Jake Labate

CRO practitioners rant regularly about avoiding channel-based thoughts. It’s not just about stakeholder expectations and a longer process that takes time to fully establish. It’s that the impact you see at the surface level on website performance does not tell the full story. Testing will increase conversion rates and revenue, and it’s easy to measure. That’s not all though. Because your website converts users better, it means the ROAS for your ads will be higher. Think about it for a second, it’s a pretty big deal. Users click an ad and do not magically buy. They need to browse a landing page, consider their buying decision and complete a purchase. Same goes for filling a demo request! If if ROAS increases, then it either means that you can acquire more users for the same budget, or that your ad spend becomes more efficient and you can reallocate. Many orgs can eventually pay off their entire testing program costs by this nature. So is website testing a channel? Not really, it’s just part of the customer journey. When we start thinking holistically, then this function of the business will have positive rewards for every channel. Yes, it’s a cost to approach web development and website strategy methodically. Thinking about it with a channel mindset is opting into a limited view of what it can do for the org. Revenue and ROI are great, but when you can make every other online initiative win as well, then even though not easy to measure, surely that must accelerate business growth.

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New episode 🎙🔥 Tune in to episode GTM 116 of The GTM Podcast to get insight directly from Eli Schwartz on: - The product-led SEO framework Eli used to drive SurveyMonkey from 0 to $100M+ in revenue. - Why the old model of churning out SEO content is dead and how AI is disrupting the space. - Eli's journey from getting rejected at top tech companies to becoming a thriving consultant. - The power of deeply understanding your target user and building products for their needs. - Actionable advice for making the transition from operator to successful consultant. + more Available wherever you get your podcasts, including the links in the comments👇

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I had a meeting with a client located in Sacramento. Here's the advice I provided to him: SEOs are relying too much on Tools and AI, which is becoming detrimental to the fact of relying on their expertise. I'm not saying SEO tools or AI is bad; it's the other way around, and it's a blessing for tons of us who know how to leverage them instead of blindly trusting any tool. We must study niche competitiveness and target needs before proceeding with any metadata modification or even thinking about a backlinking strategy. The client was asked to apply an SEO roadmap 'properly' from his Upwork freelancer, and the call ended with a to-do list for the dev team. Besides some of the errors in the image showing the critical 'speed index,' the site didn't have a solid ranking structure. What makes a website have a solid ranking structure? It's when you care more about the value of what you provide and if you provide it correctly, above the amount of articles and links you produce. It's not an exaggeration to mention that the website didn't have any schema structure, responsiveness in content tables, optimization for voice search, and buttons with redirecting chains to other landing pages. To you, my dear SEO reader, not everything is about money. Would you trust a doctor who asks to pay before even hearing your illness symptoms? Be empathetic. There's no better game-changer than truly caring for your clients. We all have needs! With love, From your friendly Senior Consultant, Gustavo F.

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SEO updates you ✨NEED✨ to know [2 Sep]: ✍️ Google may use the og title as a source for your title on the SERPs​. OG data is seen when content is shared on social media. It is customisable on most CMS platforms so may be worth including in your future content audits. via Barry Schwartz 🧑‍⚖️ ​Yelp has sued Google regarding their "monopoly of local search"​. This is another in a long list of lawsuits Google has been hit with regarding its monopolistic status across the various niches in search. via Kim Davis 📈 ​You can now include/exclude dimensions in your report charts in GA4​. This is a welcome addition that allows users to simplify and narrow down charts to important information. And yes, you could previously do this on UA. via Kyle Rushton McGregor 🖼️ ​Google now supports AVIF in Google Search​. AVIF is an increasingly popular image format and is already supported by many platforms including WordPress and Cloudflare. 📉 Not even 22 million links will save you from a core update​. This contrasts the belief by many SEOs that links are the answer in fighting the negative impact of core updates (the Google kind, not the newsletter). via Glenn Gabe 💎 ​Gemini Advanced subscribers can now create AI-powered topic experts called Custom Gems​. Despite Google's insistence on expertise and first-hand experience, you can create GEMs for career advice, coding and more. 🧑‍💻 ​Google has updated its documentation for Organization structured data​. The updates include how schema can influence knowledge panels and how to disambiguate your organisation from others by using the right properties. via Roger Montti 📱 ​Some Android users are receiving notifications to 'Choose your search engine'​. While this is very unlikely to be caused by the recent Google antitrust trial loss, it could be an omen of the future if Google loses its appeal. via Natalia Witczyk 🍪 ​Google has launched Tag Diagnostics and a new consent management platform​. Tag Diagnostics can help resolve issues in GA4, GTM and Google Ads while the CMP relates to cookie management and data privacy. via Anu Adegbola 🎞️ ​Google has clarified that a YouTube video and the same content published as text aren't considered duplicates​. Martin Splitt noted that some users prefer one format over the other so having both is beneficial, not detrimental. 💌 If you like these updates and don't want to miss them, I send them out weekly along with SEO tips and a deep dive podcast for free on our newsletter at CoreUpdates[dot]com Links to everything in my comment below [LinkedIn users click "Recent" and scroll to bottom]

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SEO updates you ✨NEED ✨ to know [15 Apr]: 📰Google has begun blocking links to California news outlets​ from search results in a protest to a proposed law that would require large online platforms to pay a ‘journalism usage fee’. 📊A 1,000 keyword analysis​ of health symptom searches in Google, many covering serious concerns, has shown Quora is the second most prominent site, where it's easy to find spammed, copied or AI-generated medical advice. ☠️Potentially harmful results have been flagged​ in Google's results since the March update, specifically with Google recommending a "for kids" filter on the search for "best cbd gummies". ​Google has responded to examples​. 💈Google appears to be showing brand names​ in title tags again, reversing a previous decision that saw Google truncate titles, usually by removing the company/brand name. Could be worth monitoring for CTR changes. 😭Particularly egregious examples of pure spam​ in both the SGE/featured snippets have been highlighted by Lily Ray, despite Google having recently completed their March Spam Update. 👋Bing is testing removing the estimated number of search results​ count in the Bing Search results interface. This comes after Bing began testing removing the cache link from the search result snippets. 🕒We are now 41 days into the March Core Update rollout​ and it's still going! We had a lot of volatility over the weekend and so far there have been no reports of recoveries from sites impacted by the HCU. ♊Gemini 1.5 Pro is now available in 180+ countries​, with native audio (speech) understanding capability and a new File API to make it easy to handle files as well as system instructions and JSON mode to give more output control. 📝In a completely unsurprising announcement​ that was predicted by absolutely everybody, Google is killing off their "Search Notes" feature, which allowed users to vandalise, er, make notes on search results. ✉️ If you like these updates, I send them out weekly, via email, along with some SEO tips, all for free, to my newsletter at CoreUpdates[dot]com Links to everything in my first comment! ⬇️⬇️

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When you are designing websites on HubSpot there is a simple principle to keep in mind with allocating your resources. The more custom you want something, the more resources you will expend. Now it is really important to define "custom" in this. Custom does not always mean "more like your design" or "more like what you want". Custom in this context means "more of what is less common". Everything is designed according to patterns. And some patterns repeat more than others. The more a design pattern is repeated, the more likely it is to be easy to find the resources supporting that pattern. Less "what ifs" exist as well. We are making things that are meant to be helpful to end users. So if I'm being super inventive with what I want, it starts to become less likely to be useful to the mass market. Hey there are long odds that this could be the next great thing. Is this the case or is it not in the market because it was tried and not the most efficient path for the desired outcome? This puts the burden on the developer to align outcomes to input. But really this burden should then be put back on the requester. It is not up to the developer to make sure that an inventive request make sense to the end user. It is however important to clarify "do you expect what I do to solve the problem for your users?" This is the crossroad we often see appear before us. It is the chance for everyone to decide... A. Do I want to be part of the problem? B. Do I want to be part of the solution? To see where this might go next, as the developer try asking the following question to the person requesting your help... "Might I present my experience to the matter and be a guide in the outcome?" Often the answer might be "I just want it this way and I want it to work for the end user". If you can't see how that happens and they can't articulate it in a way that makes sense, you must make a decision at that point. "Uh oh, looks like this might be a problem waiting to happen..." Do I want to be part of the problem? It's surprising how often we can get to this point in the web design world and often what can start out with great excitement to help can be best solved by not helping if we can't see the path forward to an outcome. It's really hard to ask clarifying questions! It's not something that comes easy and it feels risky. But at the end of the day the best outcomes are tied to the best questions. It's always best to get this messy stuff cleared up before the work begins!

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Learn how to easily determine the most optimal keyword for ranking based on DR using a Keywords Explorer tool. Action: Apply the same method to identify other optimal keywords.

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Google has recently declared that, as of August 31, 2021, it will discontinue its support for expanded text ads in favor of responsive search ads. Moreover, advertisers have been alerted that ad customizers for text ads, expanded text ads, and dynamic search ads will no longer be available after May 31, 2024. #googleads #google #searchads

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The SEO secret nobody talks about... Platform-specific descriptions drive 3x more views. Our proven formula: 1. Primary keyword in first line 2. Add related keywords naturally 3. Platform-native hashtags(Use the right hashtags) 4. Engagement triggers(Ask questions that get replies) 5. Strategic CTAs(Tell people what to do next) Result? 5x more organic reach. 💡 Pro tip: Each platform needs different optimization Want our SEO cheat sheet? Drop "SEO" below. #SEOTips #ContentStrategy #Growth

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Is your SEO tool showing AI Overviews yet? Almost certainly...NOT. FACT 1: All SEO tools and platforms (if they are doing things the right way) scrape the SERPs in incognito mode to remove any personalization. When doing assessments of ranking and what appears on search pages you want to most neutral take you can get. FACT 2: As of the time of this posting (11:50am EDT 20 May 2024), AI Overview results are showing up extremely sporadically in incognito search, and not anywhere near the amount we can see by a manual check in a non-incognito account. The few instances of it in incognito are likely errors as AIO does not look like it's been rolled out to incognito search yet. So what are tools that claim to be showing these actually picking up? In the past week since Google I/O we've been seeing a small set of instances of where Google is including an AI-generated summary in a Knowledge Panel (see example below*). These appear with a disclaimer "AI overviews are experimental" (notice the small "o"). These are appearing in US incognito results, so it is likely these are what tools claiming they are already tracking AI Overviews are actually tracking. At seoClarity we work hard to provide our clients with only accurate, reliable data and insights. To paraphrase a famous wine commercial, "we will serve no results before their time." We are fully prepared to report on AI Overviews for our clients when they are actually available in the SERPs that SEO tools actually use for such tracking. *Screen shot is from seoClarity's SERP preview feature, which captures daily snapshots of first page results for the billions of keywords we track for our clients.

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SEO tip of the Day: What is your SSI Score? Social Selling Index Score is a "page-ranking" metric that determines if you will pass on to the next tier of follower levels for linkedin and other platforms. Some platforms, like linkedin for example, won't let you pass 30K followers if you don't have a good SSI score. Brought to you by the top AI for SEO expert authority in Spokane Washington 2024. Be sure to follow me for more insights and check out the data-driven findings here: https://lnkd.in/gQEhQm7Z

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New SEO Case Study: Fiveable! 📚 Discover how this AP prep platform unlocked over 1.3 MILLION monthly visits — in just 6 months! 📈 Hint: Fresh content was the 1st step. 🍏 Explore the doc below to see just how they did it. 👀 And don't forget to head over to the *comments* for all the details in the full article. 👇 #SEOCaseStudy #AIOSEOTrends *Link in Comments*

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My SEO toolkit: 1) ChatGPT API + Google Sheets + Matrixify for bulk updates. 2) ScreamingFrog for broken link checks and seamless domain migrations. Streamlined and super effective.

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IMHO technical SEO is a bad place to 'specialize' in. 1. Most websites don't have a big enough content footprint for technical SEO to be "the play" 2. Technical SEOs are the easiest to hire, they are everywhere. 3. TBH, you don't even need to hire a technical SEO to "make the website faster", you can hire an even larger pool of devs Dont get me wrong, there are places technical SEOs can make a huge impact. But these are brands like Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Medium, Wise, Zapier, etc. and there just isn't as many of these types of brands as there are "technical SEOs'

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Google Continuous Scroll is Ending Desktop changes starting now, mobile changes over the next few weeks. Monitor #SearchConsole for changes in your data. Implications particular for search appearance if you were in page 2 or beyond, you may have been racking up search appearance and may see that diminish. #seo #google https://lnkd.in/gqqZym8d

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Following on the heels of my Eight Oh Two blog posts about optimizing product description pages, recently I took a step back and expanded the discussion to include optimizing product category pages. If it's not something you're already doing for your eComm business, you're missing valuable opportunities to develop your brand and drive traffic to your web pages. I'll show you how.

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