It means that more than half of all times a user clicked “search” (or hit enter) in Google, they completed their journey without clicking through to a website. 

But what can it all mean? And do you need to dramatically overhaul your search engine marketing strategy? 

Potentially, but let’s not panic. Good decisions are never made in haste, even though they may be made quickly, so here are a few things you need to know. 

What Is Zero-Click Search?

Zero-click search, which you might have been able to glean from the intro here, is when a user searches for something in a search engine, reads the search results, finds the answer they were looking for, and then bounces. This occurs without a click-through to a website. 

Typically, zero-click searches are brought to fruition through one of the “answer engine” search features, like the AI overview, the featured snippets of the search results that used to dominate the tops of the SERPs before the AI overview before it was introduced, and the People Also Ask section, but these are not hard or fast rules. If you got what you were looking for through the search results and didn’t click through to anything, that’s a zero-click search whether you used an answer engine feature or not.

As you can imagine, this can have potentially serious implications for website administrators, not just eCommerce merchants but also those who run websites that rely on the value of their information. If Google is scraping web pages and serving up answers without requiring users to click through, that can tank user experience metrics, rob websites of conversions, and eliminate ad traffic to certain domains. 

So let’s take a closer look at how the rise of zero-click search stands to impact SEO and website performance in general. It’s not all bad. 

How Does Zero-Click Search Impact SEO? 

For any website that is impacted by zero-click search, there are numerous changes you can expect. 

For one, if your website has a lot of good copy, either in the blog, newsletter, or on category pages, expect to get a lot more impressions, and for longer tail search queries. This equates to higher visibility, but the tradeoff is that those pages will likely not see an increase in clicks; in fact, clicks may even decrease. 

It is also possible that with a rise in impressions and a decrease (or stagnation) in clicks, affected pages may see lower time on page, among other user engagement metrics which will be affected in an adverse way. 

You may also see pages coming into ranking for new keywords embedded in long-tail queries, for which the page was not indexed previously.

These are the most important changes you can expect to affect your web pages (or your entire site) although it is important to notice that there could be others as well. 

You should also be aware of the fact that not all websites, and certainly not all web pages, will be impacted by the zero-click search trend. For instance, if a page ranks well but there’s not much copy on it, or many actions to take besides downloading a form or buying a product, there’s not much zero-click search can do to affect performance, since the user’s end goal in those cases is not to answer a question, but to download a form, or purchase a product, respectively. 

How to Optimize for Zero-Click Search? 

Because zero-click search is dependent on user searches for information, the only way to optimize for it, as a general trend under a subset of conditions within SEO, is to target long-tail keywords and search queries that take the form of a question. 

While you can optimize for short-tail keywords, the competition will be fierce and mostly unattainable, and you will lose out to larger information-based websites like Wikipedia for all but the most niche and non-competitive keywords and queries. 

So for instance, let’s say you wanted to capitalize on zero-click search trends for a short-tail keyword like “hiking boots.” 

Rather than optimizing your website, or a series of pages on it for that keyword, you would want to find the long-tail queries containing that keyword that people were searching. You can use paid search tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs for research, but you can also use Google’s Autofill, the People Also Ask section of the search results, and free resources like Answer the Public to find ideas to come up with copy. 

Then, what you need to do is draft long-form copy that answers these questions and publish it on your website. If you can publish it on the page you want to rank for the keyword in question, then publish it on a standalone page, on a CMS page, or in a blog, and embed an internal link to the intended target page. 

As usual, the basic answer to how to optimize for zero-click search is “write better copy that answers questions.” In that respect, even though zero-click searches as a share of the total is on the rise, this is really nothing new. It’s just that the nature and arrangement of the SERPs is making it easier for users to get their answers without clicking on anything. 

Do You Need to Adjust Your Keyword Strategy? 

Potentially, but that depends on your niche and how your website survives. If you blog for fun or clout, and you don’t necessarily need the clicks but just want the extra visibility and brand awareness, then not necessarily. 

If you need clicks, for instance, to drive ad revenue, then yes you will need to adjust your strategy. The best way is to become a trusted resource so that users will search for your website directly with navigational keywords rather than looking through the search results for answers to more vague queries. 

In these situations, the way to stay afloat is to find those long-tail keywords, and the questions associated with them, and to optimize your website in the manner described above. 

For some eCommerce merchants, a shift is not entirely necessary, although it could potentially be beneficial. This is because for most transactional and commercial keywords, the intent cannot be completed through the search results alone. Generally, for keywords with this search intent, the user journey is not complete until the user buys something. That requires a click. 

However, to earn that click, a website must still be found in the search results – if not searched for directly. With respect to this, getting a website or one of its pages found in the era of zero-click search does necessitate a content-forward approach to organic marketing. 

For these eCommerce merchants, to generate as much visibility as possible, it has become even more important to publish copy as a resource on your website that answers questions about your products, or about use or care of them. These CMS pages, which will answer long-tail user queries, will generate higher visibility and greater brand awareness. Done properly, they will drive clicks to your website that will result in conversions, and in an ideal scenario, increase direct searches to your website, which will also yield conversions. 

Is a Zero-Click Strategy Useful for eCommerce? 

Ultimately, zero-click search is going to prove a bigger strain on bloggers, news websites and other websites that rely entirely on content and readership, for reasons that should now be obvious. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be useful for eCommerce merchants. 

Notably, by adapting to this trend by devoting some of your marketing resources to develop materials intended to capitalize in zero-click search trends, your website will benefit from fuller, more informative copy and resources, which should positively impact your brand image while also positioning your website as a consultative authority, and not just an online store.

So, the bottom line is if you can spare the resources, you should devote some of your marketing budget to improving the copy on your website. 

Talk to One of Our Experts About the Changing Search Engine Marketing Landscape 

Hopefully you found this short post useful and informative, but if you still have questions lingering, don’t be afraid to get in touch with us. Get in touch with one of our AI SEO specialists or SEO experts and we’ll be more than happy to speak to you about the trend, myself included. 

The post SEO in the Era of Zero-Click Search appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

While it’s true that the traffic that Google gets in terms of sheer utilization utterly dwarfs ChatGPT’s, OpenAI has recently rolled out a new “search engine” feature that offers some promise to potential online shoppers, specifically to help put them in touch with products that meet their needs. 

This brings up the question of how to use ChatGPT’s search engine, not just as a consumer but also from the perspective of a beleaguered eCommerce entrepreneur whose ambition is to stay competitive. I may be able to shed some light on both. 

Is It Good? A Sneak Peek into How It Works 

First, let’s take a look at how ChatGPT’s search engine works, solely from the perspective of someone whose aim is to shop online. 

I’ll keep this in my wheelhouse and offer some visual cues of the experience, just so I can weigh on it from a professional perspective. 

To try things out, I searched for “What’s the best spinner for trout?” Below is a screenshot of some of the output: 

I can confirm, those are some good spinners for trout. Not sure I’d say either of them is “the best” but they are certainly both contenders for that title. I’ve used them; they catch fish. 

Just to experiment, I wanted to see what ChatGPT could do with a short-tail query based on the output it gave me, so I looked up “Mepp’s Aglia.” You can see the output below. 

Honestly, not bad results, but completely underwhelming. It’s little different from what I’d get in Google, in fact, I’d even say a little bit worse. Google has more and different types of search features that are more useful to someone like me in the position of a shopper. I, perhaps unlike some shoppers, don’t like to be spoon-fed, and it seems like that’s what ChatGPT’s doing here.

All the same, I asked it about a specific model of lure, so I can’t blame the search engine too much on the generality of what it gave me back. 

To drill down a little, I incorporated that keyword into a more targeted, longer-tail search query, “Where can I get a Mepp’s Aglia spinner?” and you can see the results below. 

Not too bad, but also not overwhelmingly great. You can see the results are formatted much like Google ads, with links to well-known retailers like Dicks, Tackle Warehouse, and Bass Pro. Again, can confirm these are legitimate sources. 

So far, so good. At least good enough. ChatGPT’s results are, even if lacking by Google’s standards, legitimate enough. It did give me serviceable answers to my queries, which means that for other shoppers, it will do the same – or at least, the potential is there. 

That about concludes my experimentation as a potential shopper – which brings me to the significance of all this from the perspective of an eCommerce merchant. 

What ranking signals or other criteria does ChatGPT use to assemble results, and how can I find out how to use ChatGPT’s search engine, as a business owner?

What ChatGPT Considers: How to Use ChatGPT’s Search Engine (What It Ranks) 

Naturally, what follows is how to optimize for ChatGPT’s search engine, right? At least, if you’re here because you want to know how to use ChatGPT’s search engine. 

Good news: straight from OpenAI, here are some of the things it uses as “ranking criteria” – what we would call ranking factors or ranking signals in the world of search engine optimization. 

Specifically some of the factors it uses with respect to eCommerce websites and products are:

• Product descriptions: As in the realm of “regular” eCommerce SEO, product descriptions should be informative, contain relevant queries and keywords, and provide useful details about the product specifications. Where possible, descriptions should provide succinct answers to common long-form queries, in keeping with AEO best practices. 
• Product reviews and ratings: This is an interesting aspect of ChatGPT SEO because it is something over which digital marketers and website administrators don’t have direct control, especially if ChatGPT is scraping product reviews from multiple sources. It does make reputation management that much more critical, as presumably ChatGPT will curate its results based on the frequency of positive reviews, or perhaps based on the ratio between positive and negative reviews. 
• Pricing: ChatGPT’s search functionality delivers outputs based on criteria that account for price. For instance, shoppers could search for the lowest price, in which case ChatGPT’s outputs would be delivered accordingly. 

Now that we’ve gotten the official word out of the way, here are some other things I would assume help with ChatGPT search engine optimization: 

• A website that has CMS pages dedicated to answering questions about the products it sells.

• A steady content stream that, even if it is not directly relevant to the products in terms of keywords associated with them, is useful to readers. 

• A strong domain authority with good user engagement metrics. 

• Basically anything else that helps SEO.

It all ultimately condenses down to the latter bullet point, since what ChatGPT is using is basically restricted to what shows up in the search results. Whether ChatGPT has access to web pages that are not indexed is not a question for which I have an answer, but if I had to bet one an answer, it would be no.

Which means, ultimately, that what ChatGPT search outputs is directly related to what ranks effectively in Google (and possibly through other search engines on the internet) along with websites that have the most organic visibility, overall. 

For More Information on Answer Engine Optimization 

To offer as simple an answer as possible to the question of how to use ChatGPT’s search engine, it would be this: if it’s good for SEO, it’s good for AEO, which is basically what the ChatGPT search engine is. 

For more information, get in touch with one of our digital marketing specialists or see my previous post, Answer Engine Optimization: A High-Level Guide.

The post How to Use ChatGPT’s Search Engine appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

But now, with the advent of Google’s SGE, or Search Generative Experience, and AI-powered engines like ChatGPT, there’s a (relatively) new kid on the block. 

It’s called AEO, or answer engine optimization, and while fundamentally very similar to SEO, it still varies slightly. Here’s your primer, as well as some pointers for how to optimize a website or its contents for AEO. 

What Is Answer Engine Optimization? (AEO)

AEO stands for answer engine optimization, and it refers to the process of optimizing a piece of content with the end result that it be highlighted by or featured in a generative model – such as a rich or featured snippet, Google’s AI overview or SGE, or end up as a regurgitated output through an AI model like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

For the most part, it refers to getting a website or a piece of content to end up as an output to an AI prompt, since AI models are sometimes referred to as “answer engines” hence the name “AEO.”

What’s the Difference Between AEO and SEO?

While AEO is not strictly speaking the same thing as SEO, there is a great deal of crossover, with most digital marketing experts either suspecting or outright recognizing that answer engines use the same ranking signals as search engines. 

The difference is, however, quite nuanced. 

To keep this all relatable, we’ll use a search engine as an example. SEO will get a website or a page to show up in the search results. AEO will get it to show up in the AI overview or, to a lesser degree, in the People Also Ask section of the search results, even though that isn’t strictly speaking an answer engine. 

So, in a nutshell, the chief difference between SEO and AEO is the length of the query. A single keyword is not, in the truest semantic sense of the word, a query. I mean, it is literally a search query but it is not linguistically a query because it is not a question. 

You could type “SEO” into Google and you will get search results. You may also get an AI overview, but to get a good one, you will need to embed that keyword into a broader search query – that is, a whole question. 

Therefore, the main difference between AEO and SEO has to do with the length and completeness of the search query. SEO deals with both short and long-tail queries, and AEO almost exclusively with long tail, very long tail queries. Most AEO relates to fully formed, grammatically complete interrogative statements. 

Therefore, while both SEO and AEO utilize the same ranking signals, the rankings signals that AEO uses are mostly with respect to keyword use and the structure of the content being crawled insomuch as it relates to the question being asked. For the most part, other conventional SEO ranking signals, like backlink profile and site speed, do not factor into AEO (though they do indirectly).

Also, because of the distinction I just drew, it is more accurate to consider AEO a subset of SEO than a completely distinct  marketing strategy or channel. If you do SEO the right way and make it all about content, you’re going to get AEO results. It’s ultimately as simple as that. 

How to Optimize for AEO

Good news: if you know how to optimize for SEO, at least on a functional level, then you already know what to do to optimize for AEO, with a few nuanced distinctions. 

You’ve heard SEO copywriters like myself talk about how you need to focus on quality content, and that is no different here. It’s just more important here. 

So here are the 6 main things you need to do to optimize for AEO.

• Understand search intent and target the right keywords (queries)

It all starts with what people are searching for, as well as why. While keywords are important, what you need to aim for in AEO is a fully-formed question (or an answer to one) that includes the keyword. Not just a keyword itself. 

Also critical is intent. If you want to show up in the generative results of an answer engine, you need to know the reason people are searching for and what the answer is they’re looking for as well. 

So, you can optimize for the keyword “SEO” and you might show up in the search results (good luck with that, through, last I checked that keyword had a difficulty score of 100%) or you can optimize for “How SEO services benefit small businesses” and aim to provide a succinct answer to that – which brings up the next vital element of AEO optimization. 

• Target specific questions 

I’ll just shoot straight. Getting a good AEO result is hard enough. You will never get there if you don’t target specific questions people are searching. And when I say specific – I mean literatim, word for word. 

If you have access to a tool like SEMRush, you can use their Keyword Overview tool to look at actual questions that people are searching for, along with volumes and difficulty scores. You don’t need to come up with the questions; just enter a keyword. 

Alternatively, you can just use what’s free – Google. Type a keyword in and see what shows up in the People Also Ask section. Google gets those questions from real queries people are searching for. These are the questions you should answer. Another good free tool is Answer the Public. 

• Provide clear, concise answers 

Once you have your questions all in a row, then you need to provide clear, concise answers that are accurate and insightful. Forget what you’ve read about keyword and length requirements. The shorter and more concise the better for AEO, especially if you can still provide a complete answer. 

Also, if you’re answering the question succinctly, you’re going to be including the keyword in your answer to the query anyway, so don’t worry about that. 

Using novel information is acceptable, as long as it is accurate. This is because as people find your information and circulate it (either by spending time on your page or linking to your website) both search engines and answer engines will see it as an authority and that will be all the backup they need to keep your answer showing up in their results. 

• Use structured data 

I’m including this only because as a technical ranking factor, it can slightly improve your odds of your copy being pulled for a featured snippet or displayed as a ChatGPT result. For instance, if you implement Schema Markup, you’ll have a slightly better chance of getting those AEO results. However, the first three portions of this how-to section are more important. You need to answer questions before you’ll show up, period. Structured data is an assist, not a solution. 

• Optimize for voice search 

Good news: optimizing for voice search really only means one thing (at least at this point). Structure your copy as conversational, full thoughts. Don’t write using fragments, type everything out as if it were for a formal paper submission, or at least as part of a conversation with another person. The more natural the language sounds, the better it will perform in the voice search results, and the better it will adapt to engines like ChatGPT, into which people enter intact, whole sentences and questions, rather than single keywords or short-tail phrases. 

• Use GSC

Google Search Console is a gold mine of good information that can help you improve the performance of existing web pages while also furnishing you with insights for new pages and copy that will perform independently. 

When you’re looking at the performance of a given web page, take a look at the impressions to see what long-tail queries that page showed up for. Some of these will likely be full questions that triggered an impression. Sometimes those questions will be relevant, and sometimes they won’t be. 

In those instances in which your web page shows up for a question that doesn’t seem that aligned with the page, it means there’s an opportunity for you to answer that question succinctly. Go back in and update that page so that it offers a more succinct answer to the query for which it generated an impression.

Here’s a real life example: 

That’s a snapshot of the company’s GSC for an article I wrote on how to show up in the AI overview. Shown above are a few of the queries for which the post generated impressions but no clicks. The one highlighted in red is a great example of an opportunity because, while I did indirectly answer that question in the article, I did not include the question or an answer for it word for word. 

Yet, as you can see, people are searching for it – it generated 152 impressions in just the last three months. There’s a disconnect between impressions and clicks, which I may be able to rectify by editing the article so that question, and a direct answer, show up in it.

This is a great trick for finding long-tail queries as well as opportunities for improving your existing copy, as well as new ideas for upcoming content. 

Additional AEO note: I would also like to take this point to note that AI models apparently can’t “see” Javascript, so one more pointer for AI optimization is that you need to have HTML code on your website. 

Using AEO and SEO Together 

As I clarified just above in this article, AEO and SEO are not entirely distinct, and AEO can in fact be categorized as a subset of SEO.

Therefore, all the best practices that benefit SEO will also in practice benefit AEO efforts, too. For instance, as all the SEO experts have been saying for years, you want a fast website with no glitches that offers a high-quality UX.

A website with plenty of optimized onsite copy and a healthy backlink profile is also going to be awarded overall higher organic rankings and probably a higher domain authority score than one that hasn’t been holistically optimized, and Google is more likely (taking all into consideration) to scrape a web page for a generative result if it’s been optimized heel to toe. 

The key takeaway is that all SEO best practices remain in force, with the added effect that to optimize for AEO you need to go a bit further. 

For instance, a category or product page is optimized for SEO if it is fast, secure, issue free, and if all the page level factors (image file size, alt text, page title text, meta data field, etc.) have been optimized.

However, it can only truly be said to be optimized for AEO if there are specific answers in the page copy (or other data fields) to equally specific queries. 

So, let’s say that this same web page is optimized for SEO but also contains a FAQs section with several long-tail queries along with accurate, complete, insightful answers – then it is also optimized for AEO.

How Does ChatGPT SEO Work?

ChataGPT SEO is the term that digital marketers and other savants have been throwing around, which refers to the process of optimizing a web page, or a listing, or a post, or some other piece of digitally published content for ChatGPT’s algorithm. 

This should come as no secret to my candid audience, but ChatGPT’s primary source of information is the internet, and since it is able to scrape the internet, the main ranking signals that ChatGPT uses to generate outputs are therefore indirectly also what Google uses. 

Are there other sources on the internet besides Google? Of course, but since Google is the 500 pound gorilla in the room, invariably Google is going to be a big force to reckon with here. 

Now, I am not suggesting that the two algorithms are the same. ChatGPT’s large language model is inherently distinct from Google’s and I will not in any way play expert here. I will only admit that they are different and while I am familiar with what makes Google tick, ChatGPT is still a bit alien to me.

With that said, since ChatGPT is so heavily reliant on what’s already ranking in the search engines for information, regardless of the fact that its algorithm may be different from Google’s, what you need to do to optimize for ChatGPT is effectively the same as what you need to do for Google.

Does ChatGPT Generated Text Hurt Your SEO?

This is one of the most common questions out there relative to ChatGPT and ChatGPT SEO, so, rather than saying yes or no, let me provide an illustration. 

Let’s try something specific. 

Guys, this is so bad, like dangerously bad. These two cartridges are not the same, though they are similar. ChatGPT got that right. What it got wrong is that it said they can be used interchangeably. They cannot. I’m not getting into why. Do your own research if you don’t believe me. 

Now let’s try something else:

I read the pointers and they’re all pretty good. You can see some of them in that abbreviated screencapture. But here’s one potential issue. I ran the full output (273 words, at least Chat got the length request right) and here’s what ZeroGPT told me: 

Slight problem, for sure. Seriously, couldn’t it even give me 98% or something? 100% AI generated is not a good look, people. 

Besides, let’s just do a thought experiment. If you’re looking for how to optimize for AEO and use AI to do it, you’re just creating an echo chamber, with zero thought involved. It makes no sense and at a certain point will break down. 

More importantly, if Google and ChatGPT actually introduce AI-detection capabilities into their algorithms and flag content that they suspect is AI-generated, then that should be your answer: yes, ChatGPT generated text will hurt your SEO, and by extension, your AEO. 

There are two reasons for this. One is that it’s easy to flag the generated output as AI. The other (and more important of the two) is that there is a serious risk that the generated output will be patently false, and sometimes dangerously false, as illustrated pointedly in the first image above. 

By the way, the Google AI overview is not much better. In fact, in a lot of ways it’s worse. Not that you could use the AI overview output to generate text, but I would caution you against using it as a primary source for literally anything. 

For the purpose of illustration, I tried to find some bad AI overviews but ran into some trouble. I also just noticed that it was disabled for a few of my attempts to find some really bad answers. I’ll save you the trouble of looking yourself; here are a few of the worst ones that have been published since Google rolled out the AI overview. 

Is AEO Replacing SEO? 

Well, AEO is certainly changing SEO, that’s a fact. As more and more people enter long-tail queries expecting a single precise answer rather than a list of results, AEO will start to take center stage. But at the same time, since AEO is just a facet of SEO, it can’t really be said to be replacing it. 

Besides, we could also just look at the numbers. Apparently, as of March 2025, there are over 16 billion Google searches per day. That’s more than double the total global population. It’s also almost doubled (so far) since 2024. If SEO were truly being replaced, wouldn’t searches have to be decreasing? (Spoiler: Yes.)

I had a little more trouble finding figures for ChatGPT usage, but according to at least one source, it gets some pretty good traffic. Somewhere around 38 million outputs per day – a lot, but way, way lower what Google gets.

Alright, that paints a picture of the health of search engine use. What about interest in AEO as a topic? 

Well then, SEMRush, that’s somewhat less than a billion, let alone 16 billion, per day. 

Surely interest in ChatGPT SEO is much higher? 

Apparently not. Higher but not monumentally so. What about regular SEO? 

Plenty of interest there. How about ChatGPT in general? 

That’s a rosier picture. There’s a lot of interest in ChatGPT, but even with that kind of volume, it’s important to remember that ChatGPT’s usership is still dwarfed by Google’s (with ~38 million outputs per day to more than 16 billion searches per day, Google outputs outpace ChatGPT by a factor of over 400). 

As you can see, interest in SEO as a concept is still healthy. That’s apparent from search volume alone. What will happen in ten years or even next month is your guess as well as mine, but it doesn’t look like AEO is replacing SEO or even that ChatGPT is replacing Google. It could happen, but for now they’re both still driving a lot of traffic, though the nod definitely goes to search engines. 

What I can say is this. Continue doing what you’re doing with SEO and when it comes to content marketing, hammer home on those long-tail queries. If you have customers asking you questions about products, how to use them, how to care for them, or what the specifics are, answer those questions fully in your materials, on your product pages, in your newsletter and on your blog. 

By doing so, you will be optimizing for AEO, and will help drive visibility not only through search engines but also potentially in the long run through AI models. 

The post Answer Engine Optimization: A High-Level Guide appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

It would go against everything you learned about writing in school, wouldn’t it? 

You learned about using a hook, literary devices that improved the flavor of the writing, and being creative with the structure of writing, to attract and engage readers. 

But if we practice these things consistently, even if we don’t always use the same devices or vocabulary, isn’t that a practice in scientific repeatability? 

The point is, there is a science to blogging. You can call it creative writing if you want, but there’s a method to this. 

Let’s break it down to the details. 

“Teach Me How to Blog”

To talk about the science of blogging, we need to cover a few basic principles that are necessary to build and then subsequently run a successful blog. Here are some of the most important maxims relevant to blogging. 

Know Thyself and Thy Subject 

Before you can decide on the type of blog you want to run, you need to know your own strengths. 

For instance, don’t plan on writing a killer blog teaching people how to play music if you can’t do so yourself. Don’t expect to pass as a proficient collector of military history if you lack experience and education in that sphere, either. 

The best approach is a natural approach. Don’t see dollar signs and let that drive your decision making. Many markets can be lucrative but that doesn’t mean you have the experience to capitalize on them. That’s just the cold hard truth. Blogging requires experience and demonstrable proficiency. 

So to keep this as basic as possible, pick something you know a lot about. Something you can write about, and lend opinions on, in such a manner that you feel comfortable doing so. 

Know Thine Audience 

The good thing about blogging is there are no hard rules. The bad thing about blogging is there are no hard rules. 

If you want to write about digital marketing one day and fashion trends the next, no one is going to stop you.

But you will confuse search engines, you will likely confuse readers, and you will most likely not cultivate a strong brand.

The thing is, you need not only to be aware of, but respectful of, what your audience wants to read. If you get started writing op-eds on current events and pivot to recipes, you’re going to lose readers. 

Therefore you need to be sensitive to the tastes, preferences and even prejudices of your readers and honor them accordingly. Rebranding may be possible but it will cost you. 

One other aspect of knowing your audience is being aware of opportunities for material.

Say you run a cooking blog.  Maybe for the most part your readers will want recipes, but every now and then there might be an opportunity for an informative piece on the history of a specific dish or ingredient. 

Or perhaps, you can exercise some flexibility and publish about cocktails every now and again. 

My point is there’s always opportunity. While you’ll want to be consistent with the material you cover, recognize that there are always different angles you can take, and one single idea or topic can yield countless actual blog posts.

Consistency Is Key 

If you launch a domain and start a blog website and after creating the website only publish once per month, don’t expect to get anywhere, at least not fast. 

Consistency is one of the most important aspects of blogging, and if you plan to grow through social media marketing or an email list (not through SEO) you really need to give readers something to work with. 

A good rule of thumb is to publish once per week at a bare minimum. It’s better to publish twice to three times per week, and some hardcore bloggers do so every single day. 

That’s a big ask, to be fair, but if you expect growth, you need to keep readers interested. 

Of course if your goal is slow growth through evergreen copy and SEO, you can disregard the urgency to publish frequency – with the caveat that it is still better to publish frequently than to be inconsistent about the whole affair.

Data and Reference 

While it is the case that original information performs well on the internet because it is an inherent authority unto itself (if what you’re writing original, you are the source; there’s nothing else for you to cite) in all other cases, making references and including links can be a good thing, not a bad thing. 

There are some SEO experts that would tell you to eschew external links but I am not one of them. Yes, it is true that outbound links transfer authority away from your website, but this only hurts your website if you’re linking away for information that is contained in your post. 

If your outbound link only corroborates a claim you make or a figure, then the link will actually validate your extrapolation or interpretation of that data. So, ultimately, if you can corroborate what you publish with data, links to, or references of other publications, that will increase your credibility rather than harming your efforts. 

The Science of SEO

For what it’s worth, there’s a little science to SEO, too. In this respect, what I’m referencing is how to format and structure the post for best results in the search engine, or, if your post is lucky, as a part of the search generative experience (SGE). 

I’ve posted about this numerous times and it’s information that’s also readily available on the internet, so I won’t burn too much space with it here. To be as brief as possible: 

• Include the main target keywords for which you want the post to rank in the title of the post. 

• Include main target keywords in your headers as necessary.

• Try to answer questions in the headers. 

• Write using concise, short, pointed sentences where possible. 

• Write your own meta descriptions.

• Enrich images with alt text and captions that answer queries and contain target keywords. 

• Compress images so they don’t slow the post down.

• Bullet digestible information as and where possible.

This is a very high level view of how to “do SEO.” For a more detailed breakdown, see my recent post, How to Structure a Blog Post for Best SEO Results. 

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

High-quality imagery is also a must for successful blogs, and this couldn’t be about the science of blogging without addressing some aspect of the visual component of blogs. 

Here’s the deal. Your blog posts may derive the vast bulk of their value from your written word, but for better or worse, blogs are not just all about language. They are also about visuals. 

 My best advice for you is to take your own photography and make it relevant to the post. That ensures originality and you can optimize the images you like. Also, compress them before uploading to avoid slowing down your website. 

I’ve read (and heard it said) that stock photography can be used to run a successful blog, and that may be true, but my personal experience is that original images perform better, and also see a better chance of ranking independently in the “Google Image” search. 

Now, if you can’t take your own pictures, and aren’t willing to use stock photography, consider using an image generator. There are plenty of AI models out there that will do so and can make (somewhat) serviceable images for your blogs. That route is likely better than using stock photography.

The Proverbial Hook 

There’s one thing that pretty much all successful posts share in common. They attract, and then ensnare, attention.

In school, you may have learned this as a “hook” that writers use to attract attention and hold onto it. It could be an enticing opening line or a bit of bait in the first paragraph of a post that makes readers want to continue. 

It doesn’t have to be your first line, but it does need to be initial. In fact, it could be your title. You’ve heard titles called “clickbait.” Well, a good title won’t just command a click, it will deliver on the bait that it used to attract attention in the first place. 

But my point is this: good writing uses flavor and intrigue to keep readers engaged, and it starts with the strong opening salvo, whether it’s the opening line or the title. You can’t expect readers to stick around if you can’t even get their attention from the start. 

The Seasoning of Science Blogging

Now, once you’re into the meat and potatoes of your post, as we are here, it is important to remember that good writing is less often than not, formulaic. 

There is a time and place for technical writing and it is not usually blogging. Blogging can be scientific but the self-defeating realization of that is that “the science of blogging” often entails very precisely honed artistic acumen. 

My point? Use literary devices to add sweetness and savor to your diction. Personify your words till they loom larger than life. Don’t be afraid to let loose with the metaphors (similes?) till your writing seethes with motion like a boiling sea. Practice prideful pronunciation, proliferation, promulgation and proponency of your consonance. Let the liquor of language wet your lust for knowledge like the sweet nectar of revelation. Engage metonym and allusion and hyperbole and synecdoche and euphemism and juxtaposition and…polysyndeton. 

Have fun with it. There may be a “science of blogging” but it doesn’t have to be boring. 

Maybe Science Blogging Is More Art Than Science 

All in all, these are the rules according to the “science of blogging.” Know your audience, know your subject, know your own strengths as a writer, follow a few SEO best practices, and have fun writing. That’s basically what it boils down to – and remember, sometimes, science is more art than science. 

The post The Science of Blogging appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

That’s where SEO, or search engine optimization, comes in.

SEO is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolbox. Done correctly, Shopify SEO can help your store rank higher on search engines like Google, drive more organic traffic, and ultimately increase sales without constantly paying for ads. Whether you’re just launching or still in the planning phase, here’s what you need to know about SEO as a new Shopify store owner.

1. Understand What SEO Actually Is

SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks better in search engine results pages (SERPs). This includes optimizing:

• Keywords (the terms people search for)
• On-page elements (title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text)
• Site structure (navigation, internal linking, mobile-friendliness)
• Site speed
• Backlinks from other websites 

The goal is to make your site more relevant and trustworthy in the eyes of search engines like Google.

2. Start With Keyword Research

Before you can optimize your site, you need to understand what your potential customers are searching for. Keyword research is the foundation of SEO.

How to do it:

• Use free tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, or Answer the Public
• Identify keywords related to your niche, products, and target audience
• Look for long-tail keywords (e.g., “handmade vegan leather wallet” instead of just “wallet”) that have lower competition and more specific intent 

Pro Tip: Start by optimizing for informational keywords with blogs and product-specific keywords for your product pages.

3. Optimize Product Pages for SEO

Your product pages are your bread and butter. They need to do double duty: convert visitors into customers and help search engines understand what the page is about.

Key areas to optimize:

• Product Titles: Use clear, keyword-rich titles that describe exactly what the item is.
• Meta Descriptions: These show up in search results, so write a compelling, keyword-friendly summary of the product.
• Product Descriptions: Write unique, in-depth descriptions. Don’t copy and paste manufacturer text, Google can penalize duplicate content.
• Alt Text for Images: Use descriptive, keyword-infused alt text to help with image SEO and accessibility.
  URLs: Shopify automatically creates URLs, but you can edit them to be shorter and keyword-rich (e.g., /vegan-leather-wallet instead of /product-23423).

4. Structure Your Store With SEO in Mind

Shopify makes it easy to build an online store, but structure matters for SEO.

Tips:

• Use clean, simple navigation: Make sure your site is easy to browse. Categories and subcategories should be logically grouped.
• Create an XML sitemap: Shopify automatically generates this at yourstore.com/sitemap.xml, but submit it to Google Search Console.
• Create a robots.txt file: Shopify does this too, but you can customize it if needed.
• Use internal linking: Link from one page to another to help users (and Google) navigate your store. For example, link from a blog post to related products.

5. Set Up Google Search Console and Google Analytics

These free tools are essential.

• Google Search Console helps you monitor your site’s presence in Google search results, track keyword rankings, fix errors, and submit your sitemap.
• Google Analytics helps you track how visitors are interacting with your store, which pages they visit, how long they stay, and where they’re coming from. 

Install these tools as soon as you launch your store, they’ll give you invaluable insights.

6. Focus on Site Speed and Mobile Optimization

Speed and mobile-friendliness are ranking factors for Google.

What to do:

• Use a fast, lightweight Shopify theme
• Compress images without sacrificing quality (use tools like TinyPNG or Shopify apps like Crush Pics)
• Avoid too many apps or scripts that slow down the site
• Use lazy loading for images
• Ensure your site is mobile-responsive, as most users will visit on their phones

Shopify’s built-in mobile optimization helps, but always test your site using Google PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test.

7. Write SEO-Friendly Blog Content

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic through SEO. Shopify includes a built-in blogging platform, so use it!

Blogging Tips:

• Answer common customer questions (e.g., “How to Choose the Right Yoga Mat” if you sell fitness gear)
• Target long-tail keywords
• Use clear headings (H1, H2, H3), short paragraphs, and include internal links to products
• Keep it useful, engaging, and focused on your niche 

A regularly updated blog keeps your site fresh and signals to Google that your store is active and relevant.

8. Build Backlinks Over Time

Backlinks, links from other websites to yours, are a strong signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy.

How to earn backlinks:

• Reach out to bloggers and influencers for product reviews
• Write guest posts for other sites in your niche
• List your store in online directories
• Share helpful content on social media and forums (Reddit, Quora)
• Get featured in roundups, gift guides, or local news stories

Avoid shady backlink-building schemes. Focus on quality, not quantity.

9. Avoid Common Shopify SEO Mistakes

Many new store owners make the same SEO errors. Avoid these pitfalls:

• Duplicate content: Using the same descriptions across products or copying from manufacturers
• Ignoring meta tags: Leaving title tags and meta descriptions auto-generated
• Too many apps: Each app can add code that slows down your site
• No keyword strategy: Optimizing randomly instead of strategically
• Not optimizing images: Large files slow down your site and lack of alt text means lost SEO opportunities 

Fixing these early on can set your store up for long-term success.

10. Be Patient, SEO Takes Time

One of the hardest truths for new Shopify store owners to accept is that SEO is not instant.

You won’t see dramatic results overnight. It can take weeks or even months for Google to crawl and rank your pages, especially if your site is new. But SEO is a long game that builds momentum.

When done correctly, it creates a sustainable source of free traffic that compounds over time, saving you money and increasing profitability. Don’t treat Shopify SEO as a one-time setup. Revisit your keyword strategy, blog regularly, and monitor your rankings over time. SEO is ongoing, but the results are well worth it.

Shopify is a powerful platform that gives new store owners the tools they need to succeed, but it’s up to you to make sure your site is optimized for search engines. SEO may feel overwhelming at first, but by taking a structured, step-by-step approach, you’ll position your store for long-term growth.

From conducting keyword research and optimizing your product pages to blogging and building backlinks, the key is consistency and patience. Invest the time now, and your Shopify store will reap the rewards in organic traffic, customer trust, and steady sales.

The post What New Store Owners Need to Know About Shopify SEO appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

If you want your store, products, or brand to be mentioned in ChatGPT-generated answers, this is your guide. Here’s how to position your eCommerce business for better visibility in AI-driven search.

What Is ChatGPT Search, Exactly?

Unlike traditional search engines like Google or Bing, where users browse a list of results, ChatGPT delivers summarized, natural language answers to queries. These answers are drawn from a combination of OpenAI’s training data (as of the model’s knowledge cutoff) and, when enabled, live web browsing or plugins.

So when someone asks ChatGPT something like, “What are the best eco-friendly water bottles for hiking?” they might receive a list of curated product suggestions, possibly including brands, models, and even purchase links, all in a humanlike tone. That’s a game-changer for eCommerce. If your brand is mentioned in ChatGPT’s responses, that’s free exposure to an audience that’s highly engaged and often ready to convert.

Why It Matters for eCommerce

ChatGPT and other LLM-based tools are quickly being integrated into mobile apps, search engines, smart devices, and even eCommerce platforms themselves. Customers are asking AI:

• “Where can I buy affordable pet supplies?”
• “What are the top-rated beard grooming kits?”
• “Which online stores offer unique home décor under $50?”

Being included in the AI’s response means you get ahead of your competition, often in a context that’s more trusted than traditional ads or SEO listings. So how do you earn that digital spotlight?

1. Optimize for AI-Friendly Content

AI models love structured, well-written, factual content. To make sure your product or brand is considered a credible source, your website and product pages need to offer clear, useful, and original information.

What to Do:

• Use natural language: Write product descriptions and blog posts in the way your customers talk and ask questions.
• Include FAQs: These are great for answering specific customer queries that ChatGPT might pull from.
• Be specific: Include product specs, use cases, dimensions, pricing, and comparisons.
• Explain the “why”: Don’t just describe features, highlight benefits and what makes your product stand out.

Example: Instead of saying “stainless steel water bottle with 18oz capacity,” try:

“This 18oz stainless steel water bottle keeps drinks cold for up to 24 hours. It’s perfect for long hikes, daily commutes, or gym workouts, and its leak-proof lid ensures no spills on the go.”

This kind of copy gives ChatGPT more to work with and more reason to cite you.

2. Create Topical Authority with Content Clusters

AI prefers citing trusted sources. One way to gain that trust is by building topical authority through content clusters: interconnected blog posts that cover a subject in-depth.

How to Build a Content Cluster:

Choose a core topic relevant to your niche (e.g., “natural skincare for sensitive skin”) and then create multiple supporting posts:

• The Ultimate Guide to Natural Skincare for Sensitive Skin
• 5 Ingredients to Avoid If You Have Sensitive Skin
• How to Build a Sensitive-Skin Routine with Our Natural Products
• Comparing Natural vs. Synthetic Skincare: What’s Best for You?

Internally link these posts to each other and your product pages. Over time, this increases your visibility in both Google and AI-generated answers.

3. Get Mentioned on High-Authority Websites

If your brand or product is cited on third-party websites that ChatGPT trusts, your chances of inclusion in answers skyrockets.

Strategies for Gaining Mentions:

• Reach out to bloggers and influencers in your niche for product reviews.
• Pitch your products to media outlets that write “best of” lists or product roundups.
• Offer guest posts or expert commentary on niche publications.
• Get listed in directories or comparison sites.

For instance, if you sell ergonomic office chairs and get included in a “Top 10 Home Office Chairs” article on a reputable site, ChatGPT might pull that info when someone asks, “What’s the best chair for working from home all day?”

4. Leverage Schema Markup

Schema markup (structured data) helps AI and search engines better understand your content. It doesn’t affect how your website looks, but it gives machines additional context.

For eCommerce, useful schema types include:

• Product
• Review
• FAQ
• HowTo
• BreadcrumbList

Use these on product pages and articles to help AI tools categorize and rank your content appropriately. Tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper can help you add this easily.

5. Be Transparent About Pricing, Shipping, and Returns

One of the most common questions ChatGPT gets from shoppers is about price and shipping. Make it easy for AI (and your customers) to find these answers.

Do:

• Clearly display pricing, including discounts.
• Add transparent shipping timeframes and return policies.
• Include keywords like “Free Shipping,” “Ships in 2 days,” or “30-day money-back guarantee.”

The more of this information you present clearly on your website, the more likely ChatGPT is to recommend your store when someone asks, “Where can I find [product] with fast shipping and easy returns?”

6. Use Internal and External Linking Thoughtfully

ChatGPT often relies on context and citation quality when choosing what to reference.

Internal Linking:

Link between your blog posts and product pages to create a strong site structure. For example, a blog about “Best Backpacks for Travel” should link to each backpack you mention.

External Linking:

Cite stats or sources from reputable websites. It shows your content is well-researched, which increases trustworthiness in the eyes of AI systems.

7. Stay Fresh: Keep Content Updated

ChatGPT tends to deprioritize outdated content, especially when it has access to browsing or is pulling from recent sources.

Update your product pages and blog posts regularly:

• Refresh blog content every 6–12 months.
• Update product availability, specs, and images.
• Add new reviews and testimonials.

If you release a new version of a product, make sure that’s reflected in your copy and meta information so AI tools don’t reference the old version.

8. Monitor How You’re Mentioned in AI Tools

Try asking ChatGPT (or other AI tools like Perplexity or Claude):

• “What are the best stores for [your product category]?”
• “Where can I buy [specific product]?”
• “Top-rated [product] for [use case]?”

See if your business is included. If not, analyze the brands or sources that are being referenced. What are they doing differently? Can you get featured on the sites they’re on?

The era of AI-driven search is here and forward-thinking eCommerce brands are already adapting. By creating clear, helpful, AI-friendly content and establishing topical authority, you can position your business to show up more often in ChatGPT-style answers. 

So whether you’re selling home decor, camping supplies, or fitness gear for home workouts, the time to optimize for AI search is now. Create content that’s rich, relevant, and user-focused and the AI will do the rest. It’s not just about ranking anymore, it’s about being the answer to search queries.

The post Tips to Help Your Site Rank Higher in ChatGPT Search appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

The long and short of it is this: quality content will rank in time and generate views, whereas a thin, watery post that is structured according to SEO maxims will ultimately fall off the map. 

But a post that has good information and is structured properly? That is a thing of beauty. 

So if you got here looking for how to structure a blog post for best SEO results, here’s your primer. 

The Title 

While lots of ranking factors are important, if I had to assign a single most important one, I might say the blog title. 

This title is your one prime opportunity to let Google and search engines know exactly and succinctly what the purpose of the blog is. 

Shorter and to the point is better for SEO and probably for UX, too, so state your blog’s purpose as briefly and directly as you can.

If you have a target keyword in mind, include a perfect match of that in the title. If not, just be as concise as possible. 

Refer to the title of this post for inspiration. I took no poetic license. It won’t win me a Pulitzer Prize but “How to Structure a Blog Post for Best SEO Results” definitely sets a high bar for “what is this blog going to tell me about,” and there’s no arguing there. 

It just so happens that the title is a chance to get readers’ attention and vie for clicks, too, so keep that in mind. 

The Page Subsections 

Once you have a title squared away, try to break up your blog post according to digestible sections that are relevant to the subject matter, sort of like I’ve done here. 

You see, if you want to know how to structure a blog post for best SEO results, some things you’ll have to know how to do are how to optimize the title, page subsections, meta data, and a few other things. 

Now scroll through this post and see what my page subheaders are. See what I did there? You need to do the same thing. Break it out into steps if you can, and make each step its own subsection if you’re doing a how-to. 

One more thing: use header tags, and add them in manually if your page editor won’t do it for you. I mean <h2> and <h3> tags. Google scrapes pages looking for these as it indexes a page because it looks at the header tags for context relevant to the page. 

To Bullet or Not to Bullet 

Not every piece of content in the world lends itself to “bulletization,” and that’s just a fact. News articles, for instance, don’t generally yield good bullets. 

But a post like this? I could bullet the information in here. Let’s give it a go. Here’s the bulleted information for how to structure a blog post for best SEO results:

• Optimize your blog post title with exact match keywords

• Use H2 tags in your headers 

• Bullet information where possible

• Compress images and optimize with alt data

• Add keywords into your URL slug if possible when creating the page 

• Add a meta description for the blog after you write it 

• Add internal links from existing pages to the new post to boost authority 

• Answer as many user queries as possible, if they are relevant to the post subject matter 

Well, the proof is in the pudding there. This just happens to be a topic that can be summarized well through bullets, so it worked for me. It may for you, depending on what you’re writing about. 

Another thing: to a computer, bullets are code, and Google’s algorithm “understands” that bullets are used to concisely convey information. There’s a good chance that bulleted information increases the likelihood that your post will get a featured snippet, show up in the Google AI Overview, or in other search features. 

Image Optimization

Image optimization is another important area of blog structure that will impact performance, though it will mainly impact the post’s rankings in the “Image” section of the search results. 

This is something I covered fully in a recent post, “How to Get Images to Rank (Image Optimization Guide)”. Ultimately, it comes down to compressing images to increase page load speeds, and then adding alt text – plus a few other small things. 

Check that previous post for an easy to follow, step-by-step guide on getting images to rank, as this will impact SEO results. 

URL Optimization 

In my personal experience, this is probably the ranking factor with the most insignificant amount of pull when it comes to how to structure a blog post for best SEO results. Nonetheless, it is technically a ranking factor, so it behooves me to say a word or two on it.

For my own purposes, I generally just title blogs so that the URL slug is whatever the blog post title is. If your post title is optimized, your URL slug will then automatically be optimized, too, especially if you’re using WordPress. 

If your editor lets you make granular adjustments to the page URL slug, make sure you customize them before the page goes live, because if you change the URL slug ex post facto, then anywhere there’s a link on the web to that post, you just created a 404 on your website – and that is not good for SEO.

Meta Descriptions 

Meta descriptions, like URL slugs, are not a huge deal, and Google will automatically generate them from the text on the page if you haven’t specifically written and assigned one.

With that said, meta descriptions are a small ranking signal and they can affect click-through rates, so it’s in your best interest to write your own, include any keywords for which you want the page to rank, and say something to entice any viewers to click and read. 

A Note on Internal Linking

You may have heard it said 1000 times that links are important for SEO. Well, it’s true, and if you’re looking for how to structure a blog post for SEO results I have a hack that can help get your new post to show up in the search engine results pages faster than it would have otherwise. 

If you’re posting on a domain where you have editor access, and other posts you’ve already published, include a link from one of your posts that’s already ranking, so that it sends traffic to this new page. 

A link from an old performer to a new post tells search engines like Google that a “respectable” piece of content views a “new” piece of content as an authority, and may get it to show up higher in the SERPs than it would without the link. No need to thank me!

The Use of Bolding

Way back when (like 6 years ago, an eternity in digital marketing) when Google’s algorithm was a much simpler thing, SEO experts used to bold keywords and important search terms in their copy. 

Google would see that bold tag, go straight to that phrase, and then see that the keyword was embedded in it. That was like a double whammy (in a good way) and Google would be like “Wow, this page is really an authority on this keyword, better put it right at the top of the SERPs.”

Over time, this practice has fallen off as SEO “experts” have increasingly relied on this tactic to get copy to rank, which has resulted in a net increase of nonsense on the internet. And now, today, bolding doesn’t really matter as much as it used to. 

But it doesn’t hurt, either. What I did there was bold a piece of important information that, even though it doesn’t contain any important target keywords, is relevant to the query posed by this section. 

You may also notice that I bolded my bullets, above. It adds a little bit of emphasis, which doesn’t hurt and might help. It certainly affects the user experience, and arrests attention, and since time on page is officially a ranking signal, getting users to stop and stare doesn’t hurt me, it does help. 

So the takeaway here is that bolding keywords can’t be relied on as a strategy in its own right to get a piece of content to rank, but using bolding sparingly to emphasize important nuggets of information can be beneficial to blog structure. Notice that part is also bolded. So take that for what it’s worth. 

Large Paragraphs or Single Sentences?

A debate has been raging in SEO central since time immemorial: is it better to write walls of text or publish really short, one-sentence “paragraphs.” 

Honestly, it really depends. 

If you’re writing a study and publishing it to a scientific journal, you definitely want to follow accepted guidelines that generally dictate that one paragraph should propose and answer a single, small thesis. You can’t do that in one sentence. 

At the same time, we are writing for people to read what we publish. Most readers have short attention spans and skim, rather than read, entirely articles. 

It is this latter part that makes “short and sweet” paragraph structure appealing to search engines. 

Really, consider your audience. If you’re writing a recipe or a fashion listicle, keep it short. If you’re submitting to an accredited news organization or a medical journal, follow MLA or APA guidelines for paragraph structure, or whichever else applies to your publisher. 

Long or Short?

Another serious debate in the world of SEO has been whether or not long, exhaustive articles, or short nuggets of information were better. 

The answer is yes. 

I mean to say, they’re both excellent. What matters here is search intent. 

If a user looks up a post on “how to tie shoelaces” a 500-word post with pictures and captions is likely going to outperform a 10,000 word behemoth of an article that not only covers how to tie laces but also every different pattern and profile of boot and shoe. 

On the flipside, if you look up a “guide to the different styles of dress shoes” you’re probably going to get a lot of long posts in the search results. 

Again, it’s all about what people are looking for. There are some short posts that rank very well, and also many long ones. The only right answer here is this: think about the information relevant to your target audience, cover it thoroughly, and be done. 

If that requires 400 words, that’s all you need, seriously. But if you end up with a 7,000 word banger, that’s also good, as long as there’s no fluff. 

Blogs (or Other Content Creation) as an Immutable Component of Effective SEO

At the end of the day, if I had to give suggestions this granular for technical SEO, I’d pull my hair out. That’s only partly because I’m a copywriter. The main reason is that content is the definitive pillar of SEO. 

I can say confidently, and without exaggeration, that I’ve seen websites with a domain authority of zero hit page one with optimized content alone – without any technical SEO, without any backlink strategy, and without any keyword research. 

That is how important content is, and why it’s so important to understand what you need to do in order to get a blog (or other page) to rank organically. If you can, everything else related to search engine optimization will fall into place.

The post How to Structure a Blog Post for Best SEO Results appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

While this particular client is not laboring under the restrictions of some of our other clients that cannot leverage paid search or social marketing to their advantage, there were unique hurdles to clear here. 

Here’s how we did it and what the aftereffects were. 

The Client and Industry

This client is one that specializes in selling high-end, luxury fashion items – notably, dresses to be used for memorable occasions like high school homecoming, cotillion, and promenade dances. 

They are expensive, unique, and subject to the whims and vagaries of the fashion market. What’s popular one season might experience an even more meteoric rise the next – or it might fall out of common parlance like a byword. 

While there might be plenty of search volume associated with a particular keyword or fashion trend, what’s in this month might be wiped off the map next – which presents unique challenges for eCommerce SEO.

The thing about SEO is that it usually takes a long time, a year or more, to start generating appreciable results. The problem there is how to identify keywords and search terms that will be popular – or are more likely to be popular – in a year’s time?

That is – how do we find the evergreen keywords? In an industry like this, there are precious few. 

Despite the lack of technical challenges in this industry, the unique circumstances surrounding the industry made it particularly difficult to settle on a coherent fashion SEO strategy. 

The two keys to success here were keyword research and the copy.

Special Considerations 

The strategy we ultimately settled on was one that was custom tailored for this client and its unique considerations. 

Namely, we bifurcated our strategy to create two main larger groups of target keywords. One large group consisted of high-volume, short-tail keywords that should in theory be evergreen – even in the fashion industry. 

The other was much more closely targeted and aligned with specific fashion trends and even fads. This approach enabled us to create a unique cultivated approach that would leverage the long-term benefits of SEO in multiple ways, despite the inherent risks associated with shifting consumer preferences. 

Here’s why. 

The one cohort of search terms and keywords was sufficiently broad that, even if and when trends shift, it will still bring them visibility for those general clusters, expressly because of their nonspecificity. 

For instance – take the keywords “prom dresses” and “evening gowns.” These two keywords are non-targeted according to trend, only according to event. This enabled us to build authority for this client for those event-related keywords without getting too specific. 

They’re also general enough that they offer us the flexibility to use those keywords in much more specific pieces that actually do follow the current trends. 

Presumably, “prom dresses” and “evening gowns” will still be in demand in five or even ten years, even when the trends shift – and this approach has enabled us to position this client with perfect precision. 

The other prong of this strategy was one that focused on much more targeted search terms – like “red prom dresses” and “Cinderella prom dresses.” It’s a lot riskier and the volume associated with these keywords could shift dramatically from month to month, but it’s a winning approach nonetheless. 

Let’s say we hit the mark and red prom dresses are popular this year (or next year). By leveraging content focusing on those keywords, the client will be perfectly positioned, and get the visibility and traffic right when they need it. 

Now let’s say that keyword flops this year and for the next few. At some point, red prom dresses will be back in – and at that point, the client will have all the authority they need, plus historical content, to compete for it.

So it’s basically a win-win, even though it’s a very long-term strategy that isn’t guaranteed to bear fruit in the short term. Either way, it worked, as substantiated by increases in organic metrics. 

The Role of Targeted and Optimized Content 

Secondary to the bifurcated keyword strategy aforementioned was the role of high-quality, engaging content in this campaign. 

Our copywriters had to take some time to get familiar with the client’s vertical and then compare notes with the copy being published by other industry competitors, especially those with high organic rankings for the desired target keywords.

From there they could back-form a content strategy that would outperform the best work of their competitors, outpacing their visibility in the search engines. 

Without giving away any secrets about the topics and trends they covered in the content stream for this campaign, suffice it to say that standard “SEO” copy would not cut it. 

This copy had to be more akin to content marketing copy that was specifically optimized not only for the user experience but also according to SEO best practices. 

Addressing popular trends in prom styles and fashion, as well as trends in dress design, as they became ascendant, was the only way to generate authority, and therefore visibility, for this client. 

Which is precisely what our copywriters did – and in time, the results showed. 

The Results 

Probably the best indicator of success for this client has been the positive movements in some of their target keywords, as you can see below. 

Many of their target keywords, as you can see, are in the page one, spot one position, which is largely the cumulative result over the better part of the last two years.

Google Search Console also tells a compelling tale. While we can’t see back all the way to the beginning of the campaign (GSC only lets you look back 16 months), you can see that there has been positive growth in both impressions and clicks over that time period, particularly in the latter few months. 

This is even more considerable when you weigh the reason for it; this is a seasonal spike directly associated with the prom-related keywords we’ve made targets for this campaign. The spike is not aberrant; it is by design. 

All of this is to suggest that, in a word, our industry-specific fashion SEO services are highly effective when paired with a unique strategy that is tailored to meet the needs of the client in question.

Industry-Focused SEO Services That Perform 

These are the sorts of results that data-driven, strategic eCommerce SEO services deliver for clients, even though in extremely competitive industries. If you’re operating in the fashion industry and are wondering how SEO services can benefit your business, get in touch with our SEO experts for more information. 

The post Fashion SEO and Organic Successes: A Case Study appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

This short post will cover some of the major shifts that have occurred in that timeframe, as well as some changes that are transforming the digital landscape through the present era. 

The Rise of eCommerce: 2010-2020

Let’s flash back to 2010. It’s hard to think that this was almost 15 years ago at this point. There was eCommerce way back then, but less than 5% of retail sales went through a website. 

It wasn’t so long ago that there weren’t even that many eCommerce-only sites like Amazon, eBay, Temu, and Alibaba, and to be sure, some of these (like Amazon and eBay) actually did exist before 2010. But it has only been in the last ten years that many of these eCommerce websites got off the ground. 

Early in the history of eCommerce, sales were stymied by old habits. Shoppers like to interact with products before buying, and the age-old “way” to buy things was at established, brick and mortar outlets. Even the expression “to go shopping” implies a transitive action; physically going somewhere before making a purchase. 

There were also a lot of roadblocks in the early days of eCommerce. For one, there just wasn’t a wealth of websites dedicated to eCommerce. In the early days, there were few (to no) platforms dedicated to eCommerce. Consider that Shopify and BigCommerce only hit the scene in 2006 and 2009, respectively. They existed, but they were new, and they were nascent. Volusion was one of the first, on the scene in 1999. But Volusion, though it’s eCommerce-centric, is not as easy to use as a SaaS platform and was fairly limiting. 

Consider also that transacting used to be much harder back in the past. You can’t pay with cash or even a check through a website, and we’ve only developed unique, easy to implement and use payment gateways and processors like Google Wallet, PayPal and Apple Pay in the past couple years. In 2010, there really weren’t any user-friendly payment processors or payment gateways.

So these things, in sum, also contributed to the slow rise of eCommerce as contrasted to the generally meteoric rise of internet communications. 

There were other inhibitors, too. One is simply that old habits die hard. People like to actually shop for things, and even in the modern era, with AR and VR, shopping online is fairly impersonal. 

On top of that, it used to be that there just wasn’t that much access or accessibility in the realm of eCommerce. In many, many ways, it was easier to go to a local store than it was to shop on the internet. 

That paradigm shifted strongly with the onset of the coronavirus. 

Coronavirus and the eCommerce “Revolution”

While hard to believe it was almost 5 years ago now, when the world “shut down” as a result of the coronavirus, and many businesses started working remotely, as a result of draconian impositions by local and regional governments, many businesses had no option but to start operating solely online as opposed to in person.

While a completely artificial factor, the result was that it did force some businesses to start selling online, just as it forced consumers to start shopping online. 

And, while the political and medical responses to the disease were holistically disastrous, the (potentially unintentional) effect on eCommerce was one of stellar growth. 

As an illustration, eCommerce sales in 2019 totaled about 540 billion. By 2022, that figure had risen to about 944 billion, nearly double. 

The value of all eCommerce sales is projected to grow to almost 1.8 trillion by 2028. If that projection holds, the total value of eCommerce transactions will have more than tripled, nearly quadrupled, in the space of less than a decade.

AI, AR, and VR in Personalizing the Online Shopping Experience 

It should go without saying that there have been many contributors to the growth of eCommerce and I do not mean to insinuate that its rise and subsequent growth in the past few years have been completely artificial, or insignificant. 

But with that said, it’s also the case that certain, select technological developments have also eliminated some of the barriers that conventionally kept consumers out of the eCommerce market. 

Consider the rise of AI (artificial intelligence), AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) in simulating a more realistic online shopping experience. 

AI is a bit more nascent, but AI models are increasingly being used by consumers to help them find information (and potentially products) and even if that trend ends up petering off, eCommerce platforms themselves can leverage artificial intelligence for personalized marketing – such as in the form of “recommended” products that increase conversions. 

With respect to AR and VR, which have been around marginally longer than AI but the effects of which are easier to scale with respect to the user experience, these tools are making a much bigger impact, cumulatively, on the online shopping experience. 

Consider a hypothetical experiment. Traditionally, consumers would shop for items like furniture and clothing in person. It’s easy to see why – you can take measurements of a sofa, for instance, but it’s impossible to know what it actually looks like until you can see it. And forget seeing what it will look like in your home. 

As for clothing, the answer to why consumers have conventionally shopped in person (and why many still do) should be obvious. You won’t know what something will look like on you until it’s, you know, on you. Literally. 

But with AR and VR, there are new tools emerging that offer 360° views of products and which are more interactive than ever before. And even if that were not the case, there are visualizers on the market nowadays that let you “try on” clothing and see what furniture will look like in a simulated view of your home, before you ever buy. 

Are augmented and virtual reality completely replacing the value of in-person shopping? Certainly not. But what can be said without a shred of doubt is that they are increasingly eliminating the barriers that some shoppers have to buying online. 

The Evolution of Search Engine Optimization 

Notwithstanding all of the changes in consumer behavior that have already been fronted by this article, there have been significant changes to eCommerce marketing strategies in the past ten years or so, as well. 

Take, for instance, SEO, which is still considered (by most digital marketers) to be the most important digital marketing channel of all, the most sustainable, the only one that’s entirely without restrictions, and the option that (in almost all cases) offers the highest conversion rate and return on investment. 

But the SEO of 2024 is not what the SEO of 2014 was, and it most definitely is not what the SEO of 2010 was (or earlier).

While SEO is still fundamentally about making a domain (or, in some instances, a specific page) more attractive to search engines, SEO in 2024 is more about optimizing the website for UX. I mean to say, SEO is now more about the user than it is about the search engine. 

Consider, for instance, that Google recently formally announced that user engagement metrics like time on page and pages per session are now officially going to be counted as ranking factors. While many digital marketing folk (myself included) have suspected as much for a long time, it was not officially a “truth” of search engine optimization. 

It makes sense why Google would start doing this – if it hasn’t already been doing so for years. Clearly, a user that spends more time on a page and ultimately clicks through to another page is getting value from the experience. Some aspect of search intent is definitely being met, and that’s the whole point of Google. 

These are also things that can’t be “faked” for lack of a better term. As digital marketers, we can do keyword research, we can optimize page titles, we can compress image files and make websites faster. But there are limits.

So what we can’t do? We can’t force users to spend more time on a page that is boring or fluffy and doesn’t contain the information or content the user came for. In order to do that, the page must be truly optimized for the user experience, which arises largely from a pleasant display, responsive design, and of course, content and copy that engages and informs. It takes a true industry expert (or something close) to do so. 

And the truth is, you can be an expert in SEO, but unless you’re an expert in the client’s vertical, it’s hard to engage and inform. That’s why someone like me has been able to write authoritative posts like “How to Advertise in the Gun Industry” and “Cigar Store Marketing,” and “How to Write to Get Featured in a Google AI Overview,” but why I shy away from some topics and industries on which (or with which) I am not as informed. I won’t show my full hand; you get the picture. 

Anyway, the point is that SEO has evolved quite a lot, perhaps more than any other digital marketing channel. There was a time when tactics prevailed that would be completely unacceptable today. 

What are now known today as “black hat tactics” and which might otherwise be categorized as “gaming” the system, not only will no longer work, but will result in pretty harsh penalties for those that get caught trying. 

It used to be that you could just stuff a bunch of keywords in title tags and in really thin, valueless page “copy” and you would get catapulted to the top of page one.

Today, you need to publish useful, actionable, engaging content. There is still an element of keyword optimization but in many ways it is secondary to the value of good copy. 

Changing Social Media Marketing and the Rise of Influencers 

In 2010, the only social medium we really had was Facebook. How times have changed. While Facebook is still huge, platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok (especially the latter) have really gained ground. 

These latter three – which are largely focused on image and visibility, have enabled users to pose as “experts” in certain industries – or, as you have probably heard them called, influencers. 

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that all influencers are charlatans. The vast majority, perhaps, are, but there are certainly some that truly understand their industry and are experts in their own right. 

This is highly valuable to brands that leverage their credibility, because social media marketing enables fast-track visibility that SEO cannot offer, and it has in many ways upended the conventional digital marketing paradigm. 

Ten years ago, a digital marketing expert would have told you that (basically) all digital marketing could be condensed into PPC or SEO. Those are still important channels, but through influencer marketing, brands can now buy credibility (and visibility) in ways they could not have done in even the recent past. 

I expect that these trends will continue to shape eCommerce into the near future, though I can’t rightly or exactly predict the ways in which they will do so.

The Near Future: eCommerce in the Next 5 to 10 Years

All that’s left now is to explore some of the ways in which eCommerce is expected to grow (and how) in the next few years. 

First, I’ll start with an estimate. Shopify seems to think that the total value of eCommerce in 2025 will reach $4.8 trillion. Whether or not that’s going to pan out is anyone’s guess, but if it holds, it would represent a substantial increase. 

Here are some trends that are expected to continue to define eCommerce in the coming years. 

• AR and VR are expected to continue to personalize the online shopping experience, to make it more realistic and immersive, and to break down more and more barriers to buying online. 
• Omnichannel marketing, or marketing through multiple channels while maintaining a consistent message and brand position, is expected to become more central to a unified user experience. 
• Subscription models, which minimize involvement on behalf of the buyer and which represent passive revenue streams for the merchant, are expected to account for a larger share of the market in the near future.
• Video marketing is expected to become more prevalent in the coming years, though whether that will take the form of video marketing on conventional platforms like YouTube, or through social media like TikTok, is anyone’s guess. There could also be a new platform on the horizon that has not taken off yet but which will leverage video marketing. 
• One trend that’s expected to shape eCommerce, although this might influence the broader retail market, is one on “deinfluencing” or a trend in informing consumers about which products not to buy, either because they are low quality or because they are not sustainable. Either way, this requires manufacturers to place a serious emphasis on quality manufacturing processes and brand management. 
• Short term financing and BNPL (buy now, pay later) models are expected to make eCommerce transactions more accessible, enabling more consumers to take part in online shopping.
• It might sound crazy, but my research is also indicating that “word of mouth” marketing is expected to make a resurgence. When I was in school for marketing, we called this “buzz” and I remember being told it was the most powerful advertising of all, because it is credible and inherently personal. Funny that something so old and so patently non-digital by nature is expected to have a marked impact on eCommerce, but hey, I’ve seen, heard, and learned weirder things. 

All in all, anything I can say about the presumed shifts in the eCommerce marketplace are conjectural at best, but given the latent trajectory of the overall online industry, it’s safe to say that growth will continue for the foreseeable future. It’s just too easy to buy online, and there’s too much selection, for consumers to revert entirely to in-person purchasing.

The post The Evolution of eCommerce: A Look at the Past Decade appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.

But getting images to show up in the Image Results of Google? That’s a whole other ballgame. 

It is, however, still technically part of SEO. 

Which means as a self-proclaimed SEO expert, I should be able to speak to it. 

So, that said, here are some tips and tricks I have used (firsthand) to get images to show up in the Image Results.

Use Original Images Only 

This is the most important bit of advice I can offer you and I cannot stress this enough. I do not care what you read about stock images, or where you read it. Do not use them.

They might produce a passable UX, and some journalists and bloggers might have no other option. 

But if your goal is literally to get images (not just the post) to rank, don’t even waste your time. 

Stock images are duplicate files. Google knows they are duplicate files. They’re not going to rank competitively. I don’t care what titles and alt text you assign them. 

So, take your own pictures, and make sure they’re high quality. Grainy garbage is not going to rank. You want professional resolution here. The sharper the better. 

One note I would like to make here, though. I don’t know if using AI-generated images counts as original. Like, technically I know it’s an original file, but if the engine you use to create it saves a copy, that then would be considered the original file and not whatever you publish. 

Anyway, I’m not going to say not to use generative AI to make images because they’re getting pretty good. Just take that caveat that I’m not promising that you can get AI-generated images to rank. Maybe you can, and maybe not. I don’t have experience getting AI-generated images to rank and I do with my own photography, so I can’t vouch for the former personally.

Compress the Image File

If you use Google’s PageSpeed Insights and run a URL (that has images) through it, you’ll see something almost across the board that’s very relevant to what I’m writing about. 

Go ahead and try it. I’m not a betting man but if I were I would take a wager that the main areas that page failed had to do with load speed, and that the slow load speeds were directly attributable to massive image file sizes. 

This is a plague that affects websites of all sorts. I have seen it personally. Not only does having massive image files tank your load speeds (which is bad for SEO, generally) but having massive image files sizes also reduces the chances the image will rank to near nil. 

Now here’s the problem. Right above I told you to use really high-quality images. Really high-quality images with sharp resolution are usually massive files and require a lot of storage. That is counterintuitive. 

What you do to make a fix, however, is simple: run the image through a compressor. There are tons of free compression tools that take the file and compress it, resulting in no loss of visual quality, but drastically reducing the amount of storage needed. 

As a result, the image file still looks great but will load much faster, which improves technical SEO and considerably increases the chances that the image will rank.

By the way, here are some free image file compression tools:

• Optimizilla
• TinyPNG
• FreeConvert
• Image Resizer

Another by the way: compressing your image file sizes will speed up the whole URL, which doesn’t just mean chances are better that the images on the page will rank. It increases the chances that your overall SEO will improve. 

Use a Responsive Theme 

This should actually go without saying primarily because it is an indelible aspect of general technical SEO, and is not specifically related to image optimization, but if your theme is not mobile responsive, your website will suffer, and your images will not rank (or not rank well) as a result. 

So keep that in mind.

Add Alt Text

After compressing your images, this is one of the most important ranking signals associated with image optimization and I know for a near fact that many of the images I have gotten to rank have done so because I was smart with alt text. 

See, here’s the cool thing. Compared to how many search listings there are, there is probably a lot less competition for image listings. It could be that SEO experts don’t use as many images (or use many images per page) or it could be (more likely) that most “experts” just don’t add alt text to image files. 

I don’t blame them. It’s a tiny optimization and even if all your images were optimized with several strings of high-volume, low-difficulty keywords, a page that was otherwise bad would not show up in the SERPs. 

The images, however, might, and in the realm of image optimization, specifically, this is probably the second biggest thing you can do. 

How to add alt text to an image is something that will vary slightly depending on platform, but it is an easy thing to do regardless. On WordPress, for instance, go to your media center and click on one of the images. Over on the right side of the screen there should be a field for alt text, along with a few other fields. Add your alt text right in there. 

By the way, when you’re optimizing an image with alt text, don’t just stick it in there as a standalone. Craft a small blurb for your image, sort of like a caption. Describe what you see in the image and include the keyword organically. Try not to stuff too many in. 

You’ll be surprised how effective this tactic is. Even if you’re struggling to get pages to rank, you’ll be pretty likely to get some images to show up in the Image Results for those target keywords.

Add a Caption

I have noticed that adding captions to images, while not as important as adding alt text, also gives them a boost when I want them to rank. 

When adding a caption, it is critical that what you write offers value to the reader. You want some keywords to be in there for Google’s sake, but primarily you want to increase the user’s engagement with the page and, specifically, with the image. 

So don’t just describe the image. Offer a little bit of insight into why the picture is relevant to the post or something like that. I’ll be honest, it’s a little hard for me to come up with something on the fly, so I’ll show an example here: 

See what I did with that caption? It sort of reiterates one of the ways you can get your images to rank, which should offer you value if that’s the reason you got to this post in the first place. 

Get creative with it. This is the most subjective piece of advice I’m offering in this post so there really isn’t necessarily a “wrong” way to do it. 

Get Your Images to Rank, Starting Now 

If you put all of the techniques into practice that I recommended, right now, there’s no reason you can’t start getting your website’s image to rank, and pretty soon at that. 

Give it a try and see which of these works best for you.

The post How to Get Images to Rank (Image Optimization Guide) appeared first on 1Digital® Agency.