In May 2025, Google made a major update to its algorithm. 

The main change? 

The algorithm treats Google Business Profiles (old Google my Business) as a primary source of authority. And reviews – especially the recent ones – have become very important. They are no longer just a nice detail in the right corner. 

How does it affect you? And what can you do about it? Read more in this article.

Google update core – May 2025

First, what I have observed directly in the market so far

The former Google my Business – the current Google Business Profile has gained significant importance. And not just for local businesses.

Specifically,

• Completed Google Business Profiles, with recent activity and constant reviews, climb into the local pack (selection of 3 sites + map sometimes displayed on the first page) even if the site is with moderate quality.

• In many areas of activity, the importance of links has decreased and the importance of GBP (Google Business Profile) has increased significantly.

• GBP has also started to appear on searches that are not strictly geotargeted (searches where proximity / map are not very important).

• In many searches, GBP appears twice on the page – both at the top with the map and at the bottom, generally without the map. Sometimes with the map.

• Accounts with high scores (4.8–5), but with old reviews and no responses, fall in the results.

• Links and website optimization have reduced their importance. Not much, but noticeable. It's normal, because if you introduce new criteria, the old ones will be less important. The sum of the criteria is always 100%.

• GBP has become a significant factor for all businesses and not just for local businesses (restaurants, services, etc.).

In other words,

The importance of Google Business Profile has increased HUGELY as an SEO indicator and not just for local businesses.

 

What is Google Business Profile (formerly Google my Business)?

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the platform through which Google displays essential information about your business directly in searches and on Google Maps. It's like a kind of website with a single main page and a few sub-sections that, until now, were rarely set up.

In other words, it's a kind of "digital business card" that appears first when someone searches for your business name or similar local services.

What the profile contains

It includes business hours, address, phone, website (if you have one), a description, photos, posts and - very importantly - your customer reviews and responses.

Google uses all of these elements to decide whether to display you in the top area, called the "local pack".

Why does it matters

An incomplete, inactive or poorly optimized profile does not qualify. It's just like everything else on Google: not everyone has a place, only the best optimized/promoted ones.

You will not appear in the top local results, even if your website is good.

Worse, on certain searches, customers started making purchasing decisions WITHOUT ENTERING THE SITE - based solely on GBP and reviews.  

Some observations about Google Business Profile and SEO

It's not something completely new. It was an important indicator but only for Google Maps and local and geotargeted searches. Now it's more important for those searches and in addition, it has become important for most service searches.

Google has been working on and streamlining Business Profile for about 2 years. I THINK that they are now confident enough that the application is well-developed enough to be included as a major optimization indicator.

Until now, Google Business Profile was almost exclusively relevant for local businesses and what appeared, it was mainly the map. Now, the company profile appears even in searches that are not geotargeted AND, in geotargeted searches, Google Business Profile appears twice – once at the top with companies close to the user searching AND at the bottom, either geographically relevant companies or other companies, I'm not sure how they are sorted. Maybe size? reviews? I don't know yet.

In the “classic” way, SEO mainly means:

• Relevance: On-site SEO

• Authority: External links

I THINK GBP comes as a major addition in both areas. I THINK the new formula is

• Relevance: On-site SEO + GMB optimization for a few important words

• Authority: External links + GMB reviews

 

Why did Google decide to make this move

To be clear – I’m making guesses here

I think it has to do with AI. More specifically, the ease with which AI can generate quality text.

The vast majority of people now use texts optimized and written by AI.

Both the overall quality of texts and the quantity have increased.

Google is, however, a fierce competition for the first page. Not everyone has a place.

But, if almost everyone now has (or will have in a very short time) pages with a lot of well-made text, then the indicator of a lot of well-made text is no longer a differentiator.

It’s exactly the same thing that happened about 20 years ago. If everyone puts the keyword in the title, then the keyword in the title alone can no longer be a differentiator.

There can't be dozens or hundreds of sites in the top 10. And only one can be number 1.

What we're seeing is a repositioning of ranking criteria, a move forced by AI. And I think it's just the beginning.

 

What can be done and how to optimize GBP

I will divide this section into two.

What we know for sure has an impact and what we think could have an impact.

1. What definitely has an impact

• Keywords used in the title, business description and listed services

• Reviews – they matter a lot.

By the way, in the last two years Google has worked a lot to filter fake/spam reviews

• How people interact with GBP
This is also true for classic SEO. If users choose to interact with your site and if the engagement is better than others, you grow. It is the “ultimate indicator” – if people like you, you are OK.

 2. What we assume has an impact, but we don’t know for sure

• Continuous activity: recent posts, updated schedule, real photos for SEO it’s similar. 
A page made and constantly updated ranks better than a page made x many years ago and unchanged. Even if it’s the exact same text. If you change something, you show that you care about it being current.

• Frequency of reviews: not just how many you have, but when you received them. It’s the same activity you should care of. 
Good reviews, received constantly look much more vivid and relevant than 10 5-star reviews in 2020, after which there’s nothing. Pause.

• Responses to reviews: if you don’t respond, you seem passive

• Words in reviews: “prompt”, “delivery”, “fast”, “SEO consultant”
It’s possible that Google is trying to understand how relevant, real and positive those reviews are and weight them somehow.

• Links and listings on locally relevant sites.

 

Final recommendations and personal opinions

I mostly ignored GBP. In my niche – online marketing agencies it was a significant indicator, but not very important.

I knew it had to be done but there was always something that “burned a little harder”. I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling. 

Yes, it’s a new thing to do. Yaaaay.. BUT, it’s also an opportunity for those who are somewhat agile.

Larger businesses WILL HAVE to introduce positive review solicitation into their operational flow. Until now it was an advantage. From now on, it will be a disadvantage if you don’t do this.

Personally, I don’t like the direction and change at all. GBP is something very rudimentary and offers MUCH less info than a website. Can you really form an opinion about a business just by looking at a business card?
Of course, it's not the only indicator, but it seems to me that too much weight is being given to it now. Obviously, my opinion.

Another problem that will arise – fake reviews from "friends". It's not clear to me how they will be managed.

Google tested in the past – 2014-2016 – negative authority from links. A concept in which poor quality links lowered your authority and penalized you. They gave up on the concept after they realized that you could knock down an ok site with $10-20  by paying to someone to make hundreds of thousands of poor quality links to a competitor. In small niches, it was much easier to knock down your competitors than to build something quality. There's a big risk for stars to end up in this area too.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if in about half a year, the weight of GBP will decrease again. But I think that whatever it is, in the foreseeable future it will remain a more important indicator than it was in the past.

SEO will change. AI is forcing it to change. This is not the end, it is just the beginning.

How?

I don't know. But I will tell you as I find out.

To end on a positive note, there have been other changes to the algorithm – it has started to take into account many more media – shorts, youtube, facebook, tik tok, etc. At the moment very little. I think there will be MAJOR changes in SEO and in the Google algorithm. I think it will take into account much more than just the website and a few links. Which I think is right, good and a direction in which we can grow a lot.
After all, why wouldn't someone who has a youtube channel with 100,000 followers be more relevant than someone who has a few good links on some authority news website for example.

I think there will be a significant period of diversification in promotion and what SEO means. And I think that's a good thing.

SEO optimization of online stores

Technical SEO eCommerce Guide

Digital Campaign

Do you have an online store? Do you want more visitors and to sell more?

Perfect - this is the SEO Guide for Online Stores to help you get more traffic, more customers and in the end more profit.

Here we approach aspects related to the technical optimization of an online store and the SEO optimization of the entire site especially if you target customers in Europe.

Read this SEO guide for Online Stores to understand the optimization of technical factors and on-site SEO to attract customers from Paris, Rome, London, Madrid, Berlin, The Hague, Amsterdam, Oslo and other wonderful places on the continent.

For details about on page SEO optimisation read these articles about How to optimize your website with SILO strategy and Creating and optimising the content for your target page and supporting pages.   

We think that it is obvious that there are many factors related to SEO and they influence the sales and traffic of an online store. Even so, they can be easily divided into 3 separate categories:

1. Technical aspects of your site

This part includes aspects such as how well written the code of that online store is, how fast or slow it loads, whether or not errors occur, whether Google can read the site correctly, whether it works well on any browser, phone or computer. These are some of the "technical factors".

2. SEO factors of your site optimisation

That is, things we can do on our site, such as: what we put on the first page, how we make the menu, what buttons we have in the menu, what titles we use, what product descriptions and so on. In short, on-site optimization of an online store.

3. SEO factors of external promotion for your store

Here are included things like: where we advertise, what we promote, how much traffic we attract, what kind of visitors, where they come from, and so on. In short, factors outside our site. This is the off-site SEO.

Next, we will talk about the first category: Technical factors that influence the optimization of an online store.

SEO for Online Stores - The Main Technical Factors
First of all, we want to specify an important and very useful aspect if we consider the costs of creating an online store.

Google does not give points to a website for absolutely all the technical optimizations we can bring to a site. There are hundreds of sites on the net that test different aspects of your site and that identify hundred "problems" that "must" be solved.

DON`T TRY TO GET 100% SCORES IN ALL THESE PROGRAMS

It is possible that the cost for the programmer or the developer will be very high in relation to the benefits. Just keep in mind that certain criteria are absolutely essential and for that, you need to hire a developer.

The list of criteria that Google uses to rate a site is very large. Some of those criteria do not exist in a site, certainly. The effect is so small that it is NOT worth investing in getting a “perfect score”. In reality, there is no perfect score.

Regarding the vast majority of technical settings, Google does not reward the settings but RATE THE PROBLEMS.

E.g: We know that Google is very attentive to the loading speed of a site. And it's normal to be like that. It is recommended that any page of the site load in less than 2 seconds. If the site loads over this time, there is certainly fewer points. punctuation. And it is normal to be so - the harder the store loads, the more frustrated the visitor will be.

But, let's say we have 2 online stores: one site load in 1.5 seconds, the other in 0.75 seconds. The second is 2 times faster than the first.

But does the second one deserve a double "technical" score compared to the first one? From a visitor's point of view, both load almost instantly. Do you really think you will notice a delay of 0.75 seconds?

It makes no sense for technical optimizations to generate an extra score in SEO at some point. For a user, both sites load fast enough, in which case there should be no differences in SEO between sites related to this aspect.

The only way this can happen is if Google does NOT reward high-performing sites, but penalizes poorly performing sites.

So, technically, it is good enough. There is no point in hunting for the "perfect score", which is an illusion, and it is very bad in terms of the cost of creating an online store.

List with the most important SEO factors to follow for your online store

UPLOAD SPEED

Preferably the upload speed to be on all pages of a site UNDER 2 SECONDS. Optimal if it is around 1 second. Upload speed is a factor that has always been an important parameter in determining a site's SEO score.

In general, there are 4 main aspects that slow down a site:

› Hosting. The vast majority of servers used or still use Apache server software. Although very robust, reliable and popular, Apache appeared in 1996. It was updated, but the architecture and the way of working are a bit outdated at present and in terms of speed it is quite weak.

› Programming errors, plugin errors or other errors. Simply programming errors present in the site. There is no standard here. Errors can occur from anything and there is no standard way to solve them. If there are errors, they are generally reported in the Google console of that site. After identification, you must contact a programmer or person who develops sites.

› Plugins or scripts. Do you want to have online chat conversations with visitors? Google Analytics? Facebook Pixel? Software to analyze traffic? Another software to analyze something else? Plugin to display friends on Facebook? All of this has a cost in resources - every program that does something slows down your site. Make sure everything you use is really useful. You can test your site with https://tools.pingdom.com/ and you can see what slows down your store the most.

› Very large images or movies. It's nice to have big and clear pictures. Obvious. But sometimes big, clear and beautiful pictures can take up a lot of space. If you have a category with dozens of products, and each one displays a picture of 1 mega, then your page can reach a size of tens of mega. On a connection that is not very fast (mobile, 3g) the page loading will take a lot, even if it is perfectly made technically and has a good server.

BROWSING THE SITE

Can Google browse the site without issues that actually prevent it from "seeing" the content?

There is no bonus or prize here. There are only two situations: Google CAN scan the site or Google CAN NOT scan the site. In case 2, you will not really exist on Google, because your site cannot be read by search engines.

Such errors appear in Google Search Console or if we try to access the cache of a page (write cache: before the URL of the page)

HTTPS - SECURE CONNECTION

In the case of online stores, the secure connection is a plus on SEO. Think about it: If you want to buy something, you send personal data on the net, possibly even credit/debit card data.

These transfers need to be as secure as possible - so HTTPS is important for online stores.

ASYNCHRONOUS LOADING (Async Loading)

This setting is related to the speed of the site. Asynchronous loading causes all the elements present in the site to load in parallel, which makes the site load faster.

In general, these are the main technical factors that influence a store.

We are not saying they're all, but the MAIN factors. What is important to remember is that purely technical factors provide an insignificant plus score, except for the loading speed. These factors penalize you if they are not ok, but they do NOT reward you if they are ok.

SEO for Online Stores - The Main On-Site Aspects

There are two types of SEO factors at the site level: factors related to the entire site and factors related to the optimization of a page.

In the first part of this guide, we will deal only with the factors related to the optimization of the entire site. Let's say the general SEO criteria for the entire online store.

Since 2016, Google has started to focus more and more on factors related to the user experience: how easily he moves through the site, he found or not what he is looking for, how much time he spends on the site to actually read what is written there, what is the percentage of visitors who actually buy and so on.

In the past, these factors were more in the area of ​​conversion optimization - a separate division of online marketing. Now this area is migrating and will be integrated into SEO because the user experience is an increasingly important factor in SEO - a factor that influences the position on Google.

ON-SITE SEO Factors for Online Stores

SITE STRUCTURE AND MENU
The menu and the way the site is structured is the most important SEO factor for online stores.

Why? For the majority of online stores, the life of any product is limited. Put the product in stock (or in the supplier's stock) - it remains available for a period of time - generally not more than 1-3 years - after which it disappears from the final stock.

However, the CATEGORY of which that product belongs remains permanent.

One more thing: an average store has tens or hundreds of thousands of products in stock. Every month there are hundreds of new products coming into that stock and hundreds of products coming out. The work to make for each product a dedicated page, with a lot of text, description, is huge. No one has such resources.

But you can make text dedicated and real content to the CATEGORY of which those products are part.

SO: ONLINE STORES ARE NOT OPTIMIZED FROM THE SEO POINT OF VIEW AT THE PRODUCT LEVEL - ONLY AT THE CATEGORY LEVEL.

There is only one exception: you have very few products and they have a long life. You can optimize at the product level if 50-100 products that will be valid for years.

The way the site is divided is the most important SEO optimization factor at the site level of a store.

The more detailed the category structure, the higher the traffic - because you have very specific pages that can target very specific user searches.

E.g:
›Case A - WEAK SEO optimization (not recommended): www.exemple-store-online.com/skirts/…… products ………
›Case B - GOOD SEO optimization: www.exemple-store-online.com/skirts/short_skirts/short_skirts_jeans/…… products ………

If someone searches Google for "denim skirts" - which of the two destinations is more specific? Which is more relevant to the user's search?

IMPORTANT: all sub-categories INCLUDE the main keyword - skirts - and secondary keywords - short skirts. It is very important that the whole structure is built keeping in mind the keywords pursued and the way in which their hierarchy is organized.

The more detailed the structure of a site and the better correlated with the main Google searches of the target audience, the higher the store traffic will be.

Now, OBVIOUSLY, you don't make the categories to keep them secret. The most normal and obvious place to put all these categories is in the SITE MENU.

The site menu is one of the most viewed elements of a site. The clearer, easier to use and more specific the menu, the better the user experience will be - and at the same time, your SEO score will be higher.

Think about where you are looking for something easier: in a book in which the content does not exist - or in a book in which the content is very well defined.

ELEMENTS OF THE FIRST SCREEN - and more importantly on the mobile
We are talking about the elements of SEO optimization at the level of the ENTIRE online store - the common elements on the entire site - not elements that appear only on certain pages.

What is the first thing any visitor sees on your site? Whatever that is, IT'S ON THE FIRST SCREEN. So you have to be very careful about what appears on the first screen.

Recommendations for the first screen:

› Make a small sentence (you don't have room for more on your mobile) that describes very clearly and succinctly what your store is about. Preferably that description should contain the most important 1-2 keywords you are looking for. The description must NOT be large, maximum 2 rows on the mobile.

› Enter some useful info - the most frequently asked questions/requests from customers. For example free shipping orders over 200 euro / Parcel Check / Free Return / 3-year warranty / 2nd-day delivery / and other things that are a plus for you as an online store and that are very important for your clients.

DO NOT put on the first screen things that have NOT what to look there. Especially on mobile, it is preferable for the first screen to be as clean as possible.

SITE SEARCH - well defined, preferably with an associated text
That is a button, generally with a magnifying glass icon that also has the text: search the site

It is very important that once the user arrives on your site to facilitate as much as you can the road to the desired product. The elements that manage the product path MUST appear on the first screen.

MENU OPEN BUTTON
This is the case for mobile. On a desktop, the menu is generally active from the first. That is a button to press to open the menu. It is preferable to have a text next to the icon that opens the menu (type: Open Menu).

› It is very, very important to help the visitors to find what they are looking for. Besides the search box on the site, the menu is another element very often used for navigation.

For sure, not 100% of all products/product-categories are the most important for you and your visitors. The vertical order in which the categories appear in the menu is good to be as correlated as possible with the number of searches. The more popular a product is, the higher it should be on the menu.

PRODUCT FILTER
Whether you are on the desktop or on the mobile, the product filter button must be very visible.

› Most visitors will end up on category pages, not product pages. If you are in the category, you WANT to be able to filter easily and quickly that category. This means that the filter button MUST be in the first screen, preferably to have an associated text.

DISPLAY SETTING
If you have a category in which there are many products, you can see that category in two ways: a list as compact as possible, a list as detailed as possible. In general, it is good to have a button that switches between the two modes.

SHOPPING CART
Many potential buyers often add and/or check the product cart. It is very important that the "Product Cart" button is easily accessible on the first screen.

BUTTON ABOUT US - important for expensive products
If you sell expensive or complex products/services, trust in the store can be an important factor. If you want to buy something for 2000 euros, you will most likely check that company - is it older? Does it have a headquarters? Is it trustworthy? After all, who do you give 2000 euros to? All this information must be put in the ABOUT US and about us must be easily accessible.

ELEMENTS OF POPULARITY - SOCIAL PROOF - like likes on Facebook
Popularity on social networks - social proof - is an important element that generates trust in your online store. However, I do not know if it is so important, mandatory on the first screen.

Social proof can also be done at the category or product level. However, it is very unlikely that all your products/categories will have many likes. So it's good to have a global element for that.

These are the MAIN elements of SEO related to the optimization of an online store.

Not all of them are related to on-page optimization, but they are related to SEO and are important. From the list above, by far the most important factor is the structure of categories + menu - which are essentially two aspects of the same element - the structure of the site. If you can, and if there are, find some very relevant words for your field of activity. Use those words in a way that doesn't bother the above elements. Remember that those elements are general throughout your site. For example: if you are a printer store - at the search button on the site - you can use a generic text like" search the site "or you can use a custom text like:" search the printer store ". In case 2 you get a focus on the words "store" and "printer" which - obviously it's ok for you.

Are you interested to attract visitors from Google for free?
Do you want to be on top positions and receive quality traffic?
Great. Make a YouTube channel. You need it.

 

It's not a joke. In a few moths, a BIG part of the first positions in Google will be YouTube videos. Without a YouTube channel, on certain searches, you won't have a chance for a position on the first page of Google. 

Do you have an Online Store for French and want to attract more customers? 

✔ Do you want to take your site to the top positions in Google?
✔ Want to learn how to do Copywriting to maximize sales?
✔ Do you want to increase the Conversion Rate and Payment Rate as much as possible?
✔ Want to know about Post Order Messages or Promotion Techniques?
Read on to find out details about HOW you can do this because if your answers are YES, then you've come to the right place! On page SEO is required and here is How to optimize your website with SILO strategy to gain higher rankings in search engines results.

Watch the VIDEO COURSE about Copywriting, SEO and Sales Optimization for Online Stores with three hours of Tips, Examples, Solutions and Models - with immediate practical application.

Dear online store owner (or future owner), Online sales have exploded in France (as in many other places, by the way) lately. And they will continue to grow for many years to come. It is faster, simpler and, more often, cheaper. SEO - Why not to take advantage of these growing trends? The French have made online purchases worth over 5.6 billion euros in 2020, 30% more than in 2019. How do you think it will be in 2021? But in 2022? Obviously, the answer is one: sales will increase even more, year to year.

Do you have an Online Store and want to attract more customers? It's not easy at all, the competition is high and you have to use all possible methods to face the competition. That's why you need the advice and expertise of people who know WHAT you need to do, HOW you need to do it and, especially, WHEN you need to do it. The video course on Copywriting, SEO and Sales Optimization for Online Stores was created with one purpose: to help you sell more! To achieve this, we show you step by step what you need to do, with models, examples and the practical realization of each step. 

Why a Video Course? Because it is easier to understand and apply if you see with your own eyes exactly how everything is done. 

• We start with SEO, keywords and their search, their integration in content 
• We reach the on page optimization and the optimization rule
• We go through Copywriting rules in a Landing Page or in a product page 
• We are talking about persuasion through Figures, Prices, Discounts or Promotions,- about Increasing the CTR and Reducing the Back Bounce rate, but also about Remarketing, Automation or Emailing, plus Post Order Messages, increasing the payment rate, upsale and branding. 

Search engines have super-intelligent algorithms. They are complicated in a remarkable way. What do search engines do? Connects users with the information they are looking for. 

There is an amazingly large amount of information on the Web and much is added every day worldwide. 

How search engines display search results

We all used search engines without thinking too much about what was going on behind the scenes. We see results obtained in a few milliseconds. Search engines do this by analyzing words and content on web pages. They place special emphasis on words that appear in certain locations on the webpage such as title, subtitles, image attributes, general content emphasis, outbound and inbound links, and so on.

Each search engine can offer users a very different experience. There are several aspects that can be considered. One is the location of the user looking for something.

There are major differences depending on the geographical location. For example, search engines that are in both English and German languages provide both English and German descriptions for search results. It is amazing to think about how different people around the world will see the same search results presented in different ways, depending on the geographical region in which they live.

Social signals and search results

Increasingly, search engines are also looking at social media signals that contribute to the overall authority of the site. It even happens that a social page of a business is shown above in the search results compared to the page of the respective business. If a site is linked to Twitter or is mentioned on LinkedIn or Pinterest, this is just another signal that provides intuitive search engine cues about what this site is trying to convey.

Social media signals also help with online discovery, as you've probably seen on many of your favorite sites that integrate social sharing buttons. For example, you've been invited to share a webpage you've found on Facebook or Twitter.

Some search engines give more importance to social signals than others. Or others pay special attention to certain social networks.

Relevance and search results

When a searcher writes what they are looking for in the search field, the search engine tries to match those signal words and words from the large number of web pages it has analyzed.

Provides a list of matches that are organized by what the particular search engine recognizes from the most relevant to the least relevant. This does not necessarily coincide with what the user considers most relevant.

However, the sites at the top of the results are the ones that the search engine has ranked according to a wide variety of criteria. It also takes into account how many other people actually found that page valuable by clicking on it.

The vast majority of people who search for something through a search engine do not pass the first page of search results. In fact, studies have shown that the top five to seven search results are the ones that get the most clicks.

What is the conclusion? More clicks means more pageviews, more page views, more revenue, and greater recognition of authority in any area where the site may be placed.

Getting a search result on the first page is an optimal target for anyone who wants to have the product, application or website in front of people who are interested in it. This process is much more complicated than the subject of this article.

Search engines always rank results according to a complex set of factors that work together to bring searchers results that are as relevant as possible to what they are looking for. However, this process is not perfect.

We all know that there are times when our search results are completely useless and we must continue to filter and optimize our search queries to find what we are looking for. More than that we don't know yet why in most countries of Europe the search results are not often updated with new links. Or the content of SERP is totally different in the UK - mostly with text, vs. in the US - mostly with images, video, and text.

There are niche search engines that find what others cannot

Search engines to find content you can't find elsewhere

Niche search engines are tools designed to jump deep into the hidden or invisible part of web pages, which is not easily accessible through general search queries. These search engines will find content that you will not be able to find with generalized web search.

The following search engines focus on a wide range of content areas, books, medical information, images, books, mathematical information, etc. to discover resources you never knew existed.

Mathematics and scientific search engines

Whether you need to solve a complicated math problem or look for scientific discussions about eclipses, the following search engines can help you find solutions to a wide variety of mathematical and scientific questions:

- Wolfram Alpha https://www.wolframalpha.com/ - model your queries more efficiently and get hyper-appropriate results.

- Medical search engines such as PubMed, WebMD - you can find answers to your medical questions, to get more information on various health topics or just to learn something new.

Why is important for you to establish your strategy for Search Engine Results Pages - SERP in the UK? One answer would be to attract more visitors from search engines results that could drive more sales for you.

You might want to ask what it is SERP, why it is so important for your business and how could you benefit from its features. Well, if you search on some search engines in the UK, it is more than possible you will use google.co.uk. Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are the answers/results to your query. 

Don`t you think it would be beneficial for your products/services with SEO for online store to be on the 1st page? Maybe even in the top 3. Users tend to click on the first result (meaning the top 1 result) but not all the time the 1st answer is what they are looking for. Thus, they go to the 2nd result, 3rd and so on. To sum up, be in the SERP top and you will have more visitors from search engines.

WHAT THE SERP INCLUDES?

The SERP incorporates organic results and advertisements / sponsored results. To be in the organic results you have to take care of your website content, while for the advertisements you have to pay money. 

The user has the options to see All organic results or she/he can select only Images, Maps, Videos, News, Shopping, Books, Flights, Finance and other categories. 

WHAT EXACTLY THE GOOGLE SERP CONTAINS IN 2020?

- Ads on top and bottom

- Definitions and/or Answer boxes

- Rich snippets with longer answers

- Knowledge Graph/Panels

- Images and Videos carousels

- News and social media results 

- Local results

- "People also ask"

- Organic results

Lately, also Bing has a similar structure. 

HOW THE SELECTION IS MADE BY SEARCH ENGINES TO SHOW SPECIFIC RESULTS?

Google and other search engines must select the results/answers very fast from billions of websites. 

For ads, Google show advertisements related to a specific product/service based on a system related to auctions, bid CPC (cost-per-click), well-written text, target, trustworthy.

For organic results, Google uses a complex system with multiple algorithms and ranking factors. The most important factors are the Keyword context and relevance. In order to show your website page as result, your content must be strongly related to the keyword/query the user typed or asked. 

Each and every text, image, video your page content might have must be well-written and relevant to the user queries. Be an authority in your field and give to the users what they really want.  

Think that Google scans your website and might feature it in Rich snippets, Direct answers, Knowledge Graph results. So, structure your website accurately.

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR ORGANIC RANKINGS IN SERP?

Let us tell you from the very beginning: this is not easy but also no hard. Yes, with SEO (search engine optimisation) you increase your organic search rankings. Yes, your appearance in search results could be optimised to attract more clicks from users. How this could happen? 

In very rare cases, the ranking of a website is fast. You must design a long-term strategy to rank high in search engines results. 

The collaboration with an SEO expert for your website should focus on site indexation, site speed, site security, optimization for mobile, valuable keywords in your website, on page SEO optimisations. Find out more about How to optimize your website with SILO strategy. Search engine optimisation professionals implement the right strategy on your entire website.

Keep in mind to attract quality links pointing to your site. Control your backlinks profile. Manage the good links and get rid of the bad ones. Again, your SEO knows how to do it.

These are approaches for an SEO plan. The entire strategy is designed and implemented strictly related to your business needs by your SEO expert or contact our SEO staff.

How much it costs to promote a site on Google in Italy? In this article you will find almost everything you need to know about:

• Costs of promotion on Google

• Types of promotion

• Recommendations for efficiency

Important: SEO or Google Ads?

Related to the cost of promoting on Google, there are two different types of campaigns as a way of approach and costs.

You could have campaigns where you improve the site to reach the first organic positions on Google Search. This is SEO - it can be done either by calling a specialized company / SEO expert or it can be done internally with a dedicated employee / team.

And you could design campaigns where you promote your website by giving money directly to Google (that is, you buy advertising from Google) - it's called Google Ads.

SEO

The cost of promoting a website on Google with SEO
(by optimizing it)

Here, the costs of promotion with SEO are calculated a little differently than Ads.

Let's say you have a new site, and you want to attract a lot of traffic from Google. For this, you must be in the top positions for certain searches. The higher your site`s position is, and the expressions are searched a lot, the more traffic you have.

So far, all good and beautiful. Let's say you are 1st on Google Search in organic results.

Question: What happens to everyone who was on the first page of Google before you appeared?

Answer: basically, you sent EVERYONE with one position down.

Question: let's say that the first position is Auto.it, or Tigershop.it, or Unieuro, or Fiat, or other very large companies.

Do you think it's easy to take them down? Do you think they want to be taken down by anyone? Do you think they are not investing money to stay where they are and maybe even grow?

So:

The cost of Google's natural traffic (SEO) is directly proportional to the power and amounts spent by your competitors, who are also trying to attract as much traffic.

What does this mean? That if you are a small / medium sized company you have no chance?

Wrong. You're in luck. But only if you fight intelligently.

The logic is as follows. Automobile.it - for example - it's a very big site. It has about 240 thousand pages on Google.

For certain searches, on the first page of Google may appear www.automobile.it or the page www.automobile.it/km0 - thats if we search for in Google "automobile km0", "new automobile".

Basically, if we are a store that sells new autos, we don't fight with all the Automobile.it,  or the home page of the site, but we fight with the dedicated page on the Automobile.it for new automobiles.

It may seem like a technical difference, but it is the difference between success and failure when promoting on Google.

Automobile.it, or even Amazon, have big budgets, but they can't have dedicated pages for everything.

What we need to do to "be better than" Automobile.it is to find those expressions (keywords) for which Automobile.it either does not have dedicated pages or has, but, are not very powerful and can be exceeded.

If we choose to fight directly with the pag of Automobile.it`s new autos, then ... good luck. You will need it.

That is why I said that you must choose your battles intelligently, because otherwise you will not be very successful. Obviously, you probably won't be the only ones - there will be others who are trying the same thing.

A very general estimate of the costs of promoting a site on Google with SEO:

- for weak competitors or very specific expressions - several hundred euros / expression.
- for average competitors or expressions with average searches - between several hundred and several thousand euro / expression
- for big competitors or big expressions - from thousands of euro up / expression. (think about you are struggling with companies that have SEO departments with dedicated employees)

GOOGLE ADS
(formerly Google AdWords)

The cost of promoting a site with Google Ads

Important:
If you use Google Ads, I have to specify something: here you pay for clicks, impressions, acquisitions, and video campaigns, search, display, campaigns for apps, shoppping ads. Theoretically, you can promote your products and services on Google with 1 euro. You will probably take a single click and most likely you will not get rich with it, but there really is no minimum cost.

So how do you calculate the costs?

Google Ads is a "classic" way of advertising. You spend for advertising, visitors are coming. You stop to spend, visitors dont come. That simple.

What is very important here is that the amount spent should be less than the amount won. That said, by this way you "buy" customers from Google. The cost you pay for a client must be lower than the profit you get from that client.

Why is it important and why do I insist on this?

Because the cost of promoting a site on Google with Google Ads is VERY HIGH. Google Ads cost a lot. It's expensive.

There are many companies that do not recover their costs. Not everyone can make a profit here, not every product can be successfully sold here. This is very important. I will detail further on this in next paragraphs.

Now, how much does it cost to effectively promote a site through Google Ads (paid advertising on Google)

To estimate a cost are two main variables:

1. how many people are searching on Google those expressions for which you want to pay (to be displayed).
2. how much your competitors give to be displayed - not you - on those expressions.

How can you estimate how many monthly searches there are? (generally, monthly searches are used) Here, even Google is helping you.

You need to sign up for Google Ads and access the Google Keyword Planner. You must create a Google Ads account, but you do not have to actually pay money or start advertising. However, you will have a limitation if you do not pay. You will only have approximations - between 100 and 1000 searches per month. (that is, nothing in this world is truly free)

Look for the words for which you want to attract traffic and see how many searches are.

Whatever you do, no matter how you pay, not everyone will click on your ad / ads. Just a small part. Starts estimating from 5%. It's a very, very reasonable estimate.

Example: If your words have about 10,000 (ten thousand) searches each month, it is reasonable to approximate that you will attract about 5% of them. I mean, somewhere around 500 clicks.

The figure may increase or decrease much, but we enter into another complete topic: the optimization of a campaign. This is not the purpose of this article.

Now, there's another variable. HOW MUCH you pay per click.

Here, the approximation starts from 1 euro. There are areas where a click costs less (0.2 - 0.3 €) but also areas where a click costs significantly more (10-20 €).

It matters a lot how much money you make in that field and how many competitors there are. And here can be told a lot, but the simplest is to go on 3 scenarios:

low cost estimate - about 0.4 euro / click
average / general estimate - about 1 euro / click
high estimate - 7 euro/ click.

The vast majority of businesses in ITALY fall somewhere between 0.4 and 7 €, but there are cases with higher costs depending especially on  your industry (it is Advocacy or Technology or Health & Medical, and so on).

That is, if there are 10,000 searches per month for your business, a Google ads campaign could cost you somewhere between 200 EUR (500 x 0.4) and 3500 EUR (500 x 7).

It may be even more if you want to force a larger market share, but the amount above is an ESTIMATE from which you can start.

Do you remember I said that not everyone can sell anything through Google ads and that it is an expensive way to promote?

The logic on Google ads is not how much you can spend, but how sustainable and efficient you are to spend.

That's because ultimately, not all of your products will prove to be marketable, not all words will prove profitable. In general, it starts from the above estimate, after which some can be eliminated - products that are not sold, words that do not bring you profit, and so on.

Finally, most of the times, the cost of an effective Google ads campaign is significantly lower than the initial costs. Most often lower than 1/3 of the first cost.

Why so little? Because PROFITABLE on Google Ads is not to sell to anyone. That's impossible. PROFITABLE means to identify very precisely those to whom you can sell certain products of yours and to focus ONLY on those products and those searches.

Conclusion

SEO and Ads could help you to gain more visitors and sales from a population of about 60 millions inhabitants from regions (regioni) of Italy, including Metropolitan Cities (città metropolitane d'Italia) Rome Roma, Milan Milano, Naples Napoli, Turin Torino, Palermo Palermo, Bari Bari, Catania Catania, Florence Firenze, Bologna Bologna, Genoa Genova, Venice Venezia, Messina Messina, Reggio Calabria Reggio Calabria, Cagliari Cagliari:

• Abruzzo with the capital L'Aquila
• Aosta Valley (Valle d'Aosta) with the capital Aosta
• Apulia (Puglia) with the capital Bari
• Basilicata with the capital Potenza
• Calabria with the capital Catanzaro
• Campania with the capital Naples (Napoli)
• Emilia-Romagna with the capital Bologna
• Friuli-Venezia Giulia with the capital Trieste
• Lazio with the capital Rome (Roma)
• Liguria with the capital Genoa
• Lombardy (Lombardia) with the capital Milan (Milano)
• Marche with the capital Ancona
• Molise with the capital Campobasso
• Piedmont (Piemonte) with the capital Turin (Torino)
• Sardinia (Sardegna) with the capital Cagliari
• Sicily (Sicilia) with the capital Palermo
• Trentino-South Tyrol (Trentino-Alto Adige) with the capital Trento
• Tuscany (Toscana) with the capital Florence
• Umbria with the capital Perugia
• Veneto with the capital Venice

You do On-Page SEO optimization if you want quality and free traffic for the Spanish market from search engines like Google. Do you think a quality Spanish content in your site is enough? While remains a main factor, the content itself is not sufficient anymore.

What are the main SEO rules at the page level?

• On-page - which means improving ONE PAGE (or at the page level) and means making a better page for users and Google. On page generally refers only to the content, functionality and ergonomics of the page.
• On-site - which means improvements to the entire site - here are technical factors such as upload speed, common elements throughout the site (menu, header, footer, sidebar, and so on)
• Off-site - which means external promotion and links.

On Page SEO Optimization Strategy

1. RankBrain and User Intent

Important to remember - Think about what the user wants, the visitor who is looking for something for which you want to bring it to your site. Search Google and see what's in the top positions. Then try to do something BETTER than what's out there.

2. Use of keywords - SEO "classic" or technical

Important to remember - Before you optimize for one or more keywords, you must first find out WHAT those keywords are.

3. Measuring user interaction

Important to remember - the days of bad and long content are over. If you really want traffic and if you want your pages to have as much traffic in TIME, then YOU MUST EMBRACE QUALITY. Read about websites constructions nowadays. 

IN DETAIL - Seo on page optimization factors

1. On-Page Optimization Factors for RankBrain

• The correct type of the page - optimization factor for rankbrain

• Search Google for your word and see what type of page their users want. (commercial or informational). 

• You do not have to have a blog to have Google traffic. It's ok to have a blog if you deal with it and if you want to do something quality. Otherwise there is no point.

• Title attractiveness - another factor that is considered by RankBrain

• Better interaction with the site and the page - another factor for RankBrain

Recommendations for Rankbrain optimization:

2. Technical On-Page Optimization Factors - so-called old SEO

1. Semantic diversity and relevancy 

2. Optimizing URLs

3. Page title and subtitles

4. Optimize page meta-description

5. Use of internal links for seo on page optimization

6. Images - an important factor in the seo on page optimization process

7. Author's authority and expertise

3. Measuring user interaction

Practical recommendations for on-page optimization