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BrightonSEO April 2022 recap, notes and slides
I can’t believe this was my 5th time at BrightonSEO (IRL). I don’t do many conferences, but this one is worthy enough for me to travel 1000+ km twice a year to hang out with fellow SEOs, learn tons, make new friends, and, of course, grab a fish’n’chips on the beach - if the seagulls don’t steal it from me!
I took loads of notes, and plan to catch up on the talks I couldn’t attend on the BrightonSEO video vault. Until then, here are a few excerpts of my notes, as well as useful links and resources.
Quality assurance
Goodbye SEO fuckups! Learn to set a quality assurance framework
Slides and talk by Aleyda Solis.
Notes:
85% of SEOs have one to two major SEO incidents each year
We generally spend more time fixing and improving than building stuff
It’s not only a matter of catching error faster but to prevent them too
SEO monitoring should be a part of a broader SEO quality assurance process:
Educate to prevent SEO mistakes
Validate to avoid launching SEO errors
Monitor
Technical SEO QA: shining a light on invisible work
Slides and talk by Myriam Jessier & Gianna Brachetti-Truskawa.
Always have a staging environment to test things on
Define what’s important for your QA:
Critical pages
User flows
Core functionalities
Questions to ask yourself: Is it crawlable? Is in indexable? Is it rank-worthy?
Make sure to communicate potential risks to the teams
What matters:
Do not overload with thousands of pages
GSC has a time delay, so keep it in mind for QA
Some QA checks must be manual
QA your code: canonicals, schema, and hreflang
Use a configuration file in Screaming Frog, so everyone does QA the same way every time
Be aware that each type of site has its own QA flavour
Some deployments are not done by humans: cron jobs, scripts, server updates
Brand vs SEO: how to win allies and influence brand guardians
Slides and talk by Becky Simms.
Use personas, even when you work on SEO
SEO and the brand both use the website as a vehicle, so there’s necessarily some overlap or collaboration opportunities between both fields
Fundamentals
Beyond the basics: 5 (or 10) Google Business Profile elements you might not know about but REALLY should
Slides and talk by Claire Carlile.
There’s now a “request a quote” feature in Google Business Profile, but it can show how your potential clients can get quotes from your competitors as well
In your local results tracking tools, include your competitors
UTM trackers in URLs are crucial in GBP
When you ask for reviews from your clients, give them ideas on what they could write about to avoid “empty” or boring reviews
Use Vision AI to check what Google sees in the pictures you add to your Google Business Profile. You want to make sure what Google sees reflects what you want your business to show.
Reporting
Freddy Krueger’s guide to scary good reporting
Slides and talk by Greg Gifford.
There’s an unconscious bias where clients don’t always trust digital marketers or SEOs. That means every time we get in touch with our clients we have to overcome the mistrust.
Your client came to you for a problem, and you provide a solution, so the solution needs to appear in the report. Clients want to know quickly if the stuff you do is working.
So the most important thing is to know what to put in your report.
You need to make it crystal clear that what you do matters. This is often as simple as:
Organic traffic
Leads
Organic leads
That’s all you need in the end and that can up be put in one page.
Customise reports to each client to speak to each clients goals. Use questions over jargon for headlines.
Keyword research
How to go after the long tail keywords (and why it matters!)
Slides and talk by Paola Didone.
For long tail keywords, instead of creating new pages for each, start by focusing on pages you already have. You can add a small paragraph on a category page with those long tail keywords and it will do the job for the most part.
Check what is already ranking for the keywords you are targeting
Look at the proportion of the search volume of the head term vs the long tail keywords volume. There’s more point to targeting a long tail keyword that represents 30% of the head search term volume than 0.5%
Effective zero-volume keyword research and why it’s important
Slides and talk by Mark Williams-Cook.
Interestingly, the content ideas AlsoAsked provides will likely have zero search volume.
70-80% of searches are long tail keywords
15% of searches are new
So by not focusing on these keywords, we are actually getting on just 15% of keywords.
It’s not because you have a very low search volume that you shouldn’t write about something. Think about intent volume instead of search volume.
Agency & Freelance SEO
Managing expectations with “impossible keywords”
Slides and talk by Jessica Maloney.
“Impossible keywords” are the ones where the SERP is dominated by a brand (ex. Chapstick) for example, the ones where the client wants to to rank for X without further explanation.
How to proceed with the client:
Understand why
Education
Data : it’s your backup to explain and show the client what’s possible, keyword difficulty metrics
Offer alternative keywords
Use your own data from Google Search Console
Eyes on the competition : when a client comes with a competitor and a keyword, they are often more annoyed by the competitor than by their own ranking for this keyword. So showing them what this competitor does will work better.
Explode your agency growth: be more you
Slides and talk by Nicole Osborn.
Blending in = invisibility
Home page should say :we know what your problems are and we know how to solve them”
Add call to action on the first screen of the home page
Your copy has to be super attractive, honey to a bee
Don’t be too vague on what you do great
Purple and blue themes are overdone
Stock images are boring
About page: have pictures of the people, not the building
Boring won’t get you on the best shortlists 😉
3 strategies to ditch boring:
Stand out brand values
Connect with stories: be noticed by more of your best fit clients, tell people about who you are and they will come
Show your personality
People want to work with people they like, and they will talk about you if they believe they’ve found a rare pearl
Future of Search
Web design for people and planet
Talk by Tom Greenwood.
Check out the Website Carbon Calculator
Practical step to make a website more efficient for everybody and the environment:
Do you actually need this bit of code or this image?
Images weigh way more than a thousand words
For simple stock photo pictures, is it really communicating useful information?
Blurring the edges of a photo where you have a subject in the center can reduce the size by 50%
WEBP files are 30% lighter than jpeg
Use SVG files and optimise them by hand because Illustrator adds extra information
Auto play videos burn through data and are detrimental to the environment and to people who don’t have access to a lot of data
Animated SVG are cool
System fonts are zero waste, like Times New Roman, Courrier New, and Arial
WOFF2 font files are lighter
Reuse styles rather than adding styles to improve CSS
Jquery for forms is heavy
MinimalGA for Google Analytics tracking is lighter than Google Tag Manager
Contextual ads over personalised ads -> example: have sports ad on a sports article
Test on Motorola Moto E6 or similar because that is the average of what users have worldwide
Use dark mode
Search in the Metaverse
Slides and talk by Kara Thurkettle.
Impacts on search:
Search what you see
Use AR
Try on clothes virtually so the user gets more information
Use these technologies to do product demos, people are searching more and more for AR related terms like “see flooring in my room”
The Metaverse changes the user journey, where the SERP becomes a 3D virtual street, or where the information provided to the user is even more personalised
Search intent
How to determine search intent for B2B
Slides and talk by Adriana Stein.
Buyer personas are as important up in B2B in B2C
The challenge for SEOs is to align search intent and purchase intent
B2B is more complicated than B2S in the purchase decision stage because you have multiple people deciding to make the purchase, so we need to understand whether the search intent is B2B or B2C, as well as understand what different buyer personas we will have to deal with.
Step 1: Streamline the buyer personas
It’s impossible to talk to people without knowing who they are
Update buyer personas regularly
Simplify it by categorising the personas
End users - the ones that use the product
Influencers - people who have a voice in the buying process
Decision makers - the ones that decide the purchase
Step 2: Keyword research and clustering
Check keywords by hand and look at what the SERP looks like
Depending on the results you’ll be able to tell if they are B2B or B2C queries
Step 3: Keyword map
Map keywords to each page/type of page
Use multiple keywords to describe one product, by tying it to different use cases, different contexts
One seed keyword, multiple related keywords
Step 4: Create content
Use seed keyword, determine what buying stage this refers to, create title, then h1 and body, repeat with another seed keyword.
This is just a quick summary of some of the talks I attended in person at the event. I haven’t mentioned the keynotes which were both incredible, or the talks I’ll catch up on in the BrightonSEO video vault.
If you want to check out all the slide decks from the event, SiteVisibility has them all listed here.
This is hands-down the best SEO conference I have ever been to, I already have my ticket for October 2022 and even pitched to talk! 🤞
Picture perfect! 📸 Increasing relevant traffic for an independent photographer
In this case study, we delve into Clément Renaut's SEO journey as an independent photographer based in Alsace, France. We addressed critical technical errors, transitioning HTTP images to HTTPS and restructuring the website for enhanced user experience. By aligning content with Clément's services and preferred locations, organic traffic related to weddings and family photography nearly doubled and tripled, respectively, over six months. Local visibility in key areas, such as Strasbourg, significantly improved, resulting in higher average positions and click-through rates. This case study showcases the transformative impact of tailored SEO strategies on driving relevant traffic and enhancing online visibility for independent professionals.
Clément Renaut is an independent photographer based in Alsace, France. His unique personality brings the best out of people in a joyful and fun way. He mainly does wedding photography, individual and family portraits. His area of work is in Alsace-Lorraine regions. Photography is a very competitive industry and Clément made many adjustments to his website through the years.
Where we started
Lack of visibility on keywords important for the business
The top keywords for which the website ranked where focused around topics of secondary importance for the business, such as wedding venues, or general informational content about wedding organisation that was not likely to bring in conversions.
Confusion to where the business operates
The website also ranked for cities far away from where Clément operates. Despite his ability to move around in France for photo shoots, most of his revenue is made in a 150 km area around his home.
A mix of HTTP and HTTPS content
Years of updates to this custom-built website have created errors, especially regarding the location of the images. A hole bunch of them were stored on a HTTP repository, triggering mixed content errors.
Goals of the project
Our first goal was to improve the general health of the website, removing critical technical errors that were seen as a red flag by search engine crawlers. Then we would work on improving relevant organic traffic for the website. That means making sure the keywords we would target were:
In line with what his clients are searching for
Relevant to the photography services Clément offers
Local to his area
What we did
Moving HTTP images to HTTPS
Thankfully, Clément has a background in IT and was able to make all the right changes and redirections super fast.
On another note, there is something deeply satisfying to seeing error numbers go down!
There’s something deeply satisfying when you get that kind of graph @semrush 😁
— Alizée Baudez 💫 (@AlizeeBaudez) October 12, 2021
For context, this client is alone in his business, has no team nor developer. He’s a father of 3 doing his best.
I’m so proud and can’t wait to see the impact this will have for him 🥳 pic.twitter.com/8U6YgIrPl5
Reviewing the website structure
We created content clusters around his services and the locations he often visits for photo shoots. The idea was to make sure users (and bots) could easily understand what he does and where he works with an efficient internal linking strategy.
Improve content with relevant keywords
With the help of an extensive keyword research, we worked on improving the on-page content with keywords that were more relevant to Clément’s audience and aligned with their intents.
The results
Website health
With a few technical adjustments, we were able to drastically improve the website’s overall health and decrease the likelihood of Google bot crawling issues.
The number of critical technical SEO errors on the website went from 1454 to just 2 in a few days! 🥳
The overall website health improved by 15 points with a few technical adjustments.
Increased organic traffic on relevant keywords
For keywords relevant to Clément’s services, the organic traffic grew substantially over the past 6 months. In the examples below, the focus is on keywords that include “wedding” and “family” which are the biggest sources of revenue for this business.
Organic traffic related to weddings nearly doubled. This could be partly due to the current circumstances, but also to the increased CTR and average position of the website on these queries.
Organic traffic related to families tripled over the past 6 months and the CTR grew by 1 point. The website on those queries also ranked more than 13 places higher than before!
Increased Local organic visibility
When it comes to local organic visibility, the website performed much better. The example below if for keywords including “Strasbourg”, the biggest town in Clément’s area.
For keywords including the location “Strasbourg”, the average position of the website increased by 4 ranks, the CTR increased by 2 points, and the number of clics was doubled.
Client feedback on this project
“Working with Alizee is awesome. Besides being a lovely person, she handles her subjects perfectly.”
If you found this case study interesting and would like to enquire about SEO services, you can contact me here:
2021 in review
2021 is now over and it is time for me to take a look back and see how this unique year has gone. I’ve divided my reflections in sections, so feel free to have a look around!
2021 is now over and it is time for me to take a look back and see how this unique year has gone. I’ve divided my reflections in sections, so feel free to have a look around!
What happened in 2021
Long term collaborations
I started collaborating on a monthly basis with the Jetfly group in 2020, and we continued working together all through 2021. Projects ranged from monthly reporting, SEO audits, SEO check-ups before new website launches, and I tagged along as they launched new ad campaigns in Europe on Google Ads and social media.
New Projects
In 2021, I worked with agencies in the UK, France, and even Dubai on projects in industries like:
Bedding and household linen
Firewalls and cybersecurity
Household cleaning supplies
Aviation
Tourism
Architecture
Training programmes
Pensions and savings schemes
New clients
My clients this year were mainly small companies in:
Photography
Cryptocurrency
But also a medium-sized company in the private aviation industry.
New territories
Through my clients and the projects I worked on with SEO agencies, I was able to dive deep in markets from all over the globe! I feel really lucky to be able to incorporate such a huge part of international projects to my work.
Place I’ve (virtually) been this year:
My home region: Alsace, France
Our neighbouring region: Lorraine, France
United Kingdom
Luxembourg
Switzerland
Belgium
USA
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
Abu Dhabi
2021 clients and project in Europe
2021 clients and project in the world
New connections
2021 was also about connections. I joined Alice Benham’s ON IT crew that provide monthly calls and check-ins with fellow entrepreneurs to talk and exchange ideas about our businesses. I got to meet lots of new friends!
I have also had incredible conversations with women from the Women in Tech SEO Slack group, and I was fortunate enough to be hired through their freelancers list.
This year was also the year I launched my professional Instagram account! You can find me at @alizeebaudez.seo. The idea behind this account is to help entrepreneurs understand more about SEO and regain control over their organic visibility.
Finally, I was able to attend BrightonSEO last September. I had missed these conferences so so much! It was amazing to talk to people again, see them in 3D and connect. My tickets are ready for the April 2022 edition!
New partnerships
Early 2022 I reconnected with a former classmate from... at least 10 years ago, when I started my studies in Annecy. He is the co-founder of Bolk, a branding and web agency that works with many freelancers. I got to collaborate with them on various projects this year and we get along really well.
The main advantage of being part of this community, is that I can now have access to tens of freelancers that can help out my clients. I’m very proud to be able to offer additional value like this.
New offers
As with any business, my services evolved in 2021. I created packages to simplify my offerings, and streamlined many processes. For 2022, I’m currently refining my services. I’ll make sure to keep you posted. 😉
Knowledge transmission
I’ve always found that teaching skills were very important in digital marketing, and especially important in SEO. This field is pretty complex and you can’t just get good at it with a couple of blog articles. When I work with clients, I always take to time to explain new concepts and how the Google algorithm works. That’s one of the reasons I opened a dedicated Instagram account.
I was very happy to be able to bring those skills to students again this year. I taught digital marketing and SEO to students from Epitech and my former business school: EM Strasbourg. I even taught to students in class! That was definitely a big change for me, as I had only taught classes online so far.
On of the classes that was the most fun to teach, was a project-based program about SEO, where students had to participate in a Google ranking competition I created around one made-up keyword. That keyword referred to a role-playing world I created with deep lakes and misty mountains, castles and creepy forests. Each group had to create a fake company in the tourism industry in this world. It was so much fun to read about the dragon cruises, the medieval city tours and even the carriage Uber of the region! Send your payment by pigeon mail and your carriage will come straight to your door, providing you with a knight for protection on the sketchy roads. 😂
Creating space for growth
2021 was also the year I worked on my branding with Marine from Nevermind Studio. It was about time I had a proper branding for my business that reflects my ambitions for this company moving forward. The result is cheerful and cosy, which is the kind of experience I aim at giving my clients.
Along with the new branding is a new website, of course. I’m leaving behind Wordpress and all the sys admin to focus on the content, and I chose to migrate to Squarespace. Time will tell if it was the right choice!
This year was my first full year of implementing the Profit First method for my finances. In a nutshell, it consists in working with different “buckets” to better budget through the year, and having one “bucket” dedicated for profit. This money is for my enjoyment only, and a way to reward myself as a business owner.
So far, with this method, I rewarded myself with weekend getaways, 2 spacial editions of Harry Potter books, a solo trip in the mountains and craft supplies. The kind of things that make my heart happy and filled with joy!
What the year looked like
Intentions and goals
My intentions for 2021 were for my business to be financially stable, less dependant on my time and more aligned with my values. I set myself goals each quarter that sometimes didn’t work out, but always move my business a step closer to what success meant to me.
Financially stable
With the implementation of the Profit First method, and with a bit more communication, I managed to double my revenue this year, but also set aside 6-months worth of expenses. I feel way more relaxed now as a business owner and I can allow myself some time to relax and work on strategic topics.
Less dependant on my time
Time is the thing you can’t get back right? My business was always meant to fit my lifestyle, whether I’m traveling or staying at home, whether I’m having the best day ever or a complicated moment.
To sustain this, I knew I needed to automate a few things and streamline some of my processes. I switched to a new accounting software (Freebe) that freed a lot of time for me each month and started playing around with project dashboards for my clients. It’s not perfect yet, but I’m working towards offering the best experience to my clients while having as much flexibility in my day to day as possible.
Aligned with my values
At the end of 2020, I felt like my business wasn’t reflecting my values enough. I worked all through 2021 to figure out what my ideal client would be and how to get in touch with them. A few A3 sheets filled with arrows and bullet points later, I contacted many branding experts and settled on Nevermind Studio to create a brand for me that would reflect what I wanted my business to look like. So far, this has been a great decision and I’m getting contacts from people I truly connect with.
Lessons learned
We all like a bit of an end of year conclusion, right? So here a few lessons I learned in 2020:
Resting is the key to performance. Sound paradoxical at first, but this has proven to be true so many times !
It's okay to double your yearly income, but don't get greedy and aim at x2.5 😅
Working ON the business is as important as working IN the business
I am not my business, I am the captain of a ship I built myself, but it's just a ship 🙂
The more you pay attention to and take care of your money, the more you get 💸
Investing in my business feels great and brings results
Pitching to talk at a conference isn't so hard after all (even though I didn’t hear back yet 😁)
But also... What I said no to
A big part of running a business is saying no to some projects opportunities. Here are a few things I said no to in 2021, no hard feelings but no regrets either.
Working on wonky projects that would have taken 3 times the time to complete than what I would have been paid for
Working with notoriously toxic humans or people that didn't respect my boundaries before we even had a signed contract
Working on projects that didn't fit my skills or felt like too much of a set back regarding my expertise
Working for companies I didn't feel like a good fit or in industries I do not believe in
What about 2022? 🎉
I’m still in the process of figuring out what 2022 will hold for my business. So far, I know that I want to sustain all I have created last year, but also explore and develop new ideas that have been on the back burner for a few months.
Thanks for being part of my journey as a freelance and entrepreneur. ❤️
If you would like to get in touch, feel free to send me an email at hello@alizeebaudez.com or book a call with me whenever it suits you best: https://calendly.com/alizeebaudez/30-min
Teaching a Digital Marketing Class for EM Strasbourg Business School - 2021/2022
In the first semester of the 2021/2022 curriculum, I taught students in their 2nd year (the equivalent of Master 1) Digital Marketing. My focus for this class was to teach students about what digital marketing looks like in 2021 and key concepts they should have in mind when working on a website. It was an introduction course to Digital Marketing focused on websites and their performance. Topics related to social media were covered in another course of the curriculum.
The class was taught in French to 57 students, face to face in Strasbourg, and split in 5 sessions of 2 to 3 hours. The syllabus for this class was pretty ambitious, as I realised session after session. After getting some feedback from students, I'll make sure to lighten some parts of the program so we can focus on the most important concepts.
Digital marketing class outline
Here is the breakdown of chapters we went through for each session.
Session 1 - 3 hours
1. Introduction
2. Culture and digital transformation
3. The online consumer
Session 2 - 3 hours
4. Digital marketing strategy and instruments
Session 3 - 3 hours
5. Visibility on search engines
Session 4 - 2 hours
6. User experience and conversion rate optimisation
Session 5 - 2 hours
7. Measuring and analysing data
Alizée Baudez teaching a class in digital marketing
Teaching in action! ;) Thanks Imane for the picture :)
The DIGITAL marketing class in detail
Now, let's go into detail about what we explored in each chapter and some of the activities we did in class and examples of what students created.
1. introduction
This section was pretty straight forward, I basically explained who I am, what I do and explained the functioning of the class.
I also needed to understand who my students were. I could have spent 30 minutes asking each one of the 57 students to present themselves, but that would have been extra boring. So I used a service called Slido to have an interactive set of questions they could answer and see the results live. Students just had to scan a QR code to access the polls.
For example, the first question was "Why did you choose to study Digital Marketing?"
Answers (in French) from students to the question "Why did you choose to study Digital Marketing?"
If you don't speak French, here are the main keywords that students came up with for this question:
Future
Creativity
Discovery
Interesting
Innovation
...and the notable "finance is boring" 😂
2. CUlture and digital transformation
In this chapter, I presented where French companies are at with their digital transformation. I think it's pretty easy to think all companies nationwide are 100% digital, especially after the pandemic. But the reality is that we only see the companies that are already well advanced on their "digital" journey. The ones that are still in the process of becoming "digital" are not yet visible online to most people.
Then we went through the main business models for online businesses. From e-commerce to affiliation, from content creation to subscriptions. I also spent some time explaining cases of co-creation, specifically through examples of Katnipp and XXLScrunchie, a British stationery company and a Canadian accessories company. Both document their business journeys on YouTube and co-create their next collections with their communities.
As a rule of thumb, most of the examples and case studies I use in my classes are about small businesses. The vast majority of the French workforce work for small and medium-sized businesses, and I believe it brings more value to students to study businesses with relatable people behind them.
The last part of this chapter was dedicated to ethics on the web. I found it important to explain to students the impact of online activities on the environment, but also and especially the impact it has on our societies. Most students had never heard of micro-jobs and micro-tasks, the psychological difficulties experienced by Facebook moderators or the ways Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Google’s Task Mate tend to exploit minorities with highly underpaid assignments.
3. The online consumer
This chapter focused on understanding how the online costumer journey differed from the traditional customer journey. But as we all know, humans are not rational beings and we are all prone to cognitive biases.
So I then explained what cognitive biases are, with a few examples of how they impact our day to day lives, and, of course, how they impact the online consumer. Understanding cognitive biases and more generally how our brains function when we browse, can heavily impact the way we conceive and optimise websites.
It might sound counterintuitive to talk about psychology and neurology in a digital marketing class. As a freelance digital marketing specialist, I think I do a better job at optimising websites now that I know about cognitive biases and how the brain works.
4. Digital marketing strategy and instruments
This chapter focuses on digital marketing strategy and the instruments of digital marketing.
I explained what a digital marketing strategy is through 2 concepts:
Defining a company’s mission, its vision, its values and finally drafting an elevator pitch ;
Using Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle by defining the what, the how and the why of a company, and then using this framework to create a pitch and define goals.
I also touched on the difference between owned, earned and paid media, the importance of having your own website, and not just relying on social media.
Class activity : What if you became a CEO?
Digital marketing strategy can be quite tricky to grasp as a concept. So I asked my students to form groups of 4/5 students, and assigned them randomly a company they would pretend to be CEO of.
The companies came from a list of fellow entrepreneurs that I appreciate, all small businesses. Students were then able to send their findings to these entrepreneurs and have the opportunity to actually help someone out. As a small business, its always highly valuable to get insights from an external point of view!
I asked students to follow these steps:
Familiarise themselves with the companies they were assigned to
Find their mission as a company
Uncover their vision for the company
Determine their company’s values
Define their Golden Circle
Use these elements to create and present their elevator pitch
Define their digital marketing goals for the next 6 months
Explain how their digital strategy would pan out for the next 6 months to meet their goals
Feedback from students on this activity was pretty positive. They were happy to work on relatable businesses and to go through the essential steps to create a digital marketing strategy by themselves.
As you can see, I chose to focus more on the internal motivations of an entrepreneur than on just defining goals. As an entrepreneur myself, I find that effective goals and strategies come from within, from a place of deep self reflection. This process also tends to avoid focusing on vanity metrics and unsustainable goals that solely come from comparing a business with another. It’s also applicable on a personal level, which I thought could be useful to students finding their path in life.
5. Visibility on search engines
This chapter is dedicated to Google Search and it algorithm. As an introduction, I re-used Slido and asked students to tell me in a few words what they know of Google.
Answers (in French) from students to the question “What do you know of Google?"
Interestingly, their results were a good mix between Google products, and issues around data privacy.
For this chapter, the idea is to take students from a place where “Google is magic” to a place where they understand how the Google Search algorithm functions and where results for a query come from. Through this part, I touched on the following points:
A brief history of Google
The main Google Search updates
The Search Engine Result Page (SERP)
The position zero
The Knowledge Graph
The fold
Search operators
How the Google Search algorithm works
Ranking factors of the crawler, the indexer and the ranker parts of the algorithm
This whole section of the digital marketing class is not about the small updates Google Search does every day or so, it’s about the long term vision of Google. Understanding where the algorithm comes from, what it’s been through and how the search landscape evolved through time helps us better understand where it’s going. That way, we avoid unsustainable FOMO*-induced decisions. *Fear Of Missing Out
Since I’m specialised in SEO, I primarily focused on Google Search, and only scratched the surface of Google Ads.
6. User experience and conversion rate optimisation
In this chapter, I started by explaining some additional concepts complementary to the online customer journey: the ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth) and the difference between inbound and outbound marketing.
Once those concepts were understood, I moved on to conversion rate optimisation, based on “Making Websites Win” by Dr Karl Blank and Ben Jesson. The conversion rate optimisation methodology they use is a sustainable way to improve websites based on data rather than pure intuition, taking advantage of the benefits of A/B testing, amongst other tools. I exposed to students the founding principles of this methodology:
Design for function, not aesthetics
Test, always test
Make frequent, incremental changes rather than full websites redesigns
Class activity : The diagnostic, problem and solution methodology to optimise a website
To help students better understand how to optimise a website, I asked them to form groups of 4/5, and assigned each group the website of a small business.
For this class activity also, I asked students to work on the websites of small businesses, that could really make use of an external outlook on their business.
For the conversion rate optimisation activity, I asked students to follow these steps:
Familiarise themselves with the website, go through the conversion funnel as a potential customer would. For this particular step, students had to find to goal of the website (or the most important goal of the website form a business standpoint) and where the conversion happened for this goal.
Diagnostic: because the class activity could only last 1 hour, the diagnostic was the same for all websites. In this case, all websites were said to be receiving enough trafic, but the conversion rate was not satisfactory.
Problem and solution: students had to identify problems that could prevent conversions, and offer potential solutions to each problem they found.
Describe a couple of A/B tests the business could do.
Although this activity only lasted 1 hour, students came up with amazing ideas. They sent me some of them and I shared them to the entrepreneurs. You’ll find below a few screenshots of my students’ work. Keep in mind this was done under an hour by people who hadn’t heard about conversion rate optimisations before.
Tchungle.com
A/B test ideas from students for Tchungle, a plant shop in Strasbourg
A/B test ideas from students for Tiny Sarah's Cakes, a vegan cake maker in the UK
I found there’s a real sense of pride for students to get to know an entrepreneur through their work, and to come up with ideas and propositions that can actually make a difference to someone, maybe even to their whole family. In my opinion, this brings way more value and understanding than doing yet another essay on a huge brand that no one will read.
7. Measuring and analysing data
The final part of this digital marketing class was focused on demos of Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager. The idea is for students to grasp the utility of each tool and get to know what they are about.
In an introduction class like this one, and given the ambitious program we had to get through, I don’t think there’s much point in teaching them all the ins and outs of these tools. Most of these students will specialise in Master 2 in digital marketing, and they’ll get the chance to handle these tools then. At least, leaving my class, they’ll know what these tools are about and why they are used for websites.
In conclusion
My overall experience teaching this class was very positive. It was my first class taught in person, and the first time I had so many students.
Students haven't yet given their evaluation of the class, they should be able to give their feedback at the end of the semester. But I did get feedback from them live and by email. Here are a few testimonials I gathered.
I want to thank you for the exciting class this morning!
Imane - EM Strasbourg Business School - 2021/2022
I particularly enjoyed your teaching and the references and companies we worked on for the case studies.
Mathilde - EM Strasbourg Business School - 2021/2022
Enquire about teaching digital marketing
Learn more about other classes I teach
If you would like more information on the classes I teach both online and in-person, get a copy of some slides for this class or simply enquire about teaching at your school, you can fill in my contact form and I'll get back to you ASAP :)
A cheatsheet to Google's advanced search operators
Use Google Advanced Search Operators for Technical SEO, a handy Technical SEO Checklist and How Publishers Grow their Audience by Cutting Down Content.
Every week I share no more than 3 hands-on resources that I carefully handpick from the top-experts and best practitioners in SEO and digital marketing. You won’t find FOMO inducing theories and convoluted predictions in these posts. I want to help you build long-lasting SEO and digital marketing strategies with proven methods you can implement today. Previous editions can be found here.
⏰ #NOW - WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO
As I am writing this week's edition, I'm on a train coming back from a BIG client presentation in Luxemburg. The kind of presentation I stood way too late to prepare 😅I'm happy to report it all went fine, and that I have missed nomadic working.I have also been trying to fit in a few hours to renew some industry certificates, and get a few new ones perhaps. I find it interesting to see how the world of certifications has evolved in the past years and their impact for clients and partnerships. I might write a piece on the subject.
👓 #FOCUS - THE ONE THING YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT
Dave Elliott from BuiltVisible put together a very handy cheatsheet about advanced search operators in Google and, more importantly, how to use them to find technical SEO issues and indexation errors. I found the most interesting part of the article was "How to use search operators for technical audits" where Dave explains how to:
Check your site with site:
Check if filler content has been indexed with site: and indexed:
Find duplicate titles with site: and intitle:
Check if non-secure pages have been indexed with site: and inurl:http or -inurl:https
Finding subdomains that you were not aware of
Finding all the non-html content on a site with filetype:
Find specific parameters that have been indexed with inurl:?ie=
Finding internal link opportunities by combining site:, -site: with the URL where you want to link to and intext: with the relevant search term.
Find URLs with a different domain
As you see, there are many easy ways to use Google Search operators to uncover issues in technical SEO and this article is covers a lot of it.Read "How to use Google advanced search operators to find indexation and technical SEO issues"
⚙️ #TOOL – Helping you up your game
Technical SEO audits are the best way to determine if your website's performance could be increased by upgrading its crawlability, adapting its international SEO tags, or making it a bit faster to load.As simple as it may sound, conducting a Technical SEO audit means you have to pay attention to what seems like a million details. Benjamin Estes from Distilled created a handy checklist to make sure you won't miss anything. What I found interesting with this checklist, is that it is made to help you answer questions, not just randomly check items with no context. Each row contains a problem you should check and find a solution for.Read "Comprehensive Technical SEO Audit"
🤓 #READ - THE BEST OF SEO BLOGS
Lucinda Southern from Digiday wrote an interesting piece on how publishers are reducing the number of articles they produce to grow larger audiences. Publishers like Le Monde or The Guardian cut their articles published by over 25% and saw and increase in traffic.
Publishers are moving away from last-touch attribution models that give full credit to the final article that a reader clicked on before signing up for subscription. - Lucinda Southern
Read "Publishers are growing audiences by producing less content"
Do you need help with your digital marketing strategy? Are you planning to work on your website’s SEO? Would you be interested in having me talk at your conference or train your team?Here are the links to read more about me, check out my former experiences, find out more on the services I provide and contact me.
Latest editions of The Pragmatic SEO
Write Title Tags that Drive ClicksA Guide to Writing the Best Title Tags, an FAQ for Multiple Addresses on Google My Business, and a Place to Find all the Recent Talks in the Industry....18 February, 2020
How to Fix your Internal Linking MistakesFix Internal Linking Most Common Mistakes, A Complete Guide to UTM Tagging for Google My Business and a Chrome Extension for SEO....11 February, 2020
Learning Python for SEOAn introduction to Python for SEO, Optimizing your digital PR strategy and a cheat sheet for Excel formulas....04 February, 2020
Write Title Tags that Drive Clicks
A Guide to Writing the Best Title Tags, an FAQ for Multiple Addresses on Google My Business, and a Place to Find all the Recent Talks in the Industry.
Every week I share no more than 3 hands-on resources that I carefully handpick from the top-experts and best practitioners in SEO and digital marketing. You won’t find FOMO inducing theories and convoluted predictions in these posts. I want to help you build long-lasting SEO and digital marketing strategies with proven methods you can implement today. Previous editions can be found here.
⏰ #NOW - WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO
This week, Women in Tech SEO released a list of SEO consultants and freelancers we can share amongst the industry. I'm honoured to be part of this amazing group! 😍
I have been pretty busy lately with a new SEO audit for a client, an on-site consultation for a local business and some on-page optimisations. I feel like I'm sending a quote per day, which is great! 👌
I also participated in last week's #SEMrushchat on Digital Marketing Conference Tips for 2020 and was featured in their roundup article. If you are planning on joining a conference or meet-up in the upcoming months, you will find a lot of tips to make the most out of the event in the article.
Finally, I got a new plant in my office, and that makes me happy 🌱😊
👓 #FOCUS - THE ONE THING YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT
When we write content, we often start with a structure, then go on writing all the paragraphs, creating the graphs, and, of course, making sure everything is SEO friendly. And then there's the title... Should it be catchy? Descriptive? A bit of both?
In his very detailed guide, Dominic Woodman gives his insight on all the little things that constitute a good title:
The length
What it should make people do
How to test it
How to make titles for templates
And some valuable learnings form his own tests
After reading his guide, I recommend noting down a few ideas you hadn't thought of, and adding them to your checklist of things to do before hitting the "publish" button.
Read "How to Write an Incredible Title Tag"
🤓 #READ - THE BEST OF SEO BLOGS
Managing multiple Google My Business profiles can already be a bit tedious, but how are you suppose to manage if you have multiple businesses at the same address? Miriam Ellis wrote a great piece, in the form of an FAQ, where she goes through most of the scenarios you can encounter, from the case where you work from a co-working space, to having different seasonal business at the same place.
Read "Google My Business: FAQ for Multiple Businesses at the Same Address"
⚙️ #TOOL – Helping you up your game
With over 65 conferences totalling 520 talks from 375 different speakers, SEOslides.page is an awesome resource. Chris Johnson created a hub for all the talks happening in the industry, with direct links to the slides, recaps, audio or video recordings of each talk. This project is collaborative, which means you can submit your talk via GitHub repository.
A little extra piece of info for you
It has been confirmed by John Mueller, if you have an image with an alt tag within a h1 heading, the alt text counts as h1 for Google.
We tend to see text in image alt attributes as a part of the page where the image is embedded (as well as context for the image); if that's an image within a "h1", then that would be a part of the "h1".
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 14, 2020
Here are the links to read more about me, check out my former experiences, find out more on the services I provide and contact me.
Latest editions of The Pragmatic SEO
Write Title Tags that Drive ClicksA Guide to Writing the Best Title Tags, an FAQ for Multiple Addresses on Google My Business, and a Place to Find all the Recent Talks in the Industry....18 February, 2020
How to Fix your Internal Linking MistakesFix Internal Linking Most Common Mistakes, A Complete Guide to UTM Tagging for Google My Business and a Chrome Extension for SEO....11 February, 2020
Learning Python for SEOAn introduction to Python for SEO, Optimizing your digital PR strategy and a cheat sheet for Excel formulas....04 February, 2020
How to Fix your Internal Linking Mistakes
Fix Internal Linking Most Common Mistakes, A Complete Guide to UTM Tagging for Google My Business and a Chrome Extension for SEO.
Every week I share no more than 3 hands-on resources that I carefully handpick from the top-experts and best practitioners in SEO and digital marketing. You won’t find FOMO inducing theories and convoluted predictions in these posts. I want to help you build long-lasting SEO and digital marketing strategies with proven methods you can implement today. Previous editions can be found here.
⏰ #NOW - WHAT I HAVE BEEN UP TO
There have been a few updates on my website this week, especially on the About page. I hadn't updates the page since I move back to Strasbourg.This past week, while rewatching the Silicon Valley TV Show - which I love - I learned about the IPFS protocol. It's basically an equivalent to the HTTP protocol, but distributed. I just started learning about it so please excuse my approximative definition. If you have some interest in other ways the internet could function, I highly recommend checking it out, along with Tim Berners-Lee's (yes, the one who invented the internet) project Solid.In more SEO-related news, if you have some affiliate links on your website, John Mueller recommends using a rel=sponsored tag to indicate to Google this is a paid link.
Yep. And definitely use rel=sponsored for affiliate links, if you can. And to be more complete: affiliate links are not bad. It's fine to monetize your site. Google's OK with that. There's no need to hide them, just use the right kind of link if you can.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 4, 2020
👓 #FOCUS - THE ONE THING YOU SHOULD CHECK OUT
The SEMrush team conducted a study about common mistakes in link building and Elena Terenteva reported on how to fix them. The whole article is really well made with great infographics for each case and a link to a resource to help you fix each issue.
Why should you care?
If backlinks are a well-known ranking factor, internal links are often forgotten and just as important. They help distribute ranking authority though the website and have an effect on the crawlability of your website. I always recommend to my clients to pay attention to their internal linking because a few, cheap, quick fixes can make a huge improvement on rankings, demanding usually a lot less effort than link acquisition.Read "The Most Common Internal Link Building Mistakes: A SEMrush Study"
🤓 #READ - THE BEST OF SEO BLOGS
UTM parameters are elements you can add to your URL to track where your users are coming from in Google Analytics. Although Google my Business is a Google product, the traffic sources you find in Google Analytics corresponding to the links you set up on the GMB platform are sometimes listed as direct or organic traffic.To better unify those sources, you need to tag your URLs. In her very detailed article, Claire Carlile explains how you should tag each link you put on Google My Business: primary links, Google Posts, Google Products. You'll then be able to track how your actions are performing both on Google Analytics and in the Google Search Console.Read "Claire’s Guide to UTM Tagging For Google My Business"
⚙️ #TOOL – Helping you up your game
Glen Allsopp, founder of Detailed.com created a Chrome extension for SEOs. It enables you to get insights on a page right in your browser, check out the different tags, see more detailed information from your favourite SEO tool, highlight text and find if there's any duplicate of that piece of content, and check if the canonical tags and URL match.I found it's a very handy tool to get primary information on a page, and correct elements quickly.Check out the Detailed Chrome extension for SEO
✉️ #SUBSCRIBE - RECEIVE THIS POST IN YOUR INBOX
Do you need help with your digital marketing strategy? Are you planning to work on your website’s SEO? Would you be interested in having me talk at your conference or train your team?Here are the links to read more about me, check out my former experiences, find out more on the services I provide and contact me.
Latest editions of The Pragmatic SEO
How to Fix your Internal Linking Mistakes
Fix Internal Linking Most Common Mistakes, A Complete Guide to UTM Tagging for Google My Business and a Chrome Extension for SEO....11 February, 2020
Learning Python for SEO
An introduction to Python for SEO, Optimizing your digital PR strategy and a cheat sheet for Excel formulas....04 February, 2020
Get more clicks on mobile results pages
Make your Search Results on Mobile More Clickable and Improve your CTR, Use your Discontinued Products to your Advantage in your E-Commerce SEO, and Scrape Google Search Features with XPath....28 January, 2020