Please understand that if a core update impacts a site, it can result in a huge change for that site’s search visibility. So, I do not want to diminish any core updates, including the March core update; those could have been really big for you or the sites you manage.
Data providers on the Google March 2025 core update
If you glance at the Semrush Senor, you can see the overall volatility the tool reported over that time period:
Mordy Oberstein, who sent me the data from Semrush, told me the two were of “similar in size” when comparing the volatility. He sent me this chart showing the volatility of the past two core updates, broken down by vertical. It shows the peak volatility numbers were pretty similar between the two updates:
If you look at overall ranking volatility change comparison, you can see that the Health sector saw a much bigger change, for some reason:
But when you compare this to the baseline rank volatility, both the December and March core updates were within very similar ranges, Mordy Obertstein told us. “There’s a mere .1 difference between the two,” Obertstein added. Obertstein said he has a theory, which he will share at his session at SMX Advanced, on why he thinks that this update hit different verticals differently.
When you dive into the top ten results, you can see a notable change in what ranking changes there were between these two past core updates:
Similarweb. Similarweb’s SERP Seismometer showed the spikes in volatility cooled down with the March update. You can see it get a bit more volatile on March 13th, 14th and 15th but then start to cool again as the core update rolled out.
Darrel Mordechai from SimilarWeb told us the March 2025 core update was not the most volatile core update they’ve seen and compared to the December core update, it showed “similar levels of volatility.”
Here is a chart showing the core update volatility by average position change for the past core updates, as documented by Similarweb:
Here is when you zoom in comparing the March 2025 and December 2024 core updates, they are super close:
The current update showed slightly lower fluctuations in the top three positions but increased volatility across the top five. Here is where you can see that in this chart:
When you compare it by vertical or niche, you can see the volatility the March 2025 core update caused across the health, finance, retail, travel and finance industries. You can see the finance industry showed the highest levels of fluctuation, particularly in the top five results. In contrast, the travel industry experienced notably low volatility in the top three positions.
seoClarity. The folks at seoClarity also sent me some winners and losers reports, showing the biggest winners and losers from February to March 2025:
Other tools. There are a lot of Google search ranking volatility tools. Here is what they looked like after the core update finished rolling out and over the course of the update:
Industry. The initial rollout seemed to kick in within a few days after the update was announced. Some sites saw big swings both up and down, in terms, of ranking improvements or decline. But this update did not seem as widespread as some previous core updates, where it had a wider impact on a more diverse site of sites. That is not to say this update was not big for those who were impacted by it – it 100% was very big for those sites.
During the update, some of the tracking tools were tripped up by some Google Search result page changes. That may make it hard for some to track the impact of this update. But you can use Google Search Console to see your impact for your site and see position changes for your most popular keywords.
What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. Google has not really given much new advice here.
There aren’t specific actions to take to recover. A negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages.
Google said you can see a bit of a recovery between core updates but the biggest change would be after another core update.
In short, write helpful content for people and not to rank in search engines.
“There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page,” Google said previously.
Why we care. While the data above shows how sites in general are doing with the last core update, it does not represent how your individual site did with the update. If your site was hit by this past update, it can be devastating. If you were hit by previous updates and so no improvement with this update, then again, devastating once again. But some sites saw big improvements.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/semrush-QW1xTP.png?fit=1694%2C728&ssl=17281694http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-01 12:38:472025-04-01 12:38:47Data providers: Google March 2025 core update had similar volatility to the previous update
Automatically sets your bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget.
Useful for top-of-funnel campaigns where the goal is to drive traffic to a site.
Example: “This campaign is designed to drive as much traffic to our new blog post as possible.”
Enhanced CPC (ECPC)
A semi-automated bidding strategy that adjusts your manual bids to try and get more conversions.
Google Ads adjusts your manual bid up or down based on the likelihood of a conversion.
Example: “We are using manual bidding but want to use Google’s signals to increase conversions where possible.”
Viewable CPM (YouTube)
Focuses on maximizing viewable impressions of your display or skippable in-stream video ads.
Ideal for brand awareness campaigns where the goal is to get your message seen by as many people as possible.
Example: “We want to ensure our brand message is visibly displayed to our target audience on YouTube.”
Cost Per View (YouTube)
Optimizes bids to get the most video views or interactions within your budget.
Best for campaigns focused on driving engagement with your video content.
Example: “We are running a video campaign on YouTube and want to maximize the number of views we receive.”
It’s crucial to understand that while setting a Target CPA or ROAS provides strategic direction, achieving those exact targets isn’t guaranteed.
I’ve had situations where a media planner pushed for an immediate switch to a specific CPA goal.
They wanted the target set at four times and wouldn’t budge or try to understand why the campaign was set at two times.
A common misconception is that simply setting a desired metric will automatically yield the desired results.
In practice, achieving optimal performance often requires a nuanced approach.
This may involve:
Gradual bid adjustments.
A willingness to accept temporary fluctuations in ROAS for broader account health.
A comprehensive evaluation of multiple factors, including budget, historical campaign performance, and keyword strategy.
It’s essential to understand that Smart Bidding strategies, while powerful, require strategic oversight and a holistic understanding of account dynamics.
Success should be measured within the context of overarching account objectives, not solely focusing on individual campaign metrics.
Understanding manual, automated and smart bidding in Google Ads
Manual bidding allows you to control bid adjustments completely, making it ideal for certain industries, such as legal or home services, where fluctuating competition requires ongoing oversight. However, it requires more time and effort.
It’s like driving a car where you control every gear shift and pedal movement.
Automated bidding simplifies bid management by using algorithms to adjust bids.
While automated bidding can save time, its generic approach doesn’t account for nuanced conversion goals.
Think of this as engaging cruise control. You tell the car (Google Ads) your general desired speed (goal), and it adjusts the engine (bids) to maintain that pace.
Smart Bidding, however, takes automated bidding further by using real-time signals and advanced machine learning to predict the likelihood of conversions and their value, tailoring bids to individual auctions.
It’s especially effective for campaigns with clear conversion goals and sufficient historical data.
This is like having a self-driving car with an incredibly sophisticated navigation system.
It’s important to know that while all Smart Bidding is automated, not all automated bidding qualifies as Smart Bidding.
Automated bidding covers a wider range of strategies, some of which are more basic and don’t rely on real-time signals or advanced machine learning.
In essence:
Manual: You control every bid.
Automated: Google’s algorithms handle bid adjustments based on your chosen strategy.
Smart: Google’s machine learning optimizes bids in real-time for conversions and conversion value.
There are significant advantages to using Smart Bidding.
Improved efficiency: Saves time by automating bid adjustments.
Auction-time optimization: Factors in user intent, device, location, and other data points to optimize bids for each auction.
Goal alignment: Customizes bids to match your campaign objectives, whether it’s maximizing volume or focusing on high-value actions.
While Smart Bidding offers significant advantages, missteps in implementation can lead to underwhelming results.
Here’s how to avoid common pitfalls and optimize your campaign performance.
Data dependency
Smart Bidding algorithms rely on robust historical data to make accurate predictions.
Campaigns with fewer than 30 conversions in the last 30 days may struggle to optimize effectively.
Start with manual bidding or Maximize Clicks to build a data foundation before switching to Smart Bidding. Boris Beceric, a Google Ads consultant and coach, said:
“I guess most try Smart Bidding too early – without enough conversion volume. What usually helps: consolidate campaigns so you get more data flowing through a single campaign. Portfolio bidding – kinda the same, but consolidation takes place at the bid strategy level.
“Micro conversions – try to add in the micro conversion that had the most volume and is closest to the ‘real’ conversion. Bonus: Reverse engineer CVR and conv value from micro to macro conversion and adjust tCPA accordingly.”
Goal misalignment
Using the wrong bidding strategy can hinder performance.
For example, applying Target ROAS to a new campaign with limited data can set unrealistic expectations and reduce reach.
Align bidding strategies with your goals.
When prioritizing profitability, use Maximize Conversions for volume and Target ROAS or Target CPA. Harrison Hepp, owner of Industrious Marketing, said:
“I had a client who was hybrid ecommerce and lead gen (they sold products, but high-priced deals were lead gen), and they insisted on tracking purchases and leads in every campaign. We constantly battled major fluctuations in the campaigns as they’d swing back and forth between getting purchases or leads and trying to optimize to both.
“It also made bid strategy selection really hard, as conversion value bidding would deprioritize leads (no value was tracked), but CPA bidding wasn’t efficient for purchases because of differences in product prices. It really showed how aligning your goals and bid strategy is critical for steady performance. It also underlined how the right bidding strategy can prioritize success in campaigns.”
Monitoring is non-negotiable
Despite its automation, Smart Bidding is not a “set it and forget it” tool.
Failing to monitor campaigns can lead to wasted ad spend and missed optimization opportunities.
Regularly review performance metrics, adjust campaign parameters, and stay proactive in managing Smart Bidding strategies.
“Custom columns/Segment views: We want to measure efficiency, so things like conv value/conv, search impression share, etc.” said Ameet Khabra, owner of Hop Skip Media.
Even with the most advanced AI behind Smart Bidding, performance optimization requires vigilance.
Regularly review the following metrics to ensure your strategy is working as intended:
CPA: Is your Target CPA being met?
ROAS: Are the conversions driving sufficient revenue?
Conversion rates: Are conversions coming from the right audience segments? Or are you paying for competitors to download your white papers and marking that down as a lead?
Search term reports: Are irrelevant keywords consuming a significant portion of your budget? Unprofitable keywords can be why a campaign is not meeting goals.
Conversion tracking accuracy: If conversion tracking is improperly implemented, Smart Bidding will optimize based on inaccurate data, reducing effectiveness.
Double-check your conversion tracking setup. Assign accurate values to conversions to reflect their true business impact. Khabra said:
“My favorite saying lately is ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ and that is definitely a large component of conversion tracking. Ensuring that we’ve identified the correct conversions that move the needle is half the battle. Implementing the tracking and double-checking that it is correct – collecting conversions – is the second half.”
Budgetary awareness
Strategies like Maximize Conversions and Maximize Clicks will attempt to spend your entire daily budget.
If your budget is set too high, this can lead to overspending.
Start with smaller daily budgets and gradually increase them while monitoring performance.
Realistic targets
Setting overly aggressive Target CPA or Target ROAS goals can limit your campaign’s reach, as the algorithm will avoid auctions it deems unprofitable.
Begin with realistic targets slightly higher or lower than your current average. Allow time for the algorithm to learn before refining the target.
Best practices for Smart Bidding in Google Ads
To ensure optimal performance, follow these best practices for implementing Smart Bidding in your Google Ads campaigns.
1. Feed accurate data
Ensure your conversion tracking is set up correctly.
Assign meaningful values to conversions – whether it’s a purchase, lead form submission, or newsletter signup.
2. Leverage seasonality adjustments
Use seasonality adjustments in Google Ads to guide Smart Bidding algorithms for short-term changes (e.g., holiday sales or promotions).
This prevents excessive or insufficient bids during periods of fluctuating demand.
3. Start with conservative budgets
Begin with smaller budgets and avoid aggressive bid caps that may limit auction participation. Allow the algorithm to learn and adapt gradually.
4. Prioritize business value over conversion volume
Align your bidding tactics with broader business goals. Instead of focusing solely on conversion volume, consider how each conversion contributes to revenue or lifetime customer value.
5. Test and adapt
Use Google Ads experiments to test different strategies.
For example, compare Target CPA with Target ROAS to identify which delivers better results for your campaigns.
Google Ads Experiments let you directly compare bid strategies in real-world scenarios.
Duplicate your campaign, allocate a split percentage to a new strategy (like comparing Target CPA vs. Target ROAS), and see concrete results with statistical significance.
Final thoughts
Smart Bidding isn’t just about knowing which technical settings to adjust.
It’s about understanding how to make Google’s automated tools align with your business goals.
The digital landscape evolves quickly, so it’s essential to stay adaptable, continuously monitor performance, and make adjustments as needed.
Nail the strategy, stay proactive, and you’ll set yourself up for long-term success.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Understanding-manual-automated-and-smart-bidding-in-Google-Ads-QKjaTQ.jpeg?fit=1472%2C832&ssl=18321472http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-04-01 12:00:002025-04-01 12:00:00Your guide to Google Ads Smart Bidding
Microsoft Advertising will require advertisers to provide explicit user consent signals starting May 5.
First communicated to advertisers a few weeks ago, this change ensures compliance with global privacy regulations while maintaining the ability to gather insights that optimize ad performance.
Why we care. As data privacy concerns grow, businesses face increasing pressure to protect personal information. Microsoft’s enforcement of Consent Mode offers a way to balance privacy with performance, reinforcing trust while meeting regulatory requirements.
What is Consent Mode? Consent Mode is a feature from Microsoft Advertising that respects user privacy preferences while allowing advertisers to track conversions and optimize campaigns. It adjusts cookie access based on user consent, using the ad_storage parameter to either allow or block cookies. This applies to:
Universal Event Tracking (UET) on the Microsoft Advertising Platform.
Universal Pixel, Segment, and Conversion pixels within Microsoft Invest, Curate, or Monetize.
Consent signals can also be shared through the IAB’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) or directly via a Consent Management Platform (CMP).
How to implement Consent Mode. Businesses can send user consent signals using one of these three options:
Direct integration. Implement Consent Mode with UET, Universal Pixel, Segment, or Conversion pixels.
IAB framework. Pass consent signals directly in a TCF 2.0 string or through a CMP.
Third-party tools. Integrate Microsoft’s Consent Mode through tools like Google Tag Manager.
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Reddit Ads is introducing a suite of new tools aimed at helping small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) streamline campaign management, optimize ad performance, and improve data accuracy.
Easier Campaign Setup and Management:
Campaign Import. Reddit Ads now allows advertisers to import campaigns directly from Meta in just three steps. After signing into their Meta account within Reddit Ads Manager, users can select an ad account and campaign to import, then customize it to fit Reddit’s platform. This seamless process enables advertisers to leverage high-performing Meta ads on Reddit quickly.
Simplified Campaign QA. A new review page in the Reddit Ads Manager now consolidates all campaign details for a clear overview. Advertisers can easily identify errors or inconsistencies and make edits before publishing.
Enhanced Signal Quality and Conversion Tracking:
1-Click GTM Integration for Reddit Pixel. Setting up Reddit’s website conversions tag just got easier. With the new Google Tag Manager (GTM) integration, advertisers can install the Reddit Pixel in a few clicks, enabling fast and accurate conversion tracking. This simplifies measuring customer journeys and optimizing lower-funnel strategies.
Event Manager QA. The Events Manager’s enhanced Events Overview page now provides a detailed breakdown of conversion events from the Reddit Pixel or Conversions API (CAPI). This update helps advertisers verify event data accuracy, troubleshoot issues, and run effective lower-funnel campaigns.
Why we care. The new Campaign Import feature lets advertisers quickly repurpose high-performing Meta ads on Reddit, saving time and effort. The simplified QA tools helps with quality checking to reduce as many errors as possible before launch, while the 1-click GTM integration and improved Event Manager provide deeper insights into customer behavior and campaign performance
Bottom line.These updates reflect Reddit’s ongoing commitment to making its ad platform more accessible and effective for SMBs. By reducing setup friction and providing better visibility into campaign performance, Reddit Ads aims to help businesses reach niche communities and drive impactful results.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Reddit-SEO-Everything-you-need-to-know-800x450-I093Gm.png?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1450800http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-03-31 14:00:242025-03-31 14:00:24Reddit Ads rolls out new SMB tools to boost campaign performance
Pagination is the coding and technical framework on webpages that allows content to be divided across multiple pages while remaining thematically connected to the original parent page.
When a single page contains too much content to load efficiently, pagination helps by breaking it into smaller sections.
This improves user experience and unburdens the client (i.e., web browser) from loading too much information – much of which may not even be reviewed by the user.
Examples of pagination in action
Product listings
One common example of pagination is navigating multiple pages of product results within a single product feed or category.
Let’s look at Virgin Experience Days, a site that sells gifted experiences similar to Red Letter Days.
In the URL, ?page=2 appears as a parameter extension, a common pagination syntax.
Variations include ?p=2 or /page/2/, but the purpose remains the same – allowing users to browse additional pages of listings.
Even major retailers like Amazon use similar pagination structures.
Pagination also helps search engines discover deeply nested products.
If a site is so large that all its products can’t be listed in a single XML sitemap, pagination links provide an additional way for crawlers to access them.
Even when XML sitemaps are in place, internal linking remains important for SEO.
While pagination links aren’t the strongest ranking signal, they serve a foundational role in ensuring content is discoverable.
Why pagination is still important in 2025: The infinite scroll debate
Alternate methods for browsing large amounts of content have emerged over the past couple of decades.
“View more” or “Load more” buttons often appear under comment streams, while infinite scroll or lazy-loaded feeds are common for posts and products.
Some argue these features are more user-friendly.
Originally pioneered by social networks such as Twitter (now X), this form of navigation helped boost social interactions.
Some websites have adopted it, but why isn’t it more widespread?
From an SEO perspective, the issue is that search engine crawlers interact with webpages in a limited way.
While headless browsers may sometimes execute JavaScript-based content during a page load, search crawlers typically don’t “scroll down” to trigger new content.
A search engine bot certainly won’t scroll indefinitely to load everything.
As a result, websites relying solely on infinite scroll or lazy loading risk orphaning articles, products, and comments over time.
For major news brands with strong SEO authority and extensive XML sitemaps, this may not be a concern.
The trade-off between SEO and user experience may be acceptable.
But for most websites, implementing these technologies is likely a bad idea.
Search crawlers may not spend time scrolling through content feeds, but they will click hyperlinks – including pagination links.
How JavaScript can interfere with pagination
Even if your site doesn’t use infinite scroll plugins, JavaScript can still interfere with pagination.
Since July 2024, Google has at least attempted to render JavaScript for all visited pages.
However, details on this remain vague.
Does Google render all pages, including JavaScript, at the time of the crawl?
Or is execution deferred to a separate processing queue?
How does this affect Google’s ranking algorithms?
Does Google make initial determinations before executing JavaScript weeks later?
There are no definitive answers to these questions.
If Google’s effort to execute JavaScript for all crawled pages is progressing well – which seems unlikely given the potential efficiency drawbacks – why are so many sites reverting to a non-dynamic state?
This doesn’t mean JavaScript use is disappearing.
Instead, more sites may be shifting to server-side or edge-side rendering.
If your site uses traditional pagination but JavaScript interferes with pagination links, it can still lead to crawling issues.
For example, your site might use traditional pagination links, but the main content of your page is lazy-loaded.
In turn, the pagination links only appear when a user (or bot) scrolls the page.
How to handle indexing and canonical tags for paginated URLs
SEO professionals often recommend using canonical tags to point paginated URLs to their parent pages, marking them as non-canonical.
This practice was especially common before Google introduced rel=prev/next.
Since Google deprecated rel=prev/next, many SEOs remain uncertain about the best way to handle pagination URLs.
Avoid blocking paginated content via robots.txt or with canonical tags.
Doing so prevents Google from crawling or indexing those pages.
In the case of news posts, certain comment exchanges might be considered valuable by Google, potentially connecting a paginated version of an article with keywords that wouldn’t otherwise be associated with it.
This can generate free traffic – something worth keeping in 2025.
Similarly, restricting the crawling and indexing of paginated product feeds could leave some products effectively soft-orphaned.
In SEO, there’s a tendency to chase perfection and aim for complete crawl control.
But being overly aggressive here can do more harm than good, so tread carefully.
There are cases where it makes sense to de-canonicalize or limit the crawling of paginated URLs.
Before taking that step, make sure you have data showing that crawl-efficiency issues outweigh the potential free traffic gains.
If you don’t have that data, don’t block the URLs. Simple!
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AI models like ChatGPT reflect societal biases that exist in their training data. Here’s a simple way to see this in action:
Ask it to draw a nurse. You’ll likely get a woman.
Now, ask it to draw a CEO. You’ll probably see a man.
Here’s what I got:
This gender bias isn’t just limited to images. ChatGPT can perpetuate stereotypes and biases around:
Gender roles and professions
Cultural perspectives
Socioeconomic assumptions
Historical narratives
Geographic representation
For example, when asked about “traditional family values” or “successful business practices,” ChatGPT might default to Western, male-dominated perspectives without acknowledging other viewpoints.
What does this mean for you?
Always cross-reference important facts from multiple sources
Be aware that ChatGPT’s responses may reflect societal biases
Ask follow-up questions to get different perspectives
Use ChatGPT as a starting point, not the final authority
Consider whose viewpoints might be missing from its responses
Remember: ChatGPT is an incredibly powerful tool, but it’s trained on human-created data—which means it inherits human biases. So, use it wisely by staying critical and conscious of these limitations.
How to Use ChatGPT: Step-by-Step Beginners Guide
If you’re new to ChatGPT, getting started is easy.
You’ll be using it like a pro in just a few steps.
Step 1: Choose the Right ChatGPT Account Type
There are three ways to access ChatGPT, depending on what you need.
Guest Access
You can try ChatGPT right away with “Guest Access.” No need to sign up.
Turn memory on, and ChatGPT will learn from your past conversations.
You won’t have to repeat yourself every time you start a new chat.
Over time, it’ll remember details and give you more relevant responses.
Turn memory off and every session starts fresh.
This is great if you prefer more privacy.
Or don’t want past conversations influencing future replies.
You can also erase stored memories.
Click “Manage memories” in the “Personalization” window.
And you’ll see a new window where you can erase all memories or delete specific ones.
Personalizing ChatGPT: Make It Work Your Way
ChatGPT doesn’t have to sound the same for everyone.
You can easily customize it.
Just go to “Profile” (at the top right) > “Customize ChatGPT.”
Then, enter basic details like your name and profession.
Next, customize ChatGPT’s personality.
You can specify:
Tone: Friendly, casual, professional?
Response length: Brief and direct or in-depth?
Persona: Strategist, a teacher, or something else?
For example, if you want it to write in Backlinko style, you could type:
Write in the Backlinko writing style. Be direct and cut the fluff. Every sentence should be actionable. Do not use long complicated words when a simpler, shorter word exists.
If you’re not sure what to write, you can ask ChatGPT.
Here’s one way you can do that using your brand’s messaging document.
Upload the brand guide to ChatGPT and write:
Attached is [YOUR BRAND’S] content guideline. In under 1,500 characters, summarize [YOUR BRAND’S] voice, tone, and personality.
Advanced tip: I’ve noticed that ChatGPT doesn’t always stick to the personality I want. If you see that, too, do this:
First, give it this instruction.
“You have different personas. When I write [keyword], use that persona.”
Then, define the persona:
For example, for Backlinko, I write:
“[backlinko]: Be direct. Write clearly. Use short, punchy sentences with a confident tone. Make it easy to skim and focus on real, tested advice. Skip the jargon and write using the active voice. Keep the language simple (6th-grade level).”
Now, whenever I want ChatGPT to respond in Backlinko’s style, I start the chat with [backlinko].
The great thing about this?
You can add multiple personas for different tasks. And then you just add [keyword] to call that persona into the chat.
Some of my favorites include:
[80/20]: Focus only on the 20% of knowledge or actions that drive 80% of results. Prioritize key takeaways.
[teacher]: Break concepts into step-by-step explanations with real-world examples, analogies, and case studies.
The final section in customization is “What should ChatGPT know about you?”
Here, you personalize ChatGPT to your life and work.
What should you add?
Think about how you’ll be using it, then add relevant instructions.
For example, if you’re vegetarian with some dietary restrictions and you often use it for meal planning, you can write:
My family is vegetarian. One of our children has a peanut allergy, and the other doesn’t eat onions. Always make sure that the meals you create follow these restrictions.
Here’s another example if you use ChatGPT for work.
Say you have an ecommerce store.
You could add:
I sell handcrafted plant baskets made from sustainable materials. I have customers all over the world who are eco-conscious. I write in a warm but expert tone. I’m knowledgeable but never preachy. I have a small marketing budget. I do mostly organic content and paid ads.
Control Your Privacy
By default, OpenAI may use your conversations to improve the model.
If you’d rather keep chats private, you can turn this off.
Go to “Profile” > “Settings” > “Data Controls” and toggle “Improve the model for everyone.”
Once you do this, it won’t use your conversations for training.
And that’s it.
Your AI is now customized for you.
Go test ChatGPT with a few questions.
And see how well it adjusts based on your customizations.
Still not customized the way you want it?
Go back to settings and keep refining.
Step 3: Learn to Write Better Prompts
If you want high-quality answers from ChatGPT, you need to write better prompts.
Bland or generic answers usually mean a prompting problem.
Why?
Because when you give ChatGPT a vague question, it has to fill in the gaps.
And from what I’ve seen, it plays it safe by giving you the most generic explanations.
You don’t want that.
So how do you fix it?
Let’s get Google to help.
In its prompting guide, Google states that a good, detailed prompt includes four elements:
Task: What you want ChatGPT to do (explain, analyze, compare)
Context: Relevant background info (who, what, where, why)
Persona: The role ChatGPT should take (expert, teacher, consultant)
Format: How the response should be structured (step-by-step, bullet points, examples)
Adding just task + context makes a big difference.
Use all four, and you get much better answers.
Let me show you the difference in answer quality between a basic and an optimized prompt.
A basic prompt:
Give me unique marketing tips for a tour guide.
What do you get?
A generic list that can work for any tour guide anywhere in the world:
Now, add task + specific context:
Since ChatGPT has specific details to work with, the answer is more relevant.
We’re not done yet.
How about using all four elements using this prompt?
Act as a tourism marketing expert with 20 years of experience. I’ve just started a tour company in Málaga, Spain. The competition is fierce, so I need to stand out. Your task: identify three unique viral marketing strategies. The output should be a numbered list with one real-world example for each.
That level of detail gives you a more hyper-specific answer:
Step 4: Get Better Results With Frameworks
Frameworks help ChatGPT focus its thinking so its response becomes clearer and more organized.
So, instead of saying, “Give me an SEO strategy,” or “Give me content ideas,” specify a framework.
For example, in the Málaga tour guide prompt above, try using the STP framework (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning).
You might say:
Act as a tourism marketing expert with 20 years of experience. Use the STP framework (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) to develop a unique marketing strategy for a tour guide in Málaga, Spain. Identify a specific segment of travelers, explain the best way to target them, and position the tour guide’s services for maximum appeal.
Much. Better. Answer.
But what if you don’t know any frameworks?
No problem.
Just ask ChatGPT.
All you have to do is choose the best one.
Step 5: Refine ChatGPT’s Responses with Follow-Ups
ChatGPT’s first answer isn’t always the best, especially for complex topics.
How do you improve it?
Keep asking questions.
Here’s what I mean.
Imagine you’re a social media manager launching a smart water bottle that reminds users to drink.
Your first prompt might be:
Give me a list of interactive social media campaign ideas. Context: We’re launching a new product: a smart water bottle that reminds users to drink. You’re a social media strategist with 10 years of experience.
ChatGPT gives you a list:
It’s a good start.
But it’s not enough to have a clear launch strategy.
So, you dig deeper.
If the reply is too generic, ask for more details.
If the answer is too theoretical, ask for clear, actionable steps.
Or you can focus on one thing in the list.
Keep refining your questions until you have everything you need.
By doing this, ChatGPT becomes more of a collaborative partner.
And you get a final output that’s a blend of AI and your knowledge and topical expertise.
Why not add everything in one big prompt?
You could.
But it’s not always the best approach.
Yes, some prompts are simple enough that they don’t need iterative refining.
But for complex ideas, refining step by step gives you more control over the output.
Personal insight: When conversations with ChatGPT get longer, it can go into a rabbit hole and lose track of the original task. When this happens, I bring it back with a prompt like:
“Go back to the original task. Do you remember it?”
If the response shows that it has forgotten some details from the original prompt, remind it explicitly:
“We were working on [ORIGINAL TASK]. Pick up from where we left off.”
This helps bring the conversation back to the task you set out to do.
Fun Ways to Use ChatGPT for Life and Work
One of the most powerful things about ChatGPT?
It can take on different roles.
It can be your personal assistant, researcher, strategist, problem-solver, and more.
ChatGPT as 24-7 Personal Assistant
ChatGPT can be your assistant for work and daily life.
Need help with life planning, SEO, or optimizing your habits?
Done.
For example, you can use it to review legal documents.
Upload a PDF, like a client agreement, and ask it to explain the legal jargon. Or point out unfair clauses.
It’s great for mundane tasks, too. Like cleaning up video transcripts.
Paste (or upload) the transcript.
And ask ChatGPT to organize it better.
Saves you so much time.
Personal insight: I recently used ChatGPT to help me organize my Obsidian vault (Obsidian is a personal knowledge management tool.)
I wanted a clean, scalable folder structure that matched my use case.
So, off to ChatGPT I went and wrote this prompt:
Create a folder structure for Obsidian that helps organize personal insights, research, and notes. The folder structure should make finding and linking notes easy while keeping things simple and scalable. Strictly limit to five main folders. Make sure it’s organized so it’s easy to expand over time. Your output should be in a clear, hierarchical bullet format.
This response gave me a solid starting point to structure my folders.
It also saved me time by giving me a clear framework to customize instead of figuring it all out from scratch.
ChatGPT as Your Analyst
ChatGPT is also great for processing and analyzing data.
A few things it can do:
Clean up raw data
Identify patterns
Extract insights
Side note: Data analysis works best with the paid plan. The free version may not always deliver the same level of detail.
Here’s a great example of how you can use its data analysis capabilities for digital marketing.
Let’s say you run an online store.
You want to analyze your competitor’s Google Shopping Ads using the Product Listing Ads (PLAs) data you got from Semrush.
Do this:
Upload the data to ChatGPT and use this prompt:
Analyze this Product Listing Ad (PLA) data for BestBuy.com from Semrush. Give me the top five takeaways that will help me. Show your work.
Just like that, ChatGPT will identify patterns and trends from the Semrush data:
Expert tip: Want to double-check the analysis? Add “Show your work” to your prompt. This tells ChatGPT to explain its thought process so you can verify and refine the answer.
ChatGPT as a Thought Partner
ChatGPT is great for learning and skill development.
For example, you can use it as a conversation partner when learning a new language.
You can also use ChatGPT to stress-test your thinking.
It can challenge your assumptions and poke holes in your reasoning.
I even use it to analyze my content outlines for writing projects.
Fun fact: Being nice to ChatGPT can lead to better responses. Research shows that using polite, supportive prompts leads to better answers.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-03-31 11:43:412025-03-31 11:43:41How to Use ChatGPT to Get 10X Better Answers
Writing quality content should be a key aspect of every SEO strategy. But when is your content considered good or high-quality? And does quality mean the same for your users as for Google? In this article, we’ll discuss creating content and how you can make sure it hits the mark. It will require some creative writing skills. But don’t worry, you don’t have to become the next big author! By focusing on the right things, you can create high-ranking quality content that your users will happily read.
What is quality content?
That is the million-dollar question. Knowing how to write good content helps you get more visitors, higher conversions, and lower bounce rates. But who determines the quality of your content? The easy answer: your users. However, this also makes creating the right content more difficult. Because every user is different and has a different search intent. They have, however, one thing in common: every user knows what they want.
Although your users eventually determine the quality of your content, you can take a few steps to ensure you end up with well-thought-out, readable, and attractive content. In other words, content that’s eligible to be considered high-quality by your users and search engines. Luckily, a lot of the aspects that users will appreciate about your content are the same as the aspects search engines look for in quality content.
How search engines determine quality content
Search engines want to present their users with the exact content they seek. Content that is helpful, reliable and people-first and aligns with their current search intent. To help you create good content, Google has an acronym that you can consult: E-E-A-T.
Search engines decide on what is content quality by assessing a number of things – relevance, clarity and helpfulness, credibility and uniqueness. This all ties into the importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) in any strategy around brand or topical authority.
Alex Moss – Principal SEO at Yoast
The acronym E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. In their ongoing search for the best content, Google has added this acronym to their search quality raters guidelines. They use this to assess and judge the quality of online content. Although it’s especially important for so-called YMYL websites (“Your Money Your Life” – sites that are related to well-being, health, finances or safety), these guidelines apply to all content out there.
Why is quality content important?
Quality content is the foundation of a strong brand, helping you establish authority and expertise in your industry. Well-crafted content speaks directly to the needs of your audience, providing valuable insights that position your brand as a reliable source. Whether it’s through blog posts, social media, or in-depth guides, delivering high-quality content builds long-term relationships with customers, fosters engagement, and strengthens brand credibility.
Beyond its impact on branding, quality content plays a crucial role in SEO. As mentioned above, search engines prioritize helpful, well-structured, and informative content that truly benefits users. By focusing on producing valuable content that answers queries effectively, you can achieve higher rankings in the search results. This leads to increased visibility, organic traffic, and better engagement, which will help you grow your website sustainably. To scale content creation effectively, check out this guide on scaling content. Additionally, if you mainly write content for your clients’ website, make sure to check out our article on writing valuable content that your clients will love.
7 steps to start creating high-quality content
To ensure the quality of your content, there are 7 steps that you can follow. Let’s go into them in more detail.
1. Write for your readers, not yourself
If you have an ecommerce site, you want readers to know about the products or services you offer. If you’re a blogger, you want readers to get to know you and the topics that interest you. However, it’s also important to consider what your users want to read about. What interests do they have? What events or news do they follow that you can relate to your business? And what ‘problems’ are they trying to fix that have led them to your site?
The first step in creating high-quality content is ensuring it contains the information your audience is looking for. To find out what your users are looking for, you have to conduct proper keyword research. This will help you determine what subjects to write about and what words your audience uses. Keyword research also helps your rankings, as more visitors and lower bounce rates tell Google that your page is a good result to show in their search results.
2. Think about search intent and your goal
Search intent is the reason why someone conducts a specific search. It’s the term used to describe their purpose. For example, do they have a question they need answered? Or do they want to buy something online? Someone’s search intent makes a difference in how they consider the quality of your content. If it fits their need at that moment, then they will stay on your page longer. But if they need an answer to a question and the page they land on only tries to sell them products, they’ll be gone before you know it.
Match goals to different search intents
It’s important to consider search intent while creating content for a specific page. That’s why we advise you to match your goals to users’ different search intents. Is one of your goals to increase newsletter subscriptions? Then, you should add that subscription button to pages where users with an informational intent land. Does a visitor have a transactional intent (meaning: they want to buy something)? Make sure they land on a product or category page dedicated to the product they are looking for.
Of course, experience tells us it’s not always that black and white. Still, it’s good to consider your users’ search intent. It helps you determine the focus of your content and what call-to-actions you want to add. A great way to get started is by adopting a content design mindset. This mindset helps you produce user-centered content based on real needs. Also, we recommend looking at the search results for some input to create great content.
3. Make your content readable and engaging
Do you want to get your message across? And do you want people to read your entire blog post or page? Then, make your content easy to read. This means that you should:
Think about the structure of your text and the words you use. Too much text without any headings or paragraphs, also known as a wall of text, tends to scare people off. Use headings and whitespace to give your readers some air while reading.
Try to limit the use of difficult words and be cautious of the length of your sentences. Both can make your content harder to understand, which will slow down and frustrate your reader.
Variation in your text will make it engaging. Use synonyms and alternate longer sentences with shorter ones to mix it up.
Another important thing to focus on: Have fun! And be conversational in your writing. This helps you write high-quality content that is different from your competitors’ and helps users get to know you and your brand.
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness can all be used to improve your content. So how can you make sure to include these in your writing? We’ll go through them one by one and give you some pointers.
Share your experience
Although the acronym started as E-A-T, they added another E shortly after. This newly added E stands for experience. They prefer content that showcases knowledge or skills gained through first-hand experience. This can be gained through personal involvement or observations related to the topic at hand. To give an example, someone who has worked as an optician for many years will be experienced in the topic of eyesight. Or someone who has a prescription themselves will also have experience on the topic.
The second E in E-E-A-T stands for expertise. Although it makes sense that this would be an important factor in determining the quality of content, it is trickier to evaluate. So what Google does is find out what it can about the author itself. What is their reputation when it comes to the topic at hand? What is their background? And what other (reliable) sources are they referring to? When it comes to this criterion, it will pay off to be clear about your expertise and where it comes from online.
Related to expertise, the next letter stands for authoritativeness. An authority can be defined as a person or organization having power or control in a particular area. When you’re an authority on a topic, you often have the proper knowledge on it. That’s why official websites often have a higher chance of being perceived as the authority on a topic. But also aspects like qualifications and being associated with well-known organizations count towards this. If this one is tricky for you, don’t worry. It’s just one of the aspects Google looks for when determining quality. If this one doesn’t fit your blog or business, just focus more on the other letters in the acronym.
The last one probably doesn’t come as a surprise, as this is something we all look for when browsing online. The trustworthiness of the content before you. Whether it’s for a product you want to buy or information that you’re looking for, trust plays a big role in how serious you take online content. If it doesn’t feel right, a user will hesitate in the best case and leave your website in the worst. Google’s guidelines are quite clear on how they determine the trustworthiness of a website: “An unsatisfying amount of any of the following is a reason to give a page a low-quality rating: customer service information, contact information, information about who is responsible for the website or information about who created the content.” So make sure to be clear on these and look for other opportunities to show your trustworthiness.
Another key element of writing high-quality content is ensuring it’s up-to-date and relevant. This means you have to update your content occasionally to ensure people can find the right information. But why is this so important? It shows your users that you’re on top of recent developments and can always provide them with accurate information. In other words, it builds trust and keeps your audience returning to your site.
Keeping your website and blog posts updated is also important for SEO, as this shows Google that your site is ‘alive’ and relevant. So, make sure you schedule a time to update your content regularly.
The five steps we’ve discussed so far will help you write content that is easy to read and user-centered. Now, we’d like to highlight an equally important step: working on your site structure. It’s important because it will help users and search engines find your content.
Site structure refers to the way you organize your site’s content. When you structure your site well, search engines can index your URLs better. It helps Google determine the importance of your pages and which ones are related to each other. A good site structure allows users to find their way around your site more easily. It will help them find quality content in the search results and on your website. That’s why there’s much to gain from perfecting your site structure.
7. Use Yoast SEO to perfect your content
The last tip I want to share is the content analysis in our very own Yoast SEO plugin. This feature gives you real-time feedback on your content while you’re editing your page in the backend. It monitors whether you use your chosen keyword often enough and in the right places, it looks at text length and gives you feedback on readability. For example, it tells you when you use the passive voice too much, whether you’re using enough subheadings, gives you feedback on word complexity and the use of transition words. All of this and more is available in the free version to help you improve the readability and quality of your content.
The content analysis in Yoast SEO Premium goes a bit further and also does the following:
Allows you to optimize your text for related keyphrases and synonyms
Recognizes different forms of your keyphrase, so you can focus on writing naturally
Recognizes singular and plural, and also tenses of verbs
Gives access to our AI features, like Yoast AI Optimize, suggesting changes in your content
Gives you access to all the Yoast SEO academy courses, including our SEO copywriting training!
Buy Yoast SEO Premium now!
Unlock powerful features and much more for your WordPress site with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin!
Good, high-quality content will positively affect your SEO in the long run. So, before publishing post after post (or page after page), make sure to keep the following in mind. Make sure to write for your readers, make your content readable, match search intent with your goals, be trustworthy, keep your content up to date, and work on your site structure.
The result? Good content that your readers will appreciate. This will positively affect your number of visitors, conversions and eventual revenue. If you want to learn more tips and tricks, make sure to read our guide to SEO copywriting!
Shopify has become the leading online shopping platform in just a few years. It has become an anti-Amazon, helping small and large retailers worldwide run successful online stores with minimal effort. Although the ecommerce platform makes everything easy, there’s a lot you can do to improve the SEO of your online shop. In this ultimate guide, we’ll help you get on the right track by giving you many tips and tricks. In addition, we’ll tell you the best SEO app, and we have a Shopify SEO checklist for you!
While Shopify helps you set up everything correctly from the start, there are some things to consider when considering SEO. As with all content management systems, you must optimize your store to ensure it performs well for customers and search engines.
With Shopify SEO, you’re building a technically sound store that is tuned to what potential customers are looking for. You will use SEO in such a way that you build a much better solution than what your competitors are doing. You use research to find out what customers need, and you use the power of high-quality content to draw people in.
The Shopify SEO tips also have to do with what you do to market your store in other places — both online and offline. At Yoast, we practice holistic SEO and advise you to do the same — it’s the only way to get sustainable results.
Yoast SEO for Shopify
Want to outclass your competitors and boost your Shopify store’s organic traffic? Yoast SEO for Shopify has everything you need, from creating top-notch content to making your products eligible for rich results in Google. Our 24/7 support team and valuable SEO courses will ensure you stay ahead of the curve.
Shopify ensures you set up your store quickly and that customers and search engines can reach it. It already has some basic SEO features, and you can use SEO apps such as Yoast SEO for Shopify for many of the other tasks. Of course, this being a closed platform, your control over SEO is limited to what the developers allow.
For instance, you have to use the built-in URL structure and a system to manage your products in so-called collections, but these can be suboptimal and might cause duplicate content issues. In the rest of this guide, we will go through the SEO basics you need to cover and how Shopify and Yoast SEO can help you.
It’s an excellent platform to host your online shop, but there’s a lot you can do to make it perform even better. SEO can help you get your store noticed on Google and other platforms while making it more attractive to potential customers. In this guide to Shopify SEO, we’ll give you loads of tips — and a checklist — to make your ecommerce site successful.
1. Define who you are and what you stand for
To kick things off, we need you to think about who you are. Why does your business exist, and why do you need people to visit your store and buy your products? What makes you stand out from the competition? If everyone sells the same products, what would be your number one reason for people to come to you?
Define a mission for your store. A mission is an effective way of explaining what you have in your head. It provides a line that you can connect to your values and principles. You can use your mission as input for your online store’s SEO and marketing strategy. We have a post explaining exactly what you need to do to define a good mission and what to do with it.
Branding and storytelling are essential — so is having a mission!
2. Conduct keyword research for your store
SEO for your Shopify store must start with keyword research. Keyword research for online stores produces a list of terms you want your products, services, or store to be found. It will also give you insights into your audience, which words they use, which solutions they prefer, and how they behave. If you do it well, you can instantly fill in your SEO strategy for your site.
Various tools out there can help you get those insights quickly. You could use Google Trends, Answer the Public, or more professional tools like Ahrefs and Semrush — Yoast SEO for Shopify even integrates with Semrush. You can even use generative AI tools like OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google Gemini to inspire you.
Do thorough research and find out which terms are used most often. Find out what people usually search for and which phrases have search volume that you might aim for. Remember that trying to aim for the most popular head terms only might not make the most sense — try to aim for more long-tail keywords that still attract traffic.
It would help if you also looked at the different search intents around your products or services. No one goes from not needing something to buying it in the next second. The buyer journey has a number of steps, and you need to provide content for those steps.
3. Look at what the competition is doing
When doing keyword research, you must also see what your competition is doing. There are a ton of competitors operating in every niche you can imagine. Whenever you are looking at entering a market — or growing your piece of the pie — you must look at the competition. Who are they? What do they stand for? What’s their offering? Their prices? Service? How do they talk about the product? Who are they targeting, and by which terms do they do that?
Looking at your competitors gives you an idea of who to beat. You might find a weakness in their store or a strategy you might use. Or, you can find something that inspires you to work from. Please look at their content; are they writing thoroughly and with expertise about the product? Is that something you can improve on?
Shopify SEO tips in a handy checklist
This is a pretty epic Shopify SEO article, and we can imagine it is hard to keep track of all the great tips. Luckily, we put all the main tips in a handy little Shopify SEO checklist. Download the pdf and get started on the SEO of your store!
4. Write unique and high-quality product descriptions
Together with product photography, product descriptions are the life and blood of your online store. With good product descriptions, customers can get a good feel for a product without having it in hand. The problem is many online shops count on the descriptions manufacturers supply to stores. You can probably guess what that means: the same descriptions litter the web, causing duplicate content issues.
Writing your product descriptions can help you establish trust with the consumer. Having your content in your own words makes you more unique and lets you stand out from the crowd. Do keyword research for the products to determine which terms your consumers use. Use those terms in your descriptions and craft a compelling piece of content from that. Incorporate the details from the manufacturer, like SKU and product titles, but don’t rely on their descriptions.
Helping you improve your product descriptions is one of the standout features of Yoast SEO for Shopify. The app gives you suggestions while writing your descriptions and tips to help you improve both readability and SEO.
Taylor Stitch gives you everything you need to know about a product on one screen
Just as your product descriptions should be excellent, your titles and meta descriptions should also be epic. Title and meta descriptions are essential aspects that you can focus on to improve Shopify’s SEO. Use your keywords tactically and write something enticing those consumers want to click.
Shopify automatically generates titles and meta descriptions based on a straightforward template. You can edit your products’ titles, meta descriptions, blog posts, pages, collections, and general site settings.
Go to a specific page and open the search engine listing preview. Add a title and meta description for the search results pages here. These differ from the regular titles and descriptions, as these are specifically meant for the search results. You might have a specific title visible on your store and choose something else to show on the search results pages.
Quickly edit the information that will show up on the search results pages
You can edit these in Shopify, but Yoast SEO makes this process much more manageable. This SEO app comes with the incredible power of variables — and generative AI. Using variables, you can automatically generate part of the title and the meta description based on your settings. Of course, it’s always better to write both yourself, but this allows you to automate some parts, which can be helpful when you have many products. The same goes for AI in Yoast SEO!
6. Create SEO-friendly URLs in Shopify
SEO-friendly URLs are easy to read, relatively short, and consistent. Unfortunately, the CMS is inflexible, and there is little wiggle room to improve your URL structure. If you sell ugly Christmas sweaters, your Shopify collection URL looks like this:
The only thing you can change in this setup is the last part. Many people feel that there should be a way to have Shopify give more control over the rest.
7. Fix your site structure with internal linking and proper navigation
One of the most impactful tips to improve your Shopify SEO is fine-tuning your site structure and navigation. The more logical your site is, the better and easier customers and search engines like Google can navigate it and find what they need.
Your site structure should follow a logical path, and your collection system should make sense. Please keep it simple. You can see collections as categories, so use the collections to keep customers from having trouble understanding your site. It’s also nice if they don’t have to wade through a million products to find what they need. Make sure to give the collection overview pages the love they need. At the least, give these a proper description.
Internal links are essential
Internal linking helps you give the most critical pages proper weight. By linking to your product pages from various parts of your online shop, you signal to search engines that these are important. With proper anchor texts, you can identify the destination and tell search engines in words what to expect from that link. All of this helps search engines understand your site.
For your navigation, keep it as straightforward as possible. Use recognizable terms and destinations; your menu should describe where a click would lead. Contact us says a lot more than Touch base, right?
Your most important pages should appear in your navigation. While the age-old three-click rule for navigating to all the pages on your site was debunked quite a while ago, there’s still a lot to be said for keeping everything within reach. Your most important pages should be accessible without digging for them.
8. Make products findable with an XML sitemap
XML sitemaps are like maps detailing all the routes to the different parts of your website. Search engines use sitemaps to discover new and updated content. This also applies to your online shop. Shopify will automatically generate an XML sitemap based on your site structure. Your XML sitemap will include product pages, collections, blog posts, and pages.
You can find your sitemap at the following URL, with example.com being your domain, of course:
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
There’s a set limit for XML sitemaps of 50.000 URLs. As many sites have more than that, they will generate sub-sitemaps with fewer URLs. The Shopify sitemap, for instance, can contain up to 5.000 URLs, after which the platform breaks these up into smaller parts. This also has the added benefit of speeding up the loading times of these sitemaps.
To a certain extent, Yoast SEO for Shopify lets you control what appears in your XML sitemap. For instance, you can add a noindex to determine that a specific page or post won’t appear in the search results. You can also decide whether archive pages should or should not appear in the XML sitemaps. For the most part, though, your out-of-the-box settings will be good enough. But if you want to tailor your crawling, you can.
Yoast SEO for Shopify helps you determine what does and doesn’t appear on Google
9. Streamline the number of Shopify apps you use
While trying out every Shopify app under the sun is exciting, keep yourself in check. Many apps are bulky and heavy on JavaScript. Adding many apps will add much extra code to your store, as everything must be constantly loaded. One of the most crucial performance improvements you can make is to keep the number of apps low. Think about what you need for your store, pick the best apps that do that job, and remove the rest.
10. Optimize images for SEO
Images are an essential asset for every online store. Customers can only get a good feel for the product with great photos. But you need to offer all those images in the best way. Optimizing your images is one of the best and quickest tips to improve your Shopify SEO.
The importance of good product images
Good product images make it clear what a product is all about. It helps consumers view products from all angles without having the product in their hands. Product images need to be good, as they are one of the main drivers of conversion. Good photos also can catch the eye of the shopper. Great photos stand out in visual search engines like Google Images, Instagram, or Pinterest.
Optimize the file sizes
One of the essential tips to improve the SEO of your Shopify store is optimizing your images. It’s also something everyone can do — whether you are a seasoned ecommerce SEO expert or just starting. Optimizing your images, compressing them, and giving them proper names helps!
Lazy loading images
Another effective way to improve the loading times of your images is by lazy loading them. With lazy loading, the images will only load once they appear on the screen. Of course, you should always load all your images, as you want the images at the top of your browser window to always be visible. For the rest, lazy loading is a good choice.
Preventing CLS
While at it, check if your theme enforces width and height attributes on img tags. This helps avoid cumulative layout shift (CLS), one of Google’s metrics to determine your Core Web Vitals scores. CLS happens when elements move around during loading because image boundaries haven’t been defined. This causes jerkiness, and that’s a sign that your user experience is lacking for Google. You can try this by running your online store through Google’s page quality checks at web.dev/measure. You can also learn why and how to optimize your site for CLS on that site.
Many sites still have visual elements that can use a proper width and height specification to prevent CLS
Add alt text and good file names
Alt text is crucial for both SEO and web accessibility, and there are essential tips to follow when writing them for your product images. Firstly, it’s vital to be descriptive in the alt tag and clearly and concisely describe the product’s features, manufacturer, and model number.
You can add an alt text in Shopify’s media editor
File names also help Google understand your image. Suppose your file name is DSC37612.jpg, which says nothing about what the image contains. Add something useful. For example, if you sell iPhones and the photo shows a close-up of the back camera of an iPhone 15, you can give the file a name like this: iphone_15_back_camera_closeup.jpg. You see this, and you know right away what the image contains. Try to add relevant keywords as well if it makes sense.
11. Add a blog to your Shopify store
You can create a blog on Shopify quite easily. Compared to WordPress, it has a basic blogging engine that functions appropriately, and you can get started without much effort. Blogging on your ecommerce store can be an excellent way to enhance your SEO strategy as you try to reach an audience via search engines. It’s a beautiful way to offer customers more insights into your products and company.
Starting a blog on Shopify is very easy. Open your online store and navigate to blog posts in the sidebar. You can add a blog post from here by clicking the green button. By default, the blog is called News, but you can change that to anything you want. You could also run several blogs side-by-side. If you need help setting up your blog, we have a more detailed post about adding a blog to your store. Check it out!
If you have Yoast SEO for Shopify installed, there’s another way to improve your blog posts. Click Apps > Yoast SEO, and you’ll see an overview of all your products, collections, pages, and blog posts ready for you to optimize. Open the post you choose to edit, and you’ll get the full Yoast SEO readability analysis and SEO analysis. You can manage everything, from crawling directives for search engines to defining the proper article structured data.
Optimizing your store with Yoast SEO for Shopify it get noticed by Google
Is blogging good for my Shopify store?
Blogging can be a good asset for your Shopify SEO strategy. For many fledgling stores, growth mainly comes from paid ads. Focusing on content marketing through a blog allows you to expand your reach and form a connection with your customers. But, as with everything, it depends on how you use it. Don’t go at it randomly; you need to strategize.
First, you have to determine the goal of your blog. Do you want to reach new customers, build your brand, form a bond with your current customers, or do something else? What type of content would you want to share — or, instead, what content resonates with your customers? Think about how the user might find you — in other words, map out the user journey. And don’t forget about keyword research! Use those insights to build a content strategy for your Shopify store.
When you have a strategy, you can build the blog content on your store. Use cornerstone content as a basis and add articles supporting that main content, so you can fully describe your topic from all angles — and connect everything by proper internal linking. Be sure to write high-quality, unique content that comes across as trustworthy and authoritative.
Yoast SEO for Shopify
Get more organic traffic by creating the best product and blog content. Make your products eligible for rich results in Google. Plus, you’ll get access to our top-notch SEO courses and fantastic support team (24/7). Check out the Yoast SEO for Shopify product page, or get the app now!
Your theme is an essential part of your online shop. Your chosen theme influences many things — from branding to user experience to conversions. Everything depends on how awesome your Shopify theme is. Luckily, there’s ample choice in the Theme Store, and many of these should function perfectly fine for your store.
Let’s go over a couple of things you should look out for when choosing a theme:
Determine what you want and need: Will you run a store with a single product or a theme that can handle thousands or more? The theme store has a handy selection of themes for stores with large and small catalogs. What type of design do you need? What options do you need?
Figure out your budget: Themes in the Shopify theme store run from free to a one-time payment of a couple hundred dollars. Check what you are willing to spend. Free works for some, but then you hardly get support from the developer. Paid themes often come with more options and tend to be better built.
Check the themes in the marketplace: Quite a few themes are available. Shopify has even structured these into several collections, such as catalog size or the type of industry, such as clothing or electronics. You can filter on different properties, like features you need for the product pages or what’s available on a shop’s homepage. Now, almost 200 themes are available in the Theme Store.
Read the reviews: You are probably not the first to pick a theme, so it’s a good idea to read the reviews of people who worked with it.
Check the support the developer offers: Every theme comes with documentation and support, but the level and quality of support differ from developer to developer. Read the documentation and check around. Don’t be afraid to ask your questions.
Ensure the Shopify theme is lean and mean: Many themes want everything and appeal to every store owner. But that means that there’s bound to be stuff built in that you don’t need. Keep in mind that all those features come at a price. Try to find a theme that has low overhead and loads lightning fast.
You can try the demos and check out other stores that run the theme: The theme store offers demos for all the themes, and you’ll need to check these out. Also, Shopify provides examples of stores that run the specific theme you are looking at. It’s a good idea to closely examine those online stores and run them through their paces. For instance, run a performance test on web.dev/Measure and see how they do. You’d be surprised at the results.
Check mobile-friendliness: As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to shop, your online shop must function correctly. Again, the theme store allows you to see a mobile view of the theme.
Test the user experience: The theme store also gives you a good idea of how users might experience the store. Click around, see the various layouts, and check how images load, how the animations work, the structure of the menu, and how it all feels. You can also try out the theme on your store to get an even better sense of how the theme feels and performs.
Pay extra attention to the shopping cart: Does it feel like it wants customers to move through the process as quickly as possible? Or are there elements that take away focus? Are there other distractions? Is there room to expand the basic cart with upsells/cross-sells, promotions, and the like? Test your cart to see if you can reduce shopping cart abandonment rates.
An example of a Shopify theme in the Theme Store
For total control, build your own Shopify theme
Having your own theme built might not be something you start with, but it offers many opportunities to take your store to the next level. With a self-built theme, you are in control, and you get to define what it looks like, what it needs, and how it functions. You can make it as lean or as complex as possible.
Building your theme is a good idea if you reach the limits of what’s possible with a pre-built theme. Only so much customization is possible in an existing theme — both in a technical and design sense. You have much more control over the conversion optimization options if you do it yourself.
Building your theme is quite complex, and you must consider what you want and need. It would help if you planned to ensure you avoid issues later. Of course, it’s possible to go into the nitty-gritty yourself, but there are also agencies out there that can help you get this done. The developer section of Shopify has ample documentation to help you learn more about building and adapting store themes.
8 technical SEO optimizations for Shopify
Much of what you should focus on for Shopify SEO in your day-to-day activities is content-focused. You are working on your product descriptions and content marketing, and you won’t be rebuilding your theme every day. Still, there are several things you can do to improve your Shopify store in a technical SEO sense. Let’s go over a couple of highlights.
1. Optimize for speed
As a managed platform, Shopify works hard to provide users with a speedy experience. Shopify focuses heavily on speed to help customers quickly improve those all-important loading times. Fast converts!
If your store loads slowly, customers will leave it and try a competitor. Luckily, the CMS prioritizes performance. For instance, it has an automatic content delivery network (CDN) for hosting your content on servers near your customers. In addition, it has a performance report that gives you insights into how well your store is performing regarding loading speed. For this, Shopify uses Lighthouse to get real-world results on your store’s performance.
While it provides a good platform by default, there are other things you can do to speed up your online store. For one, you should pick a highly optimized, lightweight theme — or get one built based on your specifications. Ensure that you properly optimize images on your site and take care not to use too many photos. Discard those sliders — nobody uses these anyway — and don’t install tens of apps you hardly use.
Regularly running a Lighthouse test gives you great insights into the performance of your Shopify store
2. Prevent duplicate content
We’re talking about duplicate content when a product or content appears on multiple URLs. This is not ideal, as Google might need clarification about the main one. Therefore, duplicate content can hinder your search performance.
Thanks to Shopify’s preference for collections, a specific product you add to a collection will be visible on two different URLs:
Not ideal! Luckily, the second one is canonicalized to the first one, but this causes a headache. Recent themes, like the Dawn Shopify theme, have improved and now automatically output the correct URL.
3. Working with product variants
Shopify works well with product variants like sizes or colors. You have plenty of options to make different combinations of whatever you like. The thing with variants is that it’s hard to get them to show in Google properly. You might not need that depending on your needs, but if you want the different variants of products to be indexed, you might be better off turning your variants into individual products.
Of course, you must provide sufficiently different product descriptions for each to appear individually in Google.
4. Faceted navigation or product filters
Shopify has only a handful of filtering options for your online store—no Amazon-style mega menu for you! Luckily, there are ways to add more filters to your navigation. There are two options: add your custom filters if you use an Online Store 2.0 compatible theme or add an app to manage them.
The first option is relatively straightforward but might be limited, while the second option opens up a world of possibilities. Product filter apps give you more control over how you want to categorize and visualize the faceted navigation. They also come with intelligent options that make it easier to load filters based on loads of variables dynamically.
Whatever you pick, ensure that the parameters generated by the faceted navigation don’t end up in the search results pages — block them in the robots.txt liquid file with a disallow rule.
5. Editing robots.txt to determine what ends up in search engines
The e-commerce platform hired top-notch SEO people to help expand and improve its capabilities. One of the things that came out of that team pretty quickly was the new ability to edit the robots.txt file. Having complete control over robots.txt gives you more ways to control what Google can and can’t do in your store. This takes away one of the most significant issues SEOs have with Shopify.
The robot.txt file is one of the crucial tools that you can use to optimize your online store or your website. It gives a way to tell Google how you want them to crawl the site. Ideally, you use this to prevent search engines from crawling less critical pages or sections of your site. For huge ecommerce sites, this is very important.
You can find your robots.txt file at https://example.com/robots.txt. Here’s what a standard robots.txt of Shopify looks like:
Shopify automatically disallows crawling for several parts of the store. It does this well; most users don’t have to touch this file. However, adding rules to ensure that more advanced features don’t generate duplicate content in the search results for more complex or expansive sites might make sense.
You can edit the robots.txt liquid file by visiting your Online Store admin page. Go to the theme section and select Actions > Edit code. Find the template section and click Add new template. Click the dropdown and select robots.txt from the bottom. Click Create Template, and you can start editing.
6. Structured data for your products
Structured data is essential in this day and age. This data is coded in a specific vocabulary — Schema.org — that search engines read to better understand your website. Structured data describes every part of your website to Google, so it knows all about your authors, articles, types of pages, businesses, and how they connect. Of course, there’s also Schema structured data for products.
With product structured data, you can describe your product to search engines. You’ll tell them about the product’s name, description, images, SKUs, prices, reviews, etc. Search engines like Google might give your product listings rich results in return for this valuable information. A rich result is a highlighted search with price information, availability, and even star reviews. Getting this is essential for online shops.
An example of a rich snippet for a product in Google
Luckily, most themes and Shopify itself output some product structured data. If you need a more complex setup without coding, you can use one of the structured data apps in the App Store. But there’s also another possibility: Yoast SEO for Shopify.
Yoast SEO for Shopify outputs structured data automatically
On WordPress, Yoast SEO has one of the best implementations of structured data out there. We built a complete graph that describes and connects every nook and cranny of your site. Google loves this! We bring that to Shopify in our Yoast SEO app so we can help you tell Google all about your products and their details.
You must follow some steps to get Yoast SEO to output Schema. A lot of structured data is added automatically, like Product information on product pages, but we need your input on other details. First, go to Apps and open the Yoast SEO for Shopify app. Go to the settings and click the Schema tab in the sidebar. Click Site Representation and fill in your store name, upload a logo, and fill in the social profiles. Now, your site is ready to rock.
Schema structured data for your articles and pages
Yoast SEO does a lot more with Schema structured data. For instance, we tell Google about your business — the name, logo, and social handles. The SEO app is flexible, so you can determine which parts of the Schema structured data you want to turn on or off should you ever want to integrate with another service.
Yoast SEO for Shopify has an additional structured data option to set yourself up for posts and pages. You can now describe the pages in detail. For instance, you can tell Google that your contact page is exactly that using a simple selection in the app. After that, Yoast SEO will add ContactPage Schema structured data to your contact page — ready for Google to enjoy.
This also goes for articles. Yoast SEO adds Article structured data to every article by default, but you can easily change this. There are news articles, reports, scholarly articles, and more options. By defining this, you give search engines more details on what they can find on the page, and they have to guess less.
7. Manage your redirects
Redirects are incredibly important and helpful when working on your site structure. With a proper redirect, you can send a customer from one URL to another URL without them noticing it. This is useful when you remove pages or products and don’t want people to stumble on dead links.
Shopify has a redirect feature built in. For one, it automatically adds a redirect when you change the slug of an existing post. If you need to do large-scale work on your site, you can upload CSV files with your redirects. You can also use the URL redirect feature in the admin settings navigation section. It’s a straightforward redirect feature with just two fields: one for the old URL you want to redirect and one for the new URL you want the old one to point to.
You can manage redirects via a simple URL redirect feature
8. Add your store to Google Search Console
With Analytics, Google Search Console is an essential tool for insights into your store’s performance in search. It gives you an idea of how your site does in a technical sense — crawlable, fast, and with valid structured data — and in a visibility sense. How do people see your pages and products, and how do they interact with them? Adding your store to Search Console is a must.
A quick rundown
Adding your Shopify store isn’t complicated:
Open Search Console and log in,
Add a new property
Choose either way if you’ve bought your URL from a third party
Choose the URL way for your examplestore.myshopify.com or examplestore.com URLs you got from Shopify (this is the only way that works)
Temporarily turn off the password protection (if needed)
Enter your domain name (including https://)
Copy the HTML file
Open your site theme settings
Click Actions > Edit code
Find the theme.liquid file and paste in the HTML tag below the head tag
Save and wait for Google to verify your site
Yoast SEO for Shopify makes adding the verification code to your ecommerce store easy. You no longer have to touch any code to do that! Open the Yoast SEO app, go to the settings, and click on Webmaster tools in the sidebar. Find the webmaster tool you want to verify — Google, Baidu, Bing, or something else — and paste the verification code you received into it. Click Save, and you are good to go. Check the head of your site to see if the code is correctly added
What are the biggest SEO issues with Shopify?
Shopify is one of the best ecommerce platforms out there. It does most things reasonably well, and with some finetuning and care, it’s a solid platform to build your online store.
Most SEO issues arise from its handling of different products and their variants. Products on the ecommerce platform can live in multiple places/URLs in your online store, and that can confuse search engines. Luckily, the CMS adds canonical URLs to signal to search engines that the one in the /products/ section is canonical. Unfortunately, you cannot do much about this, but be aware of the limitations.
Another area people could improve is Shopify’s rigid URL structure. It uses a system based on subfolders, making for unnecessary long URLs. For instance, you can find the contact page on a regular site on example.com/contact/, but on a store, that’s always example.com/pages/contact. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about this.
Shopify is listening to its community and has begun to roll out several improvements that make it even more attractive as an ecommerce platform. Let’s hope they keep their focus and help you get the best results with your store. In the meantime, SEO apps like Yoast SEO for Shopify and the tips and checklists in ultimate guides like the one you are reading now help alleviate the various issues.
What is the best SEO app for Shopify?
Shopify is extendable, and you can choose from a broad selection of apps that help you improve your store. Some apps help ship your products, design your store, and offer customer services. Too many to choose from! Of course, there are also some SEO apps to take note of.
Some apps help you optimize images, others help with Schema structured data, and there are all-in-one SEO suites. The best one? We’re biased, but we think Yoast SEO stands out from the competition.
Yoast SEO for Shopify: Your SEO expert
WordPress fans have enjoyed using Yoast SEO for more than a decade — it’s the most popular SEO plugin for a reason! Yoast SEO is for SEO experts by SEO experts. But we didn’t make it for experts only. We’ve made SEO accessible so everyone working with WordPress can use Yoast SEO and get a fair chance in the search results. Over 13 million websites trust Yoast SEO, and our WordPress SEO app has over 25,000 five-star reviews on wordpress.org. Now, Yoast SEO is also available for Shopify. We’re ready to help shop owners get more out of their stores.
Yoast SEO for Shopify helps store owners improve their site technically and comes with an advanced SEO and readability analysis. The app will suggest improvements to your product page descriptions, helping you create the best ones.
These analyses also work on your Shopify blog. Content marketing plays a massive role in getting your store noticed on Google. The Yoast SEO app helps you write high-quality, readable content that resonates with potential customers.
Yoast SEO for Shopify helps you write awesome product descriptions that serve both customers and search engines
The best structured data for your Shopify store
To enhance your Shopify store’s organic traffic, it’s crucial to capitalize on the benefits of rich results, which increase search visibility and edge out competitors. Yoast SEO provides rich structured data/Schema.org output in JSON-LD format, supporting various types such as Product, Organization, WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Article, and Offer. Yoast SEO also ties all its structured data together in a single graph, which helps search engines understand your store.
Additionally, Yoast SEO has integrated with the popular review apps Judge.me, Loox, Ali review, and Opinew, to generate the necessary AggregateRating schema to show your reviews in Google. Furthermore, the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block can conveniently be added to Shopify themes v2.0 to increase your store’s structured data and help boost its organic traffic.
Product variant schema
Product variant schema allows you to organize items like size, color, or material under one parent product to improve how Google displays them in search. Using properties like brand for the manufacturer, color, materialsize, and unique identifiers like sku, you can define each variant clearly. Adding this structured data helps search engines understand and showcase your product variations more effectively. Our Shopify SEO app makes it easy to implement this schema, ensuring your variants are optimized and compliant with Google’s guidelines.
Yoast SEO for Shopify outputs a lot of structured data for product variants
Of course, that’s only part of what the SEO app does. Be sure to check out the product page for Yoast SEO for Shopify or the Shopify SEO app store listing to find out more. In addition to the app, our SEO content gives you all the knowledge, tips, and tricks you need to make the most out of your SEO.
The Yoast SEO for Shopify training improves your skills!
In this guide, we gave an overview of what you can do to improve the SEO of your store. Of course, there’s more to the CMS — and to ecommerce itself. Luckily, we can help you on both fronts. Our SEO solutions come with training courses, and Shopify is no different. You’ll find an ecommerce SEO online course and training explicitly showing how to properly set up Yoast SEO for Shopify. Be sure to check out Yoast SEO Academy. Please try the ecommerce and Shopify training and bring your online store to the next level.
Conclusion on Shopify SEO
Shopify is a popular platform for hosting your online store. Rightly so, because it is easy to use and performs well out of the box. Of course, there are many things you can do to improve your store’s performance by focusing on Shopify SEO. This ultimate guide to Shopify SEO gives you an excellent place to start.
Pageviews are a web analytics metric that counts each time a visitor loads or reloads a page on your website.
Each instance of a user viewing a page is one pageview, regardless of whether the same user views the same page multiple times.
Tracking pageviews helps you measure traffic volume and understand which content attracts the most attention.
But:
Pageviews are not the most important metric you should track. I’ll explain why below, but first let’s clarify what they are in the context of a few other metrics.
Pageviews vs. Users vs. Sessions
Pageviews represent the total number of times people view your pages. If someone visits your homepage, clicks to your blog, then returns to your homepage, that counts as three pageviews.
Unique pageviews, on the other hand, combine multiple views of the same page during a single session. If that same visitor views your homepage twice in one session, it would count as just one unique pageview.
In the context of analytics tracking tools, unique pageviews were a Universal Analytics metric. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) doesn’t track unique pageviews.
A user is an individual person visiting your site. A session is a group of interactions one user takes on your site within a given time frame.
Here’s an example of how these all tie together:
Imagine someone discovers your site through Google. They land on your homepage, check out your about page, read a blog post, go back to the homepage, then get distracted by a phone call.
Two hours later, they return to your homepage, browse your product page, and then make a purchase through your checkout page.
Here’s how your analytics would count this activity:
Users: 1
Sessions: 2 (the initial visit and the return visit)
Pageviews: 7 (homepage, about page, blog post, homepage, homepage, product page, checkout)
Unique pageviews: 6 (the double homepage visit in the first session would count as one unique pageview)
Understanding these distinctions helps you interpret your data accurately and make better marketing decisions.
For example, a high pageview-to-user ratio means visitors are exploring multiple pages on your site. This is generally a good sign of engagement.
This is just one reason it’s important to track pageviews alongside other metrics.
Why Pageviews Aren’t the Most Important Metric to Track
Pageviews tell you how many times your pages are being viewed by your audience.
But they don’t tell you:
If those visitors had a good experience
If they want more of your content
If they want to buy from you
That’s why pageviews are sometimes described as a vanity metric.
Sure, it feels great to see that graph trending upward. But more pageviews doesn’t automatically mean more business.
Put it this way:
Would you rather have 100K monthly pageviews with a 0.1% conversion rate, or 10K pageviews with a 3% conversion rate?
The big number is attractive, but the math is clear: the latter gives you 3x as many conversions (300 vs. 100).
But what about 100,000 pageviews and a 0.3% conversion rate? You’re still getting the same number of conversions, and you’re reaching a much bigger audience.
I’d still take the 10K visitors with the 3% conversion rate.
Why?
Two reasons:
Higher conversion rate means I’m better catering to what my audience actually wants
There’s room to scale that 10K with a high conversion rate for even more conversions
If my realistic target market is 200K people per month, I can only double my audience size with the first example. With a 0.3% conversion rate, that would be a total of 600 conversions each month.
But with the 10K example and a 3% conversion rate, there’s room to potentially scale my audience size by 20x. While obviously a big feat, this could eventually lead to 6,000 new customers each month.
Obviously this is a major simplification. There are factors like marketing fatigue, limits on the number of potential customers that would ever become paying customers, and limits on my own abilities to scale.
But I’d always take a smaller, more engaged audience that converts more often over a larger, less engaged one.
In organic search, this means meeting the search intent. For paid ads, it could be a matter of producing great creatives and landing pages.
Conversion rates aren’t the only metrics to track either. Other important ones include:
Average order value (AOV)
Customer acquisition cost
Customer lifetime value
Return on ad spend (for paid advertising campaigns)
These metrics tell you how well you’re positioning your products, how targeted your audience is, and how effective your ad campaigns are. Insights you can’t get from pageviews alone.
Pageviews, Cookies, and Bots
There’s another reason you shouldn’t just pay attention to pageviews: you can’t always trust the numbers.
With a focus on privacy, the digital world is trying to move away from tracking measures like third-party cookies.
Tools like Google Analytics rely on cookies and tracking codes to track pageviews, so user consent levels can affect the numbers.
You might have 500 people visit your page in a month. But if 250 of them decline your tracking cookies, your analytics will be off by 50%.
Not only that, but we also can’t ignore the potential for bot traffic. Google Analytics does a reasonable job of filtering these out, but it’s not perfect.
So you can’t always take your pageviews metric at face value.
But which numbers don’t lie?
Your conversions.
Bots don’t tend to buy things, and even if a user denies cookies, they can still sign up to your email list, download a template, or buy your products.
This is why your bottom line metrics are far more important to track than just watching your pageviews number.
With that said, pageviews do matter a lot in certain contexts.
When Pageviews Are Actually Important
Pageviews are an important measure of your overall reach. This in itself is helpful as a site owner.
But pageviews are particularly important in a few other cases.
Display Ads
If you run display ads on your site, pageviews directly impact your bottom line. More eyeballs on your pages typically means more ad impressions and more revenue.
That’s because display ad networks tend to pay on an RPM basis, or revenue per thousand impressions.
This is why news sites and entertainment blogs in particular obsess over pageviews. Their business models depend on it.
Brand Awareness
When you’re trying to grow your brand awareness, getting more pageviews indicates you’re reaching a wider audience.
If your goal is simply to get your brand in front of as many people as possible, it makes sense to focus on pageviews.
How to See Pageviews in Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the interface most people will likely be familiar with when it comes to tracking pageviews. They’re no longer actually called pageviews, and are simply referred to as “views” now.
But for all intents and purposes, they’re the same thing.
How to Find Pageviews in GA4
Google Analytics 4 works differently from Universal Analytics, which it fully replaced in 2024. Instead of focusing on pageviews by default, it’s built around “events,” and pageviews are just one type of event (labeled “page_view”).
You can see your site’s total pageviews on the overview page in your GA4 property. If it doesn’t display by default, just click the drop-down and set it to “Views.”
But to see pageviews by page, first click “Reports” > “Life cycle” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.”
You’ll end up on the “Pages and screens” report.
This shows a graph and table of your pages with the most pageviews (again, just called “views” in GA4).
If you scroll down, you’ll see a table with page views, along with other metrics like users and information about engagement.
You can sort by pageviews to quickly see which of your pages are underperforming.
You can also search for specific pages to track their performance:
How to See How Many Pageviews Other Websites Get
Understanding how many pageviews your site gets is clearly useful. But it’s even more useful when you can compare that number to your competitors.
You can get an estimate of how many pageviews a site gets using a traffic checker, like our free traffic checker tool:
However:
There’s no fully accurate way to see how many pageviews another site gets without seeing its analytics dashboard.
Measuring pageviews accurately requires you to have a pixel or code snippet on your site. If it’s not your site, you can’t see how many times that snippet fires.
Other tools simply measure estimates based on various data sources. These could be their own user panels or publicly available data sources.
Their accuracy varies widely depending on the site’s size and industry. They tend to be more accurate for larger sites with more traffic (as they’ll naturally just have more data to use).
So they’re best used for understanding trends, rather than absolute numbers.
Here’s an example:
Imagine you’re the owner of Mountain Bean Coffee, a brand that offers specialty coffee. And let’s imagine you know from GA4 that you get 22K pageviews per month.
You identify a few of your competitors, and you want to compare their pageviews to yours. You know you can’t get 100% accurate numbers. So instead, you look for a trend by entering them all into a traffic checker tool.
You stick your site in, and it tells you that you get 16.4K visits per month.
Even though this is lower than your actual pageview count, this is your baseline that you’ll use to compare to your competitors.
You pop three competitors into the same tool, and it suggests you’re somewhere in the middle when it comes to traffic levels:
MakersCoffee.com: 4.6K
PressCoffee.com: 8.2K
DrinkTrade.com: 303.9K
You can see you’re driving more traffic than some competitors (like Maker’s Coffee). But you’re not at the level of Trade Coffee yet.
You know these aren’t the exact numbers of pageviews they get. But you can use this as a guide going forward.
For example, imagine Press Coffee’s number of visits increased to 20K while yours only rose to 18K.
Their estimated count is still lower than your actual count. But you can probably be quite confident they are now getting more pageviews than you.
Monitor More Than Just Pageviews
While pageviews can be a useful indicator of site traffic and content popularity, they’re just one way to track website performance.
For most businesses, the metrics that matter most are those that directly impact revenue and growth. Like conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and lifetime value.
http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png00http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-03-27 14:45:072025-03-27 14:45:07What Are Pageviews? (How to Track and Improve Them)
Tracking brand mentions across social media and news platforms
Starts at $49 per month; 14-day free trial available
1. Brand24
Best for spotting sudden spikes in mentions and identifying key influencers
Pricing: Starts at $199 per month; 14-day free trial available
Brand24 is an AI-powered media monitoring tool. It lets you track online mentions, analyze sentiment, and spot early signs of PR crises.
This tool stands out by tracking more than social media and news platforms. It also monitors podcasts and influencers, giving you a complete view of your brand.
Here’s what I love about Brand24:
Spot Sudden Spikes in Mentions to Immediately Act on Them
Brand24 uses AI to detect unexpected spikes or drops in brand mentions. It’s marked with an exclamation mark in your dashboard so you don’t miss it:
This is important because online conversations can change fast.
A spike in mentions may mean a PR crisis. A negative review might be going viral, or a complaint is spreading fast.
On the flip side, it could signal an opportunity to capitalize on. Like a post about your brand going viral in a positive way, or an influencer giving you a shoutout.
But how do you know whether the spike is positive or negative?
Brand24 uses AI to analyze the sentiment behind each mention. It checks if the spike is caused by positive buzz, negative feedback, or neutral chatter. This way, you can take the right action fast.
For example, Barbie had a significant spike in mentions in 2024 due to the Golden Globes event:
Brand24 tells you why the spike happened and shows you where it’s coming from. In the screenshot above, you can see it flagged Barbie’s spike due to the Golden Globes event.
It highlights key details like:
Why the spike occurred (Golden Globes event)
Which platforms drove the mentions (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube)
What type of sentiment was detected (positive admiration and awards)
The summary may not explicitly say “positive” or “negative.”
However, you can infer sentiment from the language used (“high admiration,” “winning awards”) and cross-referencing with the Sentiment tab at the top.
Track Podcast Mentions of Your Brand
Brand24 scans thousands of podcasts and alerts you whenever someone mentions your brand in a podcast title or description.
This way, you don’t miss critical conversations happening in the audio space.
You can view podcast mentions in the general Mentions tab. Or filter them by source:
People talk about brands on podcasts all the time. Whether it’s a CEO interview, product review, or deep-dive industry discussion.
But since podcasts aren’t text-based, these mentions are easy to miss.
Podcast tracking helps you:
See when influencers talk about your brand
Respond to negative mentions fast
Use positive mentions in your marketing
Identify Key Brand Influencers
Brand24 helps you find the most influential people talking about your brand. You can rank them based on number of mentions, reach, audience size, and impact:
Here’s why each filter matters and how you can use them:
Mentions: See how often someone talks about your brand. High mentions mean they’re actively discussing you, whether positive or negative. Use this to engage or address concerns quickly.
Reach: Shows how many people might see their posts. Use this to prioritize working with influencers with high reach to spread your message.
Influence score (impact): Shows how persuasive or credible the person is. This helps you spot trustworthy advocates or negative influencers before misinformation spreads.
Make Reports in One Click
Create reports to share insights with your team or clients.
Brand24 supports various formats like email, PDF, and Excel.
You can also create infographics:
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Track podcast mentions
Doesn’t scan podcast transcripts; only tracks mentions in episode titles and descriptions
Identify potential PR crisis early on
The dashboard isn’t visual, so it may look overwhelming for beginners
2. Reviewflowz
Best for collecting reviews on autopilot
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month; 14-day free trial available
Reviewflowz is a powerful review management platform. It helps you collect, keep an eye on, and show customer reviews.
Here’s what I liked about Reviewflowz the most:
Launch Targeted Review Request Campaigns
Reviewflows automates review collection in two ways:
Email campaigns: Send automated review requests after purchase, with customizable templates and follow-up scheduling
Magic links: Generate unique URLs that take customers directly to your review form—perfect for adding to receipts or sharing via SMS
Best part?
When you set up an email campaign within Reviewflowz, you can choose when to request reviews:
Always request reviews from your email list to get as much feedback as possible
Only request reviews when a star rating drops under a certain threshold (lets you improve your reputation when your review score starts to drop)
Quickly Reply to Your Customer Reviews
Link your channels (like Slack, email, and Microsoft Teams) to get instant alerts for new reviews:
These notifications let you be in the loop and address critical reviews in time.
Once connected:
Slack: New reviews are sent directly to a public Slack channel in your workspace
Email: Reviews land in your inbox
Microsoft Teams: Reviews show up in a designated Teams channel
Zapier and Webhooks: You can set up automations to trigger custom workflows
You’ll see all reviews in real time. From there, you can decide which ones need immediate attention—whether it’s a low rating, critical feedback, or a chance to thank a happy customer.
Plus, you can use AI to create and send automated replies to happy reviewers that are always within your brand’s tone.
Show Best Reviews on Your Website
Display your best reviews automatically with Reviewflowz’s customizable, mobile-friendly widgets.
Each widget automatically updates with new reviews and lets you filter by rating to showcase your strongest feedback.
Choose from:
Masonry: A stack of reviews, which turns into a list on mobile
Slider: An interactive slider that shows up to three reviews horizontally and one on mobile
Then select the review sources, the number of reviews to display, and which reviews to show based on star ratings:
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Email campaigns to gather more reviews with ease
Doesn’t track social media mentions
Customizable review widgets to showcase your feedback
AI-powered review responses
3. myPresences
Best for managing brand presence on different platforms and engaging with reviews
Pricing: Starts at $15 per month; 14-day free trial available
myPresences is an all-in-one online presence and reputation management platform.
It helps you appear in business directories, track customer reviews and engage with them.
Plus, you can display feedback on your website.
Here’s what I like about myPresences:
List Your Business Where It Matters Most
Listing your business on every platform takes a lot of time. It’s also prone to mistakes.
And when you update a phone number, move, or change a website URL, fixing it everywhere can take weeks.
myPresences makes it easy to list your business details on more than 2,000 directories.
You enter your business details once. Then, this tool pushes your business info on your chosen platforms.
But why does this matter? Is getting listed on Google not enough?
Not really.
Customers may use many different platforms to find your business, such as local directories and industry platforms.
Or they may check your website on a review site before they buy from you.
If you rely only on Google, you might miss out on potential customers who search elsewhere.
For example:
If your business is local, you’ll need to be on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google Business Profile (GBP)
If you manage a SaaS brand, being on review sites like G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot is crucial since some consumers go here before making a purchase
If you provide medical, legal, or real estate services, niche directories matter (Healthgrades, Avvo, or Zillow)
Check and Respond to Reviews Across Platforms
myPresences centralizes reviews from all major review sites. This helps you check and respond efficiently.
You can see a quick overview of your star rating distribution across all platforms in a pie chart:
Additionally, you can automate your responses with AI:
This lets you quickly respond to common reviews while keeping a consistent tone.
Showcase Customer Reviews on Your Website
myPresences allows you to show your best reviews on your website.
You can use customizable widgets for this:
Popup: Individual reviews appear as a small floating box on each page. They don’t take up much space and can appear sitewide.
List: A simple, single-column format. It’s ideal if you want them stacked clearly in one spot.
Grid: A three-column layout for showcasing many reviews at once. It’s great when you want to highlight volume and variety.
Carousel: A dynamic slider that rotates the reviews for an interactive experience. Perfect if you want to save space and make the page engaging.
You can avoid the task of copying and pasting reviews on your site. myPresences pulls in reviews automatically and updates them in real time.
This gives you fresh and authentic social proof.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Add your business details on directories that matter in your industry
Listing your details on business directories costs extra, up to $5 each. This can increase your expenses.
Manage all reviews in one place
4. Semrush Local
Best for managing local business reviews in one place and keeping listings accurate
Pricing: $50 per month + the plan you choose ($139.95/mo for Pro)
Best for tracking your brand mentions across social media and news platforms
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month; 14-day free trial available
Mention is a social media listening tool that monitors your online presence and analyzes brand mentions.
Let’s take a look at Mention’s key features:
Track Your Brand Mentions Across Channels
Mention tracks more than one billion sources. It checks for real-time brand mentions on social media, news sites, blogs, and forums.
All these are in one dashboard. You can expand each mention and see the preview of the post that includes your business name. And even know the sentiment behind the mention:
Mention also provides a link to each source. This takes you straight to the original post so you can join the conversation directly on the source site.
Create Real-Time, Visual Reports
Mention lets you make reports based on what matters most to you. This helps you analyze your brand’s online presence better.
You can either choose from predefined templates for quick insights:
Or customize reports by selecting the exact data you want to track:
In both cases, reports are real-time and visual.
Mention also creates automatic highlights. Like sudden mention spikes:
This lets you see key trends at a glance, so you don’t have to sift through long reports.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
Covers a wide range of sources
Only supports text, podcasts are not included
Prompt notifications about your brand mentions
FAQs
How Do I Manage My Online Reputation?
Managing your online reputation involves:
Monitoring brand mentions across social media, news, and review sites
Responding to customer feedback
Encouraging happy customers to leave reviews
Addressing negative content with strategic responses
Keeping business listings accurate across all platforms
How Long Does It Take to See Results from Reputation Management Tools?
Reputation management tools provide insights immediately. However, improving your reputation by collecting more positive reviews, content, and SEO can take weeks or months, depending on your strategy.
Can Reputation Management Tools Remove Negative Reviews?
No, reputation management tools can’t remove negative reviews. They help you improve sentiment over time, and report false reviews if necessary.
What Metrics Should I Track to Measure Reputation Improvement?
Track the following metrics to improve your reputation:
Review ratings: Changes in star ratings across platforms
Brand sentiment: Positive vs. negative mentions over time
Mentions and reach: How often people discuss your brand online
Crisis alerts: Any sudden spikes in negative mentions
Ready to Choose Your Online Reputation Management Tool?
The best ORM tool for you depends on what you need most:
Want to track brand mentions? Brand24 and Mention help you stay on top of conversations.
Need help collecting reviews? Reviewflowz lets you automate review campaigns.
Need to manage your business details on business directories? For a local business, use Semrush Local. For a SaaS brand or professional services business, go with myPresences.
After choosing the best tool for your needs, expect the following:
First month: Set alerts, connect accounts, and test automation
Second month: Track trends and respond to reviews
Third month: Improve your strategy and let automation handle more tasks
Pro tip: Even the best tools need active engagement. Check in often. Respond to feedback quickly. This keeps your online reputation strong.
Want to discover more tools to help with your marketing processes? Check out our article on 33 digital marketing tools that suit various business needs and budgets.
