The Importance of B2B Keyword Research

B2B keyword research is a set of strategies aimed at improving the visibility and ranking of specific queries targeted towards other businesses in the SERPs. The primary goal, and the overall importance of B2B SEO, is to attract more organic traffic, increase high-quality leads and sales. In the process you’ll also be able to inform yourself on potential customer needs and gain knowledge on competitor offerings and the overall competitor landscape — which should not be overlooked. 

Key B2B Factors to Keep in Mind

One of the first steps of conducting B2B keyword research is being aware of the challenges and fundamental differences it has from B2C or Business-to-Consumer. B2B marketing requires you to reach an audience responsible for making purchasing decisions within another business, which presents a unique hurdle compared to B2C. We’ve identified some key areas below to keep in mind before conducting any specific keyword research. 

• The Target Audience: In B2B, you may not just be targeting an individual consumer, but instead a group within a company. This means you have to consider various perspectives, needs, and preferences. You must be aware of the decision-makers and end-users within the organization and tailor your keyword strategy to address their specific needs. 
• Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Defining your ideal customer profile is a fundamental step in B2B keyword research. You need to identify the types of businesses that would be the best fit for your product or service. This involves understanding the industry, potential company size, or budget constraints to ensure you’re targeting a potential customer that’s an ideal match. 
• Longer Buyer Cycle: B2B sales cycles are typically longer and more intricate compared to B2C. The decision-making process in B2B often involves multiple stages, from initial research to evaluation, negotiation, and final purchase. Being aware of these hurdles and nurturing leads over an extended period requires a nuanced keyword strategy to keep prospects engaged.
• Competitive Landscape: B2B markets are often highly competitive, with many businesses vying for the attention of a relatively smaller pool of potential customers. Analyzing what keywords your competitors are targeting and where you can differentiate yourself is a great strategy to keep in mind. This often leads to targeting long-tail keywords and straying away from some of the broader queries with large amounts of reported monthly search volume. 
• Specific Language: B2B audiences often use industry-specific terminology and, to be effective, your keyword research needs to encompass these unique phrases. Understanding the language of your audience can be difficult at first, but will later on demonstrate your expertise and understanding of their challenges.
• Content Quality: B2B audiences typically seek in-depth, authoritative content. This means your keyword strategy will need to create high-quality, informative content that addresses the pain points and aspirations of your target audience. Doing this will also allow your topical authority to grow, which can be another key factor in determining your success in rankings for relevant, competitive queries.

Understanding Search Intent and Targeting the Right Audience

If you’re starting from ground zero, a great way to get a solid foundation is to review competitor content with similar offerings. You can use tools such as Ahrefs, which I’ll go into more detail below, to identify keywords their pages are ranking for. By analyzing their service pages — and potentially their top ranking blog content if you are attempting to boost your topical authority  — you’ll be able to identify a handful of keywords that you can then export and begin to review.

However, to ensure you are targeting the right audience that’s ready to buy or invest into one of your services you must be aware of each query’s search intent. The term sounds scary but, in reality, manually reviewing the SERPs for specific keyword results is a solid way to identify intent. To start, you’ll need to understand each of the four main kinds of intent. 

• Informational Intent: Queries for this intent can often be identified with modifiers such as “what is,” “how to,” or use “when” or “where” in the search. In summary, the user is looking for information to solve their problem or answer their questions, which usually means blogs, listicles, or resource pages will be ranking for these queries. Transactional Intent: Transactional intent is exactly what it sounds like — a user who is looking to make a purchase. When queries are searched with modifiers of “buy,” “for sale,” “services” or sometimes “solutions,” they typically have transactional intent. However, always double check manually as I’ve seen instances of queries, such as project management solutions, result in listicles. Whereas the service modifier results in service pages.
• Transactional Intent: Transactional intent is exactly what it sounds like — a user who is looking to make a purchase. When queries are searched with modifiers of “buy,” “for sale,” “services” or sometimes “solutions,” they typically have transactional intent. However, always double check manually as I’ve seen instances of queries, such as project management solutions, result in listicles. Whereas the service modifier results in service pages.

• Commercial Intent: Commercial intent can be viewed as the middle ground between informational and transactional. The user is clearly interested in making a purchase, but still requires more convincing. This intent typically results in reviews or comparison pieces. 
• Navigation Intent: Lastly, navigational intent refers to when a user is searching for a specific page, In these instances, they already know what they want and what they are looking for. This can oftentimes be reflected in branded queries such as “IGN reviews” or “Starbucks menu.”

Tools to Help Conduct B2B Keyword Research

As briefly stated before, conducting B2B keyword research typically requires you to target hyper-specific keywords unless you are a major site with high-authority. How you specifically conduct your research may slightly vary depending on the organic state or progress of your site. As mentioned above, competitor reviews can be a perfect place to start your analysis. However, if you have substantial traffic, another avenue to identify some long-tail keywords is by using Google Search Console and Regex filters. This will not only allow you to find queries to optimize for, but also help identify intent.

Google Search Console

Firstly, travel to performance on the left side of the screen and click search results.

This will then display the overall clicks and impressions your site has received for the last 3 months by default. The timeline can be changed, but we want to focus on adding a new filter first. You can do this by clicking new+ → queries → custom(regex). You will then be prompted to add a formula.

To create a custom regex formula, use the format: “pattern1|pattern2|pattern3,” where the vertical bar (|) functions as an OR statement, allowing your formula to match multiple variants of a given pattern. For instance, if you want to capture variations of “SAAS Services” your formula could appear as:

SAAS Services|SaaS Services|saas services|SaaS service|saas service|SaaS offerings|saas offerings

You can then use the results to identify potential transactional keywords your site is already receiving impressions and clicks for and optimize accordingly. Additionally, if you are building out your topical authority on certain relevant subjects, and want to identify potential keywords to optimize your blog for, you can use a formula such as: 

what|how|when|why 

Using GSC is vital to empowering your B2B keyword research, but Ahrefs might be a better tool if you need to identify brand new keywords. 

Ahrefs

There are a couple ways to get your foot in the door with Ahrefs. One way is to identify your key service that you want to optimize for, and start with a root term. Let’s say for instance you have a page targeting cloud management services. You could go to the keyword explorer section in Ahrefs, type in the keyword and then search.

Next step is to click and view the matching terms section, which will display various related keywords, and a section to the left that will break it down into bucket’s of related terms.

Depending on your query, this can be a gold mine for long-tail keywords and a good place to learn how people or other businesses are searching for the topic. For instance, we can see that data is the most common modifier to include with the query cloud management services. We can then use this as a jumping off point to better understand if this is a keyword our company should be targeting. 

Ahrefs will display top ranking pages, we can easily manually search to find the results as well, which shows that the top 5 results favor informational intent, while the bottom five feature service and solution pages.

Depending on our priorities, this query could be used to build a blog to bolster our service page. After this, we can simply rinse-and-repeat this formula until we’ve identified several priority B2B keywords. 

Another option is to take one of those service page’s in the top ten and put the URL in Ahrefs’ site explorer search bar. This will help us find queries that are ranking well for their page which, if our page is offering similar B2B content, should result in queries that match the intent of the service page.

Additionally, when conducting this kind of research we’ll want to keep in mind some items about the monthly search volume (MSV), keyword difficulty and, if you need buy-in from the higher-ups, estimated monthly traffic from specific ranking positions. First, MSV can oftentimes be an issue a lot of SEOs get stuck on early on in their careers. More MSV does not always mean valuable traffic. B2B’s main goal is to produce high-quality leads, which means targeting the queries that align the most with your content. That can often mean targeting queries with 20 or less MSV. 

Secondly, high MSV B2B keywords are typically paired with high keyword difficulty. For the most part, we’ll want to avoid these keywords (depending on your site’s authority) and aim for keywords with a 30 KD and below. 

And, though this contradicts the MSV point, if you’re struggling to get buy-in from stockholders or just want more understanding of how potential traffic could be viewed there is another metric I’ve used in the past that has helped out clients. This is the estimated monthly search volume given to the specific position of the ranking content. 

For example, Deloitte is estimated to receive 440 monthly traffic for ranking in the #1 position for the keyword cloud managed services. This should be taken with a grain of salt, as ahrefs is a third-party tool, but it could provide a slightly better understanding of the value of targeting a new keyword.

The SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) 

Your last must-use tool is the SERPs themselves. Not only can you use the results to view search intent, but the People Also Ask (PAA) serves as another way for B2B companies to better understand how other businesses might be searching for the topic.

For example, the query cloud managed services produces a PAA with several questions a company could target with blog posts, or even their FAQ page such as: “what is the difference between cloud services and managed cloud services?” You should always make it a habit to look through the SERPs when identifying and optimizing for your B2B keywords.

Be Aware of Customer Pain Points

The last item to guide your B2B keyword research is to be aware of your potential customers’ pain points.  One approach is to explore forums and message boards related to your industry or product. For example, by delving into Reddit threads or other user forums, you can identify pain points that are ripe for keyword targeting.

Additionally, competitive forums serve as another avenue to find pain points and potential keyword ideas. By examining discussions on competitor services, you can discover what users are struggling with, what features they desire, and other issues they encounter. 

Another powerful source of pain points is customer testimonials, reviews, and interviews. This includes your own customer feedback, as well as testimonials from competitors. Engaging with your sales and customer service teams can help you find valuable information gathered from conversations with customers. 

B2B Keyword Research in Summary 

As you embark on your B2B keyword research journey, remember the value of search intent and choose the right B2B tools for the job, whether it’s Google Search Console, Ahrefs or the SERPs themselves. With these insights, you can navigate the competitive B2B landscape effectively and drive the growth your business deserves.

And remember, at the end of the day, B2B keyword research isn’t just about ranking higher in search results; it’s about connecting with your audience, delivering solutions, and ultimately, boosting your leads and revenue. So, embrace these strategies, keep your finger on the pulse of your industry, and watch your business thrive in the digital age.

How to Conduct B2B Keyword Research for SEO is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

Even so, it can be difficult to keep up with Google’s changing definitions for E-E-A-T— formerly known as E-A-T — as the tech giant has released several updates to its guidelines in the past few months. But within these updates lie key information on how to properly optimize your site’s signals.

Below is your definitive guide on explaining E-E-A-T SEO and how to properly optimize your site for reviews, news stories, blog posts and more. 

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What is E-E-A-T SEO?

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness and is a crucial part of Google’s search quality rater’s guideline. As of December 2022, the additional “E” for experience was tacked onto Google’s documentation. 

However, it is important to note that this is not considered a direct ranking factor by Google, but should be considered as a standard for the best practices to follow when creating content. Quality E-E-A-T signals will help build trust between your site and Google and, more importantly, will assist in building a reputable identity with your site’s new and returning traffic.  

Experience 

As mentioned above, Experience is the most recent factor implemented to Google’s rater guidelines. It highlights the actual experience the author has displayed within their writing and, ultimately, determines whether the writing is authentic or not. 

This is extremely valuable for any type of review, hands-on or off, news story, or general informational blog, as inexperience can lead to misinformation and result in a broader harm than just the page’s rankings. 

Expertise 

The expertise of the writer is typically determined by their topical knowledge, their work or personal history with the topic, and any relevant qualifications. The line between expertise and experience can seem quite thin at times, but there is an important difference to note. 

For instance, this writer for the Washington Post may not have direct experience making music, but he does have the reported credentials in criticizing music. His decade of reported work as a cultural critic defines him as an expert in the discipline of music.   

Authoritativeness  

Authority can be viewed as the overall confidence Google has of the website or publication to produce reliable and quality content. For example, has the website: 

• Published about this topic before? 
• How often has it? 
• Is it receiving trustworthy backlinks from other reputable sources?

The more you cover a topic in detail the more your site’s authority will grow. Important factors to consider include:

• Establishing a brand identity 
• Obtaining backlinks through other authoritative sites 
• Creating a content & internal linking strategy to send strong contextual and architectural signals to Google about the related subject 
• Curating original and informative pages

A site that does this well is W3.org, which has established itself as the go to when learning about web standards. The article below follows up on a heavily discussed topic of the site, and links to an expert in the subject of HTML that has several other relevant articles published.

Trustworthiness 

Gaining trustworthiness is the result of combining each guideline of experience, expertise, and authoritativeness. Simply put, your content should be trustworthy and feature factual accuracy, cited sources, and provide reliable means for the user to get in contact with you if they have any concerns. 

Building up to be considered a trusted domain takes many steps, but providing quality and truthful content written by experts will send positive signals that will put your site in the best place to be rewarded. 

What is YMYL Content and is it Important for E-E-A-T SEO?

YMYL stands for your money or your life and typically cover’s the reader’s questions on health, financial stability, and current events. E-E-A-T is crucial for site’s covering subjects that fall under this category, as providing inaccurate information could cause harm to the user who reads the content and potentially who the user shares that information with. 

It should be noted that YMYL is also not a ranking factor, but Google has reported its importance in relation to accessing E-E-A-T signals. Prioritize optimizing your content for E-E-A-T SEO if you cover the topics below:

• News, current events or law
  • This includes international events, coverage on politics and science, and related government stories. 
• Shopping
  • This covers lists or guides on shopping specific products or reviews on products
• Finance 
  • Any topics related to taxes, investing money, switching banks and general guides on managing finances. 
• Health and Medicine 
  • Content that covers health related issues, informational pages that define health terms, medicine usage and general hospital information.  
• Fitness and Nutrition 
  • Similar to health, this will include fitness guides, information on substances and nutritional advice.

How Does Google Assess E-E-A-T Signals?

Google has an extremely detailed guideline on how it defines the quality of E-E-A-T signals. It categorizes them into five classifications starting from the “lowest quality” to the “highest quality” pages. 

In the 176 page documentation, Google defines lowest quality pages as, “Lowest quality pages are untrustworthy, deceptive, harmful to people or society, or have other highly undesirable characteristics.”

In this definition, and explained later on, Google first prioritizes the purpose of the page. After defining that, it analyzes the topic and then determines if the content will cause harm to “specified groups” or includes “misleading information.” 

On the opposite side, Google defines the highest quality pages as, “… Pages [that] serve a beneficial purpose and achieve that purpose very well. The distinction between High and Highest is based on the quality of MC, the reputation of the website and content creator, and/or E-E-A-T.” 

The biggest takeaway here is that Google is defining the quality of the “MC” or main content for high and highest quality pages by utilizing the E-E-A-T guidelines and other certain measurements. For example, there’s an emphasis on level of effort, originality, and level of talent or skill for defining the MC’s rating.

How to Improve Your E-E-A-T SEO 

Focusing on these attributes is sure to boost your content’s signals, but how exactly should you optimize your E-E-A-T signals for the highest success?

1. Pay Close Attention to Google’s Updates

If it isn’t clear so far, staying up-to-date with Google’s guidelines and algorithm updates is vital to gain and maintain success with your content. As stated before, Google has made two significant updates since December. The first update highlighted the importance of experience when creating content — ultimately evolving E-A-T to E-E-A-T. 

The second occurred in April and specifically focused on updating Google’s review system. The documentation now highlights visual elements, audio, links to supporting data on the writer’s experience, and quantitative measurements as key components the search engine is looking for within this type of content. 

While experience is important for any writer to have on the subject matter being discussed, it’s even more important for YMYL coverage. Ensuring you know how Google defines experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness is the first step to your success. 

2. Leverage Language/Experience in Written Work 

Search Engine Journal has seen some reports that utilizing language such as “in my experience” has helped increase rankings for articles. Whether this data is concrete or not, using similar language and providing a detailed explanation of your experience with the topic or product will be beneficial. 

Google provides context to its definition of experience within its E-E-A-T guidelines and states: 

“Does content demonstrate that it was produced with some degree of experience, such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating what a person experienced?”

The description is pretty broad, but there’s a safe bet that if your writer has actually experienced the product or talked to people involved in the related story, then they will display that within their writing. There’s also another large benefit of leaning into a writer’s experience, and that is the unique quality of that individual’s opinion of the experience. Google takes originality into account when assessing E-E-A-T signals, and every writer’s opinion or angle with a product or story will have a factor distinct to itself. Leaning into this factor can be a great strategy for producing content that differs from most competitors that rely on existing content for their ideation process.

3. Include Visual Elements 

Two key items highlighted in the April 2023 review update were visual elements and audio. Both of these have been added to help prove the item or product has been actually used. The impact of these can vary depending on what kind of review you are conducting, but I’ve seen first hand my own writing get bumped from the first page because it did not feature a video element. 

Conducting proper research beforehand on similar reviews to understand how Google typically ranks the written work is crucial before publishing. 

For instance, Google has recently prioritized ranking video game industry coverage that includes an author speaking over visuals, such as a review or interview, and is most likely doing the same for a variety of written work. 

Below is an example of a video game preview I wrote that lost rankings in the first page to video-related content. It now sits at position #9 for the query after us video game preview, below footage of gameplay and trailers.

We can see that Google prefers non-preview content for this query due to the change in which users consume similar media. In this instance the search engine is displaying audio-based experiences that explain the content of the product with the addition of gameplay. Conducting research on the current and previous history of your related SERPs can help determine what kind of visuals you may need to include when producing your article, and help deter this from happening in your own work.

4. Optimize User Profiles

Another opportunity to provide proof of experience and expertise is within the author’s user profile. Each article your writer publishes should include a link to that author’s related page that includes their previous work and a brief paragraph that is written in third-person explaining their authority on the topic. 

A good example of this is Nick Kosmider’s author page for The Athletic.

His biography displays his history covering Denver Sports and lists his previous positions at other publishers. More positive signals that could be included are any related degrees, previous awards, and links to their related social platforms. Lastly, the author page should include an optimized image or photo to help put a face to the writing. This will help provide a visual element for Google, but also create a human connection between the reader and writer.  

5. Create a Dedicated Page for Goals and Mission Statements

In 2021, Google published a documentation addressing the transparency of publishers, which discusses how to prove credibility to the site’s readers and Google itself. It breaks this down into two categories: Article Level and Site Level. 

For article’s, publisher’s should be including clear bylines that link to the author’s dedicated biography page, the article’s publishing date, and a form of categorization such as “opinion” or “review.”

On the other hand, the site level is supposed to provide guidance to the site’s purpose and organizational structure. This can be done by creating a dedicated page for the publisher’s goals, mission statements, and link towards a page providing staff details. 

A great example of this is the New York Time’s company page that provides all of this information in a single location. This is a must-pursue strategy for news publishers looking to provide credibility to search engines and users.

Making the Most of Your E-E-A-T SEO

Keeping up-to-date on Google’s algorithm updates and E-E-A-T SEO might take some work, but it will create longevity for your site’s authority and trustworthiness down the line. It’s important to follow Google’s documentation and take an article and site level approach to optimizing your signals. 

In summary, prioritize experience within your written work and always provide a visual element when applicable. Link to related sources that help prove this and provide clear and concise information for your user to digest. Following these guidelines will help you optimize your E-E-A-T signals and create a bridge of credibility that your users can trust.

E-E-A-T SEO: An SEO Guide to E-E-A-T Signals is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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Attaching engagement rate to elevating your site above the crowd might seem like a stretch at first. However, addressing the issues that can typically result in low engagement rates can improve much more than just the percentage, as it’s akin to using a broad brush to not only paint a large picture, but provide the details from corner to corner. 

But before we dive deeper, what exactly is engagement rate?

What is Engagement Rate?

Engagement rate is the amount of sessions that Google Analytics 4 defines as “engaged sessions.” This can be thought of as the inverse of bounce rate, which is now defined as the percentage of users that left a website without visiting another page or left before 10 seconds had passed. 

However, GA4 will no longer prioritize tracking bounce rate percentages, and instead rely on the engagement rate metric. There are a few qualifications that have to be met for a user’s session to be classified as an engaged session. At least one of the items below has to fulfilled:

• The user session is longer than 10 seconds
• The user visits more than one webpage 
• The session contains a conversion 

If any of these criteria are met, GA4 will then add the data to the overall engagement rate percentage. 

To put it into perspective, say a user is searching for a belt specifically for dress pants, but they land on a page selling WWE belts. The person will most likely quickly exit the site once realizing their intent was not met. 

Another scenario might be a user looking for a quick recipe on an informational site but, once landing on the blog post, they notice the site takes a few seconds to load. They then exit the page to find another site that will perform better. In both cases, the user left before 10 seconds had passed and before moving on from their original landing page. As a result, neither session was an engaged session. 

How do You Measure Engagement Rate?

Before fixing low engagement or average engaged times, you first need to identify what your overall rate is and the pages it’s impacting the most. The most effective way to find this information is to use Google Analytics 4. To do this you’ll need to head to the Reports section of GA4 located on the left side of the screen.

Once clicking on Reports, travel to the drop down menu under Engagement and find the Pages and Screens tab. If your reports are already set up, this tab should display data on views, users, average engagement time and several other options.

If engagement rate is not already included in the listed data, you can add this option through the customize report icon located at the top right of the screen.

Once clicked, a drop down menu will appear with the option to click on a tab called Metrics. The metrics tab will allow you to add engagement rate as one of your tracked items for individual pages.

After completing these steps, you should be able to filter through your site’s pages from the highest engagement rate to the lowest average engagement time.

What is a Good Engagement Rate Percentage?

A good engagement rate percentage can change from site-to-site and the overall data is somewhat sparse. At the moment, the general consensus is that the average engagement rate for all traffic is around 50 percent. Though, organic traffic typically has a higher engagement rate compared to paid traffic — sitting around 60 percent compared to the 55 percent. 

But these metrics are relative to the site, whether it be B2B or B2C. Some competitors might have an average engagement rate of 40 percent, but are still able to make their quarterly goals. While others might struggle with this lower percentage. It’s important to track goal completions as well as engagement rates to help form a larger understanding of your site’s potential improvements. 

There are a few items to keep in mind when analyzing engagement rates for specific pages. The first is the amount of call-to-actions (CTAs) the specific landing page has. It’s common for pages with a single CTA to have higher exit rates compared to pages that have multiple. Another important factor that may be overlooked is if the site features a cookie banner. 

If a user declines to share their data with the page, it may be tracked as a page exit in GA4. This can be a tricky problem to get around, but being aware of it will help clear out some potential issues when analyzing pages or websites with low engagement rates.

6 Tips to Improve Engagement Rates

Now that we know the basics of engagement rates it’s time to figure out how to improve them. From user research to optimizing for relevant keywords, below are 6 vital strategies to improve your user’s engagement.

1. Optimize for Relevant Keywords

The first step to guaranteeing your engagement rate is as high as it can be is to optimize pages for relevant keywords. If your site’s page doesn’t align with the intent of the user, or the query they used to locate your website, then the amount of traffic you’ll receive will be redundant. 

To do this, you can use tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush to conduct extensive keyword research for your landing pages. Try to target transactional keywords — such as “for sale” keywords — for your product or category pages. For blog posts or potential posts covering news, aim for information keywords, such as “what is…” or “how to…” to ensure you’re attracting the right audience. 

If your site has a lower domain rating, it’s important to focus on long-tail keywords that may feature less keyword difficulty. This will give you a better chance at ranking higher in the SERPs, while still engaging with the right audience.

2. Conduct User Research

The next item to address is acquiring the knowledge of your user base. Understanding what audience your site attracts will put you one step closer to finding out the reason they are leaving. After optimizing your site’s keywords, you can gain some general knowledge of your users by checking the Demographics tab in GA4.

This can display information on user locations, average age, and what devices they are using. If you are a local business, but find that one of your service pages is attracting users from another location, you may need to readjust your local optimization strategy. 

One of the more important pieces of information here is the device data listed. Knowing if your main audience is coming from mobile, desktop, or tablet can help narrow down your strategy to ensure you’re focusing on the right version of your site. 

If 80 percent of your visitors are coming from IOS devices, then optimizing your site’s mobile CTAs, navigation, and overall structure will be extremely important.

3. Identify User Habits

Identifying user habits is vital when trying to diagnose your engagement rate issues. How is the user interacting with your pages, if at all? What are their navigation habits? What pages are causing the most amount of users to leave?  

A great tool to use when identifying user behavior is Hotjar. Hotjar will allow you to set up heat maps or recordings for individual pages. Heatmaps will highlight areas that users frequently click, while recordings will track the habits of the user’s mouse.

While the recordings are more beneficial for analyzing user engagement length, the heat maps can identify if your CTA’s are getting enough attention or clicks. 

Hotjar can also help identify potential internal linking opportunities, as it will display common words users are clicking on. This can be used to funnel users from blog page to blog page, or key conversion pages. Overall, utilizing Hotjar can greatly increase the user experience of your site, which in turn can reduce frustration and exit rates.

4. Review CTA Structure

Another key item to review is the wording and placement of CTA’s on your most prominent landing pages. A good strategy is to ensure your CTA’s prompt an action, preferable with a small amount of text, from the user such as, “Buy Now” or “Schedule a Call.”

Next is to look at the placement of each CTA. Is there one above the fold? Or aligned with the typical eye movement of the user? 

It’s important to remember that users’ eyes most commonly navigate the site in a Z pattern. This means they’ll start at the top left, move to the right, and then repeat. Featuring a CTA in the top right of our navigation, as well as towards the left of your main hero image, are both frequent strategies used when creating CTA buttons.

For example, we can see that our site has the “Request a Proposal” button at the top right and the “Our Services” button on the left side of our hero image.

5. Create Interactive Content

Interactive content is exactly what it sounds like — items that interact with the user when prompted to. Whether it be a button or a moving image, dynamic items can oftentimes grab the user’s attention and create another layer of communication between them and the web page. 

When optimizing CTA’s, it can be valuable to add an interactive element through javascript, CSS, or a plugin. Typically, a simple hover element can help boost the interaction between your buttons and users. 

However, it’s not always necessary to do this. Depending on your site’s audience and competitive landscape, a static website might perform just as well. When deciding whether to add interactive CTAs, conduct a competitor analysis to get an idea if your target users are visiting similar sites that provide these features.

6. Optimize Site Performance

Following in suite with interactivity, another important step to take is to check the health of your site’s overall performance. You can do this through PageSpeed Insights, which will run diagnostics on your site’s mobile and desktop performance.  

The tool will display potential opportunities that will be labeled with the category the issue falls under. For example, it might recommend reducing unused Javascript to help optimize LCP or largest contentful paint. LCP is how quickly the overall content of the web page is loaded, and  is one of the three main metrics tracked in the tool.

We highly recommend checking your site’s vitals if it uses a ton of javascript to enhance its interactivity. For reference, the common load time web page’s tend to aim for is between .0 and .4 seconds. However, a more realistic goal is to strive for 1-2 seconds.

Overview of Improving Engagement Rate

As we can see, improving engagement rates can oftentimes require analyzing several areas of your website. It can seem like an arduous task, but the steps and end results are well worth it. Having a healthy, optimized website designed specifically for your target audience is essential to reducing exit rates and encouraging more engagement and total conversions. 

Now that you have the right tools, you should be on your way to conducting your own engagement research. For more, checkout Go Fish Digital’s blog for the latest SEO information and strategies. 

How to Improve Engagement Rates in GA4 is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.

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With that experience comes errors, success stories and the insight on how to properly guide you to build and improve upon your own structured data strategies.

An Overview of Structured Data

Structured data has been an integral part of SEO ever since Google, Bing, and Yahoo unified to create a single Markup Language that could be recognized by all three search engines back in 2011. The decision by the companies resulted in more accurate search results with helpful features being added regularly to improve user experience. But, what exactly is structured data? And how can you use it to bolster your SEO efforts?

What is Structured Data?

Structured data is a standardized language used to communicate content on your website to search engine crawlers. It can help classify the page, whether it be a product or recipe, and produce unique snippets, known as Rich Results, in search engine result pages (SERPs).

It’s easy to forget that crawlers don’t see a normal page as users do, but instead see a block of code using various languages that it has to decipher line by line. 

Think of structured data as a way of neatly organizing the content on a page into labeled folders. It can identify videos, dates, reviews and organize them all for crawlers to easily understand. It’s a streamlined process that has become an essential component in SEO campaigns and optimizations.

What is Schema.org and JSON-LD?

Schema.org was created to host the collection of all supported structured data by search engines. It provides detailed lists of each kind of structured data, while also displaying examples on how to code each. This can be an extremely useful resource for finding and correctly implementing applicable structured data to your pages.

JSON-LD on the other hand, is a markup language typically used to code structured data. It’s not the only language used, others include Microdata and RDFa, but is typically the safest method to code your structured data with. The other languages listed can occasionally cause hick-ups for your site, and Google has stated that they prefer the use of JSON-LD.

John Mueller stated this in March 2019, on the Google Office-hours hangout. 

“We currently prefer JSON-LD markup. I think most of the new types of structured data… kind of come out for JSON-LD first. So that’s what we prefer.”

Why Structured Data is Vital for SEO

Google and other search engines have encouraged the use of structured data since its creation, and have provided several reasons to follow this practice. Structured data not only benefits crawlers, but can greatly benefit users and increase click-through rates (CTR) through rich results. 

Enhanced rich results provide more information to the user on the SERPs, while increasing the visual appeal of pages and links. For example, if a user is trying to search for a review on a specific product, Google can provide visual feedback before the user ever clicks on your site. 

This can come in the form of brief snippets of written reviews or the typical 1-5 star metric featured underneath the page link. These visual elements are eye-catching and can greatly benefit a page’s organic traffic if it obtains the rich result.

Utilizing and combining structured data properly can result in other featured snippets as well.

Additional rich result snippets include: 

• Knowledge Graph: One of the original rich snippets, a knowledge graph typically contains information on a brand or location. 
• Carousels: These feature a collection of multiple rich results that could be displayed in images or videos.
• Videos: Growing in popularity and use, a video snippet can be displayed for specific pages and topics.
• Rich Cards: Similar to rich results, Rich Cards are snippets displayed on mobile devices.

Structured data can also serve as another avenue to help a page get indexed. For certain smaller clients competing in competitive markets, getting a page to simply be indexed can be a challenge. This can happen even if Google has found the page through internal or external linking. 

There are several steps to take to help increase the possibility of Google indexing your page. Adding structured data is one of them. 

While it may not prove to be the most important step to take, adding in another lane of communication between your page and crawlers is a strategy that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Types Of Structured Data

Alright, so we know what structured data is and why it’s vital for SEO campaigns, but what kind should you be using for yourself or clients? Below is a list of the most frequent and helpful types to use based on your specific industry or content. 

Article Schema

Article schema is an essential part of the YMYL industry (Finance, Medicine, Health and Supplements) as it helps highlight the author of blog posts which can enhance E-E-A-T signals. 

It’s also a great addition for News Outlets, and is a viable strategy for articles trying to obtain a “Top Stories” feature when addressing breaking news or timely topics. Obtaining these can help showcase topic authority and potentially turn organic traffic into recurring visitors.

When creating Article schema, make sure to include the author’s name, image and publishing date to help maintain freshness signals.

FAQ Schema

At first glance, FAQ schema might seem only valuable to add to dedicated FAQ pages but, as we all know, these pages typically don’t rank very well. Instead, FAQ schema can be viewed as a secret weapon for brief FAQ sections located on ecommerce category pages or product pages

It’s a great strategy to answer common questions about certain products — how they are made, when to use them, how to use them, etc. — and can result in a FAQ rich snippet. These snippets provide another unique avenue for relevant users to discover your site, and can help spread brand awareness and topic authority. 

Organization Schema

Organization schema allows businesses to provide valuable information to Google and search engines. This includes information such as the company’s name, logo, URL and important social profiles.

At first, it may seem valuable to throw organization schema on various pages, and to use it for all types of businesses. However, organization schema should be used in specific cases. A perfect example is a local business. 

This can provide more details on the type of business, as well as its location, to help the company potentially rank in a local pack which can be vital in competitive areas.  

However, for large retailers, it’s most likely a better fit to use brand schema instead. This schema uses more specific elements to better describe retailers and it’s common to find companies, such as Amazon or Walmart, taking this approach.

Product Schema

Product schema is essential for any ecommerce website or retailer. Similar as before, this will share valuable data to Google on specific products, allowing the creation of rich snippets to appear in the search results. 

The rich results are most prominently displayed in two kinds: popular products and a product snippet. Popular products will display an image followed by the product details in the search result, while a product snippet may appear lower on the search result page with a potential image, price, and other listed details. 

It’s important to note that review schema pairs extremely well with product schema, as it will help display user reviews on the SERPs with the related product. 

Recently, Google expanded the eligibility of product rich results by no longer requiring a Google Merchant Center account. Only product structured data is required now.

Video Schema

The last impactful type of structured data that shouldn’t be overlooked is video schema. Video rich results can be a great strategy to improve CTRs. Whether it be for a blog post discussing a topic or a product review, featuring a video can help reinforce the continuation of your site’s funnel. 

Video schema provides important information that normally might not be accessed by crawlers, such as video duration and the thumbnail image. It will certainly be important to keep this structured data in mind for the future as the format of media consumption continues to heavily favor short videos.  

How to Implement Structured Data

There’s three useful tools to use when creating and implementing your structured data. The first is Merkle, which is a technical SEO tool that generates common schema types based on the data you feed it. To start, you’ll need to navigate to the left side of the screen and select “Schema Generator.”

Then proceed to use the dropdown menu to select the specific schema you are looking to create. Merkle will then provide the necessary fields for you to fill out in order to produce the requested structured data.

You can then copy the schema from Merkle and add it to the footer of the designated page.

Another tool is Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. This tool requires some extra steps, but is still user-friendly to operate. To start you’ll need to provide the page URL and desired schema type. Afterwards, the application will display the given URL, and prompt you to select elements on the page. 

Once each element is selected, you’ll provide tags — such as author, date or logo — which the helper tool will use to fill out the generated schema fields. You can then click create html at the top right of the screen to generate the code.

No matter how you create your structured data, it should be placed in the footer of the HTML of the page.

Depending on your site’s CMS, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to help auto generate and easily implement structured data to your pages.

Testing Your Structured Data

The last step is to ensure that your structured data was coded correctly, and that crawlers are recognizing it. The best method to test your structured data is with Google’s Rich Result test and Schema’s validator. 

For both tools, you can submit a page URL and see potential errors or warnings if either occur in your structured data. If not, you should receive a returning message validating the items.

It’s important to note that the Rich Result test will specifically look for a page’s eligibility in ranking for rich results. This means that it may not pick up on less common schema types, such as Church schema, as they typically don’t produce rich results. So, it’s best practice to utilize both tools to guarantee your structured data is working. 

With the information and tools mentioned above you should be well-off on your journey of understanding, creating and implementing your own structured data. It’s time to put these skills to the test, and obtain your own rich results in the SERPs.

A Guide To Structured Data For SEO is an original blog post first published on Go Fish Digital.