Welcome to another insightful week with The SEOs Diners Club newsletter. Leveraging over a decade of SEO expertise, I aim to distill the week's most critical developments into a concise read that will take less than seven minutes. Let's dive into the insights that matter.

Boost Traffic and Conversions with SEO and CRO

Discover how SEO and CRO can optimize your search engine rankings and conversion rates.

The two powerful tools of digital marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), are critical for online success. While SEO enhances your website's visibility in search engines, CRO maximizes conversions by encouraging visitors to take desired actions. Using these strategies harmoniously allows your business to gain more traffic and conversions.

The Essentials of SEO: The Art of Acquiring Quality Traffic

SEO is vital for attracting visitors who are genuinely interested in your offerings. It is evaluated in three main categories: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. On-page SEO deals with optimizing webpage content; off-page SEO handles signals from outside your website (like backlinks), and technical SEO covers performance aspects like site speed. Tools such as Semrush are available for in-depth analysis and optimization in these areas.

The Fundamentals of CRO: Ways to Boost Conversions

The primary goal of CRO is to increase the rate of visitors who perform desired actions on your website. This is achieved by analyzing user behaviors and enhancing or adding website elements that encourage specific actions.

The Benefits of Integrating SEO and CRO

• Increased Traffic: Combining SEO and CRO helps you rank higher in search engines and optimize user experience, attracting more visitors to your website.

• Higher Conversion Rates: A user-friendly website and compelling content increase the chances of converting visitors into customers.

• Increased Revenue: More traffic and conversions mean more sales and revenue. Integrating SEO and CRO: The Path to Success

By merging SEO and CRO strategies, you can maximize your website's potential, gaining more traffic and conversions. Integrating these strategies enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts, contributing to your business's growth.

A/B Testing Key Steps to Integrating SEO and CRO Strategies

• Align SEO and CRO Goals: Consider these two disciplines when setting SEO and CRO goals. Set common goals and build your strategy by gathering feedback from both areas.

• Deepen Keyword Research: Conduct comprehensive keyword research to understand user intent. Focus on both commercial and informational keywords to enrich your content.

• Produce High-Quality, SEO-Friendly Content: Create engaging and valuable content optimized for SEO and user experience. Check your content's readability and SEO compatibility with tools like Semrush.

• Improve User Experience (UX): Analyze and enhance your website's user experience. Work on page loading speeds, mobile compatibility, and user-friendly navigation.

• Optimize Visuals: Ensure the images on your website are SEO-friendly. Add appropriate alt tags to your photos and optimize their sizes.

• Optimize Your Meta Data: Create compelling and keyword-focused meta titles and descriptions. This will make your content more attractive to search engines and users.

• Strengthen Internal Linking Structure: Develop an effective internal linking network within your website, directing to relevant content. This will improve your SEO performance and user experience.

• Boost Conversions with A/B Testing: Test different page designs, headings, and call-to-actions (CTAs) to determine which version leads to more conversions.

• Monitor and Optimize Performance: Regularly monitor your SEO and CRO performance and adjust your strategy based on the data you collect. Utilize tools like Semrush in this process. SEO and CRO are crucial for the success of any website. Using these two strategies together can maximize your website's potential, achieving more traffic and conversions. Focus on user experience and producing quality content to strengthen your digital presence.

SEO Alerts from Google: Core Web Vitals and Minor Updates May Not Always Affect Rankings

Google shares essential clarifications on the impact of Core Web Vitals (CWV) and minor site updates on rankings.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves techniques and strategies to improve websites' rankings in search results. The primary goal of SEO is to make the website more visible and accessible to search engines, thus increasing organic traffic and potential customers.

Google continuously updates its algorithm to provide the best and most relevant search results. These updates may require website owners to review their SEO strategies and make necessary adjustments.

In this week's Search Off The Record podcast, Google shared essential details about the impact of CWV and minor site updates on rankings.

Google spokespersons confirm that CWV is a ranking factor. However, optimizing CWV may not always lead to a ranking boost. CWV is just one of many factors Google uses. Rankings depend on the overall quality and relevance of the site. Therefore, it's beneficial to avoid obsessing over CWV.

Minor Updates and Rankings:

Minor site updates may not make a difference in search results. Google needs time to understand and process changes. Significant changes and new content can affect rankings. If you've experienced a drop in rankings due to an algorithm update, compensating with minor modifications might not be feasible. In most cases, you'll need to continue improving your site's quality patiently until the next update.

Are Ads a Barrier to Rankings? Google Explains

Do ads negatively impact SEO? Google spokesperson Danny Sullivan answers.

Website owners conducting search engine optimization (SEO) activities often wonder about the impact of ads on rankings. Google spokesperson Danny Sullivan clarified this issue on Twitter.

Ads Are Not an Obstacle to Rankings:

Sullivan confirmed that ads do not pose a barrier to search rankings. He emphasized the need for sites to balance ads and content while focusing on user experience.

Excessive Ads Can Lower Rankings:

Sullivan also highlighted that excessive and user-experience-disrupting ads could negatively affect rankings. Such ads can lead to users quickly leaving the site and increasing the site's bounce rate.

Key Points:

• Ads are not an obstacle to rankings.

• User experience is paramount.

• Excessive and disruptive ads can lower rankings.

Microsoft Copilot Referrer Data Now Visible in Google Analytics!

Referral data from Microsoft Copilot is now visible in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) profiles. Track and analyze traffic from Copilot to your website or app.

Exciting news for marketers: referral data from Microsoft Copilot is now visible in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) profiles. This development allows you to monitor and analyze how Copilot directs traffic to your website or app.

What is Copilot?

Copilot is an AI assistant developed by Microsoft. It can assist users in various tasks such as coding, generating text, and searching the web. One of the latest features of Copilot is directing traffic to websites and apps.

How Does Copilot Data Appear in GA4?

Referral data from Copilot appears in the “Traffic Source” report in GA4 as “microsoft-copilot.” This report shows the source of traffic from Copilot, which pages visitors viewed, and how long they stayed.

Benefits of Using Copilot Data:

Using Copilot data, you can:

• Understand how Copilot directs traffic to your website or app. See which keywords and search queries Copilot uses and which users it directs to your site or app.

• Improve your marketing strategy. Use Copilot data to determine which marketing channels are most effective and which audiences to target.

• Measure Copilot's effectiveness. See how traffic from Copilot affects the performance of your website or app.

To start using Copilot data in GA4, follow these steps:

• Go to your GA4 profile.

• Click on the “Admin” tab.

• Enable the “Advanced Data Processing” option under “Data Processing”.

• Go to the “Traffic Source” report.

• Search for the “Source/Medium” column for “Microsoft-copilot.” Copilot data is a valuable resource for marketers to understand traffic to their websites and apps better and improve their marketing strategies.

Google Analytics and Google Ads Conversions Now Compatible!

Google is updating conversion measurements in Google Analytics to match those in Google Ads better.

Google is making updates to better match conversion measurements in Google Analytics with those in Google Ads. These updates will help you track conversions more accurately and measure the return on your advertising investments.

Key Changes:

• Old conversions will be renamed “key events.” Key events represent significant user actions completed on your website or app, such as a purchase, form submission, or video playback.

• Cross-channel conversion performance reports outside of Google Ads will be added to the Advertising workspace in GA4. This will show how advertising channels (e.g., search, display, social media) contribute to overall conversion performance.

• Google Analytics and Google Ads will consistently present conversion value. This will help you better understand which key events your advertising spend leads to.

Recommended Tools & Services

• WhitePress: WhitePress is a content marketing platform that enables accessible article publishing across 90,571 websites in 30 languages, offering native copywriting and automated global publication services.

• Cannibalization Explorer Looker Studio Report is a tool for identifying keyword cannibalization and providing insights into how keywords perform across different pages.

• SurferSEO is a tool that helps you create and optimize content for SEO. It analyzes the top-ranking pages for your target keywords and gives you suggestions on how to improve your content. Surfer AI also has a feature that can generate ready-to-rank articles in minutes.

• Copilot Pro: Copilot Pro is available for $20/month for cloud-based GenAI models and $27/month with Microsoft 365. It is integrated with Microsoft 365 applications and provides access to GPT-4 Turbo and advanced AI rendering tools.

• AlsoAsked is a helpful tool that can boost your visibility in the “People Also Ask” section of Google's search engine results pages.

• Semrush Map Rank Tracker is a game-changing tool for local businesses looking to dominate their niche and attract more customers. I've been using the free version for a while now, and I'm impressed with its ease and effectiveness.

• ContentShake AI is an intelligent writing tool that combines AI with real-life competitor insights. It guides you from ideation to publishing directly to the blog, generates SEO-friendly articles, and helps you optimize them for organic traffic and engagement.

• Microsoft Clarity has recently introduced a feature called Copilot, which incorporates Generative AI through Large Language Models (LLMs) into the analytics tool. This integration aims to make data more accessible and understandable for users by leveraging the same technology created by OpenAI, which powers the new Bing or ChatGPT.

• InLinks is an SEO tool that uses a knowledge graph to optimize content for search engines. It automates internal linking and schema markup, simplifying SEO processes and content strategies.

Subscribe to my newsletter to stay informed about the latest in SEO and digital marketing. Next week, I'll continue to share the newest insights, tactics, and strategies for navigating the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.

Support My Newsletter:

If you find my content valuable, consider buying me a coffee to support my work. Your contribution will help me continue sharing the latest SEO developments. Let's achieve more together!

Best,

Mert