See all Neil Patel transcripts on Youtube

Speaker 1

00:00

You

Speaker 2

01:41

My name is Neil Patel and I help companies generate more revenue through digital marketing. Entrepreneur magazine said I was the number 1 marketer in the world, and they also said I created 1 of the 100 most brilliant companies. I started my first website at the age of 16.

Speaker 2

01:56

I took all the money that I earned from working at an amusement park, and I paid a marketing firm. The marketing firm provided no results, and I quickly learned that I wasn't alone. Out of my frustration and from being broke, I had no choice but to learn marketing. My first client was a power supply manufacturer.

Speaker 2

02:14

I helped him generate another $25 million in sales, and from that point, I realized the power of marketing. I helped everyone that I could, and I built my reputation by being honest and over-delivering. I've helped companies like Google, NBC, Viacom, General Motors, eBay, but nothing's more satisfying than helping small business owners succeed. I founded 4 multi-million dollar companies and I've learned all the mistakes that you should avoid.

Speaker 2

02:44

I've written about them on Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Fast Company, and even on my own blogs. It's so awesome to know that colleges from all around the world are teaching my material in their classroom. Over the years, I've received awards from the President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the United Nations. People believe marketing is expensive and difficult.

Speaker 2

03:09

Fortunately, that's not true. There is a formula. Even if you don't have a technical bone in your body, you can get results. And my mission is to share this formula with you.

Speaker 1

03:19

♪♪

Speaker 3

03:37

Hello, everyone. Thank you guys for joining today. Today we wanted to discuss the biggest SEO opportunity of 2024.

Speaker 3

03:45

My name is Neil Patel. We're going to dive right in. We have a lot of slides and I know we only have an hour's worth of time. I'm the co-founder of an ad agency called NP Digital.

Speaker 3

03:54

And today we also have William with us and Brittany, both from the company as well. William, you want to give a quick introduction on yourself?

Speaker 1

04:03

Yeah, hi, I'm William Kammer. I'm the VP of SEO for NP Digital's SMB branch, so I oversee SEO teams, developers, link builders, and content.

Speaker 3

04:16

Cool, And Brittany, you want to give a quick overview?

Speaker 4

04:19

Yeah. Hey everyone. My name is Brittany Werdewaerts and I'm an SEO manager here at NP Digital US. I've been working in the SEO digital marketing world for about 9 years now and have worked with a variety of well-known brands and a lot of different industries.

Speaker 4

04:32

Really excited to get started and talk SEO opportunities for 2024.

Speaker 3

04:36

All right, so we're going to dive in. I'm going to try to do good on keeping us track on time and William and Brittany just keep track of the time, of course, as you guys are talking as well. So NP Digital, we're a global ad agency.

Speaker 3

04:49

We have quite a bit of clients, getting close to 800 plus employees. We're in 19 plus countries. We've won a lot of awards. So keep in mind, we see a lot of data.

Speaker 3

04:58

The stuff that we're implementing is working. If you ever want to work with us, go to npdigital.com or you can just scan that QR code with your phone and it'll lead you there anyways. But the reason I bring this up isn't to brag or to boast. I think we can always learn more, always do better.

Speaker 3

05:13

It's more so to let you know that today when we talk about SGE or GEO, some of these new terms that you may be familiar with or maybe not, keep in mind, it's coming from a place where we're testing a lot of stuff, we're seeing results for our customers. So when we say, hey, this is where things are going, it's based on data, it's not just based on our gut. The biggest opportunity in 2024, is it AI or is it not? And that's a big debate, right?

Speaker 3

05:41

And when you look at the SEO crisis, there's a lot of things going on like, oh, Google's changing so many things, is what's going to happen to the top results? Are we going to get clicks? And we've gone through this before. Used to be where you would Google what's the weather in Los Angeles, California, and you would just click to weather.com.

Speaker 3

05:57

Now Google just shows you the weather. And yes, this affects people's SEO traffic in some industries and in others, not as much. But to answer the question, is SEO dead? We looked at 3,500 or 35,599 sites over the last 4 years.

Speaker 3

06:12

And we looked at Search Console data, which gives you idea of SEO traffic. The baseline of 2020 was 100% because whatever these sites had in their traffic, that was 100%. And over the next 3 years, they saw growth. In other words, you know, when Danny Sullivan from Google said, Google has consistently driven more traffic each and every single year to websites since its existence.

Speaker 3

06:38

Based on what we're seeing here, there's a good chance that it's actually true, right? So is SEO dead? No, you can still get a ton of traffic and it generates a ton of revenue. And you're probably wondering, where is Google going?

Speaker 3

06:52

That's what co-vedis stands for. Funny enough, I didn't know, but when my team made this slide, I actually had to Google what co-vedis means. And in Latin, it means, where is it going Or where is Google going? And they've made a lot of changes over the years.

Speaker 3

07:07

I won't bore you with their algorithm changes. But even with AI and SGE, they don't necessarily know where they're going either. It is a big experiment, and you're going to see a lot of this implemented, not in the next month or 2 or 6 months. This is a multi-year rollout.

Speaker 3

07:26

Google's going to continually make these changes, and you're going to really know where it's going in 4 or 5 years, but you're not going to really know where it's going in the next 12 months. They're going to test a lot of this stuff with a small fraction of their traffic to make sure it doesn't impact their ad revenue. And the future of search is AI. Google themselves, as I mentioned, is working out the details.

Speaker 3

07:47

The general rollout is delayed, and they'll start gathering more and more data to figure out what tweaks and changes they have to make. Google, if you look at their history, typically they test a lot of drastic changes with a fraction of a percent of their traffic, And if things look good, then they start rolling it out to more people, eventually a country, then eventually the whole world. Now you're going to see people leveraging AI in all aspects, in addition to search, whether it's to create content, whether it's to get answers when they're searching, people start looking at Chad GPT, Chad GPT won't necessarily crush Google, There'll be a place for both. Just like Facebook didn't crush Snapchat, or Snapchat didn't crush Facebook, or Instagram didn't crush TikTok.

Speaker 3

08:29

They all coexist together. There's different use cases for all of them as well. A lot of people are thinking though, with AI, do keywords really matter? They still do.

Speaker 3

08:41

They help search engines understand what people are looking for and what kind of content to show. It also allows you to target your right customer more accurately, and also guides you to figure out what kind of content you should create. But the keyword strategy that you're used to in the past may not necessarily be relevant today, it really isn't. Some elements still work.

Speaker 3

09:05

It needs to be overhauled quite a bit. And we'll discuss that in a bit as well. The big AI dilemma though is, with all these rapid tools, and a lot of them are focused on creating content, we're just going to get overloaded. So even though AI makes content easier to create, do you use it?

Speaker 3

09:23

Do you not? Do you slow down on content creation? Right? So I wanted to share some data with you.

Speaker 3

09:29

We surveyed over, technically, we actually surveyed exactly 1,051 people and asked them, are you creating your content based on, you know, humans or through AI or a combination of both? Majority said either AI 640 out of the 1,051 or a combination of both, which is 282. If you add both of them up, by far, the majority is using AI to create their content. When we ask the people who are creating content through AI with the combination of humans, as you can see, the majority are having AI create at least 50% of their content, if not more, right?

Speaker 3

10:10

And marketers are flocking to AI like, it's the best thing since sliced bread. But if you just use AI on its own, we're not necessarily seeing the AI content rank as well. And I believe the exact stat was 94.12% of the time when we ran the experiment, it was somewhere around there. Don't quote me on the exact number, I could be off on that.

Speaker 3

10:33

But it's somewhere in the 90 percentile, I believe it was 94.12% of the time, AI content, or human-based content, written content was outranking AI-based content. And here's some quick screenshots, as you can see, it's flooding the web. But meanwhile, when we ask people, hey, do you like content that's written by AI more from chat GPT or BART or humans? And funny enough, we actually asked people, we surveyed them specifically.

Speaker 3

11:01

And the question was, is this content, which piece of content do you like better and was it written by human or AI? And we did this with both BARD articles and which is now Gemini or, and ChatGPT. And what we found was more people felt that chat GPT articles were written by AI and more people felt that BARD articles or Gemini articles were written by humans. And It's a nice even split roughly, but people in many cases can't tell if it's AI written or human written.

Speaker 3

11:38

And that's the big thing that you should take away from this slide. People may say 1 thing, but when you ask them and you show it to them, they are not always able to tell and that's gonna actually get even worse in the future because AI is getting better. So is AI content the new holy grail? Well, let's dig deeper.

Speaker 1

11:57

Yeah, so you know AI is such a new concept to the mainstream, right? It's been integrated into search engines for a while now, but now that it's a conversational module that anyone can interact with, people are using it in any way they can possibly think of. And because of that, it becomes a double-edged sword, like Neil was talking about before.

Speaker 1

12:20

You know, a lot of people just say, oh, hey, wow, I can just generate as much content as I want, and I don't have to write it. I don't have to pay for content writers. I don't have to pay for editors. I don't have to do any of that.

Speaker 1

12:30

That's not the case, and you could actually, it could be a detriment to your website and your performance if you don't do it carefully. Having a human element or a human-written article is still usually the more successful piece of content, and there are a few reasons for that that we'll dig into now. So we have 7 different strategies, some bullet points here that we're going to go over of what is a good use of AI, and what you might want to stay away from, and why humans are still important to generating content on the web. And so we'll get started.

Speaker 1

13:11

So the first 1 is 1 that Google has been focusing on for years and years now, and it was EAT, now it's EEAT, expertise, authority, trust, and experience. If you think of those words, experience, expertise, trust, authority, how is AI going to be able to score on those markers over humans, right? So Google has come out and said that There's nothing like AI detection in the algorithm that's going to hurt or help AI content. But if you're talking about quality content that Google's gonna reward, how are you going to build these modules into AI generated content instead of using like an actual authoritative writer that has clout online.

Speaker 1

14:08

And so when we're taking a look at what we wanna focus on and what differentiates an AI generated article from a human generated article, Here's some of those things. So with expertise, are you citing reputable sources? Do you have author credentials? AI can't really have author credentials unless you get a little gray hat there, have in-depth analysis.

Speaker 1

14:37

So 1 of the things that Google has mentioned that they're focusing on is 1, helpful content updates, which you saw earlier in the slides, iteration on like reviews, and also what Google is calling hidden gems. And so a lot of what AI does is regurgitate what's already there online and what is already very present and obvious online. And so if you want to separate yourself, you can make sure that you establish yourself as a reputable author, but also make sure that you're talking about things that AI can't talk about because AI is a lot of the time just regurgitating what's already there. So first-hand accounts and anecdotes, subject matter expertise, quotes and interviews, you know, any personal experiences or things that might not be super apparent online, Those hidden gems are 1 of the ways in to beat out AI-generated content.

Speaker 3

15:37

Yeah, and also clarify 1 thing, nor is Will or anyone here trying to tell you if you use AI to fake author credentials, right? We wholeheartedly believe that if it's AI written, you should be transparent and let people know.

Speaker 1

15:51

Absolutely. And you can see the ones that have success with AI generated articles, some of the bigger players out there, they do mention in the byline that this was assisted by AI or something along those lines. But also, so another thing that it's it's been an issue since the beginning of SEO is people wanting, you know, what are called halo keywords or trophy phrases, those really high search volume, really short tail 1 word, 2 word, 3 word keywords. But especially now with the SGE modules coming out, Users are faster to search more granularly, just like we're faster to create the content in ideation.

Speaker 1

16:39

So now a user doesn't have to search 1 thing and then do a bunch of reading of a bunch of blogs. They can get down that sales funnel a bit faster and because of that it's even more Important now and it always has been to focus on long tail keywords that have very specific Intent and very often that intent is revenue driving more so than that those shorter tail keywords So when you're talking about say in this example, print photos from phone, you don't know, you know, it's more of a research intent but when you get more granular now they're they're looking to convert more often. And so it's really good to make sure that you're optimizing for longer tail keywords and understanding the intent of the users when they're searching those long-term tail keywords. And if you can cater your content to those exact needs, you're building that trust with the user because you're talking about exactly what they're looking to solve.

Speaker 1

17:39

And that's contributing to that EADS score that we're talking about. So and like we said, you know, we've done the studies, we've run the data. There's a lot of qualified leads in the like 3 to 6 word category, but a lot of revenue driving keywords are like 7 or more because as AI becomes conversational, users are also becoming more conversational when they search on Google. And so they're asking a long form question because now they're confident that Google can understand the context of that question.

Speaker 1

18:14

And When you do that, you have to have more granular, very detailed content that addresses those specific questions. I also want to say that while we say 3 to 6 words, 7 words, in general, this is what the data shows, but it's also very different on a case-by-case basis. If you're looking for those keywords and wanting to do keyword research with longer tail keywords, a good resource is Answer the Public, which is going to be able to plug in keywords that are shorter tail. And it's going to expand that and show you what users are searching for when they're getting more granular with that topic that you've entered into Answer the Public.

Speaker 1

18:56

So when we're talking about the focus areas that AI can't touch, How can you differentiate from even quality AI as AI continues to get better and better? There are some key areas you can focus on here. Make sure you understand how AI is limited. Like I said, it is regurgitating the content and information that is already out there.

Speaker 1

19:20

Also, in ChatGPT's case, it is outdated information. It is not running and crawling and absorbing all of the data of new content in real time. And So you might have a fresher perspective than what AI can generate. Also AI doesn't have personal experiences or emotions.

Speaker 1

19:37

It's very dry. It's very matter of fact. It's very black and white. And it can have inaccuracies based on context and contextual prompts that you might be giving it.

Speaker 1

19:48

So there are some key issues that still haven't been solved yet in the AI space. And those are things that you can exploit when you want to build a personal story, that's easily digestible, is very important. On verified sources and point out to people how long does a user need to engage with their issue that they're trying to resolve, you've helped them with that. And also, focus on media types that aren't as accessible with AI.

Speaker 1

20:43

So AI, everybody could jump on, download an app right now, and generate content using AI, textual content. Video becomes a little bit more difficult. Even imagery is still not perfect, and you get a lot of seven-fingered hands and things when you try to generate images. So focus on a multimedia approach that allows you to optimize and claim search volumes that are more difficult for AI to claim.

Speaker 1

21:12

For example, YouTube is a very powerful search engine in and of itself. So where else can you enter spaces that aren't necessarily getting drowned out by a massive amount of AI-generated content right now? So yeah, also make sure that you're in that same vein of videos and multimedia. Think about other things that AI can't do, user generated content.

Speaker 1

21:49

Google is loving user generated content right now. You might have noticed with some core algorithm updates over the last year that Reddit has blown up. And it's This human interaction, this unique content that is being generated by users from personal experience and anecdotes that Google is really rewarding right now. Also do things that AI can't do.

Speaker 1

22:12

If you create a bunch of tools that AI hasn't, you're creating resources that can easily enter the market. So what does your user base need that AI can't achieve? Is there a tool? Is there something, a product you can develop that is going to get a significant amount of engagement that AI can't even compete with?

Speaker 1

22:40

So when you focus on AI-powered search, We're talking about SGE right here, so search generated experiences. If you're in the beta in the US, and I believe Canada right now, you can start seeing some of those generated answers that Google is providing, and they're continuing to roll it out to more and more of the demographic. But as they are creating this SGE module that is knocking everything else down in the SERPs, the search engine result pages, we have to figure out how we can capitalize on that like we have had to before. For example, with featured snippets and position 0, everyone was worried that it was going to steal all the clicks and that it's stealing the content.

Speaker 1

23:24

But what we found was that you actually get more clicks to your website if you have that featured snippet. And the same is likely going to be the case with optimizing for SGE, and making sure that you're actually optimizing for the AI, so it will cite you inside of that SGE module as it rolls out to the public. So we can go to the next slide here. So there are a lot of misconceptions around SGE as well.

Speaker 1

23:55

And so we're talking about SGE is never going to try to answer every single question. It's never going to be completely accurate because information fluctuates and it's going to struggle in some of these other ways as well where you can't do a lot of trend predictions or things like that that a human analyst can still do. So SEO is not dead, but just like we had to figure out how to optimize and get featured snippets or rich snippets or review stars, any of those other results in the SERPs, we have to figure out how to get into the SGE module as well. And so right now, it's not like if you rank number 1, you're going to be cited in SGE.

Speaker 1

24:48

It's a separate algorithm that's trying to pull in an exact answer for the exact intent of the query that the user is searching. And because of that, it's not always going to pick position 1 or 2. It does often because Google wants to serve the best answer, and that might be in line. But we also see it pulling from page 2 or beyond even.

Speaker 1

25:09

Or like position 9 is also a very popular position. So this allows smaller players in the market to beat out very large competitors in the market. So if you are, if there is a conglomerate, a massive corporation that is dominating the space, but isn't getting really granular with the needs and intent of the user queries, this is an opportunity for you to capitalize on that and get on top of people that you might have given up trying to outrank organically. So here are some of the ways that you can optimize for what the industry is calling GEO, Generative Engine Optimization basically, or Generative Experience Optimization.

Speaker 1

25:55

And so, this is a lot of kind of, there's a theme forming here of what I'm talking about where it's unique content that AI can't necessarily pull, and that can be things like those anecdotes, that user-generated content, those experiences or authority that is very difficult for AI to show. And There have been some studies from some universities that have taken a look at these specific areas to see how they increase the performance of being cited in AI. There are some results we can look at from that. So what the study showed was that these 3 strategies were very, very big deals.

Speaker 1

26:43

Citing your sources, making sure that you're not just making stuff up, quotations from authoritative sources, statistics or data that really proves the trust of the content. Also, an interesting finding was that you don't want to act persuasive or authoritative necessarily. That was actually a detriment. And if you've ever played around with chat GPT or those similar tools, it comes off very arrogant and very matter of fact and very authoritative, right?

Speaker 1

27:17

But what they found during the study was that it's actually better to be more inviting and make easily digestible content that people want to read and that doesn't kind of speak down to them. It was actually a benefit in this case. Also it is important to know that different industries are impacted differently. Healthcare you see at the top here, but healthcare is a very touchy subject in SGE and AI because you can get into trouble with information that isn't completely accurate.

Speaker 1

27:58

If you're dealing with that kind of information in the healthcare space, that can be a liability. So I've seen there be very big fluctuations of how much Google is addressing SGE in the healthcare space, and you can see that based on the industry, There's a different weight being held to this kind of module that SEOs are starting to get worried about. Getting your brand mentioned by AI, those are the kinds of things that we were just talking about. Optimizing for GEO.

Speaker 1

28:34

In order to do that, the theme is kind of be human, be more human than the robot, have those personal experiences, have conversations, have hidden gems that AI isn't regurgitating. It's just, it's very important to differentiate yourself from what we kind of as an industry have been doing over the last decade, which is regurgitating the information already out there. Now AI is getting really good at that and we can't rely on that anymore. So based on our research, these are some of the factors that influence what an AI module might, when the AI module might promote or recommend a product or a service or a brand.

Speaker 1

29:31

And so, you know, brand mentions this. A lot of what you're seeing here is that EEAT. It's relevancy, reviews, authority, recommendations, all of those things that establish trust and experience and expertise. And so, what can you do to capitalize on all of this?

Speaker 1

29:53

There's, you know, increase your online mentions, high quality reviews. And really all this comes down to is brand authority and domain authority, which Brittany is going to dive into a little deeper now.

Speaker 4

30:07

Yeah, thank you, William. Perfect segue. So yeah, now we'll dive into our next strategy for increasing visibility, which is focusing on building your brand authority and awareness.

Speaker 4

30:15

Building your brand in 2024 is crucial because it's 1 of the main factors that's going to set you apart from your competitors, especially in saturated markets. If you think about search behavior and who users will choose in search results, generally users are going to gravitate toward a brand that they know and trust, so having a strong brand presence is going to be what gives you the competitive edge. And in general, the bigger your brand is, the more search traffic you're going to get from that brand name, as seen on the right. So there's many benefits to growing your brand, and it's going to work hand-in-hand with your SEO strategy.

Speaker 4

30:47

1 way to build brand authority that is common in SEO strategies is to have a strong backlink profile. This is a very popular topic these days and many people are questioning, do backlinks still matter in 2024? And the answer is a little complex. Google has recently said that backlinks are not a top 3 ranking factor, so they don't matter to SEO as much as they used to.

Speaker 4

31:07

But that doesn't mean that they're still not important. They're still a very important ranking factor and send important authority signals to Google. Neil and the team actually analyzed 25,000 search terms to see how important backlinks still are and found some interesting insights. The number 1 result on Google has 3 times more backlinks on average than positions 2 through 10.

Speaker 4

31:26

99% of the time, the results on page 1 had more backlinks than those on page 2. And 100% of the time, the results on page 1 had more backlinks than the results on page 3. So from these insights, it does seem that backlinks and a strong domain authority do correlate with higher rankings, and they definitely do still matter. Another way you can improve brand awareness is through digital PR.

Speaker 4

31:49

The whole purpose of digital PR is to amplify a brand's online presence across different channels, so having a comprehensive DPR strategy in place is necessary to improve visibility, especially as we mentioned with the rollout of Google's new search generative experience, because SGE will likely place even more importance on authority since AI-generated results are going to pull from reliable sources. And there's many ways you can execute a successful DPR strategy. 1 of the most impactful DPR tactics is finding unlinked brand mention opportunities. It's a great tactic to utilize because your brand is already being mentioned in articles.

Speaker 4

32:23

You just need to reach out in order to secure the link with that brand mention and gain that link equity. Another approach is partnering with relevant publishers to build your backlink profiles. Working with reputable publishers in your niche will allow you to find quality backlinks that target your specific audience. Partnering with publishers also creates a mutually beneficial relationship since you're providing valuable content for them.

Speaker 4

32:46

And in turn, this helps your brand gain more visibility by being featured in this content. And a third great option is looking into link reclamation opportunities. Link reclamation involves finding broken or lost backlinks that link back to your site, And the goal is to reach out and have these links restored to improve SEO performance and maximize link equity. So a lot of effective ways to regain any lost equity and boost your visibility.

Speaker 4

33:14

All right, And for our next strategy on improving visibility, we'll talk about the importance of focusing on user experience. User experience continues to be essential because to keep users engaged on your site,

Speaker 1

33:25

you

Speaker 4

33:25

have to provide a positive experience overall. And you really only have a few seconds to do that. So first impressions definitely matter.

Speaker 4

33:35

UX has always been an important component of SEO strategy. And in 2024, it will continue to be even more important since users expect websites to understand their preferences and to deliver more tailored experiences. Over the years, UX design has gone from being primarily focused on functionality to a more holistic approach that considers the user needs and emotional experience. And research done by Google actually shows that focusing on UX can reduce site abandonment by 24% and generate up to 15% more page views per session.

Speaker 4

34:07

It was also found that focusing on UX not only helps with that engagement, but also helps to boost conversion rate and increase advertising revenue. So Ideally, an optimized user experience should streamline that path to conversion, so it's very easy for users to navigate the page and convert. And you want to make sure you're striking that right balance between user satisfaction and achieving those business goals. And Neil himself has even said, UX isn't just about making your site look pretty.

Speaker 4

34:35

It's also about understanding users' behavior, needs, and motivations. Oftentimes, when we think of UX, we do think of the page design and layout first. But as we just spoke about, It's so much more than just making your site look good. It's also thinking about what the optimal user journey and experience is on each page.

Speaker 4

34:53

A lot of analysis and refinement have to go into UX design to make sure you're providing that positive experience. So it's important to continue testing different layouts and monitoring how users interact with your site through tools like heat mapping. So you can always improve on that experience. And there are a few UX factors that you especially want to pay attention to when trying to create a positive user experience.

Speaker 4

35:16

The first is page speed. No 1 wants to stay on a website that loads slowly. We've probably all had the experience of going to a website and it not loading quick enough, so we leave and go to a competitor. And Google has actually said that the probability of a bounce almost triples if your page takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

Speaker 4

35:32

So quick load time is definitely crucial. You also want to make sure that your site has responsive design and is optimized for mobile. Your site should provide a good experience regardless of the device the user is using. And with so many people using their phones now to browse internet, having a well-optimized mobile experience is a non-negotiable.

Speaker 4

35:50

Next is website copy. The copy on the page is important for a few reasons. It should engage readers and keep them on the page, and it should also be structured in a way that's easily digestible and well-optimized for search. So you always want to make sure when you're creating your copy, you're thinking of the user first and providing personalized, helpful content to the reader.

Speaker 4

36:09

It's also crucial to have an intuitive navigation and layout for users. Well-organized content should always follow a logical structure. And for the last factor, you need to have a well-designed user interface to enhance the visual appeal of a website and make the user experience as seamless as possible. UI design specifically focuses on making your interaction with the page easy and enjoyable.

Speaker 4

36:33

All elements on the page, such as visuals and call to action buttons, should be arranged strategically and in a way that makes sense to the user. If a page is difficult to interact with, this is going to lead to frustration and cause the user to abandon the site. So making sure the UI is designed properly is key. For our last strategy, we'll focus on why you should be using an omni-channel approach in order to increase organic results and improve visibility.

Speaker 4

37:01

An omni-channel strategy is a comprehensive approach that integrates all channels and has 1 unified goal and message. Users now often switch between channels during their shopping journey, so an omni-channel approach allows you to strategically engage with potential customers across a lot of diverse platforms. More digital marketers have been implementing omnichannel strategies for this reason. And in fact, the search interest for omnichannel strategies has doubled over the past 5 years.

Speaker 4

37:32

Digital marketers are looking more and more into this omnichannel approach in order to widen their reach and tap into different audiences. And this shift towards omnichannel is partly in response to shifting customer expectations as we spoke about earlier. Customers expect personalization and a consistent experience across all channels. Consumer journeys are now very complex.

Speaker 4

37:57

You want to make sure that you are everywhere your consumer is in capturing your audience's attention. More than 50% of shoppers use 4 touch points before they even make a purchase. People want to make sure that they're buying the right thing and not wasting their money. And the majority of shoppers do a lot of online research when considering a major purchase.

Speaker 4

38:16

Typical consumer journey might look like starting your research on a product with a Google search, then a day or 2 later looking at reviews on the product, then continuing to do research on different platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok. An omnichannel approach allows businesses to appear to users at these various touch points. And it's been shown that marketing campaigns that use at least 3 channels have a 494% higher order rate compared to those launched on just 1 channel. So not only increasing your visibility across channels, but you're also able to increase conversions since you're meeting the user wherever they are.

Speaker 4

38:52

And businesses have been seeing the benefits from omnichannel strategies. In a recent survey, 67% of e-commerce companies said omnichannel is very important for their business. And this percent will likely continue to increase over the years as more businesses adopt an omnichannel strategy. So how does SEO fit into an omnichannel strategy?

Speaker 4

39:14

Well, omnichannel marketing and SEO are complementary, just like PB&J, better together than apart. So first, it's going to help your organic visibility. Since you'll have a larger online presence, with more potential customers are seeing your brand and consistent messaging on different touchpoints, they're going to remember your brand name and will likely search for more information on your product through a Google search. And for businesses with physical locations, Omnichannel strategy can work with your local SEO efforts and increase foot traffic, since you can implement strategies like sharing localized content and promoting in-store events or sales through channels like social media and email marketing.

Speaker 4

39:54

Next, you'll be able to use data from the omnichannel strategy to improve user engagement experience. A key aspect of SEO is creating high quality, relevant content that aligns with search intent. And an omni-channel approach will allow you to see what kind of content performs best across channels, which will then help inform your decisions for your content strategy. You can also repurpose existing content distributed across channels to see what kind of content formats your audience responds to.

Speaker 4

40:21

But by analyzing performance and data across channels, you'll be able to better understand customer behavior preferences. And lastly, you'll be able to build stronger brand authority and trust. We've mentioned a few times how important brand authority will be in SEO for 2024. And strong social signals, such as likes, shares, and comments on posts, boost brand authority and show Google that the content being promoted is valuable.

Speaker 4

40:45

And this is why you want to make sure the content you're creating is unique and compelling so it'll gain traction and get shared by users across channels. And omnichannel strategies also give you the opportunity to promote reviews and testimonials, which is really important for brand credibility. Users want to see reviews from other people on your product or service. You can also use a chance to encourage users to leave reviews across multiple channels, so it'll help enhance your brand reputation.

Speaker 4

41:14

And at MPDigital we saw success from a multi-channel campaign for a college loan provider and have a great case study to share. So Ascent funding came to NPD with a few goals. They wanted to capture new leads, garner more organic traffic and social engagement, and improve their brand of domain authority. For the solution, we got creative and promoted a contest inviting students to win $10,000 for sharing their dreams in a short video submission.

Speaker 4

41:45

We aligned on a few goals and promoted this contest across channels, which included promotion on the website, promotion through social media and influencer marketing, some media outreach, and community forum engagements. The results from this contest promotion were fantastic, And 1 of the standout results was Ascent had 74% of contacts generated. So people that had never heard of Ascent reached out to them because of the visibility this campaign received. Ascent also had 334 complete submissions, which was 34% greater than the original goal.

Speaker 4

42:18

So not only did Ascent reach their initial goals with this campaign, but we also helped them surpass these goals. In addition, there were 32 link placements on authoritative education sites, 218 syndication pickups from their optimized press release, and 47,000 impressions on TikTok in only 30 days. So overall, this multi-channel approach was a great success and demonstrated the value of these kinds of multi-channel strategies that are becoming more popular. So we've heard of all the great benefits of an omnichannel strategy so far.

Speaker 4

42:52

But if you've only focused on 1 channel to date, it can sound a little overwhelming. So here are a few ways you can get started. First, you want to consider the different channels you'll be using in your strategy. You don't need to start on such a large scale.

Speaker 4

43:07

You can also start by launching a campaign that incorporates a few different channels and has 1 main goal. This will help you to see which channels work together the most effectively. Some examples of this are testing different copy and search ads, trying out different types of graphics on social media, and launching email campaigns that test out different kinds of copy in the subject line. Once you've done some testing and evaluated how different channels perform, interact with each other, then you can develop a strategy on how to incorporate them all effectively.

Speaker 4

43:37

You can also test out different focuses with your paid ads and start to strategize with SEO efforts. Seeing how paid ads and SEO efforts interact together is a great place to start because you can see which keywords perform best for each channel. And lastly, you can analyze your paid campaign data to see how users are searching for your products. Then you can tailor your organic content based on that data.

Speaker 4

43:57

A few ways you can use this data are by analyzing keywords that are driving traffic and conversions, looking at different demographics and geographic data, and also analyzing conversion paths, looking for common touch points. So there's really no bad place to start for an omni-channel strategy. You just wanna make sure you're keeping a cohesive brand image and focusing on providing consistent user experience.

Speaker 1

44:21

Yeah, so after, thanks Brittany, going over all of the omni channel stuff. So how can we use AI? How do we at NPA and NPD use AI?

Speaker 1

44:31

And how can we make it more efficient? I was reading some of the comments and I really like Cheryl's here that says, AI is about efficiency in your current business. You still need all of the core elements that made your business yours. It's about efficiency gains and making sure to train the AI for your specific business so it can be as effective for you as possible.

Speaker 1

44:57

And that's what we're going to talk about here. So like I said, AI is only as good as the input it receives, and that means the better you are at talking to it, the better it's going to be at talking to you. So, you know, make sure that you're doing a couple of key things when you're talking to AI. You know, The big thing that happened about a year or 2 years ago is AI became a lot more conversational.

Speaker 1

45:36

So have a conversation with it. Be direct and specific. And also make sure that you're asking for exactly what you want. It's not going to gain any additional context or anything.

Speaker 1

45:47

So you have to be very clear about what you're going to be talking with the AI about. And so a prompt like this, for example, would help train the GPT to your specific needs. It's telling Bard, or Gemini, or chat GPT, hey, write me a blog post about what it is and why, first train it up and get it ready to write that or ideate for that. We still are a team.