by In today’s issue ⤵
- 🎄 Learn how you can start planning now for Black Friday
- 🤖 Google looking to improve transparency for AI-generated content in search
- 🌐 Campaign-level negative keywords coming soon to PMAX
- 🤳 Google recognizing content creators in search results
- 🥵 SERP Volatility in September
- 💡 Tip: How SERP
Your competitors are already preparing for the 2024 holiday season – so should you!
A recent WooCommerce survey reveals that 72% of merchants attribute more than 20% of their annual income to Black Friday Cyber Monday and the holiday season. Start setting up your site for heavy holiday traffic, attracting new shoppers, and enhancing their post-shopping experience.
By identifying your highest-priority pages and keywords ahead of time, you can ensure you’ve tick off all on-page and technical SEO best practices, and then consider what improvements can be made to your content or if additional third-party backlinks could be pursued to get the best rankings possible prior to and throughout the holiday season.
🔗 WooCommerce – Black Friday statistics and trends for 2024
What you need to know so far:
✅ Now is the best time to get your website and mobile UX the best it can be.
✅ Ensure the checkout process for customers is seamless with multiple payment methods.
✅ Identify your highest priority categories and products to determine if rankings can be improved.
✅ Consider creating holiday guides for your products or industry to maximize seasonal traffic.
Google Working to Increase Transparency on How Content was Created and Modified in Search
Google is investing heavily in AI-generated content detection tools, like SynthID, to provide searchers with transparency around whether or not an article or image was generated using AI. This change in transparency may lead to some content that was either fully-produced or modified using AI tools having those details publicly available to search users.
🔗 Google – How we’re increasing transparency for gen AI content with the C2PA
What you need to know so far:
✅ Google does not claim that AI-generated content is negative or should be avoided.
✅ The change is stated to rollout “over the coming months” for Search Images and Search Ads.
✅It’s still unclear if AI-generated content will have any correlation on keyword rank positions.
Negative Keywords Coming to PMAX Campaigns – Google Ads
Google Ads has introduced a much-requested feature—campaign-level negative keywords for PMAX campaigns. This gives advertisers more control by allowing them to exclude specific keywords or phrases, preventing ads from showing for searches where they aren’t needed.
This update offers a balance between maintaining visibility and optimizing your ad budget. While it’s still a valid argument to be present when competitors are advertising against your brand name, negative keywords now allow you to refine when and where your ads appear.
🔗 Google Ads – New features and controls for your AI-powered campaigns
What you need to know so far:
✅ New AI Tools and advertiser controls are coming soon to Google Ads and PMAX Campaigns.
✅ PMAX Campaigns currently do not allow for campaign-level negative keywords.
✅ Negative keywords are terms you can soon add to a PMAX Campaign to exclude them from displaying in search results.
✅ Campaign-level negative keyword controls are coming to PMAX Campaigns towards the end of this year.
Google Recognizes Content Creators in Search Results
Google now highlights content creators directly in search results, making their contributions and expertise more visible. For experienced content creators, this is a huge win for credibility in their niche. If a piece of content is authored by a creator recognized by Google, it’s highly likely their content will outrank all other sites who publish content anonymously.
🔗 Search Engine Land: Google recognizes content creators: A breakthrough for E-E-A-T and SEO
What you need to know so far:
✅ Google now recognizes individual content creators as trusted entities in SERPs.
✅ This strengthens the role of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) in SEO, giving creators more visibility.
✅ Recognized content creators are featured with a knowledge graph and links to their content.
SERP Volatility in September
Source: SEMRush – Semrush Sensor
With the Google August Core Algorithm Update rollout complete on September 3rd, the rest of the month saw highly-volatile ranking fluctuations. This is common to see during the rollout period a core update, not so much when we’re almost a month following its completion.
🔗 Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search Ranking Volatility & Shuffles This Weekend
What you need to know so far:
✅ High-degree in keyword ranking fluctuation throughout September 2024.
✅ If you’ve been negatively impacted, your first step is to identify identifying what keywords and pages were impacted the most, and look for any patterns/correlation.
✅ Go back through changes made to your site preceding the drop to explore correlation.
What to do if your rankings took a hit in September
There are a number of things you can do if your top-traffic driving keywords have dropped in rankings.
Step 1 – Identify what keywords and ranking pages were affected.
- Were there any significant changes to your site or the ranking pages in the weeks preceding the ranking drop?
- Were there any significant price changes on ranking products pages?
- Did your ranking pages have inventory or availability information?
- Did you make any adjustments to your theme, HTML, JavaScript or CSS?
If your answer is yes to one or more of the above, investigate further to see if all or part of the change could be retracted, as that can offer a fast way to recover valuable keyword rankings!
If your answer is no to all of the above, proceed to the next step.
Step 2 – Consider updating the page with fresh or missing information
- Is there up to date information regarding availability and pricing on the ranking page?
- Looking at the top 10 results in SERPs, do they have information that you’re missing?
- Try to diversify the content available on the page with videos, articles, FAQs, etc.
If none of the steps above fix the rankings, it may be necessary to work with an SEO expert to do a deeper investigation.
💡 Tip of the Month: Why User Engagement Signals Matter and How to Boost Them for Better Google Rankings
User signals like bounce rate, time on site, and pages per visit play a huge role in your store’s traffic. Google pays attention to how people engage with your pages. If visitors leave quickly (high bounce rate), it likely means your content isn’t hitting the mark.
For instance, if 55%+ of visitors leave without interacting, it’s a sign they didn’t find what they were looking for. This is especially true for higher-priced products—users might leave to find lower-cost options elsewhere like Amazon or Walmart.
Here are some easy ways to improve your user engagement signals:
✅ Incorporate some of your lower cost products at the top of your category pages so searchers don’t get scared off by higher prices.
✅ Make sure your pages look just as good (if not better) on mobile as they do on desktop.
✅ Work with customer service reps to better understand the frustrations or questions previous customers have had, and work to resolve any friction with ordering.
✅ Build social proof with custom reviews and testimonials.
✅ Use Live Chat to answer a visitors question before losing them.
✅ Consider A/B split testing to see what type of page layout, images, CTAs, etc have the best bounce rates and conversion rates.
Get the latest Google Algorithm updates and eCommerce SEO tips directly to your inbox.
Sign up below for free – opt out anytime!
