The balance between lift and attribution

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I’ve shared a few times on here how precise attribution of online activities is becoming more and more difficult to track. It feels like companies are collecting every bit of information that they can about us, which is true, but it’s becoming trickier to put all of the pieces together.

Ad blockers and cookie policies are a big reason why, but there’s also just the fact that so many marketing activities simply aren’t done in ways that are trackable (private conversations online, in-person events, etc).

A recent article from Ann Gynn on the Content Marketing Institute blog suggests that we go back to tracking marketing like we did in 1985 — focus on the lift of the brand. From her article:

“To measure impact, you should follow in the footsteps of the 1980s marketer. Evaluate the before-and-after metrics overall, and don’t assign a value to each component’s contributions.“

That’s not to say that we should ignore SEO and other current marketing best practices, as those are still certainly valuable, but that we shouldn’t put as much weight into the numbers. Again, from Ann:

“Still, your brand can’t ignore search rankings as they play a role in those zero-click results and some humans still see Google, other search engines, and even generative AI tools as their go-to research sources.“

Taking it further, she quotes SparkToro CEO Rand Fishkin (among the most well-known search engine marketers in the world), who expresses the problem quite clearly:

“They have to understand when you provide attribution, you miss almost every organic channel, every word-of-mouth-channel, almost every social engagement channel that’s organic, and almost every channel that doesn’t directly drive a link that passes a referral string.”

Instead, they must recognize that measurement is the preferred method and it requires a long-range assessment of brand strength and recognition. “You’re going to look at lift, not attribution,” Rand says. “They have to buy into this new method of operating.”

There’s not an easy answer here, but the first step is to accept reality. Rand says “attribution is fully broken these days, but we’re still using it like we used to“. At GreenMellen we still track every bit of data that we can, across a variety of different tools, and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. However, we also need to be sure we’re tracking the overall vitality of each brand so we can get a better idea of the success of the overall marketing plan.

The next few years will be very interesting, headlined by the impact that AI will be making, but we can be confident that precise attribution is never coming back and we need to work hard to find ways to track overall lift instead.

I encourage you to check out Ann’s full article, as well as the live show where she pulled some of Rand’s thoughts.

The majority of Google searches don’t lead to websites

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It’s a trend that has been growing for years, but the number of “zero-click” searches on Google continues to grow (where a zero-click search is one where the user doesn’t ever click through to a website).

In a recent post on the SparkToro blog, Rand Fishkin points out that in 2024 only 360 of every 1,000 searches lead to a result on the open web. That means that 64% of visitors to Google never end up visiting a traditional website, which is a huge number.

The problem is two-fold:

First, many search questions are answered right on the page, either with a simple answer from Google or with an AI-powered result.

Second, Google does as much as it can to send users to other Google properties. Rand explains:

Equally concerning, especially for those worried about Google’s monopoly power to self-preference their own properties in the results, is that almost 30% of all clicks go to platforms Google owns. YouTube, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Flights, Google Hotels, the Google App Store, and dozens more means that Google gets even more monetization and sector-dominating power from their search engine.

This trend is unlikely to slow down, much less reverse, so we need to start coming up with other ideas to continue to be found online. SEO is going to become a much more challenging game if Google is literally sending fewer visitors to websites.

At the same time, Google search continues to be the dominant player in the search market and that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Even with Google taking more of the pie for themselves, there are still many billions of visitors that Google sends out to the web every month, and ignoring that completely would be foolish.

If and when Google takes their next big step into AI-powered results remains to be seen, and likely will have a big impact on things, so I’m sure I’ll have more to say as things continue to develop. For now, I encourage you to check out Rand’s full post to dig into the details.

Build a brand outside of Google

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There was recently a huge leak from Google that detailed much of how their search algorithm works, and it was quite eye opening. One of the best overviews of the leak comes from Rand Fishkin, and you can read it here.

In digging in, he had a few very insightful thoughts that I wanted to share here.

Big brands matter

He had a few thoughts about building a big brand in order to rank well in Google. Here is one:

“If there was one universal piece of advice I had for marketers seeking to broadly improve their organic search rankings and traffic, it would be: “Build a notable, popular, well-recognized brand in your space, outside of Google search.”

A related thought is a bit more glum, and essentially says to put your efforts elsewhere if you can’t be seen as a major brand.

“The content you create is unlikely to perform well in Google if competition from big, popular websites with well-known brands exists. Google no longer rewards scrappy, clever, SEO-savvy operators who know all the right tricks. They reward established brands, search-measurable forms of popularity, and established domains that searchers already know and click.”

Clicks matter, and Google lied

A theme that goes through Rand’s piece, along with others that I’ve read, is that Google has been dishonest with us for years. It could be somewhat defensible (trying to stop spammers from knowing everything), but it’s undeniable that Google literally lied about various pieces of how their algorithm works.

A major one is clicks in the search results. Google has long downplayed the importance of them (denying them completely until 2019, I believe), but it seems that clicks can matter a lot. Here is a scenario about that from Rand:

Let’s say, for example, that many people in the Seattle area search for “Lehman Brothers” and scroll to page 2, 3, or 4 of the search results until they find the theatre listing for the Lehman Brother stage production, then click that result. Fairly quickly, Google will learn that’s what searchers for those words in that area want.

Even if the Wikipedia article about Lehman Brothers’ role in the financial crisis of 2008 were to invest heavily in link building and content optimization, it’s unlikely they could outrank the user-intent signals (calculated from queries and clicks) of Seattle’s theatre-goers.

Extending this example to the broader web and search as a whole, if you can create demand for your website among enough likely searchers in the regions you’re targeting, you may be able to end-around the need for classic on-and-off-page SEO signals like links, anchor text, optimized content, and the like.

All in all, it’s a massive leak with huge implications, and I encourage you to read Rand’s piece and follow his links to other sources with more info. Things won’t change drastically for how search engine optimization is performed, but these new insights certainly shape how all of us think about Google’s algorithm and behavior.

Filed Under: SEO

Don’t ascribe attribution to Google when other investments drove the real value

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When monitoring your website traffic, it’s easy to look at your sources and see that Google has sent you the most traffic, leading you to think you should double down on it. Maybe you should, but maybe not.

There are certainly people that Google sends to your site that you should be thankful for. If someone searches for “plumbers near me” to find your plumbing company, that’s fantastic! However, there are many cases where it may look like Google is sending you traffic but it’s not really coming from Google.

In a recent post on the SparkToro blog, Rand Fishkin dug into this pretty deep, and this image largely summarized what he had to say:

If your reputation is strong enough that people search for you by name, that is awesome! Really, that should be your main goal. It’s great when people find you for unbranded searches like “plumbers near me”, but if they know to search for you directly, you win.

Google may still find themselves in the middle, but you didn’t get that customer via “SEO (Search Engine Optimization)” even though they technically came via a Google search. You need to find out how people really discovered you and why they searched for you by name and double down on that instead.

As I shared last year, tracking down precise attribution can be nearly impossible, but that doesn’t mean you should default to attributing it to Google. Work hard to figure out where your best customers are really coming from, and focus as much effort there as you can.

If you want more detail and data behind this, I encourage you to check out the full post on SparkToro.

Blogs are still among the highest-ranking pages

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While it’s been well-established that users don’t click on the “blog” page for most sites, having those posts can still be incredibly valuable. The purpose of most blogs (not this one) are to drive people to the website via Google search, and then lead them to the pages that matter (registration, purchase, etc).

For those kinds of goals, blogs are still fantastic.

In a study from Brightedge Research, where they looked at 10,000 keywords across 10 industries, they found that the most common type of page found in the top 10 results on Google were blog posts. Here’s the breakdown:

Helpful content is always going to perform well on Google, and blogging is one of the best ways to generate content that your audience will find to be helpful.

I have my concerns about the future of blogging for SEO, largely depending on where AI takes us, but for now it’s still a great thing to do if you want your business to show up well on Google. Business blogs give you a great place to showcase your expertise and drive more users to your site. It’s a win-win.

Check out the full study from Brightedge here, and this post from Search Engine Land digs into it quite a bit more.

Artwork is signed because it matters who created it

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I’ve mentioned a few times on here that I’m not a fan of companies that put a “designed by” link in the footer of websites that they create. Google clearly says not to do it, and putting a link there is entirely for the (misguided) advantage of the designer, to the detriment of the site they stick their link on.

One reaction that I sometimes hear about this is that it’s “like an artist signing their painting”, and that the customer should be proud to have worked with that agency. It’s an interesting concept, but I disagree on a few counts:

  • It’s not helping the client site to sell more of their product. No one is going to visit the site, consider making a purchase, see “designed by Acme” in the footer, and then decide that they’re reputable enough to trust.
  • A signature on a painting increases the value of it, while a link in the footer doesn’t.
  • Not only does a footer link fail to increase the value of the site, it actually decreases the value.

I’m noticing that this happens less and less frequently, which is fantastic, but it’s still not acceptable when it does. If you have a “designed by” link at the bottom of your site, you should try to determine if the company that did it is either ignorant of how search engines work, or if they’re shady enough to be ripping you off.

Why should your website rank higher than theirs?

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A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend and he was upset that his site wasn’t ranking first on Google for a particular keyword. We ran the search, and sure enough he was in fifth. I proposed a very simple challenge: click the top ranking, and then tell me if his site really deserves to rank higher.

In this case it was incredibly clear. His page for this keyword consisted of one sentence of text and a small photo gallery, while the top ranked site had a more text, photos, testimonials, and other great information. I told him that if I were Google, I’d absolutely leave that other site ranked at the top. He reluctantly agreed.

You can do the same.

If you’re being outranked for a particular search term, look at the pages that rank ahead of you and then make your page better than the ones at the top. Most of the time it’ll take some effort to simply match the top page, but go further. Give your page more info, better photos, clear calls to action, incredible resources, fast loading times, etc. Make it so it’s not even close.

There are certainly times when the top ranked page really isn’t very good, and figuring out why can be frustrating. In most cases, though, the work you need to do in order to take the top spot is pretty clear and you simply need to put in the effort to get there.

Marketing isn’t magic

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I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago that was working with a new company. That company had been outsourcing their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) work to another firm for a few thousand dollars a month, but it was unclear exactly what that other firm was doing.

When asked for details on what work was being done each month, they were denied and derided for daring to ask such a question. I don’t know the details of that situation, but I’ve seen similar before where companies were “doing SEO” for company but didn’t disclose what they were doing. Short answer: usually not much.

Marketing isn’t magic. Even SEO, which can be a little complicated at times, includes tactics and practices that are easy to define. If you’re working with a firm that doesn’t disclose details (even for “proprietary secrets”), you need to break ties with them immediately. The lack of transparency is not acceptable, and often means they’re hiding something — usually the fact that they’re not doing much work for the client.

When it comes specifically to SEO, it’s pretty straightforward, though it can take a good bit of work to keep it going strong. In most cases it includes:

  • Keyword research to determine what specific phrases to go after.
  • Work on the technical side of the website to make sure nothing is badly broken. This can take some time, but it’s not an ongoing expense aside from baseline security after a point.
  • Generating strong content. This is often the bulk of the work, and companies deserve to be paid well if they’re doing a good job, but it’s not a secret.

Don’t let companies hide what they’re doing. Good marketing takes effort, but there’s no magic secret to any of this stuff. Follow best practices, know your audience, produce great content, measure the results, and repeat.

If a company says “We’re going to do A, B, and C for you every month for $x,xxx“, that’s awesome.

If they say “just trust us“, don’t.

Branded searches matter too

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When companies invest in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), their main focus is on unbranded terms. For example, if you’re a roofer you might be trying to rank for things like “roof replacement”, “roofing in Marietta” and other terms like that. This is a fantastic approach, but it often overshadows the value of focusing on your branded searches.

Branded searches are when people search for your name specifically. Rather than searching for a generic marketing firm by using things like “website design companies” or “marketing firms in Marietta”, one might search directly for “GreenMellen”. This is gold, and should not be ignored. The goal of every business should be to be the answer for a problem. If someone finds us via “website design companies”, that’s great; if they find us via “GreenMellen” because they’ve heard we’re the solution for their problem, that’s 10x better.

The good thing about branded search results is that you should do fairly well without much effort. If you have a unique business name, your website should come up first without much effort (unless you mistakenly left the magic checkbox checked, or you got too cute with your name).

However, there are some things you can do to help further:

Google Business Profile

Make sure to claim your Google Business Profile listing, as well as related listings at Yelp and other industry-specific sites.

Schema

Adding structured markup / schema to your site can help a bit, and often will get Google to show a little more info about your business when someone searches for your name.

Claim and be active elsewhere

Adding more sites that you control to the top of your Google results is a great way to strengthen your branded search results. Here is a good example using personal results, but the same applies to your business. The more results that you can control, the better.

I’m certainly not advocating that you stop worrying about unbranded SEO, as that can be a great source of traffic for your site. Over time, though, you should get increasing amounts of branded search traffic as your company becomes more well-known and respected, so keep an eye on those results and make sure you’re looking as sharp as you can.

SEO hasn’t ever really changed

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If you’ve ever done work on your website to improve your search engine optimization (SEO), and you’ve done it in a legit way, the techniques really haven’t changed much over the years.

Google’s Danny Sullivan recently tweeted (via SE Roundtable) that very thing with two comments.

First, he simply said: “Our good advice then remains the same over two decades later. To succeed in Google Search, focus on people-first content.“

Second, he shared a screenshot of Google’s quality guidelines from way back in 2002:

I’ve made the argument for years that Google isn’t changing the rules on us, but they’re simply getting better at detecting and dealing with spam. If you’ve found some creative way to trick Google, they’ll likely find a way to stop it. However, if you simply generate high-quality content that is useful for people, that remains the main thing that Google wants to see.

Google has made a few small shifts over the years, adding emphasis for mobile devices and website security (both of which were irrelevant when they started in 1998), but the core is still the same — make pages for users, not search engines.

The future could be a bit cloudier, as AI is going to disrupt SEO in a few major ways (more AI-generated content, as well as AI-powered search results), but there is no need to get away from the core tenants of what Google is saying. Produce great content for humans, and you’ll do pretty well in search.