, for instance.

They appear in Google’s 3-Pack when prospective customers in their area search for “plumbing company” and other related keywords.

And they have notably more reviews than the competition.

Google Businesses – Plumbing company – Arizona

Their site also ranks for 3K keywords.

This helps Deer Valley Plumbing Contractors drive 2.7K organic visits to their website each month.

Traffic that would cost an estimated $44.7K per month in Google Ads.

Organic Research – Deer Valley Plumbing – Overview

The best part?

With SEO for plumbers, your business can achieve similar—or better—results.

In this guide, you’ll learn SEO fundamentals that’ll help your site rank higher, from local search to link-building.

But first, let’s start with a quick overview of what exactly plumbing SEO is.

What Is Plumbing SEO?

Plumbing SEO is a set of practices that increase a plumbing company’s website’s visibility in search engines like Google.

SEO for plumbers includes:

  • On-page optimization: Optimizing your service pages for key terms like “water heater repair” or “emergency plumber” by using strategic headers, meta descriptions, and location-based keywords that match how local customers actually search
  • Technical SEO: Making sure your plumbing website loads quickly on mobile devices, has intuitive navigation, including clear contact information, and works smoothly for emergency calls
  • Local SEO: Optimizing your Google Business Profile, service area pages, and local citations to show up in “near me” searches and Google Maps when homeowners need a plumber in your area
  • Content marketing: Creating helpful guides, FAQs, and service pages that answer common plumbing questions like “Why is my water heater leaking?” or “How to unclog a drain” to attract local homeowners searching for solutions
  • Link building: Building credibility and authority by getting featured in local business directories, home service websites, and plumbing supplier sites

Google SERP – Plumber near me

What Are the Benefits of SEO for Plumbers?

SEO has many benefits for plumbers—especially if you’re at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This includes attracting more qualified leads, building authority, and increasing revenue—all without spending a dime on advertising.

Think about how people search for plumbers today.

When a homeowner’s water heater fails at midnight, or their kitchen sink backs up before a dinner party, they immediately grab their phone and search Google.

SEO increases your chances of showing up in these searches, helping you get more ready-to-hire leads.

And you have plenty of opportunities—246,000 people search for “plumbers near me” in the U.S. every month.

Keyword Overview – Plumbers near me – Volume

But that’s far from the only search term getting traffic.

Countless people search for standard and urgent plumbing-related terms monthly:

  • Emergency plumber: 27,100 monthly searches
  • Plumbing companies near me: 27,000 monthly searches
  • Best plumbers near me: 9,900 monthly searches
  • 24 hour plumber: 4,400 monthly searches

Keyword Overview – Emergency Plumber – Volume

When your website ranks at the top of Google for these terms, you’re essentially setting up a 24/7 lead generation system.

6 Essential Plumber SEO Strategies

Ready to outrank your competitors and capture more high-value plumbing leads?

These six SEO strategies work together to boost your search visibility. And convert website visitors into paying customers.

1. Keyword Research

The first step of any plumber SEO campaign is keyword research.

This involves identifying relevant keywords based on key metrics like search intent, volume, and keyword difficulty. And conducting research into your competitors’ keyword strategies.

Understand Keyword Metrics

A tool like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool is helpful for conducting keyword research.

Note: A free Semrush account gives you 10 searches in this tool per day. Or you can use this link to access a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

Enter a seed keyword like “plumbing company” into the Keyword Magic Tool.

Keyword Magic Tool – Plumbing company – Search

You’ll see a list of keyword ideas and some important information about each term.

This includes “Intent.”

Keyword Magic Tool – Plumbing company – Keywords Intent

Search intent is the reason behind a user’s search—it tells you why they searched and what they were hoping to find.

There are four types of search intent.

Including:

  • Informational: These are searches where people want to learn something, like “how to fix a clogged toilet.” This type of content works best as detailed guides and tutorials.
  • Navigational: When searchers are looking for a specific plumbing business or page like “Jerry’s Plumbing Company” or “Plumbing Pros hours of operation”
  • Commercial: The person wants to know more about a product or business, such as “best plumbers in Austin” and “sink repair.” Use these in product comparison articles, testimonials, and service pages.
  • Transactional: The person is ready to hire and might search “hire a plumber” or “call a plumber.” Use strategic calls to action (CTA) and keywords like “hire” and “book now” on your site.

For example, “plumbing company” has commercial intent.

Keyword Magic Tool – Plumbing company – Keyword

This means the user’s goal for this search is to research plumbing company options, read reviews, and view services, making it a good term to target on a service page.

But if someone searches “how to fix a leaky faucet,” (which has informational intent), they expect to find detailed DIY instructions with photos or videos.

See the difference?

Rainbow Restoration – How to fix leaky faucet

Next, let’s look at two other crucial metrics:

  • Volume: The number of monthly searches for a keyword
  • Keyword Difficulty (KD): A rating showing how hard it is to rank for that keyword from zero to 100

Keyword Magic Tool – Plumbing company – Volume & KD

While you’ll likely have broad keywords on most pages, if you have a newer site (or one that lacks authority), you’ll also want to target terms that’ll be easier to rank for in the SERPs.

Local keywords often have this perfect combination—moderate search volume with lower competition in specific service areas.

For example, “plumbing companies in phoenix, arizona” gets 70 searches per month and has a low keyword difficulty score of 27.

Keyword Magic Tool – Plumbing companies – Arizona, Phoenix

You might use this term on a location page to target local customers.

Continue researching keywords to target on each page of your site—making sure to adjust your focus for each page’s specific purpose:

  • Service pages should target specific plumbing solutions: Water heater repair, drain cleaning, radiator installation
  • Location pages need geographic terms: Local plumbing company, plumber in [city], 24/7 plumbers in [city]
  • About pages should emphasize trust and credentials: Licensed plumber, family-owned plumbing, plumbing company hours
  • Resource pages should answer common questions and concerns: How to fix a leaky faucet, signs you need repiping, water heater maintenance tips

Answer User Questions

Your target audience likely has a lot of questions about plumbing problems and hiring a plumber.

These questions make great topics for FAQ pages and blog posts.

Here’s how to find them using the Keyword Magic Tool:

Search for a broad keyword like “drain repair” and apply the “Questions” filter.

Keyword Magic Tool – Drain repair – Questions

The tool will return options like:

  • How to repair tub drain: 320 volume; 29 KD
  • How to repair shower drain: 210 volume; 30 KD
  • How to repair a leaking shower drain: 170 volume; 23 KD

All of the above topics have informational intent, which means they’d work well as step-by-step tutorials on your blog.

Plus, answering these questions with high-quality content will help you establish expertise.

As you review the questions, pay attention to volume and KD scores—the lower the KD, the easier it’ll be for you to rank for each term.

Research Competitor Keywords

You don’t have to start from scratch when finding keywords—analyze what’s already working for your successful competitors.

A tool like Semrush’s Keyword Gap can help you with this.

First, enter your URL and up to four competitors’ URLs. Hit “Compare.”

Keyword Gap – Bill Howe – Search

Now, you’ll see an overview of your site’s keyword performance compared to your competitors.

Including how many ranking keywords you and each of your rivals have.

Keyword Gap – Bill Howe – Keyword Overlap

As you review the reports, pay special attention to three key opportunities:

  • Missing: Keywords your competitors rank for but you don’t
  • Weak: Keywords where competitors outrank you
  • Untapped: Keywords where at least one competitor ranks

These are opportunities to target these keywords on existing pages.

And create new content to knock your competitors off the SERPs.

Keyword Gap – Bill Howe – Details for filters

If they have a blog post on how to clear a clogged drain, create a better version with step-by-step photos and videos.

If they list services, include pricing guides and customer case studies.

Aim to outrank them with higher-quality content that diverts traffic away from their site to yours.

2. Local SEO

Local SEO is vital for plumbers.

Why?

Because when someone conducts a search with local intent, such as “plumber near me” or “plumber in [city],” Google shows three local businesses at the top of the page.

Google Businesses – Plumber in Queens New York

This is the 3-Pack I mentioned earlier in the article—and it’s prime real estate for plumbers.

Let’s make sure your business shows up there.

Claim and Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Start by claiming your free Google Business Profile (GBP). If you’re not sure how to do this, follow Google’s tutorial.

Add your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) to your profile.

Double-check that you’ve entered everything correctly.

Accurate NAPs show Google your business is trustworthy, which helps increase your chances of ranking in the Map Pack.

Google Map Pack – Plumber in Phoenix

Next, create a keyword-rich business description that includes important terms for your business.

This will be the services you offer and any standout features like “local plumbing business” or “emergency plumbing repair.”

For example, Maloney Plumbing and Drain Services included key terms like “plumbing repair” and “drain clearing” in their company overview.

They also referenced the location they serve: “Phoenix.”

Maloney Plumbing and Drain Services – Overview – Key terms, location

Add as many relevant service categories as possible—from sewer cleaning to garbage disposal installation.

Maloney Plumbing and Drain Services – Services

The photos section isn’t just about showing you exist.

Your images should build trust and show potential customers exactly what to expect:

  • Uniformed technicians (shows professionalism)
  • Branded trucks (proves you’re established)
  • Actual repair work (demonstrates expertise)
  • Team in action (builds credibility)

Maloney Plumbing and Drain Services – Photos

Finally, post updates.

This shows searchers and Google that you’re an active business with up-to-date information.

But it also lets you share vital details, communicate with customers, and highlight promotions and events.

Maloney Plumbing and Drain Services – Updates

With your GBP filled out, it’s time to focus on earning positive reviews—lots of them.

Collect and Manage Online Reviews

Reviews matter more than you may realize.

Seventy-one percent of consumers will not consider using a business if it has an average review rating below three stars.

Google also states that one of the three ranking factors for local search is “prominence,” which is defined by how popular a business is online and offline.

(Prominence includes review count and average review rating.)

Maloney Plumbing and Drain Services – Prominence

So, how do you get more positive reviews?

You ask for them.

Most importantly, you make it easy for past clients to leave reviews.

For example, Total Service Plumbing created a dedicated review page on their website that links to each of their location’s Google Business Profiles.

Smart.

Total Service Plumbing – Review page

While having a page on your website is helpful, you’ll want to take a multi-pronged approach to collecting reviews.

For example:

  • Send a follow-up text right after completing a service
  • Include a review link in your invoice emails
  • Create QR codes on your business cards and service vehicles
  • Train your technicians to ask satisfied customers for reviews

Pro tip: Use a tool like Semrush’s Review Management to make it easy to track and reply to all your reviews (even negative ones) from your Google Business Profile and other directories. This shows you value customer feedback and want to improve your services.

West Plumbing LLC – Customer feedback

Build Local Citations

A local citation is any mention of your business on the internet.

This includes your basic contact details, like your NAP.

Think Yelp, Angi, and Porch.com.

The key? Keep your information consistent everywhere.

Yelp – Consistent business information

Consistent business information tells search engines your business is legitimate and trustworthy.

But manually searching and verifying your citations is not a productive use of your time (or your team’s).

Use a tool like Semrush’s Listing Management tool to automate this process.

Listing Management automatically checks for issues like missing phone numbers and incorrect addresses and updates them for you.

Listing Management – Ranshav – Plumbing and heating example

This makes it easy to maintain updated and accurate listings across multiple directories and keep your local SEO on point.

3. On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of improving webpage elements so your website ranks higher in SERPs and earns more relevant traffic.

Here’s how to optimize your plumbing site.

Use Your Target Keyword in the Right Places

Every webpage has specific spots where keywords make the biggest impact.

This includes the following elements:

  • Title tag: This is the title that shows up in search results. Limit this to 50-60 characters and include the target keyword as close to the front as possible.
  • Meta description: This is the summary that appears under the title tag in search results. Include the target keyword and keep it under 155 characters.

Nick's- Plumbing – Title tag & meta description

Pro tip: SEO plugins like RankMath and Yoast SEO make it fast and easy to customize title tags and meta descriptions on your site. The plugins will also alert you when you’ve forgotten to add metadata, helping ensure you keep up with on-page optimization.


You’ll also want to add your target keyword to the H1 (aka the headline) of each page.

For example, plumbing company Benjamin Franklin uses the keyword “Residential Leak Detection Services” on its H1 for one of its service pages.

H1s tell Google and readers what your page is about.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing – Leak Detection Services – H1

Pro tip: Every service page needs a unique H1—aka, don’t use “Plumbing Services” on multiple pages.

Use subheads (H2, H3, H4) to organize your content. Include keyword variations in them naturally.

For example, Benjamin Franklin uses “The Types of Plumbing Leaks We Repair” as an H2 and has “Common Signs of Plumbing Leaks” underneath as an H3.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing – Using subheadings

You’ll also want to add descriptive alt text to your images.

This helps Google understand what your images show and ensures your site is accessible for those using screen readers.

For example, alt text for this image could be: “Professional plumber in uniform inspecting under-sink plumbing while showing digital tablet to homeowner in kitchen.”

Plumbing services in Phoenix – Image

Further reading: SEO Content: Complete Beginner’s Guide

Implement Schema Markup

Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand your content better.

It’s a ‌common practice to put this code on all webpages, especially service and location pages.

When done right, it can make your listing stand out with rich snippets that include:

  • Your business logo
  • Star ratings
  • Service prices
  • Availability hours

Like this plumbing company that shows up when searching for “clogged drain repair in San Diego.”

The listing features a 4.8 star rating and shows the business has over 8K votes, helping to instill confidence in searchers.

Rooter Hero Plumbing – Star rating

Use Google’s free Schema markup generator tool.

Select “Local Businesses” for the data type.

Enter the URL of the webpage and click “Start Tagging.”

Google Structured Data Markup Helper – Benjamin Franklin Plumbing

This takes you to the webpage where you highlight or tag the content needed for the code.

Google Structured Data Markup Helper – Create HTML

Once you’re done tagging the page, click “Create HTML.”

Google Structured Data Markup Helper – Script block

Copy the script block and paste it to the head section of your webpage’s HTML.

Too technical for you?

Hire a developer or tech-savvy friend to help you with this step.

It’s worth the hassle, as it can help your plumbing business stand out in the SERPs.

Analyze Current Pages for On-Page SEO Opportunities

As you add more pages to your site and blog, you’ll want to make sure you’ve properly implemented on-page optimization.

Semrush’s On Page SEO Checker can help you with this—it automates the process, so you don’t have to check each page manually.

Enter your URL and click “Get ideas.”

On Page SEO Checker – Ranshaw – Get ideas

Click the “View all pages & ideas” to view the full list of pages it found to optimize.

On Page SEO Checker – Ranshaw – Overview

Click the blue “Ideas” button for any page to view the suggestions.

On Page SEO Checker – Ranshaw – Optimization Ideas

For example, you’ll see recommendations like avoiding keyword stuffing in content, creating more informative contentm, and providing more relevant meta descriptions.

It’ll also give you tips on how to score featured snippets for certain keywords.

Make the necessary changes to help give your site a boost in the SERPs.

On Page SEO Checker – Ranshaw – Optimization Ideas – Content

4. Content Marketing

Creating helpful, high-quality content for your audience is a big part of SEO.

It can also drive long-term results and steady organic traffic over time.

Let’s look at how you can use content marketing to attract leads and instill confidence in prospective customers.

Answer Questions in Your Blog Posts

People who have a clogged toilet might not want to hire a plumber right away.

They might first try to fix the problem themselves—this is when they try to find answers online.

As a plumber, you’re in the best position to teach them how to unclog a toilet.

Like Benjamin Franklin did on its blog:

Benjamin Franklin Plumber – Blog topic

With step-by-step instructions, Benjamin Franklin gives its target customers the information they need to handle the job themselves.

Benjamin Franklin Plumber – Plumbing topic instructions

But they also include hiring a pro as an option to encourage those who don’t want to DIY to give them a call.

Nice.

Benjamin Franklin Plumber – Call a Plumber

Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, you’ll be competing in the SERPs with countless other plumbers who are targeting the same keywords for the same topics.

So, how do you stand out?

By following Google’s quality guidelines for content: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).

Here’s how:

  • Prove your expertise. Include an author bio at the end of your content and highlight your experience as a plumber, including any certifications, years of experience, education, and more
  • Include step-by-step photos and videos: Guide your readers through each step with high-quality photos and videos that show you know your stuff
  • Add expert insights and quotes: Share firsthand tips that showcase your experience and include quotes from SMEs on your team to infuse your content with more authority and trust

Create Location and Service Pages

Location and service pages are exactly what they sound like.

They’re dedicated webpages for every service and location of your business.

If you have 10 different plumbing services, you need to create 10 separate pages describing each service.

For example, Jimmy Joe’s Plumbing has a separate page for everything from backflow prevention to home remodeling plumbing.

Jimmy Joe's Plumbing – Service pages dropdown

If you have multiple locations, you’ll also want to create dedicated pages for each one.

Like John the Plumber did in Florida.

Its site has pages for each location with city-specific content on each one.

John the Plumber– Service Areas dropdown

Pro tip: Create unique content for each location page—don’t copy/paste. Duplicate content is a big no-no in SEO and can negatively impact your rankings.

Include Semantic Keywords in Your Content

Semantic keywords are keywords that are related to your target keywords.

It’s important to add semantic keywords to your content because it helps Google understand the context of your content.

You can use keyword research tools to find related keywords based on a seed keyword.

But you can also type a word in Google and view the People Also Ask section.

For example, typing in “heater installation” reveals semantic and question keywords you can target in content.

People Also Ask – Heater installation

5. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of improving your website’s technical aspects.

In other words, it needs to be fast, mobile-friendly, and secure.

But if you’re not a technical person, don’t worry.

I’ll teach you how to run an audit and check your site’s speed with user-friendly tools.

Run an SEO Audit

An audit can identify issues with your site, particularly page errors that affect your site’s performance and health.

For instance, broken links and pages can damage your website’s ranking and authority.

Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush offer free website audit tools.

For example, Semrush’s Site Audit tool lets you audit up to 100 pages per month on Semrush’s free plan.

Enter your website’s URL and click “Start Audit.”

Site Audit – Ranshaw – Start Audit

You’ll get an email when the report is ready.

The tool will provide an overview of your site’s performance.

This includes everything from a site health score to categorizing site issues by severity: Errors (high), Warnings (medium), and Notices (low).

Site Audit – Ranshaw – Overview

Click on the “Issues” tab to learn how you can improve your site’s pages.

Site Audit – Ranshaw – Issues – How to fix it

Some common errors you might see include:

  • Keyword cannibalization: When multiple pages have the same or similar target keywords and the same search intent
  • Keyword stuffing: When target keywords are used excessively on the page
  • Thin content: The content doesn’t have any (or little) value to readers and doesn’t meet search intent

Improve Loading Speed

If it takes your site longer than three seconds to load, 53% of visitors will abandon it, according to Google Consumer Insights.

So, if you have a slow site, it could be causing you to lose valuable plumbing leads.

Use a free web speed analysis tool like GTMetrix to check your site’s loading speed.

Enter your website’s URL and click “Test Now.”

GTmetrix – Test your website speed

After the analysis, you’ll get a grade, which tells you how well your site is performing, along with an overview of Core Web Vitals metrics.

Core Web Vitals measure the speed, interactivity, and visual stability of your site.

GTmetrix – Country plumber – Report

Scroll to the “Top Issues” section to learn what your site’s errors are and how to fix them.

GTmetrix – Country plumber – Report – Top Issues

Prioritizing technical SEO helps ensure your site delivers the fast and intuitive experience users expect.

6. Link Building

Link building is the process of getting other sites to link to a page on your website.

These links, called backlinks, play a big role in your site’s search ranking.

Here’s how to build your backlink profile, starting with a little competitor research.

Spy on Your Competitors’ Backlink Profiles

Use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool to learn valuable information about your competitors’ backlink profiles.

This includes the total number of referring domains and backlinks they receive and their authority score.

Backlink Analytics – Roto-Rooter – Overview

View the “Referring Domains” report to see who is linking to your competitors.

(So you can try to get them to link to you, too.)

Backlink Analytics – Roto-Rooter – Referring Domains

Some referring domains might be directories you can add your business information to, and others may be sites you can try to guest post on.

Find and Reach Out to High-Quality Link Prospects for Guest Posting

Think about plumbing-related content that a website within your industry might be interested in.

Some examples of websites that might feature plumbers include:

  • Home improvement blogs
  • Real estate blogs
  • Home insurance blogs

Here’s an example of a guest blog from Precision Air & Plumbing for a home insurance website.

City Building Owners Blog – Common Plumbing Problems

Finding websites that publish plumbing-related content can take time.

One way to speed things up is to use a tool like Semrush’s Link Building Tool.

Enter your URL and click “Start Link Building.”

Link Building – Black Diamond Today – Search

Add your keywords, like “plumber in chicago” and “emergency plumber chicago” and click “Keywords” on the bottom.

Link Building – Black Diamond Today – Add keywords

This brings you to the next page, where you can add competitors.

Click “Start Link Building.”

Link Building – Black Diamond Today – Competitors

Click “View prospects” on the pop-up.

View link building prospects – Black Diamond Today

Sort the list by highest AS (Authority Score).

This shows you the most reputable websites on this list.

Link Building – Black Diamond Today – To In Progress

Use your judgment to choose websites that are likely to accept guest posts.

Click on the icon to open the link to see plumbing-related content that’s published on the prospect’s website.

Link Building – Black Diamond Today – To In Progress – wikiHow

In this example, we clicked on wikiHow’s link and learned that the co-author is a professional plumber.

This points out an opportunity to reach out to major sites and offer your expert input for articles.

This can be a great way to build backlinks for your site while highlighting you as an industry expert.

wikiHow – Author Bio

Make a list of prospects and pitch topics that match what the sites publish and are relevant to your target audience.

While not all sites will provide backlinks, it’s still a valuable way to get your name—and your plumbing business’s name—some positive press mentions online.

Further reading: 6 Best HARO Alternatives (Expert Review)


Keep Track of Your Best Links

When it comes to backlinks, focus on quality over quantity.

This is why it’s a good idea to check for low-quality backlinks.

Low-quality links can come from:

  • Sites or content that are unrelated to your industry
  • Sites with low domain authority
  • Sites with low-traffic
  • Sites with spam content

These links may hurt your site’s ranking.

Check for toxic backlinks with Semrush’s Backlink Audit tool.

In the Overview tab, click on the number in red (your total toxic backlinks) under the Overall Toxicity Score.

Backlink Audit – A Better Plumber – Overview

This shows you all of your site’s toxic backlinks and their source pages.

Hover over each of the links to see the reason why the link was labeled as toxic.

Backlink Audit – A Better Plumber – Toxic

If you determine the link needs to go, try reaching out to the website owners and requesting to have the link removed.

If you can’t get these links removed, you can disavow them as a last resort.

Disavowing links tells Google not to take these links into account when determining rankings for your pages.

Google advises to disavow links only when:

  • You have a lot of spammy or low-quality links to your site
  • Your site has received a Google penalty because of the link

Read Google’s guidelines on disavowing links before attempting this step.

If disavowing is the right move, the Backlink Audit tool can help you with this process.

Click the blue icon featuring a circle with a slash (“Move to Disavow list”) to move URLs to a disavow list.

Backlink Audit – A Better Plumber – Toxic – Move to Disavow list

Go to the “Disavow” tab.

Backlink Audit – How to manage toxic backlinks

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On the next page, you’ll see the links you’ve added to the tab. Click the “Export to TXT” button.

Backlink Audit – A Better Plumber – Disavow

Go to the Google Disavow Tool and upload the .txt file.

Once done, Google will no longer consider these links when ranking your site or pages.

Get More Customers with Plumber SEO

SEO isn’t a quick fix.

But it’s one of the most effective ways to get new plumbing customers.

With a bit of research and help from tools like Semrush, you can flood your business with high-quality leads (without spending a fortune on ads).

I’m talking crushing your local competition in Google Maps, ranking #1 for emergency plumbing keywords, and turning your website into a 24/7 lead generation machine.

Ready to rank higher for local keywords?

Check out the top local SEO tools for plumbers that will help you dominate the SERPs.

The post SEO for Plumbers: How to Rank Higher & Get More Customers appeared first on Backlinko.

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How to Get More Google Reviews: 9 Proven Tips

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Google reviews play a huge role in a brand’s success.

Especially positive reviews.

That means it’s a good idea to think about how to get more Google reviews for your business.

To illustrate why, let’s go over some of the advantages.

Benefits of Getting Google Reviews

By collecting Google reviews, you can:

  • Learn what customers think about you: This includes what they like and dislike about your business, so that you know what’s working and what to improve on
  • Increase visibility: Having more good Google reviews can improve your business’s Google local pack rankings
  • Persuade people to buy: A product’s number of reviews is the second most influential factor affecting prospects’ perception of its quality and decision to buy it, according to research

How to Get More Google Reviews: 9 Methods

1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Set up a Google Business Profile (GBP) for your business if it doesn’t yet have one.

This is a free business listing that appears in places like Google Maps and Search.

It also stores your Google reviews, as this GBP from Diablo & Sons Saloon shows:

Go to the profile creation tool and follow the steps to add your business to Google.

This involves providing information like your business’s name, category, and website URL.

If a profile for your business already exists, claim it or follow Google’s steps to request ownership from the current owner.

Once you have control of your GBP, choose a verification method (email, text message, etc.).

Google may take up to five business days to verify your profile. You can use it to collect Google reviews after that.

Pro tip: Use a tool like Semrush’s Listing Management to automatically distribute your information to GBP and dozens of other directories all at once. You can also manage these listings within the tool.

2. Provide an Excellent Experience

If you wow customers with amazing products, services, and customer support, they’ll be more likely to leave you a Google review.

This is the best way to get good Google reviews.

Why?

Because people are more motivated to take action when they feel strongly about something.

Like writing a glowing review to tell others about their phenomenal experience with your business.

3. Share Your Google Review Link

Share your Google review link everywhere users may see it so they can easily leave you a review.

There are a few ways to get your Google review link through your GBP.

Alternatively, use Semrush’s free Google review link generator.

Launch the tool, type your business name into the search bar, and then use the drop-down menu to select your business.

Once you’ve selected your business, the tool will generate short and long Google review links for it.

We recommend using the short link, as it looks cleaner.

Copy your Google review link and share it in places like your:

  • Website footer
  • Email signature
  • Social media profiles

For example, Bunny & Co. has placed a Google review link in its website’s footer:

4. Provide a Review QR Code

Preparing a QR code customers can scan to access your Google review link is helpful when clicking a link isn’t convenient.

Like when:

  • The customer is shopping in your physical store
  • You want to include your review link in your business cards or posters

A handy way to create a QR code for your review link is with Semrush’s Google review link generator.

After creating your Google review link with the tool, enter your email address into the “Wait! There’s more…” section and click “Send me QR & prints.”

Then, check your inbox for QR code assets you can use.

5. Respond to Current Reviews

Responding to your Google reviews signals that you take feedback seriously.

This can motivate prospects to leave reviews in the future after they become customers.

Plus, research from Shout About Us reveals that up to 76% of customers may update their negative reviews if you reply and take steps to address their concerns.

So, respond by:

  • Thanking customers for their feedback—whether positive or negative
  • Sharing the follow-up actions you’ve taken in response to negative feedback

A tool like Semrush’s Review Management makes it easy to monitor and respond to your Google reviews.

Here’s how it works:

Open the tool and enter your business’s name, site, or phone number into the search bar.

Then, select your business from the drop-down menu.

Click the “Try it now” button on the page that loads.

Follow the steps to sign up for Semrush Local.

Once you’ve set up the tool, click the “Review Management” tab.

Scroll down the page to see your reviews.

Click the “Not Replied” filter to view only those you haven’t responded to yet.

The tool will suggest AI-generated replies to your Google reviews.

Modify any reply as you see fit and click “Reply” to submit it.

Take a page out of Giordano’s book if you can.

The pizza chain replies to every Google review it gets—both good and bad.

6. Send a Feedback Email

Emailing customers to ask for a Google review right after they buy from you is a good way to get reviews while their experiences are still fresh in their minds.

Here’s an example of an email requesting a Google review from Love and Logic:

Note: Trying to influence reviews through tactics like offering incentives, discouraging negative feedback, and buying or faking reviews violates Google’s policies and can result in penalties.

You can also use an email marketing platform to automate your customer feedback emails instead of sending them manually.

7. Design Physical Review Cards

Creating physical cards asking for Google reviews works well if you interact with customers in offline situations like:

  • Running a brick-and-mortar shop—where you can place review cards at the checkout counter
  • Delivering physical goods to customers—where you can include a feedback card in the package

Some cards have QR codes for customers to scan, but you can also use cards embedded with near-field communication (NFC) technology.

If you do, customers just need to activate their phone’s NFC feature and tap it against the card to visit your Google review page.

This Instagram post from Zappycards shows how it works:

The result?

Leaving a review becomes even more convenient.

8. Ask for Reviews Directly

To get more good Google reviews if you’re engaging with customers in person, just ask.

You may even receive more reviews this way than waiting for customers to take action on their own.

Good times to ask for a Google review include:

  • After clearing the customer’s table (at a restaurant)
  • After the customer has paid for their items
  • Just before the customer leaves

And here’s a sample script you can try:

“Thanks for stopping by today! If you enjoyed your time with us, could you take a couple of minutes to leave us a Google review? Thank you so much!”

9. Provide Review Instructions

Consider teaching users how to leave you a Google review.

If they need help, this could help you get more reviews than you might get otherwise.

Drs. Najem & Lehky Orthodontics does this by sharing step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

And Rehab In Motion posted an Instagram video demonstrating how customers can leave it a Google review:

Make the Most of Your Reviews

Getting more Google reviews doesn’t have to be complicated.

Focus your energy on two things: making it super easy for customers to leave reviews and delivering service that’s worth talking about.

Then, use tools like Semrush’s Listing Management to keep listings updated and accurate across the web.

Ready to level up your local SEO strategy?

Read our definitive guide to local SEO to learn how to dominate your local market step by step.

The post How to Get More Google Reviews: <br>9 Proven Tips appeared first on Backlinko.

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Top 10 PPC news of the year 2024 on Search Engine Land

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The world of digital marketing in 2024 has been nothing short of transformative, with Google once again taking center stage in many of the year’s biggest developments. From the ongoing debates about third-party cookies to advancements in Google Analytics and the rising distrust among advertisers, the year was marked by shifts that tested the adaptability and resilience of marketers everywhere.

As we enter the last few weeks of the year, let’s take a look at the top newsworthy headlines according to pageviews.

10. Google Ads phasing out card payments

In June Google notified some high-spending advertisers that they would need to stop using credit or debit cards for Google Ads payments by July 31, 2024. Affected accounts needed to transition to bank-based payment methods or risk suspension.

  • Advertisers expressed frustration, citing financial strain, loss of cashflow flexibility and lack of benefits.
  • Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin confirmed that only a small subset of advertisers would be impacted.

9. Google Ads ad copy: what works and what doesn’t in 2024

Optmyzr analyzed over 1 million Google Ads to uncover key insights into ad copy strategies, focusing on metrics like CPA, CTR, and ROAS. The findings challenge conventional wisdom and highlight opportunities for marketers to improve performance.

The report covered:

  • Ad strength – its misleading
  • Pinning Assets – against Google’s recommendations, it could be worth pinning all headlines
  • Sentence case vs Title Case – sentence case is a clear winner especially for RSAs
  • Creative length – shorter headlines performed better

8. Google is shutting down websites made with business profiles

Google Business Profile (GBP) websites were discontinued in March 2024. Visitors to these websites were redirected to the associated Business Profile form March until June 10 and from then it will be a “page not found error” they would see whenever such a link is clicked.

This caused the need of a new site for brands who had GBP websites, using platforms like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, WordPress, Google Sites, or GoDaddy

7. Advertisers don’t trust Google

2024 saw advertisers trust level at an all time low as the Department of Justice’s laid out a damning case against Google, releasing a document even, detailing extensively why there should be trust issues against Google.

It took little coaxing to have several advertisers let us know why their trust is at an all time low. Advertisers complained of manipulative practices, lack of transparency, erosion of trust and much more.

6. Costs increasing

Advertising spend on Google search ads in the U.S. increased by 17% year-over-year in Q4 2023, with steady click growth at 8% and cost-per-click (CPC) rising by 9%, according to Tinuiti’s Q4 2023 Digital Ads Benchmark Report.

The rise in ad spend and growing confidence in paid media suggest advertisers adapted to challenges in 2023, leveraging mobile and emerging platforms like PMax to drive performance.

However by April, despite CPCs being up, spend was plateauing as advertisers were seeing a decline in clicks.

5. Google exposes competitor data

Advertisers are used to the odd Google Ads reporting glitch here and there, however in August, a unique one happened where competitor data was exposed.

Advertisers were unable to manage campaigns or access critical performance data. Additionally, a serious data breach has exposed unrelated item IDs, product titles, and Merchant Center information, potentially revealing competitors’ sensitive information.

It took a week for the issue to be fully resolved.

4. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) adds new dimensions

In February, GA4 introduced eight new dimensions to enhance tracking and analysis of paid and organic traffic sources. With new dimensions like Manual source, Manual medium, Manual Campaign and more, these dimensions provide deeper insights into user behavior and performance across channels.

3. Google Ads discrepancies

In July, advertiser Brais Calvo Vázquez’s discovered that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) includes a hidden report that allows users to compare conversion data exported to Google Ads, helping to identify and explain discrepancies between the two platforms.

This tool, accessible by appending “/advertising/key-event-differences” to a GA4 property URL, provides advertisers with insights to improve campaign accuracy and performance.

Some users have had access to this report for over a year, indicating it may have been in extended testing. Google made no comment to this discovery.

2. Search Partner Update

February Google announced introducing greater advertiser control over ad placements within its Search Partner Network (SPN). Starting March 4, advertisers using Performance Max (PMax) campaigns will gain access to impression-level reporting for SPN sites. Additionally, exclusions applied at the account level will extend to SPN placements, YouTube, and display ads.

The changes aim to provide advertisers with enhanced transparency and control, allowing them to safeguard their brand reputation. The SPN includes websites and apps that display search ads, extending beyond Google’s main properties like YouTube and Google Discover.

1. Third Party Cookies

There had been back and forth about third party cookies for years now and whether to deprecate it and in 2024, Google had high hopes of going ahead with doing getting rid of it. However, their hopes were dashed almost as soon as they started their tests.

In January the report was Google started phasing out third party cookies. They were axing cookies from 1% of browser traffic, and the speculation at that stage was that they would phase out third-party cookies by the second half of 2024 as a crucial move in its Privacy Sandbox initiative.

In February due to concerns raised by UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, Google were stopped in their tracks form going ahead with the third party deprecation until concerns around its proposed Privacy Sandbox changes were sufficiently appeased. According to Google’s documentation:

  • “The Privacy Sandbox initiative aims to create technologies that both protect people’s privacy online and give companies and developers tools to build thriving digital businesses.”

However CMA had lots (39 and counting) of concerns, the three key ones being:

  • Google would still benefit from user data whilst competitors would be limited form this data,
  • That they will show favoritism towards their ad tech,
  • Publishers and advertisers won’t able to detect fraudulent activity.

In April the deadline for third party cookie deprecation moved from end of 2024 to 2025, conceding to the concerns the CMA raised in February. The had put evidence together that they were still doing the right by the industry and wanted to give the CMA enough time go over all the documentation they had provided.

Later that same month the concerns increased to 111 with the primary concern now being that Google will become too dominant in the market if their Privacy Sandbox solution went ahead.

After a couple of months of silence, the final decision came – Google scraps plans to kill third-party cookies in Chrome. The new promise is to introduce a new experience in Chrome whilst the Privacy Sandbox AMI will continue to be developed for alternative solutions.

That is a wrap on 2024. Several major talking points there, unsurprisingly mostly focused around Google there. What do we think 2025 will bring us? I reckon a lot more AI updates and experts truly needing to different themselves from those who just use AI as their selling point. It would also be interesting to see whether the Google we know now will have all its brands still intact by this time next year.

How to Find Competitors’ Keywords to Boost Your SEO

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Finding competitor keywords is essential to building your SEO strategy.

Why?

Because they show what’s working for others, highlight opportunities, and uncover gaps in your approach.

At Backlinko, we’ve spied on Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush’s keywords for years—and found many opportunities.

For instance, Ahrefs gets an estimated 2.5k monthly organic visits from the keyword “website authority checker.”

Organic Research – Ahrefs – Website authority checker – Organic Traffic

But this is only part of the story.

The page targets over 1.7k keywords and drives an estimated 30k monthly organic visits.

Organic Research – Ahrefs – Website authority checker – Positions

Clearly, A LOT of people are interested.

So we published a free tool with a supporting blog post on the same topic. Now this page ranks for 1,000 queries and gets over 13k clicks a month from Google.

GSC – Backlinko – Website authority – Clicks

That’s the power of finding competitor keywords.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

  • What competitor keywords are and how they fit into an SEO strategy
  • How to find and analyze these keywords, step-by-step
  • Where to integrate them into your content and SEO plans

The Power of Using Competitor’s Keywords for SEO

When you find competitors’ keywords, you uncover what content they’re ranking for.

But it’s more than just ranking for a specific keyword.

Think bigger: You’re getting a snapshot of your competitors’ SEO strategy.

SEO Strategy

Competitor keywords reveal opportunities to boost your SEO in three ways.

First, spotting patterns in your competitor’s keyword strategy and capitalize on gaps.

Say a competitor is going after terms like “best vegan protein powder.” But they might be ignoring budget-conscious customers.

That’s your chance to swoop in and target keywords like “affordable vegan protein powder.”

The goal?

Position yourself to win over the segments they’re missing. Whether it’s budget-friendly options, niche markets, or untapped audiences.

Second, understanding their focus.

Whether they’re targeting broad, high-traffic terms or niche, long-tail keywords.

Say a competitor is focused on targeting top-funnel keywords like “online course platforms.”

Here, you can take a different route.

Why not target bottom-funnel queries like “how to create an online course for free?”

It will help you reach an audience ready to buy.

Third, building a content plan based on your strategy.

Finding competitors’ keywords gives you ideas for a content calendar.

Use them to plan your next topics, decide on content formats. And, finally, create content that meets your audience’s needs better than anyone else.

Now, you’ll learn techniques to find competitors’ keywords.

Step 1: Identify Your SEO Competitors

If you want to find competitors’ keywords, focus on SEO competitors.

These are websites competing with you for similar keywords and rankings.

They may not even be direct business competitors.

Start with a manual search and analysis.

Imagine your business is in the crypto space.

Think of relevant keywords that your potential customers might use.

Like “best crypto platforms 2024.”

Search the keyword on Google.

Google SERP – Best crypto platforms 2024

Take note of the websites that rank for this keyword.

In our example: Investopedia, Alchemy, and NerdWallet.

These are your content competitors.

Next, check the “People also ask” box.

People Also Ask – Best crypto platforms 2024

It’s a good tool for finding additional keywords and content ideas.

Now, let’s explore another method for finding competitors.

First, create a free Semrush account and follow these steps:

Head to the Organic Research tool.

Add your URL and hit “Search.”

Organic Research – Backlinko – Search

Then, scroll down to “Main Organic Competitors.”

Organic Research – Backlinko – Main Organic Competitors

Click the “View all 35.3K competitors” button to show your rivals.

Organic Research –Backlinko – Organic Competitors

Now, locate the “Com. Level” column.

You’ll see a percentage showing keyword alignment with your competitor.

For Backlinko, Ahrefs has a 35% competitive overlap, and Moz has 25% overlap.

Both are close content competitors.

Now that you’ve identified your competitors, it’s time to analyze their keywords.

Step 2: Find Competitor Keywords Using Tools

By examining the keywords your competitors rank for, you can uncover opportunities to improve your SEO strategy.

This step will help you find the exact terms your competitors are targeting and how you can potentially outrank them.

We’ll continue with our Backlinko example.

Since we identified Moz as a competitor, let’s enter its URL into the Organic Research tool.

Click “Search.”

Organic Research – Moz – Search

In the “Overview” section, you’ll immediately see key data such as the total keywords Moz ranks for, their traffic volume, and the estimated cost of that traffic.

Organic Research – Moz – Overview

Click the “Positions” tab to view a detailed list.

Here, you’ll find important data:

  • “Keyword positions” for each term
  • “Intent” showing the user’s goal behind searched query
  • “Traffic” generated from these keywords
  • “Keyword volume” (searches per month)
  • “Keyword difficulty (KD%)” telling you how competitive each keyword is

You can use this information to identify high-value keywords your competitor is targeting and analyze their performance.

How?

Look for keywords with high search volume but lower keyword difficulty.

Use filters to narrow your search and focus on the most promising keywords:

  • Set the position filter to “Top 10”: Focus on keywords where your competitors rank high but you don’t
  • Adjust the volume filter to “101-1,000 searches per month”: Target keywords with moderate volume so you actually drive organic traffic to your website
  • Set keyword difficulty (KD%) to “Possible”: Target keywords where you can rank without having to go all-in on building external backlinks

Organic Research – Moz – Organic Search Positions – Filters

These filters help you pinpoint keywords that offer a good balance of traffic potential and achievable competition.

For example, a keyword like “seo terms” gets 1K searches per month. And has a KD% of 46.

Organic Research – Moz – Organic Search Positions – Filtered keyword

Not bad.

Create better content and optimize it to close gaps and outrank your competition.

Pro tip: Don’t stop at organic keywords—check what terms your competitors are paying for, too. Using tools like Semrush’s Advertising Research, you can uncover the keywords they’re investing in. These paid keywords signal strong opportunities for your SEO campaign.

Step 3: Expand Your Keyword List Through Research

Nuanced research helps you better target and prioritize audience-focused keywords.

In the end, it helps you expand your keyword database in ways that align with your overall strategy.

Let’s explore more advanced techniques to find competitors’ keywords.

Customer Feedback Analysis

Customer feedback is one of the most underrated sources of keyword inspiration.

Customers often use natural terms not found in keyword tools.

By diving into reviews, you can discover keywords that reflect real customer needs.

Let’s say you’re competing with a project management tool like Monday.

Analyze customer reviews on platforms like G2, Trustpilot, or even Google Reviews for local businesses.

They might reveal phrases like “Monday.com prevents copying and pasting data without exporting.”

Monday – Customer review

These kinds of comments give you direct insight into the pain points users are facing with competitors’ products.

And they’re a perfect example of long-tail keywords that you can tackle.

For instance, paste “project management software with data import/export” into Google search to see how saturated the space is.

Google SERP – Project management software with data import/export

Here, GetApp’s software comparison page ranks organically in the top spot.

Monday’s competitor, Asana, is also present.

This indicates that content creators see value in addressing this specific pain point for users.

If you’re selling project management software with data import and export features, you could create a blog post or comparison page.

These pieces help attract frustrated users seeking better alternatives.

Private Communities

Your competitor’s private communities like Facebook Groups, Slack channels and Discord servers are gold mines for keyword ideas.

Simply watch what people talk about. You’ll discover:

  • Questions they ask (that aren’t being answered)
  • Problems they face (that you could solve)
  • Terms they use naturally (not marketing speak)

For example, let’s say you’re competing with Nike Training Club.

Join a few fitness Facebook groups where their users hang out.

You might spot people asking about:

  • “Best bodyweight exercises for beginners”
  • “Home workout equipment”
  • “Affordable fitness gear”

These terms could be perfect keywords that a competitor isn’t targeting yet.

Here’s what to do next:

Head to Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.

Enter your target keyword into the search bar.

Then, hit “Search.”

We’ll use “home workout equipment” as an example.

Keyword Magic Tool – Home gym equipment – Search

This generates us a list of relevant keywords.

Next, we’ll set some filters to refine the list.

Adjust the “Volume” filter to 101–1,000, and for “Keyword Difficulty,” choose “Possible.”

Keyword Magic Tool – Home gym equipment – Filters

This will help you identify high-value terms that have decent traffic potential but aren’t overly competitive.

Keyword Magic Tool – Home gym equipment – Keywords

For example, these keywords stand out as prime content opportunities:

  • “compact home gym equipment” (320 searches/month)
  • “essential home gym equipment” (320 searches/month)
  • “affordable home gym equipment” (260 searches/month)

Why?

They have a solid search volume per month. At the same time, they’re not too competitive.

It means you have chances to rank relatively high on the search engine results page (SERP).

Google Search Operators

Google search operators are a powerful tool to find competitor content and gaps in your strategy.

By using specific search queries, you can reveal the topics your competitors are covering and how well they’re doing it.

Start by typing site:competitor.com followed by a keyword or phrase related to your niche.

In our example, we’ll use the niche of organic beauty products.

Let’s say one of our organic competitors is Our Oily House.

We searched: site:https://www.ouroilyhouse.com/ “natural face moisturizer“

This gives us a list of pages on that competitor’s site that mention or target this keyword.

Google SERP – Ouroilhouse

But we don’t stop there.

Now, we’ll look for patterns.

Are they creating topic clusters around natural skincare?

Or organic ingredients?

Or maybe DIY beauty tips?

Examining their content reveals pillar topics and related subtopics they rank for.

For example, we’ll jump back to the Keyword Overview and check “skincare kits.”

Keyword Overview – Skincare kits – Overview

It has transactional intent, it gets 1,300 monthly average searches, and the “Keyword Difficulty” is 27.

Great!

Step 4: Evaluate Your Competitors’ Keywords

You know how to find competitors’ keywords.

The next step is to evaluate them.

Analyze competitor keywords to see how intent-based terms target different funnel stages.

Let’s take a keyword like “best online course platforms.”

Now, check the search intent.

Domain Overview – Best online course platforms – Intent

It’s “Commercial.”

Meaning users want to investigate and compare brands or services.

This implies a content format that should be a comparison post.

Or a landing page evaluating various platform’s capabilities.

Second, look for keyword relevance.

Focus on competitor keywords that align with your business goals.

These have high keyword relevance.

If your platform offers course creation tools, focus on keywords like “best course software” or “create a membership site.”

For example, broad terms like “passive income from online courses” won’t be useful.

Third, search for volume and difficulty.

Ideally, you’re looking for keywords with high search volume and moderate to low keyword difficulty.

Let’s head back to the Keyword Magic Tool.

We’ll use Teachable as our example.

Enter “best online course platform.”

And add the website URL for personalized results.

Now, hit “Search.”

Keyword Magic Tool – Best online course platform – Search

You’ll see a list of related keywords.

Take a look at the intent, search volume, and personal keyword difficulty (PKD%).

Also, see the position in the SERP.

Keyword Magic Tool – Best online course platform – Keywords

For example, “best online course platforms” has 480 monthly searches with a PKD% of 0.

Another strong keyword is “best platform to sell online courses,” with 170 searches and a PKD% of 0.

Both are prime targets.

They also have commercial intent.

Meaning searchers are closer to making a purchase decision.

Targeting these can help improve your rankings and capture more organic traffic from competitors.

Step 5: Prioritize Your Competitors’ Keywords List

Now that you’ve analyzed the competitor keywords, the next step is to integrate them into your strategy.

First, compare the competitor keywords with the ones you’re already targeting.

But what exactly are you looking for?

  • Are there any high-volume keywords you’re not targeting yet?
  • Are there terms they’re ranking for where you could compete?
  • Are there areas where you’re already ranking, but could improve?

This will ensure you’re not leaving valuable opportunities on the table.

Earlier, we used the example of vegan supplements.

Here’s a spreadsheet with keyword data for this niche, showing volume, difficulty, and value.

Later, we’ll show you how to create this spreadsheet (and provide a template.)

Keyword Prioritization Framework – Spreadsheet

The more keywords you have in your database, the better.

This gives you plenty of options to choose what to write about.

(After all, the better keywords you choose, the faster you can grow your organic traffic and bring more leads.)

Now, go to Keyword Overview, and add all your keywords.

Keyword Overview – Vegan suplements – Enter keywords

Then, click “Analyze.”

Scroll down and press “Export.”

Choose between XLXS, CSV or CSV semicolon.

Keyword list – Export data

To prioritize your keywords well, use a simple scoring framework.

Download the template and follow our steps

We’ll use Google Sheets—we’ve exported our data in CSV format.

Go there and press “Import.”

Keyword Prioritization Framework – Data import

An “Import file” window will open.

Switch to the tab “Upload,” and choose your exported file.

Then, click “Browse,” and choose your exported file.

Google Docs – Import file – Upload

Then, click “Import data.”

Google Docs – Upload – Import data

Now, you have your raw data.

What interests you is Volume (column C) and Keyword Difficulty (column E).

Keyword Prioritization Framework – Raw data

Click over to the “Framework” tab and check VLOOKUP formulas.

In our case it’s:

  • =VLOOKUP(A2, Data_import!$A$1:$G$16, 3, FALSE) to get Search Volume
  • =VLOOKUP(A2, Data_import!$A$1:$G$16, 5, FALSE) to get Ranking Difficulty

At this point, you should have Search Volume and Ranking Difficulty columns and scores for these two (they’re automatic.)

Keyword Prioritization Framework – Ranking Difficulty & Search Volume

First, let’s talk about Ranking Difficulty.

This tells you how tough it’ll be to rank for a keyword:

  • Under 30: Low competition (easy to rank for), score = 1
  • 30-60: Medium competition, score = 2
  • Over 60: High competition, score = 3

Next, we’ve got Business Value.

This is a manual assessment (you have to insert numbers between 1 and 3 yourself) of how well the keyword aligns with your product or service.

  • 3 (High value): If your product fits well into content targeting that keyword
  • 2 (Medium value): If your product fits, but not perfectly
  • 1 (Low value): If the keyword is barely relevant

Lastly, consider Search Volume.

  • Over 800 searches/month: High volume, score = 3
  • 500-800 searches/month: Medium volume, score = 2
  • Under 500 searches/month: Low volume, score = 1

Once you score all your keywords on these three factors, formulas in the sheet gives you the final score.

This helps you prioritize what to target.

Focus on keywords with high volume, low difficulty, and strong business value.

Here’s how:

  • High search volume (over 800 searches per month) means more potential traffic
  • Low ranking difficulty (anything under 30) means it’s easier to break into the rankings
  • Strong business value means it’s a perfect fit for what you offer, so it’s worth your time to go after it

For example a keyword “vegan protein powder.”

It has high search volume, low ranking difficulty, and business value.

Which means it’s going to be a top priority.

Meanwhile, something like “affordable vegan protein powder” has lower search volume and tougher competition.

So, it might fall to the bottom of the list.

This way, you’re focusing on keywords that’ll actually move the needle.

But remember:

In the end, any framework is just a framework.

Consider market trends, customer feedback, and lifetime value, too.

Now it’s time to create a content plan.

Step 6: Turn Competitor Keywords into Content

Once you’ve integrated competitor keywords into your strategy, it’s time to plan your content around them.

Say you’re a fast-growing brand that can’t compete with big players that rank high for high-volume and high-difficulty keywords.

But you have authority in one field.

And you found loads of decent-volume but low-competition keywords.

So, your strategy should focus on this untapped area.

Suppose your framework lists “vegan vitamins” as a high-priority keyword.

Google SERP – Vegan vitamins

It has commercial intent.

And you know your customers often ask about it.

First, review the types of pages that currently rank for this keyword.

Then, create a landing page that lists all the vegan vitamins.

Ensure it provides more value and depth than competing pages.

Apply this workflow to each of your high-priority keywords for maximum impact.

Get a Strategic Start for Using Your Competitors’ Keywords

Competitor keywords provide valuable insights for a focused SEO strategy.

The most important thing is to approach this task through a strategic lens.

To help you set the right priorities, download our keyword prioritization framework.

Use it to create an at-a-glance reference of your keywords and related data.

Then, put those insights to use to build a better SEO strategy and ultimately outrank your rivals.


Download the template

The post How to Find Competitors’ Keywords to Boost Your SEO appeared first on Backlinko.

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A brief history of Google’s algorithm updates

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SEO has changed significantly over the last decade, largely because Google has continuously updated its algorithms to improve search results. These updates aim to better understand user intent, reward high-quality content, and discourage manipulative practices. From foundational changes like Panda and Penguin to more recent updates like the November and December 2024 core updates, each has shaped how websites rank and how we approach optimization. Below is a look at some of Google’s most impactful updates and what they mean for SEO today.

Table of contents

2011 – Panda

The Panda update marked a shift in SEO by targeting low-quality content and spammy practices. It penalized sites with thin content or those created solely to manipulate rankings, such as affiliate-heavy pages. Over time, Panda became part of Google’s core algorithm, reinforcing the need for meaningful, high-quality content that provides real value to users.

2012 – Venice

Google’s algorithm update Venice was a noteworthy update, as it showed that Google understood that searchers are sometimes looking for results that are local to them. After Venice, Google’s search results included pages based on the location you set, or your IP address.

2012 – Penguin

The Google Penguin update focused on eliminating manipulative link-building practices. It penalized sites with spammy or paid backlinks, shifting the focus to earning genuine, high-quality links. By 2016, Penguin became part of the core algorithm, emphasizing the importance of ethical and relevant link-building strategies.

2012 – Pirate

The Pirate update addressed copyright infringement by penalizing sites with repeated DMCA takedown requests. It aimed to reduce the visibility of websites sharing unauthorized content, ensuring legitimate sources were prioritized in search results. This update highlighted the importance of respecting intellectual property online.

2013 – Hummingbird

The Hummingbird update improved Google’s ability to understand the meaning behind search queries. Rather than focusing on individual keywords, it considered the entire phrase to deliver more accurate results. This shift encouraged natural, conversational content and reduced the need for over-optimized keyword stuffing. It also laid the foundation for advancements in voice search and semantic search technology.

2014 – Pigeon

Another bird-related Google update followed in 2014 with Google Pigeon, which focused on local SEO. The Pigeon update affected both the results pages and Google Maps. It led to more accurate localization, giving preference to results near the user’s location. It also aimed to make local results more relevant and higher quality, taking organic ranking factors into account. 

2014 – HTTPS/SSL

Google introduced HTTPS as a ranking signal to encourage secure web connections. Sites using HTTPS gained a slight ranking advantage, promoting better data encryption and security for users. While initially a minor factor, it signaled Google’s growing focus on user safety and set the stage for security becoming a standard expectation online.

2015 – Mobile Update

Known as “Mobilegeddon,” this update prioritized mobile-friendly websites in mobile search results. As mobile usage surpassed desktop, Google aimed to ensure a better experience for users on smaller screens. While the immediate impact wasn’t drastic, it marked a clear shift toward mobile-first indexing, emphasizing the importance of mobile optimization for long-term SEO success.

2015 – RankBrain

RankBrain introduced machine learning to Google’s algorithm, helping the search engine interpret unfamiliar or complex queries. It analyzed past searches to predict the most relevant results, even for terms it hadn’t encountered before. While you can’t directly optimize for RankBrain, creating clear, helpful, and user-focused content ensures your site aligns with its goal of improving search relevance.

2016 – Possum 

In September 2016 it was time for another local update. Google’s algorithm update ​Possum update​ applied several changes to Google’s local ranking filter to further improve local search. After Possum, local results became more varied, depending more on the physical location of the searcher and the phrasing of the query. Some businesses, not doing well in organic search, found it easier to rank locally after this update. This indicated that this update made local search more independent of the organic results.

Read more: Near me searches: Is that a Possum near me? »

2018 – (Mobile) Speed Update

The Speed Update made page load time a ranking factor for mobile searches, building on its previous importance for desktop. Slow-loading sites were more likely to see a drop in rankings, especially on mobile devices. This update reinforced the need for fast, seamless user experiences, encouraging site owners to prioritize performance optimization.

2018 – Medic

The Medic Update was a broad core algorithm change that heavily impacted “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) websites, such as health, finance, and legal sites. It appeared to prioritize expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in content, especially for topics affecting users’ well-being. While it wasn’t exclusively aimed at medical sites, it underscored the importance of credible, accurate, and user-focused information.

Keep reading: Google’s Medic update »

2019 – BERT

The BERT update (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) enhanced Google’s ability to understand the context of words in a search query. By analyzing words in relation to the ones around them, BERT improved how Google interpreted natural language and intent. This update particularly helped with more conversational or complex queries, making search results more accurate and relevant. For content creators, it emphasized the value of clear, natural writing that directly addresses user needs.

Read on: Google BERT: A better understanding of complex queries »

2021 – Page Experience Update

The Page Experience update introduced a new ranking signal combining existing factors like mobile-friendliness and HTTPS with Core Web Vitals. These metrics measured real-world user experience, focusing on loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. While content quality remained the top priority, this update emphasized the importance of delivering a smooth and user-friendly browsing experience.

Keep on reading: Page experience: a new Google ranking factor »

2021 – MUM (Multitask United Model)

Announced in 2021, MUM introduced a powerful AI system capable of processing information across multiple formats and languages. It can analyze text, images, and videos to deliver more comprehensive answers to complex queries. For example, MUM can combine insights from various sources to provide layered, context-rich results. This update signaled Google’s focus on deeper understanding and more diverse content delivery in search.

Read more: Google’s MUM understands what you need: 1000x more powerful than BERT »

2021 – Product Reviews Update

First run in April 2021, these updates prioritized detailed, insightful product reviews over thin or generic content. Google rewarded reviews that showed expertise, included real-world usage, and helped users make informed decisions. It’s a key update for affiliate and e-commerce sites focused on providing genuine value. The update ran multiple times over the years.

2022 – Helpful Content Update

The Helpful Content Update targeted low-quality, unoriginal content designed primarily to game search rankings. Instead, it rewarded “people-first” content—material that genuinely answers user questions and provides a satisfying experience. Sites with lots of unhelpful or shallow content saw declines, while those focused on creating valuable, user-centric content were prioritized. This update reinforced the importance of writing with the audience in mind, not just search engines.

Keep reading: Google to launch Helpful Content Update to diversify search results »

2023 / 2024 – A mix of updates

Between 2023 and 2024, Google rolled out a mix of core and spam algorithm updates to enhance search quality and combat manipulative practices. Core updates focused on refining how content is evaluated, rewarding pages that provide high-quality, relevant, and trustworthy information. At the same time, spam updates targeted tactics like keyword stuffing, spammy backlinks, and low-quality AI-generated content. These changes reinforced Google’s priorities: surfacing helpful, user-focused content while penalizing manipulative SEO strategies.

2024 – Site Reputation Abuse

Google is cracking down on site reputation abuse, including parasite SEO. This tactic involves using trusted domains to host unrelated third-party content, like payday loans or casino reviews, to manipulate rankings. Sites caught violating this policy risk manual penalties, which require removing or noindexing the problematic content to recover. Legitimate uses of third-party content, such as syndicated news or user-generated material, are still allowed when properly managed.

Google algorithm updates: What’s next?

Google continues to refine its search algorithms with a growing focus on AI-driven search experiences. Recent advancements, such as Google AI Overviews, show a shift toward providing users with more intuitive and context-rich results. These tools combine AI to summarize complex topics, pull insights from multiple sources, and answer broader questions in a concise way.

Looking ahead, we can expect updates to further enhance understanding of search intent, prioritize high-quality content, and improve how information is presented. At the same time, technical factors like site speed, mobile usability, and security will remain essential. For website owners, the key is to stay adaptable by focusing on creating helpful, accurate, and user-centered content while keeping an eye on emerging AI trends in search.

Read on: Should I follow every change Google makes? »

The post A brief history of Google’s algorithm updates appeared first on Yoast.

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SEO in 2025: Experts reveal key trends and insights

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We love to say that SEO is always changing, and 2024 proved that true. There’s hardly been a year more challenging and exciting than that. But as we’re heading into 2025, we’re sure we have not seen the last of it. With everyone banking on AI, search, and the search industry are set for another sea change. In this post, we hear from seasoned SEO experts for their predictions on the future and how you can prepare.

Table of contents

A look back at SEO in 2024

2024 was a year with many newsworthy developments. We won’t review everything here, as that would need a book, but maybe someone will make a documentary about life as an SEO in 2024. Or maybe life at Google, as the search giant was central to almost all the big news.

Google deemed a monopoly

Let’s start with the biggest: Google faced a significant legal ruling when a federal judge declared it a monopoly in August. This landmark antitrust case found that Google’s dominance in the search engine market violated antitrust laws. Since then, there have been many discussions about potential regulatory changes and impacts on the broader search and tech industry. Currently, it looks like the DOJ will ask Google to sell off Chrome, among other things.

Google launched AI Overviews

In May, Google launched AI Overviews during its I/O event. This new feature uses AI to generate concise summaries in search results, aiming to make searches more efficient and user-friendly. This integration marked a significant advancement in using AI within search engines. AI Overviews are now available in most markets, but not the EU.

Google search documents leak

Around the same time, a massive leak of Google’s search API documentation occurred, revealing over 2,500 pages of internal documents. Although the leaked documents do not contain the algorithm’s secret recipe, they provide valuable insights into Google’s inner workings.

Core updates keeping everyone up at night 

Throughout the year, Google’s core updates led to significant swings in search rankings and notable traffic changes for many websites. For many of us, it remains an ongoing challenge to adapt to evolving algorithms quickly.

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The end of Parasite SEO?

Additionally, in March, Google banned Parasite SEO, a practice that exploits high-authority domains for quick ranking. Google uses this ban to improve search quality and eliminate manipulative practices within its search ecosystem. This policy affected major sites like Time, Forbes, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, as they were penalized for not adhering to Google’s guidelines.

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Search

In non-Google news, OpenAI introduced a search feature within ChatGPT in October, which was another groundbreaking development. This addition allows users to access up-to-date web information directly through the chatbot. As a result, OpenAI became a direct competitor to traditional search engines and offered a new way to find information online.

These were just some of the big events that happened in 2024. SEO is one of the most dynamic industries — there is never a dull moment! But this also means that you must stay informed about SEO trends for 2025 and be able to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

The SEO experts in this article

Jes Scholz

Consultant and SEO futurist

Kevin Indig

Independent Growth Advisor

Lily Ray

VP, SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive

Kyle Risley

Senior SEO Lead at Shopify

Aleyda Solis

SEO Consultant, Speaker & Author

Jo Turnbull

Founder and Consultant at Turn Global

Arnout Hellemans

SEO & Analytics Consultant

Gareth Hoyle

Managing Director Marketing Signals

Mark Williams-Cook

SEO Director at Candour

Gus Pelogia

Senior SEO Product Manager at Indeed

Carolyn Shelby

Principal SEO at Yoast

Alex Moss

Principal SEO at Yoast

Johnny Herge

Digital Marketer at Amsive

Main trends and SEO insights for 2025

We’ve asked several trusted experts for their predictions of what’s happening next in SEO in 2025. We’ll present their answers in themes, starting with the biggest one: the role of AI in SEO.

AI’s role in SEO

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how businesses and professionals approach SEO. As AI tools become more advanced, they offer both opportunities and challenges.

Content generation and strategy

Arnout Hellemans (independent SEO consultant) believes AI will “massively” transform SEO strategies. However, he says, “The issue is that search engines will leave loads more content out of the index because it’s generic content already there.”

This means businesses must focus on creating unique and valuable content rather than relying solely on AI-generated text. AI can help keep content updated and assist in research, but human oversight remains critical. Hellemans suggests that while AI advances rapidly, “human oversight and rewriting is still really needed.” This balance ensures content remains relevant and engaging.

Streamlining content creation

Lily Ray (VP, SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive) points out that AI can make content creation much more efficient: “More and more companies will find ways to integrate AI into their content creation and optimization strategies. Outside of using AI to generate content, AI can create major efficiencies that streamline the content creation, such as analyzing and summarizing data, producing insights and text content at scale; generating metadata and structured data, and much more. While mass-producing AI content on a large scale can present SEO risks in some cases, using AI creatively and intelligently can dramatically speed up and improve the content ideation and creation process.”

Using AI for more than just content creation

Lily’s colleague Johnny Herge added that content writers will start using AI tools to do more than just produce content. “A new way many SEOs will succeed in 2025 is by using AI to help with the final product besides the copy itself. Coding is made infinitely easier with AI. Using AI will allow writers to make data analytics scripts or scripts that organize data and pull insights that would have previously required a writer to have a different skillset entirely. This likely will lead to writers being able to put forward much further quantifiable insights. ”

Kevin Indig (independent consultant) agrees: “AI + no-code offers SEO and other marketers powerful new workflows around building systems instead of working on single campaigns. I expect us to see many more examples of “systemization” next year, which will lead to smaller SEO teams with larger impact.”

AI and SEO tools will improve

As AI and SEO tools evolve, they will become much smarter. They don’t just identify issues but suggest fixes, making them incredibly valuable. Kyle Risley (Senior SEO Lead at Shopify) predicts, “SEO tools will evolve to be more proactive, shifting from merely identifying issues to offering comprehensive solutions. For small businesses with limited time and resources, these recommendations can help improve site quality, even without specialized SEO knowledge. Instead of simply noting “Your title tag is too short,” tools will suggest “Your title tag is too short. Click here to implement a better one.”

AI agents and AI brandbuilding

Jes Scholz (independent Growth Marketing Consultant and SEO Futurist) says, “AI agents will be all the hype, but very few SEOs will actually change their strategy. Only the bold will have the buy-in to take tactics to the cutting edge. But this will be needed as LLM-powered surfaces (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, etc.) start slowly but steadily eating into traditional search. Quick win AI visibility tactics, like best of listicles, will rise and fall like the meta keyword tag of old. Brand building on popular RAGd platforms will likely emerge as a dependable strategy. But no matter what, now is the time you can win the HoM/CMO/CEOs attention.”

Google’s AI Overviews will evolve

Kevin Indig predicts that Google’s AI Overviews will evolve: “I expect AIOs to morph into other formats next year, similar to how they contain products in shopping. Right now, they look like Featured Snippets, but I expect Google to keep iterating. I also expect them to roll AIOs out even further to monetizable queries, widening the gap between what’s measurable and what’s happening in the search results even more.”

Mark Williams-Cook (SEO Director at Candour) adds: “We’ve long seen the trend of Google trying to keep searchers on their SERP, and with their recent announcement they have reduced the cost of generating AIOs by 90%, I think it’s obvious we’re only going to see more of them. However, AI in the form of LLMs does open new doors, especially with content creation, without falling into the no-value trap of having AI write your content for you.”

Yoast SEO expert insights for 2025

Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast

The balancing act of SEO professionals
In 2025, the big shift in SEO will be balancing diversified visibility with unified messaging. As AI-powered platforms, alternative search engines, and social discovery tools like TikTok, ChatGPT Search, and even Reddit increasingly influence how users find information, businesses can no longer rely solely on Google to drive traffic. Success will come from creating a consistent, authoritative presence across these fragmented ecosystems.

SEO professionals will need to ensure brand messaging remains cohesive and trustworthy across all channels while adapting to each platform’s unique requirements. Structured data, multimedia content, and a deep understanding of user intent will become critical to connecting the dots between platforms and maintaining a seamless user experience. In 2025, SEO will evolve into an integrated marketing discipline where visibility and messaging work hand in hand to build lasting trust and engagement.

Adapting to zero-click searches

The rise of zero-click searches is changing how businesses approach SEO in 2025. Getting clicks can be harder as users find answers directly on search result pages. Here are our experts’ predictions on this challenging topic.

Maintaining visibility

Arnout Hellemans suggests that you “start looking at other platforms (both search engines and AI interfaces) and try to understand how you can be included in their answers (think Claude, ChatGPT, Bing, Brave search engine). By doing this, you can ensure your business remains visible even when traditional clicks decrease.”

Building a brand following

Building a strong brand presence is essential. Arnout advises businesses to focus on “proper marketing, such as building a following or fans. Visibility will start shifting away from Google; I think this is where we will find plenty of opportunities.” Engaging with your audience on social media and other platforms helps maintain interest and loyalty, even if users don’t click through to your site directly.

Leveraging AI and alternative channels

Kyle Risley says, “As clicks become harder to come by in organic search, there are pretty much two options for organic acquisition: hang on to as much of your remaining click share as you can and activate new traffic acquisition channels.” This could mean looking at channels like TikTok and YouTube. These platforms are gaining traction as starting points for user journeys. Businesses can create engaging content on these channels to reach new audiences and drive traffic.

Becoming a source for AI Overviews

Gus Pelogia (Senior SEO Product Manager at Indeed) notes that being a source in AI Overviews can be more relevant than getting clicks: “Imagine searches displaying a brand’s blog as a source (e.g. software listicles). If one of the players is the main source for AI Overviews, they’ve more control over the message vs competitors. Could they change the wording to say better things about them? 

“I’d guess many people will see an AI answer mentioning a few brands and what’s being said about them, and later, they will move to each brand’s website to evaluate their options. That specific search was a zero-click, but there’s a new one happening directly to your company’s website.”

“It’s interesting that clicks will decrease, but since AI Overviews are a RAG (AI answers validate with sources), many pages will still have a reason to exist since they’ll validate the AI answer. This is intent-dependent. Many informational, common-knowledge queries won’t require new articles or have a brand impact.”

Reddit is not going away; make use of it

Kevin Indig doesn’t expect Reddit’s growth to slow: “Searchers want connection and a non-commercialized space. I expect Google to improve at showing Reddit posts that are not outdated or thin. The implication is that domains must compete for one less spot since Reddit takes up many top spots in the search results. On the other hand, it becomes a valuable pool of audience insights and engagement. Brands that develop a playbook to grow their visibility on Reddit have a chance to improve their sentiment and create loyal customers.”

Expand your data tracking

Aleyda Solis predicts that tracking pixels, SERP features, and clicks vs. no-clicks will become fundamental: “Start monitoring your overall SERP visibility and click behavior: Your SERP features shifts — AI overviews included — pixel visibility from the top, as well as clicks (and no-clicks) shifts per content type and SERP feature, to focus your SEO strategy accordingly.”

Yoast SEO expert insights for 2025

Alex Moss – Principal SEO at Yoast

The evolving role of the SEO: It’s more than just “SEO”
As an SEO professional, I’ve witnessed a dramatic shift in our field, particularly in 2024. While the traditional “SEO” title remains, it has become an increasingly outdated term. Our role is expanding, becoming more multifaceted, and demanding a broader skillset. We’re no longer solely focused on optimizing for Google; we’re becoming Discovery Optimization Experts responsible for ensuring brands are found across the entire digital landscape.

Several factors drive this shift, including the rise of AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity and the growing importance of platforms like TikTok and Reddit as legitimate discovery channels.

Furthermore, the perception of SEO as purely a marketing function is misguided. SEOs bring a unique understanding of the digital ecosystem far beyond traditional marketing. We should be more involved in high-level business decisions that shape a company’s online presence, influencing everything from website design to content strategy to product development.

The future of SEO is exciting, but our value still tends to be underrated. Our skillset will need to expand further yet again, practicing through experimentation.

The rising importance of video content

Video content is becoming a key component of SEO strategies in 2025. Its engaging nature offers a unique way to connect with audiences.

Video-first approach

Mark Williams-Cook says, “I expect we’ll see many smaller businesses take a ‘top-down’ approach with content now, meaning they will go video first – and I think this is really smart. Video content is cheap, fast to make, and a natural way to pull real insight out of people. With the tooling we have now, it’s easy to automatically produce transcripts, which in turn, LLMs can rewrite into a more traditional ‘article’ style. This approach means you’ll get the video to share over multiple platforms, which is not only hard for AI to replicate but how a lot of people prefer to engage in content.”

Google’s focus on video content

Lily Ray confirms that “video content is increasingly essential, as Google prominently features YouTube and sometimes TikTok across various surfaces, like Search, Discover, Google News, the Video tab, Short Videos, and more. Site owners should be well-versed in changes to how Google indexes video content and expands their text content into visual formats.”

“As it relates to video indexing, Google now requires that a video be the focus of an indexed watch page for the video to get indexed (“Google indexes videos only from indexed watch pages.”) Using YouTube to host the video is another way to ensure that the video is indexed, but be sure to use VideoObject structured data to “connect” your watch page to the YouTube video for the watch page to get video rich features in search results.”

Interactive engagement

Gareth Hoyle emphasizes that “video will also continue to gain importance due to its interactive nature and engagement. AI video will continue to grow, but like the EEAT signals above, curated and well-engaged real video will help businesses showcase themselves to Google’s algorithm and their current and potential new customers.”

E-commerce SEO shifts

The landscape of e-commerce SEO is evolving, particularly with changes in how Google handles shopping queries. Businesses need to adapt to these shifts to stay competitive. These are some of the predictions our SEO experts had to share.

Google Shopping tab focus

Kevin Indig expects “the new Shopping Tab experience to become the default experience for shopping queries. As we’ve seen before, Google often tests a new experience in the shopping tab and then moves it to the main tab. The implication is that e-commerce SEO becomes more about optimizing product pages as Google becomes the new category page.”

Optimizing product pages

As Google will likely integrate more e-commerce features directly into search results, businesses must optimize their product listings. With the emphasis on product pages, businesses should ensure that these pages are detailed and informative. This includes high-quality images, detailed product descriptions, customer reviews, and clear pricing information. Structured data markup can enhance how products appear in search results, increasing visibility and click-through rates.

Product feed accuracy

Accurate and organized product feeds are crucial. Kyle Risley highlights the importance of having “well-organized and error-free product feeds” as search engines increase the visibility of organic product listings. This requires regularly updating product information and ensuring consistency across platforms.

Adapting to new channels

As consumers begin their shopping journeys on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, businesses should consider expanding their presence on these channels. Creating engaging product videos and leveraging social commerce features can attract new customers and drive traffic.

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Building brand authority

Today, brand authority is vital if you want to perform well in search results. As search engines evolve, they will develop new ways of determining how valuable your brand is. Building a good — human — brand is one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd.

Targeting branded queries

Aleyda Solis emphasizes that it’s all about brand optimization: “Brand optimization becomes key. It’s clear that Google wants to feature real, authoritative brands at the top of the SERPs, which is also helpful for increasing CTR and optimizing conversions. Grow your brand authority by understanding your company brand positioning and considering it in your SEO strategy: Target your branded queries, specify your brand details with structured data, optimize your knowledge panel details, etc.”

Focusing on EEAT

Gareth Hoyle highlights the importance of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) referenced content: “As Google continues to improve its ability to weed out low-level, auto-produced AI content, EEAT-referenced content will become increasingly important and visible as Google increases trust based on what it knows about the author rather than just the words on the page. I am sure it will be an ongoing battle as spammers and content sites continue to churn out page after page of content, but the personal brand will help the cream rise to the top.”

Local SEO trends for 2025

Local SEO is essential for small and medium-sized businesses attracting nearby customers. As we move into 2025, businesses should focus on a few key areas.

Google Business Profile optimization

Keeping an updated and complete Google Business Profile is essential. Freelance SEO expert Arnout Hellemans emphasizes that a “regularly updated Google Business Profile and a fully completed profile will be extremely important.” This means ensuring that all business information is accurate and up-to-date. Regularly adding new photos, responding to customer questions, and posting updates can make your business more appealing to local searchers.

The power of reviews

Customer reviews significantly impact local search rankings. According to Arnout, reviews with the “right sentiment,” particularly those discussing “the services received and results,” are crucial. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, highlighting their experiences with your services. Responding to positive and negative reviews shows that you value customer feedback and are committed to improving your business.

User experience (UX) enhancements

Improving user experience is key to boosting SEO performance. A smooth and intuitive website keeps visitors engaged and encourages them to explore more.

Form validation and friction reduction

Arnout Hellemans highlights the importance of “proper form validation on lead forms and checkout.” Ensuring that forms work correctly and are easy to use can prevent user frustration. Make sure users can easily fill out and submit forms without errors. 

Removing distractions is also crucial. Arnout advises focusing on “the removal of distractions like pop-ups on every page.” Pop-ups can be annoying and disrupt the browsing experience. Limiting their use or ensuring they’re relevant and easy to close can help maintain user attention.

Leveraging SEO communities

Joining SEO communities can be a game-changer for people looking to enhance their knowledge and network. These communities offer support, insights, and opportunities that can drive growth.

Growth of global SEO communities

Jo Turnbull (Founder and Marketing Consultant at Turn Global) mentions that by 2025, there will be “the growth of global SEO and digital communities.” This growth is particularly beneficial for smaller brands aiming to build authority. Being part of a community provides access to shared experiences and advice from peers facing similar challenges.

Jo says, “We have seen a growth in members of some communities such as Women in Tech SEO, The FCDC and the DMU (a community for freelancers) over the past few years and many communities will continue to grow in 2025. SEO Office Hours has had over 60k views and regularly has between 30 and 40 live attendees per episode. As of November 23rd, there have been 50 episodes.”

“The International Search Summit, run by WebCertain, has grown to over 600 attendees, but when it first started in Barcelona, there were just 50. Search London has been running for nearly 14 years, and we have grown to now run events in Barcelona. They sold out of tickets just by promoting on social media and within our network.”

Support and learning opportunities

SEO can often feel isolating, especially in smaller companies where one person handles most of the SEO tasks. Jo notes that these communities help individuals who “look for external support” as they navigate frequent updates and changes in SEO. Participating in events, webinars, and online forums provides valuable learning opportunities and informs members about the latest SEO trends and techniques.

Building networks and careers

Being active in an SEO community can also open doors to career opportunities. Networking with other professionals can lead to collaborations, job offers, and new projects. Jo points out that people join communities to “feel and be supported,” learn from one another, and advance their careers.

Conclusion to SEO in 2025

As we move into 2025, staying on top of SEO trends is more important than ever. The events of 2024 have shown us how quickly the landscape can change, from legal rulings and algorithm leaks to shifts in digital strategies. These changes underscore the need for you to remain agile and informed.

Join our monthly SEO news webinar to keep up with these changes and gain deeper insights. Alex and Carolyn — our resident SEO experts — talk you through all the latest developments. It’s a great opportunity to stay informed about the latest trends and strategies. Please sign up today and learn how to navigate SEO in 2025. Let’s continue to learn and adapt together.

Do you have any thoughts or predictions about SEO in 2025 to share? Please comment on this post!

The post SEO in 2025: Experts reveal key trends and insights appeared first on Yoast.

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Crawling December: HTTP caching

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Allow us to cache, pretty please.
As the internet grew over the years, so did how much Google crawls. While Google’s crawling
infrastructure supports heuristic caching mechanisms, in fact always had, the number of requests
that can be returned from local caches has decreased: 10 years ago about 0.026% of the total
fetches were cacheable, which is already not that impressive; today that number is 0.017%.

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Features of the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

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Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) offers more than just a list of links. Its layout can change based on what you’re searching for, presenting various SERP features tailored to your needs. You might see different elements like featured snippets, shopping options, or local listings and also AI Overviews. Understanding these can help you navigate the results more effectively. This guide will help you identify and differentiate between the paid and organic results you encounter.

Table of contents

What are SERP features?

Search features are elements on a search engine results page (SERP) that provide information beyond the standard list of links. They include things like featured snippets, image packs, and knowledge panels. These features make it easier for users to quickly find answers and relevant information in search results.

an example of how rich google search is based on a search for footballer cody gakpo
Google Search is really rich with information these days

A new SERP feature: Google AI Overviews

AI Overviews are a new feature in Google’s search results. They use artificial intelligence to create concise summaries that answer user queries quickly. These summaries appear at the top of search pages, providing immediate information without the user needing to click through links, although links are provided. This feature helps users find the information they need faster and increases the visibility of diverse websites.

google ai overviews are a new type of feature, here showing results for yoast seo
Google AI Overview provide a new way of accessing information from search

It depends on what you’re searching for

What the result page looks like largely depends on what you are searching for. If you’re searching for a product you can buy, Google will show shop results on the SERP. For example, when we searched for hockey equipment for an eight-year-old, Google showed us this:

an example of a product search on Google, showing listing for hockey equipment
An example of a product search on Google

This results page starts with shopping results, with images on top. On the left-hand side, you will see all kinds of filters to fine-tune your product search as well. To enter the Sponsored section, you must pay Google – note the word ‘sponsored’ in the upper left corner. After those results, the first is an ad, which is another paid result. And then the organic results start.

However, if you’re searching for information about the planet Neptune – because your son is writing an essay about that – you’ll encounter a different-looking SERP:

an example the serp features for the search term neptune planet
Different searches show different SERP features on Google

These search results do not show any paid or sponsored results. At the top, you’ll see an AI Overview for the topic, and on the right, you’ll notice a knowledge graph with lots of information about the planet Neptune. There’s even an interactive diagram to learn more about what Neptune looks like.

Read on: What is search intent? »

Browsing through the result page

The default page of Google’s search result is a page on which different results appear. Google decides which results fit your search query best. That could be ‘normal’ results, but also news results, shopping results or images. If you’re searching for information, a knowledge graph could turn up. When you’re searching to buy something online, you’ll probably get lots of shopping results on the default result page.

the google bar serp feature gives you quick access to images, news, videos, shopping, maps, forums and more
Google Search has many options than just regular search

You can apply some filters on the search results yourself if you want to. You can, for instance, click on ‘images’ if you’re searching for an image. This allows you to browse through images only. You can also choose ‘shopping’, ‘maps’, ‘forums’, ‘videos’, ‘news’ and ‘more’.

Keep on reading: How to get your Shopify store on Google »

Sponsored results and ads

Google shows both paid results and organic results. It can be pretty hard to notice the difference between the two. The ads usually appear on top of the search results. Sometimes it’s only one ad, but Google can show more ads as well. This depends on how many people search for a certain search term and who wants to pay for it.

an example of a sponsored ad on google for the term holiday home south of france
There are many sponsored listings in Google

You’ll recognize the paid result by the word Sponsored shown in front of the link to the website. The shopping results in Google are also paid results: a company pays Google to appear in the shopping results. If you want to advertise on Google, you should check out Google Adwords.

Organic results

Google’s organic results are all non-paid results. According to Google’s algorithm, the organic results shown first are the best fit for the user’s search query. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) improves the chances of ranking in organic search results.

Snippets

The search result page consists of a number of snippets. A snippet is a result Google shows to the user in the search results.  A ‘normal’ snippet usually looks like this:

an example of a regular snippet in google
A regular Google snippet

Google shows the title in blue, the URL in grey, and a description of the page. You’ll also encounter rich snippets on the SERP. A rich snippet shows extra information between the URL and the description. A rich snippet looks like this:

an example of a rich snippet in google showing a recipe with image and star rating
A rich result as shown in Google search

In this snippet, a picture of the ice cream is added. You can see the recipe’s rating and the time it takes to prepare this type of ice cream. A rich snippet contains much more information than a normal snippet does.

Read more: What are rich snippets? »

Other elements on the SERPs

Besides snippets, images, videos, news results, shopping results and maps, Google also shows some other elements on the SERPs.

Knowledge Graph panel

The Knowledge Graph Panel appears on the right side of the search results. According to Google, this information is retrieved from many sources, including the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia. Information from the Knowledge Graph is used to answer spoken questions in Google Assistant and Google Home voice queries.

an example of a serp feature known as a knowledge graph panel, this case about minecraft
An example of a knowledge graph panel Google search feature

People also ask

This box appears somewhere between the organic search results. It’ll suggest questions related to the search query you typed in. You’ll encounter these related questions in the organic search results if you’re searching for Minecraft. Clicking on one of the suggestions will directly answer the specific question.

an example of a feature on the google search results pages known as people also ask
Google’s People also ask search feature

Featured snippets

A featured snippet, aka answer box, is a highlighted search box that answers the question you type in the Google search bar. This featured snippet box is situated above the regular organic search results. Featured snippets often appear as a paragraph or a bulleted list, accompanied by an image.

an example of a serp feature known as a featured snippet
Featured highlight answers directly at the top of the Google search results

Keep reading: How to get featured snippets »

Local 3-pack

When you search from something locally, the Local 3-pack can show up to highlight three related local businesses. It’s a Google search feature that provides information such as business names, addresses, phone numbers, and customer reviews. This feature is often integrated with Google Maps. It helps users find directions and learn more about local businesses.

a serp feature called a local three-pack after searching for best spaghetti seattle
This search feature shows three local result based on the query

Image pack

The image pack search feature shows a collection of images related to a search. Typically shown in a grid or carousel format, they allow users to quickly browse visual content without leaving the search page. For some searches, images are a better fit than just regular links or other SERP features.

an example of a google search results page showing an image pack for the search space needle photos
An example of an image pack in Google’s search results

Top stories

Top stories is a search feature on Google that displays the most recent and relevant news articles. This section typically appears near the top of the search results, highlighting breaking news and timely updates. It includes headlines, publication names, and often images to quickly inform users about current events.

a serp feature called top stories in google
Google’re Top stories feature shows the most important news

Conclusion about SERP features

Google’s search engine results pages can show various elements: the search results (so-called snippets), AI Overviews, a knowledge graph, a featured snippet, an answer box, images, shopping results, and more. Some of these elements will show up depending on the type of query and the data Google finds. You can add structured data to your page so Google can show a ‘rich’ snippet, providing more information about your product or recipe, for instance.

You can pay Google to make the snippet of your page end up high on the search results page as an ad. Or, you can optimize your pages for the search engines – and users! – so it will rank high organically. That’s SEO, and that’s what we write about!

Read on: Yoast SEO: how to make your site stand out in the search results »

The post Features of the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) appeared first on Yoast.

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Improve local SEO with Google My Business/Business Profile

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Every business owner with a website is looking for ways to get noticed in the search results. There are loads of tactics to rank well as a local business, but unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. As with most things SEO, this is a combined effort. One of the ways to get noticed is by offering customers up-to-date information like opening hours and contact information. You can do this using Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. But what is it exactly, and why is it so important for local SEO?

Table of contents

What is Google My Business?

Before we start, it’s good to know that Google recently changed its name from Google My Business to Google Business Profile. But even with its new name, Google Business Profile is still your one-stop shop for managing your business information and how it will be presented in the search results. It is an essential tool to adjust how your business is shown in Google Maps, the Knowledge Graph, and organic search results. According to the most recent edition of Whitespark’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, Google My Business remains the biggest driver of local SEO success, with reviews coming in second place.

You can manage your business listing by adding NAP details, opening hours, photos, etcetera. There are even unique options to show multiple ways to shop (delivery or curbside pickup). In addition, you get many other options, like managing the reviews your customers leave behind. As you might already know, reviews should be a critical part of your local SEO efforts.

Want to learn more about local SEO and how to get higher rankings in the local search results? Our Local SEO training helps you improve your online presence and attract more online and offline visitors.

How does it work?

Getting started with Google Business Profile is easy; you make an account and claim your business. After filling in your details, you need to verify your business. You can choose between receiving an automated call or text with a verification code, or receiving a real-life postcard from Google at your specified address with the verification code. Some businesses may need to verify with a video. You may have to verify with more than one method. So, why does Google want you to verify your account? They want to ensure that you’re telling the truth and that you’re the business owner listed at the address. Google has a special page that helps you check your verification status.

Once verified, you can fill in all the necessary details and check how your listing is doing. You can get regular insights to see how many impressions, clicks, and subscribers your listing got over time. It’s a great way of getting a feel for how Google and customers perceive your business.

Keep in mind that Google My Business (or Google Business Profile) is not the catch-all tool for your local SEO. It has to work in tandem with your other off-page and on-page SEO efforts. You probably won’t climb the charts if your profile is inaccurate, but you won’t reach the top without a well-optimized site and localized content. These things go hand in hand.

Ranking factors

Google Business Profile uses many factors to determine rankings for businesses. We’ll highlight the three most important ones:

  • Relevance
  • Distance
  • Prominence

Relevance

Relevance determines how well your business fits the search intent of the customer. Is your focus identical to what the customer needs, or are you a bit opaque about what your company does? Vagueness doesn’t rank or sell. Be as clear as you can be, and keep your focus. That way, Google knows what people can expect from you and will be more inclined to show your business in the search results.

Tip: When setting up your profile, Google offers you common services that you can add to your category of business. It’s smart to include these, because they will help your business get found. We’ll talk about these in more detail later on.

Proximity

Proximity is a well-known factor for ranking local businesses. And quite logical when you think about it. You can’t rank in a local search for dentist in Philadelphia when you have located your company in Manhattan. However, the exact way Google determines which businesses to show in a local search is unknown, and it can be pretty hard to rank in a given area. Other factors play a significant role as well. It helps to say you are located in a particular area and show it by having local-oriented content around your business on your site. Google uses what’s known about the searcher’s location to present the most relevant local businesses.

Prominence

Prominence is all about the activity around your listing; this could be the number of reviews, events, local content, et cetera. It also helps to have loads of quality links to your site. It is somewhat hard to determine what prominence means exactly, but one thing is for sure: no one likes inactive profiles. You have to keep it updated with new photos and manage your reviews. As said before, this goes hand in hand with your site, so make sure both listings align and publish content focusing on your local area(s).

Screenshot of Google Maps for the search question "dentist in Seattle". The highlighted listing is Dental Care Seattle.
It is vital that you keep your business listing accurate and up to date

Optimize your Google Business Profile listing

Any business with a bona fide brick-and-mortar location or an online outlet is eligible for a Google Business listing. But what if you operate your business out of your house and don’t want people to know your address?

If you don’t operate a walk-up brick-and-mortar location but visit your customers in a particular geographic area, you’re called a “Service Business.” Service businesses include plumbers, carpet cleaners, and courier services. In this case, you’re still eligible for a listing. However, you’ll want to choose “Service business” when Google asks what kind of business you have.

Google asks what kind of business you are operating

Verifying your location

Google tries to make sure that only legitimate businesses are represented in GMB. It requires anyone claiming a Listing to verify their association with the company. The easiest way to start the process is to perform a desktop search on Google for your business name (for example, “Kido Chicago”). You’ll see a link in the panel on the right-hand side of the page that asks, “Own this business?”

Before you click that link to begin the verification process, make sure you are either not signed in to Google (you can create an account in the next step) or are signed into a Google account for your business instead of your personal Gmail. It’s not a requirement; however, sharing access to your listing with employees or other company agents from a business account will be much easier.

Screenshot of a listing for a coffeehouse. Highlighted is the "Claim this business" at the bottom of the screenshot.
Click on Claim this business to claim the profile of this business; if you are the owner

Once you fill out the most basic information (see below for what these details are), if it can corroborate your address and phone number, Google will call and ask you to enter a PIN on the screen. If it hasn’t previously seen a business with the phone number and address you submitted, you’ll be mailed a postcard within a week with instructions on how to PIN verify.

Verify with video

Some businesses may need to verify with a video. If you own a physical store, you will need to record your location by showing street signs, your business exterior and interior, and you need to show that you’re authorized to represent this business. You will need to show all these requirements in one continuous recording, so no editing.

If you own a service business, like a plumbing or landscaping business, you don’t have a physical store. That’s why you’ll need to show street signs or the surrounding area where your business is located, your business card or a branded vehicle or business tools, and finally a proof of address. Again, this needs to be done in one continuous recording.

Primary business information

Name, Address, and Phone

This sounds simple, but it’s surprising how many business owners overthink these core attributes or try to “optimize” them. Your Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) are your thumbprint online. If they don’t reflect your business accurately in your Google Business Profile, Google—and your customers—lose trust that you are who you say you are. They will stop sending business your way.

  • Do NOT stuff keywords in your business name. Represent yourself as you would answer the phone or welcome a customer into your store. You probably see spammers doing this and succeeding all the time, but it’ll come back to bite them at some point. Google is monitoring for these kinds of abuses all the time, and they’re getting better at blocking the abusers.
  • Submit the same address you use on your website. If you’re a Yoast user, this should be the address you enter in the Yoast Local SEO plugin. Even if you’re a service-area business, you’ll have to submit a physical address, not a PO box or other mailing-only address.
  • You’ll see a map displayed just alongside your address. Zoom in and double-check that the pin is in the correct place on your business. Google’s pin precision for U.S. addresses is typically pretty good, but it can be spotty in other countries.
  • Don’t use a tracking phone number to segment customers coming from Google vs. other sources. There are ways to do this, but they’re pretty advanced. Implementing tracking numbers incorrectly can do tremendous damage to your local search rankings.

Choose a category for your business

From a rankings standpoint, the business category is the most important attribute you can optimize in your Google Business Profile. In our experience, it’s best to keep an eye on Google’s advice on categories. Remember that advice has changed frequently over the years and might change again.

Start typing, and the categories magically appear. You can add more later on

Google maintains a taxonomy of several thousand categories to describe local businesses. You’ll probably find a match pretty closely by typing in a few characters of a keyword that describes your business.

Google suggests “using as few categories as possible,” as well as categories that are “as specific as possible.” And while it’s true that Google can and does “detect category information from your website and mentions about your business throughout the web,” our advice is to specify as many relevant categories as possible on your Google Business Profile listing.

Google’s automated review system may remove one or two from your listing, but this is not spam—provided you select relevant categories. It helps you show up for as broad a range of searches as possible.

Services businesses can add the specific services you offer

Add your website

In the process, there’s a field to add your website URL, but it doesn’t have to be your “website” per se. In particular, if you operate in more than one location, you may want to enter the page on your website corresponding to the location you’re submitting to Google—rather than your homepage. Opinions are mixed on whether listing your homepage, or a location page will help you rank better, so do what’s best for prospective customers. If you think your homepage will give them the best initial sense of your business, submit it as your “website”. If a location page—or even some other page—will give your audience a better sense, submit that instead.

Add a business description

Later on, you can add a business description to your profile. It’s essential to take a moment and find an excellent way to describe your business on Google. The business description field gives you a maximum of 750 characters to convince people to visit your business. This might be the first thing people read about your business, so make it unique and exciting. Describe what your business offers precisely and how you set yourself apart from your competitors. You can also talk about your history and anything else that’s helpful for customers.

Keep the description short and sweet, and don’t try to push promotions or deals you have running. You also shouldn’t include URLs or HTML code. Give it a think, write a few descriptions and pick the best one!

A unique business description can make you stand out from the rest

More business information

After entering the attributes above, you’re asked to verify your listing. But don’t stop there. There are a few other attributes that are well worth your time to add.

Photos and images

Photos may be the most neglected attribute in all local SEO. The success of Instagram, Pinterest, and any lesser-known apps indicates how visual our internet culture has become. Consumers often select—or reject!—a business because of its photos. Not only on the content of the photos, but consumers also judge the quality and professionalism of the photos.

Photos are essential in the mobile ecosystem that Google Business Profile powers (including Google Maps), where they dominate a business’s representation in Google’s user interfaces. Try to add authentic photos instead of stock photos, and make sure the pictures reflect your business.

As with all local media or social media sites, Google Business Profile has its image format requirements. Take some time to review them and make sure you have high-quality assets for each format. You can find more on improving your images in our image SEO guide.

Business hours

Selecting your opening hours is pretty straightforward. Google has dramatically improved its interface for telling customers when you’re open over the past several years. Hours will be front-and-center wherever customers interact with your business on Google, so they should be accurate. You can even daypart multiple times during the day and add specific hours for holidays and special events.

While you can’t control it, you may be interested to know that Google now displays the busyness of your business in real time. This is based on aggregate location-tracking visitors with Android phones and iOS Google Maps users with location services enabled.

See when a business opens and when the most popular times are

Restaurants can add menus

Specific categories of businesses will have the option to add their menu. Suppose you’re lucky enough to be in one of these categories. In that case, we highly recommend adding this, as it gives Google an additional set of keywords that your business should consider relevant.

Accept messages for more leads

By default, this feature is turned on. It will add a messaging feature to your Business Profile, and it can be a great way to generate more leads. Of course, you need to keep this chat feature in mind and check regularly for any messages. If you respond quickly and helpfully, you’ll probably turn visitors into customers.

A screenshot of a Levi's store Google Business profile. The chat function is made bigger to highlight where it is on the page.
The chat function

If you’re slow to respond to customers, however, Google might disable this feature for you. So, if you’re not sure you’ll be able to keep track of this feature, it might be better to turn it off.

Share posts on your Business Profile

The Posts feature is a very useful way to communicate with your customers from your profile. With posts, you can connect with existing and potential customers through your Business Profile on Google Search and Maps. You can create and share announcements, offers, new or popular items in stock, or event details directly with your customers. Use this to promote your sales, specials, events, news, and offers. You can even add videos and photos to posts to make them more interesting!

A screenshot of the Seattle Children's Museum post on their Business Profile about their prideful playdate event in July.
Example of the post feature

Many options

Since Google Business Profile has grown quite a bit over the years, there are many more options to explore. You don’t need to use all of them, but some are valuable. For example, the Products feature to highlight your products in your listing is a great way to get people interested in what your offer.

Another great option is the possibility of getting potential customers to ask questions that you can respond to. Keep in mind that others can also answer these questions, so keep an eye on this. When it works, it can be a real help in turning visitors into customers.

And, as always, get reviews for your business! With a Business Profile, you can even respond to these reviews. It doesn’t have to be a message. Nowadays, you can also quickly respond with an emoji, like a heart or fire emoji.

Ranking factors beyond your control

There are two significant local search and local SEO ranking factors over which you have little control. They both have to do with the physical location of your business.

The location of your potential customer

The first is the proximity of your business to the location where your prospective customer is performing their search. All other things being equal, Google will display a company closer to the searcher than one farther away from them.

In the early years of Google, its algorithm favored businesses close to the center of a given city or its “centroid.” This was partly because Google wasn’t as good at detecting the location of the searcher as they are now. It defaulted to showing businesses in the areas with the highest population density.

Nowadays, this factor has declined in importance. Especially for mobile searches where Google has a precise idea of where you are. Google has also partially improved at detecting desktop searchers’ location information through surreptitious collection means.

A physical store in the city of your customer’s search question

The second factor is having an address in the city in which your customer is searching.  If your customer is searching in Seattle, your Tacoma or Bellevue-based coffee shop won’t appear. This is simply because it’s irrelevant to the customer’s search.

Short of opening additional locations to target areas where high concentrations of your customers are searching, there’s not much you can do to optimize for these ranking factors. Still, you should be aware of their importance.

Google Business Profile Insights

Google provides a free, lightweight analytics package as part of GBP. This gives you a basic sense of how customers and potential customers view and interact with your listing.

Insights show how often your listing appears in plain old search vs. Google Maps. It also shows the number of clicks to your website, requests for driving directions, phone calls, and more.

There’s also a breakdown of how many customers see your listing for direct searches (for your business specifically) vs. discovery searches (for businesses in your category). While no one outside of Google is entirely sure how they calculate the discovery number, it’s probably as good a barometer for the overall strength of your local SEO as any, mainly if you track it over time.

Troubleshooting listing issues

The most typical GMB troubleshooting issue continues to be duplicate listings for the same business. While it’s gotten harder to detect duplicate listings, it’s much easier to close them.

The first step to identifying duplicates is to search for your business name on Google. If it looks like multiple listings refer to your business, select the one you’d like to report as a duplicate and click “Suggest an Edit.” Follow the suggestions to have the listing marked as duplicate.

Google support staff are generally responsive to these reports within a reasonable time. If you continue to have trouble, ask multiple people—co-workers, friends, family members, or relatives—to report the same problem, and it’s more likely Google will look at it. If your issue seems particularly thorny, you’re most likely to get a response by tweeting @googlemybiz, the official Twitter support channel for Google Business Profile.

A tool to manage your reviews

Some time ago, Google added a new feature to the Google My Business dashboard. A feature that allows you to manage your reviews and report reviews for removal. You can also check the status of reviews you’ve already reported here. Keep in mind that Google will only remove reviews that violate their policies, such as irrelevant or offensive content.

Structured data and Yoast Local SEO

Google increasingly depends on structured data to determine what your site is about and which elements represent what. This is true for your business information, including the information that Google Business Profile uses. Make sure you add the correct structured data to your site. Enhance your NAP details, opening hours, reviews, product information, et cetera, with Schema.org data. This will make it much easier for Google to determine the validity of your listing. Several tools can help you with this, including our Yoast Local SEO plugin.

Local SEO is critical, even with Google Business Profile

So, you should activate and maintain your Google My Business account and make it awesome. But to get the most out of your listings and to get good rankings, you must have your site in order as well. Optimize every part of it. Create local content for your chosen keyword and business location and get quality local backlinks to build a solid link profile. Ask customers to review your business onsite or on My Business. Make sure your listing is active and attractive; as we said, inaccurate profiles are no good.

Read more: The ultimate guide to small business SEO »

The post Improve local SEO with Google My Business/Business Profile appeared first on Yoast.

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How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide

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Do you have a website or maintain the website of the company you work for? Of course, to do this right, you need to keep a keen eye on the performance of your website. Google offers several tools to collect and analyze data from your website. You probably have heard of Google Analytics and Google Search Console before. These tools are free for everyone maintaining a website and can give you valuable insights about your website. Here, we’ll explain how to use Google Search Console for SEO!

Table of contents

Why use Google Search Console?

Google Search Console helps you track the performance of your website easily. You can get valuable insights from your Google Search Console account, which means you can see what part of your website needs work. This can be a technical part of your website, such as an increasing number of crawl errors that need to be fixed. This can also give a specific keyword more attention because the rankings or impressions are decreasing. Or find the reasons why some pages aren’t indexed.

Besides seeing this kind of data, you’ll get email notifications when Google Search Console notices new errors. Because of these notifications, you’re quickly aware of issues you must fix. That’s why everyone with a website should learn how to use it!

the google search console overview page with menu items to the left and graphs on the right
The Google Search Console Overview page

Search Console is structured around various sections

Search Console has several sections, which keep expanding as Google adds more:

  • URL Inspection
    • The URL Inspection tool lets you get insights on specific URLs and how Google sees and indexes these. You’ll also see if the page is eligible for rich results.
  • Performance
    • In the Performance section, you’ll discover how your site is doing in the regular search results, on Discover, and Google News, if it is eligible for those.
  • Indexing
    • In the Indexing section, you’ll find all the insights you need to see how Google discovers and indexes your pages. You can also learn if and how Google is indexing the video content on your site. There’s also a section to check your XML sitemaps and any page removals you may have requested.
  • Experience
    • The Experience section gives you an idea of how Google values your page’s performance on mobile and desktop, with a little help from Core Web Vitals, and whether your pages are served via HTTPS connections.
  • Shopping
    • In the Shopping tab, you’ll find more information about how Google sees your products — if you own an ecommerce site or sell something else online. You can see which products have rich results, plus insights into your merchant listings and how you appear in Google Shopping.
  • Enhancements
    • The Enhancements section lists all the structured data that Google found on your site and whether or not it is eligible for rich results. This includes events, reviews, job postings, and more.
  • Security & Manual Actions
    • The Security & Manual Actions destination shouldn’t be visited often, as it lists security issues found by Google or when it issues a manual action against your site.
  • Links
    • The Links section overviews your site’s internal and external links.

Setting up an account

You’ll need to create an account to start using Google Search Console. Within Google Search Console, you can click on ‘add a new property’ in the top bar:

adding a new site property in the top left-hand side of the search console screen
Add a new property to get started

You can insert the website you want to add by clicking the ‘Add property’ button. If you choose the new Domain option, you only need to add the domain name without www or subdomains. This option tracks everything connected to that domain. With the ‘old’ URL prefix option, you must add the correct URL, so with ‘HTTPS’ if you have an HTTPS website and with or without ‘www’. To collect the correct data, it’s essential to add the correct version:

selecting the property type gives two options, for domain or url prefix
Choose domain if you want to track all your URLs or URL prefix if you want to track specific URLs

You must verify that you’re the owner when you’ve added a website. There are several options to verify your ownership. The Domain option only works with DNS verification, while the URL prefix supports different methods. You can learn more about the differences in Google’s documentation: adding a new property and verifying your site ownership. You can also use Google’s Site Kit WordPress plugin to connect Analytics and Search Console while giving you statistics in your site dashboard.

Add to Yoast SEO

For WordPress users who use Yoast SEO, get the verification code via the ‘HTML tag’ method from the Ownership settings in Search Console. Copy the long, random string of characters.

download html file to get the verification code
See your verification methods in the Google Search Console ownership settings

You can easily copy the code and paste it into the Google field in the ‘Site connections’ section in the settings of your Yoast SEO plugin:

in yoast seo general settings you'll find the site connections option to add the google search console verification code
Paste your code into the Google field to finish the process

After saving this, you can return to Google Search Console and click the ‘Verify’ button to confirm. If everything is ok, you’ll get a success message, and GSC will start collecting data for your website.

Features in Google Search Console

Now that you’ve set up your account, what’s the next step? Well, it’s time to look at some of your data! In the rest of this article, we’ll explore some of the reports and information available.

Performance tab

In the Performance tab, you can see the pages and keywords your website ranks for in Google. If you’re eligible for that, you’ll also find reports on your content’s performance in Google Discover and on Google News. You’ll get 16 months of performance data for your reports.

If you check the performance tab regularly, you can quickly see what keywords or pages need more attention and optimization. So, where to begin? Within the performance tab, you see a list of ‘queries’, ‘pages’, ‘countries’, or ‘devices’. With ‘search appearance,’ you can check how your rich results are doing in search. You can sort each section by the number of ‘clicks’, ‘impressions’, ‘average CTR’, or ‘average position’. We’ll explain each of them below:

performance section in google search console
The Performance overview harbors a ton of information

1. Clicks

The number of clicks tells you how often people clicked on your website in Google’s search results. This number can say something about the performance of your page titles and meta descriptions: if just a few people click on your result, your result might not stand out in the search results. It can be helpful to check what other results are displayed around you to see how you can optimize your snippet.

The position of the search result also impacts the number of clicks. If your page is in the top three of Google’s first result page, it will automatically get more clicks than a page that ranks on the second page of the search results.

2. Impressions

The impressions tell you how often your website or a specific page is shown in the search results. The number of impressions after this keyword shows how often our website is shown for that keyword in Google’s search results. You don’t know yet what page ranks for that keyword.

To see what pages might rank for the specific keyword, you can click on the line of the keyword. Doing this for a keyword, the keyword is added as a filter:

search performance data for a specific post on a site
You can query the data in many ways

Afterward, you can navigate to the ‘Pages’ tab to see what pages rank for this keyword. Are those pages the ones you’d want to rank for that keyword? If not, you might need to optimize the page you’d like to rank. Think of writing better content containing the keyword on that page, adding internal links from relevant pages or posts to the page, making the page load faster, etc.

3. Average CTR

The CTR – Click-through rate – tells you what percentage of the people who have seen your website in the search results also clicked through to your website. You probably understand that higher rankings mostly also lead to higher click-through rates.

However, you can also do things yourself to increase the CTR. For example, you could rewrite your meta description and page title to make it more appealing — Yoast SEO has AI features to help you do that. When the title and description of your site stand out from the other results, more people will probably click on your result, and your CTR will increase. Remember that this will not significantly impact you if you’re not ranking on the first page yet. You might need to try other things first to improve your ranking.

4. Average position

The last one on this list is the ‘Average position’. This tells you the average ranking of a specific keyword or page in your selected period. Of course, this position isn’t always reliable since more and more people seem to get different search results. Google seems to understand better and better which results fit which visitor best. However, this indicator still shows whether the clicks, impressions and average CTR are explainable.

Indexing

The’ Indexing’ section is a more technical but treasured addition to Google Search Console. This section shows how many pages have been in Google’s index since the last update, how many pages haven’t, and what errors and warnings caused Google to index your pages incorrectly. Google split this section into parts, collecting your regular pages and video pages while giving a home for your XML sitemap and the removals sections.

the indexing report in search console shows how google indexes your pages
You can see how Google indexes your content over time

We recommend you check this tab regularly to see what errors and warnings appear on your website. However, you also get notifications when Google has found new errors. Please check the error in more detail when you get such a notification.

You may find that errors are caused when, e.g., a redirect doesn’t seem to work correctly, or Google finds broken code or error pages in your theme. You also find error messages like “Crawled – currently not indexed“. Google has a long list of possible reasons why pages aren’t indexed and what you can do to fix that.

Clicking on one of the issues, you can analyze the error more in-depth to see what specific URLs are affected. When you’ve fixed the error, you can mark it as fixed to make sure Google will test the URL again:

example of an indexing errors, this is excluded by nonindex tag in search console
Fixed the specific error? Validate it so Google can check if it’s gone for real

Things to look out for

There are a few things you should always look for when checking out your indexing coverage reports:

  • If you’re writing new content, your indexed pages should steadily increase. This tells you two things: Google can index your site, and you keep your site ‘alive’ by adding content.
  • Watch out for sudden drops! This might mean that Google is having trouble accessing (all of) your website. Something may be blocking Google; whether it’s robots.txt changes or server downtime, you need to look into it!
  • Sudden (and unexpected) spikes in the graph might mean an issue with duplicate content (such as both www and non-www, wrong canonicals, etc.), automatically generated pages, or even hacks.

We recommend you monitor these situations closely and resolve errors quickly, as too many errors could signal low quality (poor maintenance) to Google.

URL Inspection

The URL Inspection tool helps you analyze specific URLs. You retrieve the page from Google’s index and compare it with the page as it lives now on your site to see if there are differences. You can also find more technical info on this page, such as when and how Google crawled it and how it looked at that moment. Sometimes, you’ll also notice several errors. This might be regarding Google’s inability to crawl your page correctly. It also gives information about the structured data found on this URL.

url inspection in search console showing if a page is indexed and if it has enhancements
The URL Inspection tool gives insights into every URL on your site

Experience

The experience report is an invaluable addition. It gives a good idea of how fast your site loads on mobile and desktop and how Google uses core web vitals to grade page experience. It shows which pages have issues that keep them from performing well. The data is based on the Chrome UX report, so it’s accurate data from real users.

Site speed, page experience, and user experience are complex topics with many moving parts, so learning how to think about page speed is good. The answer is here: how to check site speed.

page experience and core web vitals reports show urls that aren't good
Find out which pages offer a bad experience and how you can fix that

Enhancements: rich results

If you have structured data on your site — provided by Yoast SEO, for instance — it’s a good idea to check out the Enhancements reports in Search Console. The Enhancements tab collects all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. It lists all the structured data that Google found on your site. There’s an ever-expanding list of rich results, and you can find the following, among other things:

  • Breadcrumbs
  • Events
  • FAQs
  • Job postings
  • Profile pages
  • Review snippets
  • Sitelinks searchboxes
  • Videos

All these tabs show how many valid enhancements you have or how many have errors or warnings. You get details about the kind of errors and warnings and on which URLs these are found. There’s also a trend line that shows if the number of issues is increasing or decreasing. And that’s just the start of it.

an example of the enhancement reports in this case for job postings
Here’s an example of a job posting enhancement. You can overlay Impressions to get more context for the stats

The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder the performance of your rich results in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search. We have a more expansive guide on the structured data Enhancement reports in Google Search Console.

Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is a roadmap to all important pages and posts on your website. Every website would benefit from having one. Do you run the Yoast SEO plugin on your website? Then, you automatically have an XML sitemap. If not, we recommend creating one to ensure Google can easily find your most important pages and posts.

You can find an option for XML sitemaps within the Indexing tab of Google Search Console. Here, you can tell Google where your XML sitemap is located on your site:

google search console showing the status of your xml sitemaps
Don’t forget to check your XML sitemap

We recommend that everyone enter the URL of their XML sitemap into GSC to make it easy for Google to find. In addition, you can quickly see if your sitemap gives errors or if some pages aren’t indexed. Regularly checking this ensures that Google can find and read your XML sitemap.

We recommend regularly checking the XML sitemap section in our plugin to manage which post types or taxonomies you include in your sitemaps!

Shopping

Google Search Console also has a Shopping section. Here, you can check how Google sees your products and if they get proper rich results. You’ll see if they are valid or if they are missing fields that make the product snippets more prominent. Click on a product to see which fields are missing for particular products and if these are essential parts or nice-to-haves. If you’ve added these to the structured data of your products, you validate the fix in Search Console.

In the Shopping section, you’ll also find your Google Merchant listings and an option to enable shopping tab listings to show your products on the Shopping tab in Google Search. With these options, Google gives ecommerce site owners — and people selling stuff — more ways of checking how their listings are doing.

google search console shopping section showing the product snippets of a site
Optimize your product listings in Google search

Links

Within the links to your site section, you can see how many links from other sites are pointing to your website. Besides, you can see what websites link, how many links those websites contain, and what anchor texts are used most when linking to your website. This can be valuable information because links are still vital for SEO.

the links section in search console showing the top internal and external linked pages
Find out which pages receive lots of links

Within the internal links section, you can check what pages of your website are most linked from other spots on your site. This list can be valuable to analyze regularly because you want your most important pages and posts to get the most internal links. By doing this, you make sure Google understands your cornerstones as well.

per page information on external links in google search console
You can even see how many links individual pages get

Manual Actions

You don’t want to see anything in the manual actions tab. If Google penalizes your site, you’ll get more information. If your site is affected by a manual action, you’ll also get an email message.

Several scenarios can lead to these kinds of penalties, including:

  • You have unnatural/bought links
    Ensure links from and to your site are valuable, not just for SEO. Preferably, your links come from related content that is valuable for your readers.
  • Your site has been hacked
    A message stating your site’s probably hacked by a third party. Google might label your site as compromised or lower your rankings.
  • You’re hiding something from Google
    If you’re ‘cloaking’ (that is, intentionally showing different content to users to deceive them), or using ‘sneaky’ redirects (e.g., hiding affiliate URLs), then you’re violating Google’s guidelines (now known as Google Search Essentials).
  • Plain Spam
    Automatically generated content, scraped content, and aggressive cloaking could cause Google to blocklist your site.
  • Spammy structured markup
    If you use rich snippets for too many irrelevant elements on a page or mark up content hidden from the visitor, that might be considered spammy. Mark up what’s necessary and only necessary things.

Security issues

Within the security issues tab, you’ll get a notification when your website seems to have a security issue.

Google Search Console is essential

Reading this post should give you a good idea of what Search Console is capable of and how to use it, so we’d like to ask you this: Do you already use Google Search Console for your website? If not, create an account to collect data about your website. Do you think something is missing? Feel free to leave a comment!

Read on: How to make your site stand out in the search results »

The post How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide appeared first on Yoast.

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