Potential customers are searching for a service or product like yours on the internet right now.

The goal of keyword research is simple ā it helps you convert as many of these potential customers as possible.

Another goal of keyword research is to attempt to be listed as high as possible in the search results for a particular phrase or word. Doing so helps a business move ahead of its competitors.

Hence, we cannot emphasize its importance enough.

Conducting keyword research means finding phrases and words (also known as keywords) which people use in Bing, Google, YouTube, and other search engines.

This kind of research affects every other SEO task you undertake, including content promotion, searching for content topics, and much more.

Keyword Research: The Most Important Benefit

One of the most significant benefits of keyword research is it helps businesses familiarize themselves with the search intent.

Search intent is a term used to describe the purpose behind conducting an online search. It has become increasingly important because search engines such as Google are prioritizing user experience' above anything else.

When you gauge the intent behind the phrases or keywords that people use for searching information, you can create improved content strategies and produce targeted content that brings traffic to your website.

Let's discuss the types of search intent:

1. Informational: Internet users with informational intent want to search for more information on a subject. Users use informational keywords to update or educate themselves regarding a particular topic. An example of an informational search is “types of loans.”

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2. Transactional: An internet user carries out a transactional query with the intent to buy a service or product. A transactional query doesn’t always imply a purchase but depicts the user’s readiness to make a conversion.

3. Commercial: When the user has not yet made up their mind regarding which product or service to choose, they use this type of query, which may not lead to a sale directly. A majority of commercial queries display results that help the user in making a decision regarding a purchase.

4. Navigational: A navigational query helps locate a website or pages when the user enters brand keywords rather than typing the target URL in the address bar. For example – “Gmail login” is an example of a navigational query.

Now that you have understood search intent, you may wonder how to do keyword research for SEO. There are many ways to do it, the most important of which we will discuss in this guide. Let’s start:

1. How to Research for Keyword Ideas?

How can one come up with keyword ideas? It is not as difficult as you may think.

First, you have to brainstorm a comprehensive list of topics that your potential customers are likely to be interested in. For instance, if you run a digital marketing agency, think of topics related to your business that people will search for.

Some of these topics would be:

1. Content Marketing
2. Blogging
3. Social Media
4. Website traffic
5. Email marketing

Note: These topics cannot be termed as keywords yet.

Once you have prepared the list of topics, follow these steps:

A. The “Searches Related To” Section

The “Searches Related To” section that appears at the bottom of Google’s search results proves helpful in finding keywords. For example, one of the topics you listed was “email marketing.” Now, head over to Google and search for the same. Scroll to the bottom, and you will find a heading “Searches related to email marketing.”

Under this heading, you will find 8 keywords that are closely related to “email marketing.” These keyword ideas are presented to you straight from Google. Hence, the search engine is crystal-clear in its message that several people are searching for these 8 keywords. So, it is best that you utilize it to your advantage.

Insider Tip: Click on one of the keywords in the ”Searches Related To” section, then scroll to the bottom of the search results. You have a new keyword list ready with you!

B. Wikipedia Table of Contents

Were you surprised by the word “Wikipedia”? You are certainly not alone. A lot of people don’t know, but Wikipedia is an excellent source of finding keyword ideas. Industry experts have curated its content and organized it into categories, which we certainly can use to our advantage.

These are the steps you need to follow to search keyword ideas on Wikipedia:

1. Open Wikipedia and enter a broad keyword such as ‘tea.’
2. Now, its Wikipedia page will open.
3. Scroll and look for the ‘contents’ section that lists the subtopics
4. The subtopics listed here are excellent keywords that will be difficult to find elsewhere.
5. You may also spot “See also” when you click one of the subtopics. For instance, if you open the subtopic called ‘Chemical Composition’ on the Wikipedia page of tea, you are shown – See also: Phenolic content in tea and Health effects of tea. When you click on any of the two links, you are presented with another table of contents.
6. The subtopics listed on this page can also be used as another set of keywords. Interesting, isn’t it?

C. Use YouTube and Google Suggest

Take the topics from your list and enter them into Google one by one. Now, check the terms that Google is suggesting every time. These terms can be great additions to your keywords list. Remember, if Google is giving you suggestions, it means that lots of people are actually searching for those suggestions.

Do the same thing with Youtube and Bing to get a ready list of keywords.

D. Search for Famous Topics From Forums

You can always search for forums where your potential customers hang out. All you need to do is search phrases in Google keeping this structure in mind:

• “Keyword” forum
• “Keyword” forums
• “Keyword” board

Once you locate a forum, check the sections the forum is divided into. Each one of these sections is a potential keyword that you can use.

2. How to Find Keywords with Keyword Research Tools?

You can search keywords without a tool, but tools tend to make the whole keyword search process much easier. Let's discuss some excellent recommendations:

A. The Google Keyword Planner

The data you receive from the Google Keyword Planner is accurate because it comes from Google itself. Unfortunately, this tool is created to help businesses with their Google ad campaigns. However, this tool is also an excellent source of keyword ideas and enables you to find search queries with lots of searches.

B. Keyword Surfer

Keyword Surfer is yet another tool that helps in keyword research. It is a free Chrome extension that allows you to gain insights into the estimated search volume and CPC in the search bar itself. You will also be able to check different keyword ideas along with associated data.

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C. SEMrush

If you want to invest in a paid keyword tool, look no further than SEMrush. All you need to do is type in your competitor's URL in Google and view the keywords they rank for. You can then use the exact keywords for your website. A brilliant time-saver, isn't it?

D. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest produces keyword ideas from search suggestions on Google.

Just enter a term in the tool, and it will get you long-term keywords. It also provides you data on every keyword such as CPC, search volume, etc.

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Now, you may wonder what is a long-tail keyword and why use it? We will discuss it in the next section.

3. How to Know a Keyword’s SEO Difficulty?

75% of searchers don’t go past the 1st page of the search results. It is important to know if a keyword is too competitive to rank for. You may find it difficult to get past the third page of Google if you use an extremely competitive keyword.

On the other hand, a keyword that doesn’t have too much competition provides you a good chance to reach the top 3. So, let’s find out more about a keyword’s SEO difficulty so that you can make the best decision in selecting your keywords:

A. Types of keywords in SEO

At the time of keyword research, you must be aware of the different keyword types to get the desired benefit. Let’s discuss the different keyword types:

a. Short-tail keywords

Short-tail keywords are phrases that contain only two to three words. They have a high search volume and hence, are very competitive. Users use these keywords at the starting stages of research when their search intent is not very clear.

For example, “running shoes” is an example of a short-tail keyword.

b. Long-tail keywords

This type of keyword has lesser search volume as compared to a short-tail keyword. It is composed of more than 3 words and tends to be longer than other keyword types. Specific in nature, these keywords clearly state the search intent.

It is also important to know that long-tail keywords are less competitive as compared to short-tail keywords. For instance, “running shoes for summer” is an example of a long-tail keyword.

These types of keywords have high conversion rates. Let’s see how:

People who are searching for long-tail terms tend to be much further in the buying cycle. For instance, consider a keyword – “paleo diet.” Someone searching for a “paleo diet” is perhaps trying to know more about it. This means they don’t have any intention of purchase.

But if a person is searching for a “paleo diet supplement,” which is a longer version of the term, they are more likely to be closer to making a purchase. Therefore, the traffic from these keywords tends to convert well.

c. Short-term fresh keyword

Short-term fresh keywords are the ones that have been recently hyped on social media or have been in the news. In other words, these are the keywords that are currently trending. A fresh keyword can get more organic views. But once the hype is over, be ready for a harsh fall.

In 2018, an instance of a fresh keyword was “The Avengers: Infinity War.” Think of any newest blockbuster for an example of a fresh keyword in the current year.

d. Long-term evergreen keyword

Evergreen keywords are those keywords that are relevant regardless of time. If you use long-term evergreen keywords in a content piece now, you can rest assured that people will search for this content even after 2-5 years. When you do this, you get consistent traffic over the years.

Some examples of evergreen articles are:

• 10 Ways to Soothe A Crying Baby
• How to Make a Dog House
• Top 10 Ways to Enjoy Apples

While producing good evergreen ideas, you may feel a lot of them are already covered, that too in excess. At this time, you can search for long-tail keywords which do not have super-high competition but do have volume.

Tip: Try to keep your evergreen pieces based around the keywords you want your website to rank on.

e. Customer-defining keyword

When you reach the stage of keyword research, you already know about your target audience. You are aware of whether they are females, males, kids, etc. If you are targeting a particular group, make sure your content is clear in addressing them. For instance, a customer-defining keyword can be “video games for kids.” When you use these keywords, it draws people from your targeted category and builds credibility for your business.

B. Check Websites on First Page of Google and Export Their Organic Keywords

You must know a faster way of evaluating the competition level of a keyword. To do this, search for your keyword in the search bar of Google. Now, check the sites that rank on the first page. If you see uber authority sites such as Wikipedia on the first page, you should reconsider using the keyword. On the other hand, if you see a few smaller blogs on the first page, it means you can try to hit the first page too with the help of this keyword.

How To Check Organic Keywords on SEMrush?

In case you want to check the best keywords of your competitors, visit the Organic Research Tool in SEMrush. When you use the tool, you get one step closer to the top of the SERPs. Here’s how to use the tool:

1. Go to Organic Research Tool in SEMrush

2. Enter the URL and click on the search button

3. Check the keywords from the list and include the suitable ones in your SEO campaign

CanIRank

Interestingly enough, there is a complete tool called CanIRank dedicated to keyword difficulty. It evaluates the competition level of a keyword relative to your site. For example, once you enter the keyword “CRM” into the tool, it will look at the first-page competition of Google compared to your website’s authority. It will then give you a “Ranking Probability.”

4. How to Select Keywords from the List of Keywords

Now that you have a keywords list, you may want to know which keywords to choose from it. There isn’t a tool that tells you the same; hence you need to consider a few factors to choose the right keywords.

A. By Checking Search Volume

Short-tail keywords can have hundreds of monthly searches. On the other hand, long-tail keywords have relatively low search volumes. Ensure you use a keyword that has reasonable search volume. Refrain from using keywords that nobody is searching for.

B. By Estimating Organic CTR

The number of Google searchers who click on an organic result has gone down. This is because featured snippets give you an answer right away without the need to click anywhere. It is also because Google is packing more ads in the search results as compared to before.

So, knowing about search volume isn’t enough. You need to estimate organic CTR to get a complete estimate of the number of clicks you will receive from the first-page ranking on Google.

Organic CTR is the percentage of searchers who click on a search engine result.

So, to estimate organic CTR, look at the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) by entering your keyword. If there are already several things on the first page, like a featured snippet and many Google ads, then it is understandable that you will not get a lot of clicks even if you rank number one.

C. Analyzing Keyword Trends

Google Trends is the best way to see if your keyword is slowly dying or growing fast. Add your keyword in Google Trends, and you will be able to see its “interest over time.” If it is growing, you can go ahead with the keyword as it is likely to reward you with increased traffic over time.

5. Helpful Tips and Strategies

Now that you are aware of the basics, it is time to know some advanced tips and strategies. Let’s start:

A. Use Barnacle SEO

Let’s suppose you have discovered a “perfect” keyword and achieved a rank in the top 3 for it. You may think that your work is done. However, the keyword can provide you more traction with Barnacle SEO.

Barnacle SEO is a practice where you use the authority of another site for ranking on the first page. For instance, suppose that “voice search SEO” is your best keyword when it comes to conversions and the post you write about it ranks in the top 3 for this keyword. But this means you have only one spot in the SERPs. In an attempt to take more than one spot on the first page, you can create a YouTube video that is optimized for this keyword. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

B. Find Niche Keywords

Some websites offer you scope for discussion on topics that are associated with your niche. One of the best examples of such websites is Reddit. It helps you discover the potential keywords that you have not yet added to your list.

To find keyword ideas on Reddit, head over to the website and search for a broad topic your potential customers will be interested in. Then, select a subreddit where you think your potential customers are likely to be hanging out. Keep an eye on threads that have plenty of comments to get keyword ideas.

C. Use Google Search Console for Keyword Ideas

The Google Search Console can provide lots of keyword ideas. For this, you need to log in to your GSC account and go to the “Performance Report.” This report displays those terms that provide the most clicks from Google search.

As a next step, sort the list by “Impressions” and check keywords that get loads of impressions,  but not necessarily clicks. Choose one of these keywords to produce a piece of content that is optimized around it.

Why do this?

This keyword that you choose is what people are searching for. Plus, you already know that Google considers your website a good fit in the search results. Now, you can publish content that is highly focused on this specific keyword and you are all set!

D. Optimize Content Around Synonyms and Closely Related Terms

Don’t stop after you optimize your page around your target keyword. To get more search engine traffic, optimize it around synonyms. For instance, if you have created a post on your main keyword – “search engine visibility,” you can add variations of the keyword in the post, too. For instance, add “SEO visibility” to your post. Doing so gives you an opportunity to rank #1 for the keyword and its variations.

E. Search for ‘Shoulder Keywords’

So many people only optimize their websites around those keywords that are very closely related to what they are selling. This can be a huge mistake because product keywords are highly competitive. There are tons of keywords your target audience is searching for when they are not looking for what you are selling. These are called “Shoulder Keywords.” These are the keywords that are not directly associated with what you are selling, but are the ones your potential customers are searching for.

Hence, you can use shoulder keywords to publish fantastic pieces of content and when your customers notice it, they are more likely to purchase from you in the future.

To understand this better, let’s take an example. Let’s suppose, you offer a marketing analytics tool. So, apart from optimizing around “analytics software” and “marketing analytics tool,” you can also publish content around shoulder keywords, such as “how can analytics help optimize your website,” “marketing analytics benefits,” and so on.

Bottomline

With a ready list of keywords, you can focus on the right topics for your website. This will, in turn, help you achieve short-term as well as long-term gains.

So, now that you know how to do keyword research for SEO, it’s our turn to ask – which keyword research method did you love the most? Which tools will you definitely use?

If you are an agency and want to offer the best results to your clients, you can always consider hiring result-oriented white label SEO services from DashClicks. It is hassle-free, time-saving, and affordable!

The two most prevalent methods of business promotion and lead generation in digital marketing are:

A. Investing money in paid advertisements

B. Implementing inbound and content marketing

These strategies serve both purposes:

A. Creating awareness about the products and services

B. Lead generation and conversion

So, these can be used in various parts of the sales funnel.

Paid Advertising vs. Content Marketing

Both paid advertising and content marketing have their pros and cons.

Paid marketing brings quick results, whereas content marketing requires patience and time, as it drives results in the long run.

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Content marketing builds an audience that is likely to convert and become your customers in the future. Both of these strategies are successful in their domains, but they also have various cons.

If you try paid advertising, you need to have enough money to get noticeable results. On the flip side, while implementing content marketing, you need to invest time and effort.

It would help if you also had lots of patience as you would see results through content marketing in terms of conversion in a long time.

Why Do You Need to Implement Cold Email Marketing?

So, is there a way to generate quick leads, which is cost-effective as well? You can try cold email marketing, which works for many businesses and freelancers.

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Email marketing is quite common, but there is a slight difference between cold email marketing and email marketing. In email marketing, you get the opt-in form filled in by the user when they visit your website, and you get their permission to send them emails.

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The objective of email marketing is to engage users and do business with them. Whereas in cold email marketing, we send an email to a stranger without seeking their permission. Cold email marketing has the following features.

1. High Open Rate

But why would you send a cold email? There are many reasons behind it. According to a study based on the analysis of 20 million cold emails, it was found that these were quite effective. The cold emails had an open rate of 53%, and that's a considerable number because the writer sent them to millions of people.

That is even higher than what you'd achieve through paid ads, and it's a remarkable achievement for a marketer. Secondly, cold pitching yields results faster than any other campaign. People can get results within a week. It is even faster than inbound marketing.

The average time needed is six to nine months to drive any significant result with inbound marketing. With cold emailing, you can start doing business with your prospective client within a few days.

2. Scalable

Cold emailing is scalable. You can potentially send an unlimited number of cold emails. If you do it properly, you can add hundreds of people every day to your email list.

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With cold email marketing, you can easily reach out to as many as 1000 to 15,000 people in a day because it has endless possibilities.

3. It's Free

The best feature of cold email marketing is that it's mostly free. All you need is to have access to an email account. However, you may need to invest in a few tools like Quickmail that will make your life easier.

The biggest problem while performing cold email marketing is to find email addresses. Email Address Finder is a tool that you can use along with an Email Open Tracker and Reverse Email Lookup. These tools can be a bit costly. However, the good news is buying these tools isn't a must. You can very well achieve the same results by using free tools along with some manual work. However, doing it manually may be a bit time-consuming.

The Legality of Cold Email Marketing

You receive hundreds of junk emails every day that include get-rich-quick schemes and other fraudulent offers, most of which are spam. So, people confuse cold emails with spam emails which is not the case.

So, cold email marketing is not necessarily illegal. Even though spammy and illegal cold emails are commonplace, sending out cold emails is considered legal globally.

However, you should make sure that while sending cold emails, you don’t use the following:

1. False headers
2. Deceptive subject lines
3. No option to opt-out or unsubscribe

There is a law against deceptive subject lines and false headers, known as the CAN-SPAM Act.

The objective of this act is to respect the privacy of the recipients and prevent businesses from cheating or deceiving them. It applies to all types of emails, even the emails sent as part of email marketing. If you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, cold email marketing is 100% legal.

How to Make a Prospecting List?

Prospecting is the next most important thing, and you should invest a significant chunk of your time in making your prospect list because it will pay you off tremendously. The success of your email campaign will also depend on the quality and length of your email list.

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During prospecting, you develop a list of targets and contacts to send your cold emails to. The more exhaustive and targeted your email prospecting list is, the more success you're likely to achieve with your cold email marketing campaign.

Here is the five-step process of prospecting:

1. First, figure out what your target audience is.
2. Then, find out the related keywords that define your target audience.
3. Perform screening and filtering of prospects.
4. Identify decision-makers.
5. Find out the email addresses of the decision-makers.

A. Defining Your Target Audience

Instead of taking a general approach, you should first try to determine your target audience.

You can further filter your audience to a set of people in a particular niche or people with a certain quality or a trait, such as educational level or income.

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Coming up with the right target audience is extremely important for success in cold email marketing. Furthermore, your success rate is bound to increase with personalized emails. With general targeting, it's not possible to personalize those emails.

B. Finding the Keywords That Define Your Audience

After defining your target audience, you should try to figure out keywords that people use to find such an audience. You can use a keyword tool such as Ubersuggest or Google Keyword Planner for this purpose. For example, if you are targeting business process outsourcing units, you can use keywords such as:

• Business offshoring services
• Knowledge process outsourcing centers
• Business process outsourcing companies
• Remote outsourcing centers

You can use your creativity and secondary information to research the most searched and popular keywords:

C. Perform Screening and Filtering Of Prospects

While screening your prospects, have a look at their websites and other features such as financial strength and business model, etc., so that you don't end up wasting your time on an unintended audience. If their businesses are in nascent stages and cannot earn any revenue, there is little chance that they would even care about the services you offer.

D. Identify Decision-Makers and Find Their Email Addresses

The next most important step after you shortlisted the businesses you need to target is identifying the decision-makers. Usually, you can find it on the "About Us" page on the website and also in the "Team" or "Leadership" section. However, the best place to know the decision-maker is Linkedin.

A decision-maker can be an MD, CEO, CMO, CFO, or CTO, etc.

You cannot start your cold emailing campaign unless you know the correct Email address of your prospects. This is where an email verifier becomes indispensable, ensuring the email addresses you’ve gathered are accurate and active. You can either use an email finder app or try it manually.

You can consider the following email finder apps:

• Octoparse
• Find that.email
• Clearbit
• Clearout
• AeroLeads
• Snov.io
• LeadGrabber MF
• Email Hunter
• Voila Norbert
• FindThatLead
• Uplead
• Norbert

Many of these apps are available as Chrome extensions and extensions of popular CRM and other digital marketing tools.

It is not difficult to use these apps. All you need to do is enter the prospect's name and company URL, and the app will try to find the email address for you. Most of these tools offer a free trial but upto 50 free email lookup addresses are free. For extensive use, you can buy their subscription.

If you do not want to invest in a tool or app, you can use the manual approach to try different email variations and check it on Google.

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You can see here that for an imaginary prospect Jane Doe, who works for Deloitte US, there can be different email variations.

According to the screenshot, Deloitte US uses seven other email formats, the combination with the first name's initials and second name, i.e., jdoe@deloitte.com, was used 29.8% of the time. So, you can try this variation along with two others on top, i.e., janedoe@deloitte.com and doej@deloitte.com.

If you choose the wrong variation, don't worry, you'll receive mail from "MAILER-DAEMON" or a "Mail Delivery Subsystem". You can filter such emails out later on.

How to Write Highly Effective Cold Emails?

Here is an example of a very successful email format that the sender claims had earned him $10,000+ in freelance writing income.

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To write such cold mails, you should remember the following things:

1. Personalized

The email addresses the recipient by their first name, and their company name is also referenced in the second sentence. So, the cold email has an element of personalization.

2. Highly Specific, Brief, and to the Point

The email directly talks about the reason for reaching out. So, without any fluff, it helps the prospect to decide whether to continue reading the mail or not.

3. Attention-Grabbing

The sender introduces himself and provides relevant social proof by mentioning that he has been featured in major international magazines such as Forbes and the Huffington Post, and his blog has millions of subscribers. Since he was pitching for writing projects, all of these act as attention grabbers.

4. Specify How You Can Help

The sender has specified how he could help the recipient, giving them different options to choose from. Being specific about your services also helps you write highly engaging emails.

A 5-Step Process to Write an Effective Email

Here is a 5-step process to write effective cold emails that bring quick results:

1. Tailor the Message to the Recipient

Personalization involves taking time to understand your customer and deep-diving into their mind. It is possible only through empathy mapping. So, instead of getting tone-deaf about your messaging, personalize it according to the likes and interests of the recipient.

Personalization comes with the understanding of the human mind, so it involves getting into the thinking process of an individual, what they want and what motivates them. Once you develop that "theory of mind," your homework is done.

The purpose of your email should also be pretty straightforward, even if it sounds like seeking help. According to various studies, people feel motivated to help others when you address them as uniquely qualified. If your story makes sense, they would be more than eager to help you.

With personalization, you cut the crap and don't talk about things that don't make sense or are said with little or no homework.

2. Validate Yourself

When you interact with a stranger or receive an email from someone you don't know, you have a natural curiosity to know about that person.

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Mentioning a familiar friend can help minimize that stranger feeling. If you have the authority, social status, or credibility to qualify for the quick camaraderie, say it.

"Rare similarities" like a shared hometown, strange hobbies, or being part of the same group can also help you connect instantaneously and ward off that stranger feeling.

3. Help Your Audience Alleviate Their Pain

According to various studies, people tend to go overboard to get rid of pain than to acquire pleasure. So, if you have done your research about your audience's pain points and want to offer some relief from it, explain it.

You can use social listening to know the most significant pain points of your prospects. It will simply surprise them and delight them, and in turn, they will also be willing to return the favor. Or, you can help people with something they want or connect them to someone they would like to meet.

4. Keep It Short and Actionable

Keep people's needs and wants in mind and craft a short but power-packed email with a compelling offer. Short emails have a higher chance of being read than long and cold ones that can be annoying. Your emails should request explicit, specific action to get a higher response.

The best way to do it is to keep its tone conversational, just like someone introduces himself at a party and immediately grabs the guests' attention.

Reading your email out loud will immensely help. It will likely be read with enthusiasm if it sounds natural, cordial, friendly, and pleasant. Ask instead of suggesting or instructing people. So, the way you talk to them matters a lot.

5. Be Appreciative, Express Gratitude and Vulnerability

Being slightly submissive and showing vulnerability is a highly effective persuasion skill. It doesn't mean you should bow down like what people did in ancient times before majestic kings.

But, when you approach a stranger for a favor, it pays to express gratitude and a little bit of vulnerability, to make them feel that they are a good person and in a position to help someone in need. While approaching them, could you give them a feeling of power and status?

Conclusion

Experts warn against using a template as it can be annoying, cold, and boring. It may not have the pull required to engage the readers because it lacks personalization and often carries a formal tone. That's why we have refrained from suggesting any template. The tips and tricks offered above will stimulate readers and help you engage with them. Cold email marketing is not really "cold" as it sounds. It all comes down to the value you offer, the personal touch in your language, friendly tone, and brevity of the content.

Google algorithm updates are considered something that marketers are always wary of. So, every time Google rolls out an algorithm update, they become nervous and have no option but to roll with the punches. However, Google releases hundreds of minor adjustments and a few significant tweaks to its algorithm every year.

In this article, we will discuss your ideal strategy in the wake of such updates so that it does not affect your traffic and rankings. We will also explain how you can use past algorithm updates to understand the current trends and deal with them.

In the past decade, the core objective of Google algorithm updates was to prevent manipulation of search engine algorithms by unscrupulous companies, so only the relevant sites may appear on the top SERPs resulting in a better search experience for the users.

What Are Google Algorithm Updates?

Now that Google has taken search experience to the next level, the search engine not only wants its users to get relevant results for their search queries, but it also wants them to be happy with the websites appearing on top of SERPs.

The focus of the previous updates used to be:

1. Up-to-date, unique, and relevant content
2. Trustworthiness of the website
3. Link quality
4. User experience (download speed, ease of navigation, and glitch-free checkouts, etc.)

It usually affects how a web page ranks on Google.

Google also wants to make sure its users love the content and their overall experience on the website.

So, all the authoritativeness and the backlinks are useless if the website doesn't offer a good user experience. So, for better or worse, The focus is now shifting towards user experience.

It's crucial to know since we want our readers not just to be ready for a particular update to be rolled out in the future but any algorithm update that Google may announce in the forthcoming years.

Apart from the regular algorithm updates, Google announces some sweeping updates every year to prepare proactively and update their websites accordingly.

A Brief Overview of Previous Google Algorithm Updates

Let's discuss some significant algorithm updates that changed many practices and changed the landscape of SEO across the web world.

1. Google Panda Update

The first serious update that shook the web world was the Panda, which Google announced in 2011. It was aimed at penalizing poor-quality content that offered very little value and was overstuffed with keywords.

Now, let's discuss the context of this update. Google announced this update at a time when most companies engaged in content farming. It was all about poor-quality content created for search engines. It mainly was irrelevant, least helpful for the users, and keyword stuffed. The aim of writing such articles was to game the search engine algorithms to win top rankings. As soon as Google decided to deal with this sneaky practice, Panda was rolled out to penalize those sites.

The timeline for the Panda algorithm update indicates that Google targeted thin content, high ad to content ratio, and various other quality issues. Google rolled it out in a phased manner in different countries, and finally, in September 2012, Panda #20 was announced, which was a significant update, affecting 2.4% of the queries.

Again in May 2014, Google announced a major Panda update that affected 7.5% of English language queries, and with these updates, Google almost tackled duplicate and poor quality content. Digital marketing teams across the globe started creating high-quality content that offers real value to the users. With this, the nefarious practice of keyword stuffing took a back seat and was replaced with the natural inclusion of relevant keywords.

2. Penguin Update

Google announced the Penguin update just a year after Panda was first rolled out in 2011, but its aim was entirely different. It was launched to deal with another significant menace in the web world— artificial link building used as a “hack” to win top ranks.

You must be familiar with the fact that Google has been taking backlinks as a sign of authority, popularity, and trustworthiness of a site since its inception. It openly uses it as a ranking signal.

Some unscrupulous webmasters decided to take advantage and started using it as a hack to rank on top manipulating Google's love for backlinks. Low quality and spammy backlinks led to reduced search results on Google as low-quality websites started ranking high. Google took it head-on with the Penguin update and started penalizing the sites involved in this practice. Soon a significant shift happened, and business owners and webmasters started tracking their links and removing low-quality, irrelevant and spammy links.

3. The Hummingbird Update

Google announced the Hummingbird update to provide a better experience to the searcher by showing the related results. For example, if someone searched for “small business,” Google will use different search intents to show the results. So, the results may include websites offering small business loans, business consultancy and networking services, small business ideas, small business trends, and government websites that connect entrepreneurs with lenders. For example, if you run a cake shop, you can optimize your website for the following keywords:

• Cakeshop
• Bakery
• Cupcakes
• Cheesecake
• Birthday cake
• Vegan bakery
• Italian bakery
• Sweetshop
• Pastry shop

Even though the results don’t look like an exact match to your queries, they are relevant and valuable for the searcher. So, this up-date expected marketers to focus on related keywords as well apart from the main keywords.

How to Proactively Prepare Yourself Against Future Algorithm Updates?

If you want to keep your website “update proof” and don’t want to lose out on traffic because of every damn update, the best strategy is to learn from the past updates.

Here are a few tips you can proactively use to protect your website against any future algorithm updates:

1. Understand the Basics of Google Algorithm Updates

You can understand the central objective of Google update, and to a great extent, it was explained by Ben Gomes, Google’s Vice-President of Engineering, “our goal is to get you the exact answer you’re searching for faster.”

So, relevancy, accuracy, and rapidity are what Google wants to achieve with these updates. It makes understanding the search intent of the user essential. Marketers should focus on relevance and user experience, and it will cover almost everything Google expects from your website.

So, let’s begin with user experience. First, check how long it takes for your website to load. Have a look at the navigation. Is it user-friendly? Can you get to the sections you need to go in a maximum of three clicks? Are too many ads bothering you or preventing you from seeing the content on your web pages?

The recent changes made to Google’s algorithm point that sites with poor user experience will also get penalized regardless of other factors that might have propelled them to the top ranks.

2. Optimize UX

As per a shocking study by Google, as page load time increases from one to 10 seconds, the bounce rate of a mobile site visitor may go up by 123%. So, if you are serious about retaining visitors to your site, you should minimize the page load time.

Reducing the number of ads, especially near the critical navigation buttons, is also a good way of optimizing the UX. It would help if you kept in mind that users won't close the three random ads and would instead close the website and move to another site.

How to Identify That a Google Algorithm Update Has Affected Your Site?

Here's a checklist you can follow to determine whether your website has been affected by a recent Google algorithm update:

1. Track Google Updates

Keep on tracking Google updates and find out if there have been any recently. Most Google algorithm updates that occur almost daily are industry-specific and their effect only in specific industry verticals. Their objective is to improve the search results. Specific algorithm updates are also referred to as core updates on the flip side, and these updates happen several times a year.

If you want to know about the latest algorithm updates and how they can affect your website, check out Moz’s list of Google algorithm updates. The following screenshot explains the updates that happened in 2021 and how they impacted search results. For example, the latest update was detected by many SEO tools in February 2021, and it was named “Featured Snippets Drop.” Its likely impact was that Google Search started showing featured snippets less often (SEL).

2. Wait For the Dust to Settle

Don't panic as soon as you sense an update taking place. Let the dust settle down, which takes around a week. It would help if you didn't react to things in the meantime. Once the data stops fluctuating, you can initiate the repair. You can refer to Google Analytics and Google Search Console after that and take cues from these channels.

3. Check Google Analytics

Now it's time to get back to Google Analytics and Google Search Console and choose different date ranges to see any traffic fluctuations. To access Search Console via GA, go to Acquisition > Search Console

Sometimes, this fluctuation can be due to an external factor such as running an email or any other promotion campaign, or a big event or holiday, so you should choose a broader date range.

If you see an overall decline in your traffic or a sharp drop in your organic sessions or leads, it can be due to a Google algorithm update.

4. Check It Across Different Landing Pages

Log in to Your Site's Google Analytics Account > Go to Acquisition > Search Console > Landing Pages

If traffic drop is sitewide, it could be due to an algorithm update.

Similarly, you can also check it across different devices.

Acquisition > Search Console > Devices > Click on Mobile

Usually, a sitewide traffic drop is a strong indication that your website has been affected by an algorithm update.

5. Perform the Preliminary Assessment: Check Google

There is another method that you can try with ease. If you feel that your website has been affected by an update, check the search landscape on Google. Also, check the current position of your website as compared to your competition:

a. Is there a significant change in the positions?
b. Which site is ranking at the position your site used to rank before?
c. Are you still ranking but in no-click search results, snippets, or paid ads?
d. Compare the rankings of your web pages to those that are now ranking well. Compare the keywords you are targeting versus them? Find out if they are using any keyword variations or content strategies?
e. Have they implemented any specific landing page strategies you haven’t tried so far which may help you boost your rankings?

6. Check Your Backlinks Profile

Sometimes you may notice a drop in traffic due to the presence of spammy links. As Google may penalize your site anytime if they detect spammy links, it's essential to check your backlink profile regularly. You can use Google Search Console for auditing your backlinks. You can also manage your backlink profile and improve the overall health of your backlinks through GSC.

Here is the step-by-step process of checking your backlink profile using SEO SpyGlass and Google Search Control:

A. Get the comprehensive list of your backlinks

Open SEO SpyGlass and enter your domain name. SEO SpyGlass provides a comprehensive list of backlinks as it uses its own index to find backlinks.

For better results, you can sync your Google Analytics and Google Search Console account with SEO SpyGlass. To do this, put a tick in front of the Enable Expert Options line, and click Next.

You can also turn it on using the “Preferences drop-down” menu of the tool.

Once Google Analytics and GSC are connected to the tool, it will start retrieving the backlink data. However, the process may take some time.

B. Identify potentially harmful backlinks

Google ignores occasional bad backlinks, but an overwhelming number of suspicious backlinks may attract a manual penalty. Here is how to identify toxic backlinks.

In the tool, Go to Backlink Profile and then click the Penalty Risk section from the drop-down menu. On this screen, the tool will provide you with the estimated penalty risk for the backlink domains.

A backlink with a penalty risk of over 70% is considered a harmful and high-risk backlink. These are marked red, and you should remove those backlinks.

C. Remove toxic backlinks

The best option to remove toxic backlinks to your website is to disavow them. You can do it with the help of the Google Disavow tool. Google wants you to use this tool to inform them that these backlinks should be ignored when assessing your site for ranking purposes.

To do it, create a “disavow” file where you can collect all the toxic links and submit this file to the Google Disavow tool.

If you are using SEO SpyGlass, select the backlinks you want to remove and choose the Disavow backlinks option by right-clicking on it.

Export the file from the tool and submit it to the Google Disavow tool as we did it previously.

You may not notice any immediate impact of this activity on your backlink profile, but Google will soon start ignoring these backlinks.

You should frequently do a backlink health check for your website and remove toxic and harmful links this way.

7. Keep Google’s Resolution and Mission Statement in Mind

As emphasized above, Google wants to offer the best user experience and exact search results faster. So, if you notice a drop in rankings or traffic, check whether your website provides:

a. Excellent user experience
b. Great and compelling content
c. Excellent usability

8. Use External Google Algorithm Update Trackers

To keep yourself abreast with the latest Google algorithm updates, you may refer to the following trackers.

A. Moz Update History: This list is maintained by none other than SEO guru Rand Fishkin’s Moz. It’s a comprehensive and up-to-date list of algorithm updates so that you can identify the trend.

B. Google Webmaster Central Blog: Monitor this resource to stay updated on the latest algorithm updates, straight from Google.

C. SEJ’s Google Algorithm History: Search Engine Journals’ Google algorithm history provides you a sneak peek into the latest as well as previous updates. You can also see the updates using filters such as the year an update happened.

D. Twitter: After Matt Cutts, the most reliable source of getting information about algorithm updates and Google’s “insider information” is Twitter. Apart from Google, you can follow the likes of:

a. Danny Sullivan: @dannysullivan and @searchliaison
b. John Mueller: @JohnMu
c. Barry Schwartz @rustybrick
d. Marie Haynes @Marie_Haynes

E. SEO Tools: Apart from that, you can use the following tools to track Google algorithm updates:

a. Mozcast
b. SEMrush Sensor
c. Rank Ranger Rank Risk Index Tool
d. Accuranker ‘Grump’ Rating
e. Algoroo
f. Penguin Tool

How to Recover If Your Website Has Been Penalized by a Google Algorithm Update?

If you feel that your site has been penalized following an algorithm update, here is the step-by-step approach to recover and reclaim your lost rankings:

1. Audit Your Website and Find Its Cause

As explained above, check all previous updates and trends through update trackers, and identify what might have gone wrong. There can be several reasons for a penalty, such as —— duplicate or poor quality content, spammy and irrelevant backlinks (backlinks from other niches and industries), keyword abuse, poor navigation, poor user experience, and site usability issues, etc.

Visit Google Webmaster Tools to identify such issues and how to fix them.

2. Make Algorithm-Friendly Changes

Once you identify the possible reasons for a penalty, make algorithm-friendly changes to reclaim your lost rankings. You can remove low-quality spammy backlinks, remove duplicate content, add high-quality content and improve user experience on the site.

3. Improve the User Experience on the Site

You should also pay attention to user experience and related issues such as:

A. Site load speed
B. Poor navigation where it becomes difficult to access the content you are looking for
C. Too many ads that may annoy a visitor
D. Bad layout and website design

FAQs About Google Algorithm Updates

1. What is a Search Engine Algorithm?

The search engine uses a complex system where data from its search index is retrieved to instantly deliver the best possible results for a search term or query. Search engines use algorithms and various ranking factors to return web pages ranked by relevance on their SERPs.

2. How Many Google Algorithm Updates Happen Every Year?

Google changes its algorithm about 500 to a few thousand times per year. However, there are only a few significant updates. Minor updates may not affect your website immediately, but there is always a pattern and trend behind these updates. Therefore it’s crucial to keep an eye on these changes to prevent any penalty.

3. Why Should You Track Google Updates?

If you are a business owner or an SEO expert, you should keep track of small and significant changes that could impact your website so that you can change your SEO strategy and tactics accordingly.

A Google algorithm update can either boost or hurt your:

• Rankings on SERPs and overall visibility
• Organic traffic
• Leads and conversions
• Revenue

4. What Is the EAT Concept in SEO, and How Is It Related to Search Engine Rankings?

EAT is a popular acronym in SEO that stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.

The EAT concept is quite important as, according to Google, it helps them measure the relevance of a website and decide whether to rank it higher or not.

So, always try to publish content written or compiled by an expert and is well-researched. If an authority writes it, it will boost trustworthiness.

For example, have a look at this Therapytribe blog. TherapyTribe is an online directory of psychiatrists, and the content it publishes is created by certified mental health and psychiatry professionals.

What are Bulimia, Anorexia, & Eating Disorders? The article is written by Emily Mendez, M.S., Ed.S., a certified psychotherapist and an expert in mental health and substance abuse cases. It increases the trustworthiness of the website for the website visitors.

The websites with unverified and shallow content are often penalized by Google as the information provided in those websites can be potentially harmful to the readers.

Conclusion

Dealing with thousands of minor and a couple of major algorithm updates every year is not a cakewalk. Still, if you have the right tools such as keyword density checkers, backlink finders, and Google algorithm update trackers mentioned above, it will help you puzzle it out.

Apart from that, tools such as Mozcast, SEMrush Sensor, Rank Ranger Rank Risk Index Tool, Accuranker’ Grump’ Rating, and Algoroo will also be handy.

If your website is affected by a Google algorithm update, go to Moz or SEJ’s trackers mentioned above and study the past algorithm updates to figure out its exact reason.

Use Google Search Central, which was previously known as Google Webmasters’ Tool, to find ways to fix it. You can find many tools and useful study material on GSC. Use it along with the tools listed above, and soon you’ll be on your way to reclaiming your lost rankings and traffic.

If you are an agency and don’t have the required tools and expertise in it, you can hire result-oriented white label SEO services from DashClicks for your clients. It is not only affordable but hassle-free and time-saving too.

While looking for ways to create more organic traffic, you may hear a term called SEO-friendly website design almost every single time. However, this term can seem a little overwhelming, especially to businesses that are just starting out in the digital world.

Let's begin by answering the question - what is an SEO-friendly website? Simply put, an SEO-friendly website is implemented with SEO techniques that are designed to help the search engine crawlers to explore and read pages in an easier manner.

Today, many businesses create a website just for the sake of it. They don't incorporate design and content that attract visitors who are important for their business. Due to this, their potential customers are not even able to find it on the web. If their website is optimized correctly, it can transform into a full-fledged salesperson and help them reach their potential customers. An SEO-friendly website helps businesses achieve exactly this. Such a website helps them consider the needs of their target audience. It also helps them rank high on Google, provide an enhanced user experience, and increase their customer base.

Now, you may wonder what are attributes that make your site SEO-friendly. Don't worry, we can answer that for you, too.

What Makes a Website SEO Friendly?

The approach to making a website SEO-friendly is quite simple. It is carried out so that Google and other search engines can crawl efficiently on each webpage, effectively interpret the content, and finally index it in their database. After this, they provide the most valuable and important web pages to their users according to the topics they are looking for.

Some of the most significant characteristics of an SEO friendly website are:

1. Attention to URLs

A simple thing such as a URL can make a world of difference in making a website SEO friendly. Apart from possessing a clean structure, your webpage URL must adhere to the best SEO practices associated with search engine indexing to make your website SEO-friendly. In the case of permanent links, make sure that they are self-explanatory, in lowercase, and separated using dashes. They can also feature keywords placed organically in order to improve visibility.

2. Unique Content

The content on the web pages of your website should be unique for it to be SEO friendly. Search engines are aware of websites with plagiarism and flag them for the same. Such a thing results in a decrease in the SEO friendliness of your website.

3. The Right Structure

A well-structured website is easier to index. Here's what a general website structure is composed of:

Ø  Header

Ø  Page title or H1 tag

Ø  Breadcrumb menu

Ø  Text separated into several short paragraphs along with subheadings

Ø  Information of the author

Ø  Footer

4. Quick-loading Webpages

Needless to say, neither your potential customers nor search engines are fond of slow-loading websites. So, here's an insider tip - SEO-friendly websites are optimized for speed and fast loading time. A website that loads faster leads to more user interactions.

SEO Friendly Website ā Why Do You Need it?

How would you feel if someone does a Google search regarding a problem that your business can solve but your website isn't even visible to them? This is precisely the reason why SEO should matter to you. You are likely to miss out on your potential customers if your site isn't ranking on the first page of SERPs (when a user submits a search query, SERP is the page that a search engine returns).

For a higher ranking on SERPs, you must start your web design process with your target audience and SEO in mind. The chance of your web page ranking on the first page of SERPs increases if you keep on improving your SEO strategies.

With an SEO-friendly website in place, you will have an edge over the competitors who don't create their website according to their potential customers and search engines.

Let's discuss in detail the reasons why your website should be SEO friendly:

1. Helps Generate Organic Traffic

When you work on your website content taking into account the strategies used by the competitors, you are able to obtain a higher ranking, which increases the chances of selling. High ranking is an excellent source of organic traffic to your website (organic traffic is the traffic that comes from search engines).

How to boost organic traffic?

Some ways in which businesses can generate more organic traffic are:

• By creating insightful, persona-optimized content that is based on their market niche
• By using long-tail keywords (the keywords that are more specific to the service or product by the business)
• By creating quality content and being consistent at it

2. Helps Get Valuable Traffic

If you are getting web traffic, that's great! But you must ensure that you are attracting potential customers as well. As we now already know, an SEO-friendly website helps you achieve exactly that!

There are many ways to get valuable traffic with the help of an SEO-friendly design. One of them is using long-tail keywords in your content. Let us define long-tail keywords for you to understand them better. The search terms that have low competition levels and search volume are called long-tail keywords. They have a longer length (more than 3 words) as compared to other keyword types. Such keywords are specific and derive more valuable traffic to your website. Some examples of long-tail keywords include buy beebalms plant near me.ā

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Another way you get valuable traffic with the help of an SEO-friendly design is because it integrates a responsive design into your website. Such a design is an essential part of an SEO-friendly website. A responsive design helps your website to adapt to any device the user may be using at the time of the search (such as a tablet, mobile, or website). This helps the users to have a positive experience on your website. They tend to stay longer on your website because the website accurately fits their screens. This, in turn, sends a positive signal to Google. As a result, your site's ranking improves in the search results and you get more valuable traffic.

3. Is Cost-effective

Ā It is important to understand that as opposed to paid advertising or other marketing strategies, you are not required to spend money on achieving a good ranking in search results. Search engine listings are free and easy to attain. A website that is implemented with SEO strategies helps you in this respect.

Consider this scenario for better understanding- when funding is stopped for an ad, it is removed from the internet, and web traffic declines for that specific website. But when it comes to utilizing SEO, your web traffic and ranking remain consistent without the need to spend any money.

4. Increases Your Reputation

If you take a look at one of the statistics of 2020, it may not come as a surprise that 89% of consumers read reviews before purchasing products (as quoted by Trustpilot, which is a leading online review platform). With so many people checking for reviews before purchasing from a business, your website needs to create a great impression on its visitors. An SEO-friendly website helps you achieve this.

A notable characteristic of such a website is that it has a visually pleasing interface along and easy navigation that helps visitors find the information they seek. The website is tailored keeping in mind the needs of your target audience. The aim is to keep the visitors engaged and help them become return users. When people have a good experience on your website, it only works to enhance your reputation in the market.

5. Enhances Customer Experience

As you can now easily interpret, an SEO-friendly design helps in enhancing the customer experience. You gain customer loyalty and get repeat customers when you provide them with such an experience.

A good customer experience is like an endorsement. If search engines become aware that people are clicking onto more pages or spending more time on your website, your ranking will definitely soar high.

Insider tip: Refrain from using too many flash elements as it doesn't add value to the SEO of your website. Moreover, it delays the loading time, which can annoy your customers. Focus on offering a more refined user experience with different SEO practices, such as improving site speed and interlinking for increased content discoverability.

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6. Is Optimized for Conversions

Getting quality traffic on your website is impressive but you need to analyze if you are able to 'seal the deal.' An SEO-friendly website design is Conversion Rate Optimized (CRO). CRO is defined as the process in which your website and content are tweaked, tested, and improved to increase conversions. With CRO, you get more out of your web traffic. There are many CRO marketing strategies that you can try, some of which include:

• Use live chat software in your high-performing webpages
• Use lead flows (high-converting pop-ups that offer value)
• Re-engage people who left your website by tracking them and showing them online ads when they check other websites on the internet.

7. Is a Long-term Investment

How about having a web design that keeps paying you back? An SEO-friendly website design pays your business back as long as you vow to maintain it. All that you require is minimal monthly maintenance to maintain the position that you have in search results. Doing so also helps you increase traffic and helps your business grow.

8. SEO Holds Even More Importance on Mobile

How many times have you used your mobile to search for information and products? 88% of consumers looking for a local business with the help of a mobile device end up visiting/calling the business. This means, it is crucial to be on top of mobile search results or you may lose your customers to the competition.

As mentioned before, an SEO-friendly website has a responsive design that helps you connect with mobile users. Such a design offers an improved user experience and helps your leads stay longer on your website when they conduct a mobile search. Owing to this fact, Google ranks your website higher in the search results, which in turn, helps you get more customers.

9. Builds Brand Credibility

You must already trust the websites that show up on the first pages of Bing, Yahoo, or Google, right? Other internet users are likely to think the same too. This not only helps in brand awareness but is also good for brand credibility. You may ask why? Well, when you are displayed on the top, it clearly states that you are the best in your field. It makes a statement that your website is as per the needs of your users. A website that finds a frequent mention at the top of the result page is bound to gain exposure and credibility.

10. Helps Increases Engagement

We all know the objective of digital marketing ā create interaction with your customers. This engagement leads to brand exposure or an increase in sales. Thus, it is important to devise an SEO strategy that helps you reach more people, make them stay longer on your website, and urge them to share your content. Remember, your rankings will improve with more engagement and you will get the chance to move towards your desired results.

How to Create an SEO-friendly Website?

You can create an SEO-friendly website by keeping certain factors in mind. For instance, incorporate the most important keyword in the title of a page. Apart from this, you can integrate other essential keywords in smaller headings as well. You must also add content that is light and captivates the reader.

Implementing all these tips is just the start of the journey towards an SEO-friendly website. Here are some more ways to make your website SEO friendly:

• Ā Add new content regularly
• Ā Optimize your meta description to increase clicks
• Ā Use internal as well as external links
• Make sure that the readability of the content is on point

If you wish to create SEO-friendly websites in seconds, DashClicks's InstaSites tool allows you to do exactly this. Just a few clicks and you are done!

Bottomline

An SEO-friendly web design is extremely important for your business to find potential customers. We all know that building an SEO-friendly, professional niche-based website can take many days. However, if you use DashClicks' agency website tool, you can make an SEO-friendly, custom branded agency website in a matter of seconds. An excellent way of impressing your prospects, isn't it?

All in all, now that you know the importance of an SEO-friendly website design, you are in a better position to put in the required work and take your business to greater heights.

Digital marketing is constantly changing. The needs of our clients evolve as the pace and competitiveness of social marketing and paid search make it difficult for small businesses to stay on target. They need personalized solutions, continuous optimizations through real-time analysis, and automated solutions to improve to nurture those leads.

That's exactly what machine learning is doing for companies in 2021 and beyond.

If your current strategies are proving ineffective, or if you need actionable solutions to give you an advantage over your competitors, take a look at how machine learning will bolster your digital marketing strategies and ensure that your business continues to be a leader in your industry for the foreseeable future.

What is Machine Learning for Digital Marketing?

Machine learning is a system, or systems, that utilize artificial intelligence to gather analytics and present actionable solutions based on the findings. As your audience engages with your advertisements or shared content, knowledge about each user and their behaviors feeds into an algorithm. The more data that the algorithm receives, the more accurate and effective the proposed solutions will be.

There are two major types of machine learning that experts use to gather and interpret data sets:

Guided Machine Learning

A machine learning system will generally have a difficult time gathering and interpreting data without first receiving the help of human intelligence. In digital marketing, experts will instruct the system on what specific data to track as well as how to look out for patterns of note. You can do this by supplying it with data previously gathered manually from past marketing campaigns. For example, if you’re analyzing the math tutor cost across different regions, you can train the system with historical pricing data to identify trends and predict future costs. The machine learning system interprets this data and applies it to data gathered from.

The machine learning system interprets this data and applies it to data gathered from future marketing campaigns and experiments.

Unguided Machine Learning

This type of machine learning system is exactly the opposite. Experts allow the system to gather data from users in real-time without receiving the knowledge of previous user patterns or behaviors. Artificial intelligence is left to its own devices to sort out the gathered data and come up with solutions to improve its processes as time passes.

The Importance of Artificial Intelligence in Marketing

As a marketing professional, you may be thinking that you already have no shortage of tools to help you gather data. However, the true problem is finding the time and resources necessary to effectively sort through all of this valuable data to present meaningful solutions that get your clients real results.

Artificial intelligence is able to interpret and organize vast amounts of information in a fraction of the time it would take a human employee. In fact, as long as enough data is being fed into the algorithm, the results are virtually instant.

This means that machine learning development services can free up countless billable hours for your digital marketing agency. With the help of artificial intelligence, you can run any number of experiments with the right tools, focus your efforts on other tasks in the meantime, and return to find meticulously organized and accurate information to perform effective optimizations.

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Machine learning is not only faster but also eliminates the potential for human error. It is effectively improving the digital marketing process for every business in the world.

How to Use Machine Learning to Improve Your Digital Marketing?

Now that you better understand what machine learning is, we wanted to walk through the various ways you can utilize machine learning marketing to improve virtually every aspect of your agency. Below, you can find a list of the most important ways that the top experts are utilizing the best tools to help their teams prove more efficient:

1. Personalizing the User Experience

If you compare your Amazon shopping account with a friend's, you're guaranteed to observe two very different experiences. That's because the website is utilizing algorithms to constantly observe and track user behavior while they are utilizing their platform. As a result, you get personalized product recommendations, unique search predictions, and unique listing rankings.

The same is true for just about every platform you can think of - Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and many others.

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Your business or marketing agency can utilize machine learning to the same effect. You can utilize these systems to create personalized homepages or platforms for customers using your service. You could also personalize your paid ad or email marketing campaigns to better target users that take unique routes throughout their buyer's journey with your company.

2. Analyzing Your Data

Does your team currently utilize Google Analytics or Facebook Business Manager for your marketing goals? If you answered yes, you're already utilizing machine learning to improve your marketing processes.

These machine learning systems are able to gather vast amounts of data from your audience at a faster rate than humans and do so while retaining accuracy. Your team will quickly learn about customer demographics, bounce rates, retention time, clickthrough rates, etc.

Machine learning can also conduct experiments for you by segmenting your audience into different groups and observing which strategies perform best. It will also be able to automatically determine when its learning efforts are complete and automatically turn off experiments, optimizing the use of your advertising budget without input from an employee.

This powerful method of data analysis outclasses anything you can do manually, and will effectively improve every aspect of your marketing services without question.

3. Automated Customer Service

An estimated 85% of all customer service interactions online will be resolved with an AI chatbot by the end of 2021. The statistics show that businesses and users alike enjoy the benefits of chatbots for the following reasons:

• Immediate response times
• Available 24/7 – no waiting for business hours
• Immediate solution suggestions
• Ability to sort customer queries and direct complex issues to human experts
• Ability to assist hundreds of customers simultaneously

While you will always have a share of consumers who insist upon human interaction, most are simply looking for their problems to be resolved as quickly as possible. As a result, businesses can utilize chatbots to handle billing and payments, subscriptions, account-related issues, and so much more.

A chatbot driven by machine learning can also sort through a vast library of help articles to provide the right solution to the user immediately. Additionally, if the chatbot is unable to help a user, it still gathers the data and offers your team insights on how to improve the automated customer experience.

Automated customer service can also potentially save your business thousands of dollars annually.

4. Improve Your Website and Landing Page Designs

Before machine learning, web designers were largely left to guesswork when it came to optimizing webpage layouts. With these new AI systems, you can learn everything you need to know about user activity on your site.

Web designers can now take advantage of heat mapping, which tracks which sections of the page receive more clicks as well as how long their eyes stay on a particular segment. Sections of the page that are ā€�hotā€¯ are safe to call keepers, while notably ā€�coldā€¯ sections likely need a redesign.

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Businesses and marketers can also take advantage of A/B testing, which allows you to direct your audience to two different versions of the same website. Machine learning will automatically track user behavior on each page, calculate which performs best, and automatically redirect users to the better page when enough data is gathered.

You will once again save time and money by performing optimizations backed by data from real users that want to engage with your content.

5. Optimize Your PPC Campaigns

Every business has a set budget when it comes to monthly digital advertising, so it's essential that you don't leave it up to guesswork. Machine learning now outperforms manual decision-making by helping experts choose the best types of ads, where and when to launch them, and how much of your budget you should use to boost engagement.

AI-driven machine learning will save you countless dollars and work to lower your cost-per-lead month after month (Are you beginning to see the pattern?)

For example, many social media platforms that offer to advertise can accept your previous campaign data to guide future efforts. The algorithm takes previous metrics, applies that data to users on the platform, and automatically generate what’s known as a “lookalike audience” to reach new customers that are most likely to convert.

Machine learning systems can also take over and autopilot the bidding process, adjusting bids according to your set limits, and knowing when to cease budget use when keyword costs become too competitive.

6. Improve Your Presence on Social Media

More than half of the world is now participating in social media. That statistic alone describes how necessary it is for every business to market themselves through those platforms.

With the help of machine learning marketing, you can easily turn Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more into tools for success. Similar to the methods mentioned above, machine learning systems can automatically track and compile data from your audience to determine what types of content foster higher levels of engagement and impressions.

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Something that is unique to social media is knowing what days of the week to post as well as the best times to catch your audience's attention. Machine learning utilizes that same data from your audience to create an easy-to-read map of the best times to share your content on each social platform. User behavior greatly fluctuates depending on where you're posting, and AI-driven marketing provides you with immediate answers.

7. Machine Learning is Now Mandatory for SEO

Experts are no longer combing through each of your business's web pages with a fine-tooth comb. If you're not already, you need to be taking advantage of the world's top SEO tools including SEMrush, Ahrefs, KWFinder, and Moz - all of which utilize machine learning.

Once again, these AI systems are able to scan, track, and identify SEO errors across each page of your site with almost zero waiting period. These error reports will also come with proposed solutions that your team of experts can put into effect. This allows for more effective optimizations that in turn help your brand become more competitive in search rankings no matter how new your website is.

Additionally, these automated SEO reports can help dictate which type of content will best help improve website traffic and engagement. You will be able to track content keywords your audience is using and create articles, videos, or images for your site that naturally satisfies the demand.

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Conclusion - Adapt to Machine Learning Marketing or Be Left Behind

Machine learning marketing doesn't eliminate the need for intelligent, seasoned marketing experts. It simply takes over the role of completing the necessary, yet time-consuming, trivial tasks, and does so faster and with greater accuracy.

The role of future marketers is not to complete hours of menial tasks, but to utilize the tremendously beneficial insights that artificial intelligence can provide. The most competitive brands will utilize these tools in their marketing arsenal to continuously optimize web design, content creation, paid campaigns, search rankings, and everything else that goes into your overall business success.

By adapting to machine learning, you will save thousands of dollars, free up countless hours for tasks that can actually enhance your business, and do so while putting out better content than any of your competitors. If you've yet to embrace it, you're already late. Adapt now, or get left behind for good.

Website design is never truly complete. If you're trying to get more conversions out of that new landing page, it may be time to rethink that hero section or consider adding a video. However, you may not be sure what changes will work best.

Even the most seasoned marketing experts can't trust that their instinctual analysis will always be correct. That's why every marketer or business owner needs to be aware of how to run an A/B test in Google Analytics.

In this article, you should learn what an A/B test is as well as how you can easily set up various types of split tests with minimal effort.

What is an A/B Test in Digital Marketing?

An A/B test is a process of utilizing two versions of a sales page to determine what yields better results. You will start by fully designing your landing page including the layout, color choices, images, videos, and copy.

Then, you create a second variation of the page generally by modifying the existing format. These changes depend upon what exactly you are looking to test during this process. For example, you may have two strong approaches to sales copy, but are unsure of which will best speak to your audience. Another example may simply be recording and adding a personal video to engage new prospects.

After you create your two variations, you can direct a set percentage of your traffic to either page. A 50/50 split will see half of the users arriving at Page A with the other half getting the Page B experience.

Google Analytics then gathers various metrics in real-time to help you determine which page is the best performer. These insights may also help you better understand what creatives your audience responds to, so that future marketing ventures are naturally tailored for success.

Who Should Use A/B Testing?

Any website owner or business owner should be utilizing A/B testing in Google Analytics. Whether it's a website or a fancy new landing page, you're making that investment to get you qualified leads and improve your sales. The best way to do that is to constantly analyze what's getting results and making the necessary improvements along the way.

While the process of setting up A/B tests is relatively simple, it may not be so for newcomers who are unsure of what creatives need testing. As a result, studies show that most of these A/B tests will fail.

The good news is that we generally understand the reasons why most of these end in failure. Before we get into the specifics of how to set up your A/B test in Google Analytics, let's take a moment to educate ourselves on what not to do when performing your future tests.

What Causes A/B Tests to Fail?

Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing best practices for success. Here is a quick list of things you need to be aware of and avoid to ensure that you make the most of your time and marketing budget:

1. You Aren't Making Any Significant Changes

Making small copy changes may seem appealing (and can yield results when done right), but it's not a substantial change that generally sees long-term differences. While you and your team might be able to point out the difference in a header, a paragraph, or an image, the overall layout of both variations remains fairly identical.

So - what should you change? Consider big picture items such as the overall tone or approach to selling your product on the page. An easy example might look like this:

• Page A features a CTA (call to action) in the headline along with a sign-up form, a relevant, high-quality image, and a brief paragraph telling users why they need to enter their information.

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• Page B features the same headline and sign-up form but replaces the image and most of the sales copy with a video.

In this particular example, Page B is going to outperform Page A most of the time. A quality video will yield better results than still images 75% of the time. Without that insider knowledge, you would need to rely on an A/B test to know for sure that the video was the deciding factor.

2. You're Testing Too Many Changes at Once

It's great that you have several ideas on how to approach your webpage. However, incorporating too many changes simultaneously may make it more difficult to isolate exactly which changes bolstered your results.

When creating your experiment, you should make an effort to simplify your hypothesis and put the variations to the test. Then, create a separate experiment down the line to further improve conversions. Don't view website optimizations necessarily as a sprint, but plan on making continuous improvements and revisions over time.

3. You're Stopping the Tests Too Soon

Testing is a continuous process. If you go into the expectation that you're going to make some quick changes and watch the leads roll in, you're going to be disappointed.

A/B tests are most effective when you allow sufficient time and conversion volume. It's common sense that you would put more faith in a survey of 1000 unique persons versus 100. Unless your brand is already a hot-ticket item, it can take several weeks to gather enough data of any real statistical significance.

4. The Tests Focus on Personal Bias

This one can be a bit harder to identify, but your personal bias may be blocking from you accurately assessing problems with the page. You keep making changes to the areas that should be driving conversions, but neither variation is outperforming the other in any noteworthy fashion.

True testing needs to be focused on what is actually happening, not your personal feelings or assumptions about the copy or web design. Unless you're confident that you know what to test, A/B testing may not be helping as your variations are not featuring any actionable changes.

Key Elements for Your A/B Testing

To ensure that you prepare properly, let's take a look at some of the key elements on the webpage that you generally want to be the focus of your A/B testing:

1. The Sales Copy

This is a broad category, but debatably the most important part of the page. Every person who clicks on the ad needs to be able to easily read and comprehend what they're being told on the page.

The description of the product, service, and offer should be clear and easy to digest. It's okay for your audience to have some questions, but they should feel informed and empowered to sign up or make a purchasing decision on the spot. If you're getting traffic to the page but have a low conversion rate, explore different ways to communicate the details such as bullet lists, product or service comparisons, and pricing details upfront.

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2. Headlines

Headlines are the first tool you use on a web page to get your audience engaged. It should directly address the individual and provide them with an immediate incentive to take action and learn more.

We can use another example to better understand an A/B test of two headlines from two landscaping services:

• Page A – Improve Your Home with Joe’s Landscaping Today!
• Page B – Sign Up to Get $100 Off Your First Landscaping Service Today Only!

Both headlines directly address the customer by using some form of “you,” but Page B is more engaging. The headline immediately describes the service, provides an attractive offer, and incentivizes immediate action by revealing a time limit. While improving your home sounds like a great benefit, A/B testing allows you to take a step back and determine the actual highlight of the page.

3. Social Proof

Customers continue to get more purchase-savvy online and tend to be more skeptical of a great offer. You can combat this effectively by offering your customers social proof. Examples of this may be testimonials, past sales figures, or current subscriber numbers.

You then place social proof on your landing page, but you're still not converting. Thankfully, A/B testing allows us to explore the possible reasons. The metrics may show that users are not scrolling down to see your testimonials at the bottom of the page, meaning that your B variation should try alternative placements to improve the impact and visibility.

4. Webpage Design

This may seem like a no-brainer until you consider how many visually unattractive pages you see every month as an active internet user. Poor color choices, illegible or hard-to-read text and lack of visual engagement with high-resolution images or video can cause users to bounce off your page quickly.

While problems with your web design may not be so severe, you still want to explore alternate page layouts and designs to activate your readers. The design should amplify the copy, gracefully walking readers through your pitch and naturally leading them to a call-to-action button.

How to Set Up an A/B Test in Google Analytics?

After you review the key elements of your webpage and come up with a few actionable hypotheses, you can begin setting up your A/B test. You will require a Google Analytics and Google Optimize account to begin.

AAfter logging into your Optimize account, complete the following steps:

1. Click on the appropriate Container name and navigate to the “Experiments” page.

2. Click “Create Experiment” Give your experiment an easy-to-identify name that’s relevant to the subject of testing.

3. Enter the URL of the page you wish to test.

4. Select “A/B test” Then, click “Create”

Now that your experiment is active, you should see two tabs on the page. One is the Variants card and the other is your Configuration card.

Creating Your Variant

1. On the bottom right side of the page, click “Create Variant” to begin.

2. Name this variant and click “Add.” You can do this again for as many variants as you need to create.

3. You can see your variants in a list on the page along with the number of changes currently present. Click on a variant anywhere to begin making your desired edits.

4. An editor panel will appear, and you can now make changes to the new page variant. When you are satisfied with the changes, be sure to click “Save.”

5. When all of the changes are in place, click “Done” to complete the variant.

Configuring Your Objectives

Now that you have a variant to test alongside your original page, you need to set the objectives for your Google Analytics A/B testing experiment. You can do this by performing the following steps:

1. On the objectives tab, select a Google Analytics View. Then, select a Primary Objective.

2. Click “+ Add Objective.”

3. Add a description and hypothesis that describes what you’re looking to test and achieve with this experiment. Then, click “Save.”

4. Next, we will select who to target with the new variant and when by going to the Targeting tab.

5. Under Who, select the split percentage of your audience you want to send to your variant page.

6. You can further establish targeting rules by utilizing the When tab. There are a variety of custom rules you can use to determine when your audience will see the variant. We encourage you to review this in-depth targeting tutorial from Google. Also, be sure to review Google’s policies before continuing with your new targeting rules.

When you are satisfied with the experiment, you can click “Start” to push your variant pages live. Google recommends allowing this experiment to run for at least two weeks or until a variation has a 95% probability to outperform the original.

Conclusion

Performing A/B split tests in Google Analytics is easy to pick up but offers a host of ways to get even more confident results with experience and know-how.  You may eventually wish to graduate from general A/B split tests to perform more in-depth content experiments.

Google also provides built-in reporting that you can review at the end of your experiment. Their reporting utilizes Bayesian inference, which is a statistical analysis method that helps to determine the actual likelihood of your variant outperforming the original. Optimize can also advise you on when it can no longer realistically gather relevant data to improve the results.

A/B split tests in Google Analytics offer numerous benefits with almost no downside, including:

• Ongoing performance analysis
• An easy way to make low-risk changes
• Learning from your audience to improve engagement
• Utilizing gathered data to improve your website and future webpages
• Noticeable improvements to conversions

If you have a page that you’re ready to test, you can use this information to start testing today. Stop wasting money on vanity traffic numbers, and start turning those leads into conversions.