2023 Guide for Digital Marketers: Recommendations From Top Experts
Digital marketing is already a field of constant change, so today it's more important than ever to stay on top of updates, understand shifts in consumer behavior, analyze data, and adapt to new developments because so much has changed in 2022.
We spoke to recognized experts in the field to learn the implications of AI's rapid entry into the industry and identify key SEO and PPC trends for 2023. To gather insights, we asked digital marketing professionals questions about AI technology, Google's algorithm updates, Digital Marketing Tools & Strategies, Core Web Vitals improvements, and E-commerce SEO strategies.
You can check all the names in the list on the left and reach their info by clicking their pictures.
What do you think of Google's algorithm updates in 2022?
I actually liked most of them focused more on satisfying users' signals, but I was slightly surprised by what happened on the 14th of December 2022 with the automated linkspam update, these have had some big impacts on quite a few websites and I think it might not always have been right. This marks a change in the way Google looks at the frequency of repetition of links and other patterns, this is actually a really interesting development for me (as an SEO) to follow.
Which different Digital Marketing tools came into your life in 2022?
There are a few I started using quite heavily; the first one is AlsoAsked.com which gives me tremendous insight into People Also Asked (PAA) boxes in the different SERPs, it's great for understanding users' queries and catering your content toward that. Furthermore, I'm really impressed with the Performance Insights tab in Chrome developer tools, it's really helpful in understanding what is slowing your page load for your users to the point of seeing the API calls or the element that causes the CLS issue. Last but not least I'm really impressed with Branch Tools, a great way to dig into Search Console data and overlay Google updates to spot improvements.
What do you think of Google's algorithm updates in 2022?
The algorithm updates Google rolled out in 2022 seem to be part of their overall efforts to reward 'good behavior' and minimize the impact of spammy, low-quality SEO tactics. The various updates appear to have a narrow focus on types of spam tactics, such as the Product Review and Helpful Content updates that target specific SEO content approaches.
Then the general core updates that Google rolls out seem to be part of their overall efforts to reward high-quality websites and downgrade low-quality content. These appear to be based on improvements to their machine learning systems from the input of their quality raters.
The way Google has overlapped some of these updates means it's become challenging, if not impossible, to isolate the effects of one particular update. Nonetheless, I think looking at the sites that Google rewards and the ones that are punished by these updates is helpful, as it can inform us of what Google intends to focus on in the near future. They can provide data points to help make business cases for (or against) specific SEO tactics to ensure the long-term success of your website in Google searches.
Did you allocate the budget for Core Web Vitals improvements in 2022?
While in most contexts Core Web Vitals are a small ranking factor, for news publishers they can be very powerful usability signals. Especially publishers that want to move away from the restrictive AMP web framework need to ensure their Core Web Vitals for regular, non-AMP articles are in good shape.
Removing AMP without having good CWV for non-AMP can lead to a significant loss of visibility in Google's news rankings, so this is definitely an area where publishing clients are putting their resources into.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
I think content needs to be useful and trustworthy, regardless of how it is generated. AI can certainly generate useful content, but trust factors often rely on identifying the 'who' and 'why' behind a piece of content, which is not easily done for AI-generated text.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
Overall, I believe that AI is going to significantly impact our (digital) lives moving forward. In content generation specifically, it’s super exciting to see what’s currently possible, but I’m even more excited to see what will potentially happen in this space in the future.
From a format perspective, I think (especially given the recent hype with ChatGTP) the most obvious topic is text generation, but we’re practically already far past that.
- DALL-E made AI for images a "mainstream" topic and the new April 2022 update, DALL-E 2, changed things significantly again. DALL-E will also become part of Microsoft Office, integrated into the Edge browser. In early November 2022, the eagerly awaited DALL-E API was released as a Public BETA – perhaps proving that we're in for a boom in 3rd party integrations. But it’s also Google with Imagen as well as others such as the Stable Diffusion AI who are continuing to innovate in this area.
- Additionally, a lot is happening with video. Meta has launched "Make-A-Video" video AI and Google is active in this area as well – Imagen video and PHENAKI are two very exciting programs to keep an eye on. However, creating videos is significantly more complex than creating images, because the pixels need to be created correctly and the AI also needs to predict how they will change over time.
- Finally, use cases such as audio (especially around voice/speech recognition and content creation) are extremely exciting. If you haven’t done so already, definitely check out VALL-E.
Coming back to text content creation once more: What people tend to forget is the fact that AIs don’t write content. There’s a reason why they’re called “generative AI”. Because they do exactly that: they produce (=generate) text content based on previously collected training data. That being said, they can be great tools for research and for speeding up certain steps in a content production workflow. However, you absolutely cannot rely on AI-generated output without human editing (including fact-checking, etc.).
Lastly complex topics such as detection (as in, has the content been generated by AI or is it an original piece of content which had been produced by an editor) as well as sustainability, training data bias, and more, are important to understand so you can make decisions accordingly.
In 2022, which different digital marketing tools came into your life?
Regarding my comment above on AI and content generation, the Peak Ace team has been testing and using a relatively broad variety of AI tools. Most recently we’ve obviously been looking at ChatGTP, but prior to that we’ve also been fairly busy testing tools like these:
In 2023 and beyond, as the power of AI increases (ChatGPT example), will Google give more accurate results, and in this sense, will the fact that rich appearance, i.e. rich snippets, are much more accurate in all SERPs create problems in terms of the traffic of the sites?
Those topics are not necessarily directly connected in my mind. Google has been very busy introducing more and more elements to their search results pages in recent years – most recently, those have predominately been more graphics-based and so have gained more attention; this is also true for rich snippets of course. However, while this graphics-first method makes a lot of sense for Google, it’s also good for the person searching. With the informational search in particular, Google doesn’t want people to leave the SERP after their query is resolved, but rather they remain on Google. And certainly, the quality of those direct answers alone still won’t mean a done deal.
For (or with) AI this is going to change, yet it will not be perfect in the near future either. This is partly because AI innovators - such as Google - need to solve the recency (or real-time) problem first. Right now, training data for big language models may be months or years old, meaning that anything recent would currently produce non-helpful (=false) output. Thus, current AI cannot help with this at this very moment.
Another Google-specific topic is their monetization model. It’s no secret that the biggest chunk of Google’s revenue is from advertising. Now, I am not saying that it’s impossible to e.g., monetize “ChatGTP-like implementations”, but obviously Google is going to be extremely cautious with what they’ll change and how. While I am certain that Google would be very capable of producing something that “feels” like ChatGTP at short notice, the question is whether they even want to. Google is more than suited to creating a similar tool to ChatGTP, with their very own Pathways AI as well as PaLM … these are exciting times!
What do you think of Google's algorithm updates in 2022?
When it comes to Google Updates 2022 has been a most exciting year, especially the last quarter. Anyone keen on reading up on officially confirmed Google Updates will be most interested in this overview. Of course, these are merely the tip of the iceberg, the updates that Google deems worthy of mentioning. Given the pace of releases, with typically several updates or new algorithms deployed every day, the actual total number is far higher yet. Interestingly, many of the 2022 updates seem to aim at improving SERP content quality, which is both in line with Google’s policies and a useful guideline for website operators. All these, official and otherwise updates are of course a contributing factor explaining SERP volatility. Google isn’t likely to stop in its tracks to rest on its laurels, which is why I believe we all can look forward to exciting new SEO developments in the year 2023.
In 2022, to what extent did off-site play a role in your Digital Marketing efforts?
In a nutshell, off-page signals were and remain a huge factor! Backlinks in particular are one of the key factors enabling SERP success. Or causing SERP failure, when in excessive violation of Google Search Essentials Spam Policies. Together with technical, performance, and content signals, off-page factors remain among the most important factors to be considered when conducting a preventive SEO audit.
When building off-page signals, including backlinks, it is important to focus on traffic-converting links rather than PageRank passing links. Being visible with authority in the niche where your primary audience is present will result in organic mentions and links to your website, as well as increased positive user signals for branded and non-branded search visibility in search engines. While organic search visibility grows, the positive exposure in the niche will also lead to additional conversions. So yes, with the right focus and investment in building off-page signals, you can have your cake and eat it too.
How to Create a 2023 E-commerce SEO Strategy?
Any SEO strategy needs to be focused on the input (your website's SEO signals) being sent into the Google search algorithms, which is ultimately the responsibility of the website owner.
Creating an SEO strategy depends on the product, the brand, the unique selling proposition, the size of the web platform, the developers' acumen, the allocated budget, the management expectations, the acceptable risk levels, ROI, conversion expectations, and many other factors.
Every SEO strategy is individually tailored, to the needs, requirements, and limitations imposed by the organization operating the website. In some cases, when the budget situation does not allow for a comprehensive, data-driven SEO initiative, an SEO strategy may even be put entirely on hold, in order to focus limited resources on what remains most important, which is clients and the product. Substantially large organizations, however, can start building their own strategy by conducting an SEO audit and by utilizing their last year's server logs in the process.
Focusing on the input (your website's SEO signals) for search engines is an excellent starting point to define, build and implement a superior, winning SEO strategy, even in the most competitive niches.
What do you think of Google's algorithm updates in 2022?
Definitely geared towards improving the search experience through the Helpful Content Update(s) (targeting auto / AI-generated content), and the page experience updates which many SEOs sidelined but probably had a massive impact in tie-breaking results based on Core Web Vitals. Those latter updates took up lots of resources with a minimal positive impact, but it's the kind of housecleaning and fundamental optimizations of code and platforms that SEOs should be looking at all the time, purely from a user's experience in completing their tasks on a page.
How should Digital Marketing Strategy be prioritized in the new year?
Focus on the metrics that matter to your clients as opposed to laundry lists of fixes, and prioritize based on returns that will actually make a difference to the client’s bottom line.
Which platforms did you add to your digital marketing strategy this year?
SEOCrawl
What changes did you see in HR for Digital Marketing?
Year of transition for many with some larger brands cutting back on their SEO channel (and by extension their staff) and many others still looking
In 2022, to what extent did off-site play a role in your Digital Marketing efforts?
Nominal. It’s still important, there were a lot of content and tech issues to be resolved across many of my clients, including re-platforming for better performance and content gaps around the ‘helpful content update'
Did you allocate the budget for Core Web Vitals improvements in 2022?
No actual budget was allocated, but time and effort were allocated as a normal part of SEO.
CWV was positioned as a tiebreaker but also highlighted some of the UX issues sites were having, as far as Layout Shifts and slow page loads for both the Google Lighthouse tool and user experience.
Having a ’score’ for performance from Google directly, helped prioritize additional resources, but they have pulled away from other tasks, not given additional budget
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
It’s here. And it’s here to stay. And a giant pain in the tush for Google.
The key thing about AI-written content is it’s currently not great. But it’ll get better and my thought is it will outpace Google’s ability to recognize it, and no one will care if it’s great for users, unique and valuable.
Which different Digital Marketing tools came into your life in 2022?
InLinks. Great tool for Entity SEO and internal linking at scale, done right.
How to Create a 2023 E-commerce SEO Strategy?
Great, totally satisfying content, with distinct pathways for users to dig deeper into topics, products, or aligned and relevant sub-topics.
User experience has never been more important and I hope businesses and organizations focus on user testing and listening to users to build their priorities in their strategy. User first.
In 2023 and beyond, as the power of AI increases (ChatGPT example), will Google give more accurate results, and in this sense, will the fact that rich appearance, i.e. rich snippets, are much more accurate in all SERPs create problems in terms of the traffic of the sites?
Maybe. Rich snippets are a potential path to clicks, but not the final goal of actual clicks. Extremely possible for Google to augment its knowledge graph and rich answers to cover broader topics than just facts, with subjectivity or objectivity ’scores’ and authoritative resource citations. ChatGPT data is too old for searches that require recency and Google is sure to introduce longer-form answers in response with real-time or near real-time data at their disposal… but I don’t see ChatGPT being able to provide a Google-like and Google-equitable experience without that data. Then there are the moral and ethical arguments that are probably for an article as opposed to a quick answer to your question.
In 2022, what innovations entered our lives in digital marketing in e-commerce?
Commerce discoverability is growing and changing at a breakneck pace. The rise of e-commerce and delivery service adoption during the pandemic forced retailers and commerce sites to adapt their approaches. We’ve seen them invest a lot more in optimizing and refining their experiences, creating more fields and opportunities for brands to take advantage of in commerce experiences, and making more data available for us to learn and optimize from. The seeds of things like social commerce and social discoverability have been planted, too, and we’re seeing the rise of search on all kinds of new platforms that marketers treated as separate before. Successful search practitioners of the future will have to be a lot less focused on individual technologies and ranking signals, and a lot more focused on the whole, connected search experience our customers go through – and how, why, where, and when they search in that experience.
How should Digital Marketing Strategy be prioritized in the new year?
We see brands around the world tightening budgets and efforts in anticipation of unknown economic challenges in 2023. I expect to see clients tighten their budgets, and focus on highly efficient, effective, and measurable channels that they can prove were worthwhile for their marketing budgets. Fortunately, search and content tend to be highly data-driven and highly measurable channels, and the people who prioritize their strategy and recommendations by impact and tie it back to core business goals will stand out relative to digital marketers who focus on the laundry list of search and content action items without any thought to how to prioritize within their limited resources. This is always true, but it will be especially true during tumultuous economic times.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
We have seen progressive improvements in machine learning and artificial intelligence over the last several years that promise to alleviate a lot of the manual work search and content professionals are doing. On the one hand, that can be scary – it may seem like human marketers are going to be replaced by AI technology. To some degree, that’s true – but really it’s the nature of our content production work that will change. No longer will our performance content writers have to write out hundreds of barely differentiated detail pages for product variants. Instead, we will become drivers of AI for content production machines. The strategic expertise of search and writing pros is still needed to make sure the “AI machine” gets the right search data inputs, the right guardrails for high-quality and strategic content, and that the output at scale maintains appropriate rigor and quality. Basically – AI content production is picking up speed. We can let it kill us, or we can harness its power.
Which platforms did you add to your digital marketing strategy this year?
We have been using WordLift for several years, but not to its fullest extent. In July our content team lead, Jean Marie, started to focus on better leveraging Wordlift for the FAQ section on Kalicube.com. The results were stunning: we more than doubled traffic for hyper-relevant search queries https://wordlift.io/blog/en/seo-case-study-kalicube-digital-agency/
We also expanded our use of Authoritas SERP API. Over 2022, we gathered several hundreds of millions of data points for Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels covering 70,000 entities. That data has helped us move the needle for both the digital marketing agencies using our SaaS platform, Kalicube Pro, and our done-for-you clients.
We are hugely impressed with both Authoritas and Wordlift.
In 2022, to what extent did off-site play a role in your Digital Marketing efforts?
Off-site is HUGE. In the new Entity-based epoch of SEO, off-site factors have become absolutely essential. There has been a debate in the past about how much off-site signals are helpful to SEO efforts. There is no longer something any modern SEO expert would question. If your company, author, CEO, founder or product is in Google's Knowledge Graph, then it understands who you are and, in addition to inbound links to your website, will use mentions, social accounts, and other third-party corroboration to evaluate your credibility (aka E-E-A-T). Since December 2022, Google's Quality Rater Guidelines explicitly define third-party sources as being key to evaluating E-E-A-T, we know that off-site is now absolutely essential to Google's Knowledge and Ranking algorithms.
In 2023 and beyond, as the power of AI increases (ChatGPT example), will Google give more accurate results, and in this sense, will the fact that rich appearance, i.e. rich snippets, are much more accurate in all SERPs create problems in terms of the traffic of the sites?
On-SERP SEO has been a thorny question for years. And in the next few years, Google's ability to answer questions and solve problems for its users directly on the SERP will continue to expand. At Kalicube, we maintain that this will prove to be a double-edged sword that offers immense opportunity. Smart companies that implement a brand focussed strategy will actually benefit hugely from Google's pivot. Why? Because people will increasingly research Google's SERPs. If you focus on increasing your brand presence and controlling your brand narrative on Google's Search results, you will gain IMMENSE brand recognition with Google's users (90% of people in the world). Google then becomes a phenomenal (free) branding exercise for your company where the ultimate aim is to get your potential customers to google your brand name. In 2023 (and beyond) your biggest SEO asset will be your Brand SERP. Google your brand name (or personal name) right now. That is your online business card.
Did you allocate the budget for Core Web Vitals improvements in 2022?
Making your site faster can't be a bad thing-- thinking about it as "Core Web Vitals" rather than general usability and speed can be a stumbling block. Make your sites faster and less frustrating-- we have a technical SEO who's good at incorporating those things into our strategies, and that's the way to think about CWV in my opinion.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
If you are thoughtless in using AI to create content, you will create bad content. There are ways to create good content with AI, but you need to have humans and data in the pipeline. Even ChatGPT doesn't create content purely using AI-- it requires training data and moderators to ensure that the responses aren't offensive or gross.
In 2023 and beyond, as the power of AI increases (ChatGPT example), will Google give more accurate results, and in this sense, will the fact that rich appearance, i.e. rich snippets, are much more accurate in all SERPs create problems in terms of the traffic of the sites?
This has been a discussion in SEO for ten years-- There will be things Google can give a definitive answer for, but there are also things that have no definitive answer, where people want multiple points of view (or a human point of view.) Sites like Wirecutter are good at this, making content that is useful, having a brand that's reliable, and giving thorough answers that Google can't compare to.
In your opinion, what was the most critical agenda in the Digital Marketing industry in 2022
I feel that ChatGPT is the beginning and end of the question. So I asked it to write me a reply:
In 2022, the most critical agenda in Digital Marketing was incorporating AI and NLP technology such as ChatGPT into marketing strategies. ChatGPT can enhance and automate various aspects of digital marketing such as content creation, conversational interfaces, and personalization, providing a more efficient and effective approach to customer engagement and lead generation. Marketers who embraced this technology were able to stay ahead of the curve and reap its benefits.
What do you think of Google's algorithm updates in 2022?
As for me, the last year was a year of Helpful Content Updates. We felt it twice, in August and in December. In a few pieces of research I conducted this year, I concluded that these updates had a prolonged effect. Also, I thoroughly analyzed the lines of business affected by the changes. The main goal of Google is the same — providing the users with the information they came for. In the era of TikTok Search and GPTChat, providing the most relevant information and shortening user interaction with the search engine is essential.
The second important 2022 novelty is E-E-A-T signals, an update in the quality rater guidelines. Experience signals were added to the concept of E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). As for me, it's one more step to providing more "human" content. These updates can change the character of modern content marketing.
In 2023 and beyond, as the power of AI increases (ChatGPT example), will Google give more accurate results, and in this sense, will the fact that rich appearance, i.e. rich snippets, are much more accurate in all SERPs create problems in terms of the traffic of the sites?
It's hard to predict upcoming events, but as far as I can understand, there is also a possibility of Google creating more AI-driven features. Back in 2021, Google announced LaMDA — short for "Language Model for Dialogue Applications". In 2017, Google Research invented Transformer, a neural network architecture used by many recent language models, including BERT and GPT-3. So, my point is that we can expect a lot of new improvements inside Google search, not only with the rich snippets but also with voice search or Google Lens.
As for SERP features, I've gotten used to "scanning mode" to quickly get more valuable information on the new topic, using observing reach results. But I will visit the website immediately as far as I get the most relevant snippet.
Running the survey about TikTok search, I got a few comments according to the more friendly and familiar format of Google search. So, we will have to wait until there is a considerable shift to other searching behavior. According to this, it will have the sense to adapt to the new conditions.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
Such content became a part of my automation and helped to save a lot of time. There is a common misconception that artificial intelligence can replace people. Still, it would be more accurate to consider AI users replacing those who do not use productivity-enhancing software.
The quality of content will constantly increase as soon as people realize that artificial intelligence is not a ready-made solution but an assisting tool that needs human touch and rechecking.
Our platform released many GPT-3-based SEO tools, and I could test AI-generated titles, descriptions, and the article outlines. So I can confidently tell that Google will rank the content following the user behavior and value to the reader and meet Google's AI principles. This is evidenced by the tweets of Google executives.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
Generated content can be a cost-effective supplement in some cases, such as technical support or Q&A. At the current stage of commercially available AI technology, it is however dangerous to utilize generated content on a wider scale, such as blogging, article publication, press releases, etc. Doing so has the potential to drag down the website's rankings due to content quality issues. And to alienate users who swiftly notice the difference between human-edited and artificially generated content.
How to Create a 2023 E-commerce SEO Strategy?
The 2023 eCommerce SEO strategy for a specific website depends on the niche it covers and the unique selling proposition that it stands for. However, any promising SEO strategy has to include a key component critical to the website's success in organic search. Among these is ensuring that the website performance meets, yet preferably beats that of its imminent competitors. No less important is providing and clearly communicating the website's unique selling proposition. Demonstrating how and why the contents of the website aren't readily available elsewhere is a critical step toward SEO success. Along the same lines is building and maintaining a strong brand. There are countless websites with through-the-roof impressions, yet no CTR to speak of. That’s because the users don’t know the brand or don’t recognize the unique selling proposition of the website. Last but not least, ensuring a flawless technical setup of the website is essential. It won’t matter much if the website is fast and does provide a superb unique selling proposition if it can’t be crawled, indexed, or served to users. This is why conducting an SEO audit is key.
In 2022, to what extent did off-site play a role in your Digital Marketing efforts?
Off-page signals remain important for Google rankings. First and foremost it is the backlinks that contribute in a positive way to new content being found, crawled, and indexed as well as because they can boost relevant, converting user traffic. At the same time backlinks, and legacy PageRank passing link building in particular can represent a great risk to website rankings. This is why in 2022 more website operators than ever were keen on backlink clean-up and mitigating the associated risks of a Google penalty. I anticipate this trend to continue in 2023 and beyond.
Lukasz Zelezny
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
I have a big problem with this content. It's nothing but an intelligent respin. It doesn't create added value. It just takes what was available to the point in time and mixes it to create new content, which pretends to create added value when it doesn't.
What we are currently calling AI in fact, is keeping us in the bubble of existing knowledge and doesn't move forward. Maybe the next months or years will bring a better version that can not only write unique content but go beyond that.
How to Create a 2023 E-commerce SEO Strategy?
As there is plenty of AI-related conversations, I think the translation of content is where the focus should be. These days, DeepL API is doing a fantastic job with accurately translated content.
Translating an e-commerce website to other languages gives a chance to reach other markets, previously unavailable.
Which platforms did you add to your digital marketing strategy this year?
I am a huge fan of InLinks. A platform that is a CMS agnostic system gives me the ability to improve internal links and schema markups.
For the mid and large size of websites, it's an undisputed champion of results as I can quickly deliver a high amount of relevant internal links increasing crawlability and improving UX.
Mehmet Aktuğ
In 2022, to what extent did off-site play a role in your Digital Marketing efforts?
It would not be wrong to say that we are closing 2022 with many updates and innovations, just like every year. But basically, there is no serious change in the expectations of both Google and other search engines. For this reason, we SEO consultants are trying to make a difference not in the essence of our work, but by making changes and strategies in their methods. When I examine both the different examples in the world and the trends in the websites of hundreds of different brands that we provide consultancy at Zeo; I see that quality, comprehensive and reliable content makes a difference.
I think this is why, especially in recent years, we have been using E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness or in Turkish translation: Although it has been mentioned in Google's Search Quality guides since 2014, we can say that it has been in the agenda more intensely due to the increased use of the web and the increase in content (visual, text or video), especially after the pandemic. So why does E-A-T play such an important role in SEO? In fact, E-A-T is a guide that Google uses to distinguish quality content. In order for Google to call a piece of content quality, it must meet the requirements under these three main headings. In short; it is useful to make sure that every content on our website will benefit our users, that it conveys accurate information, and that it is created by an expert on the subject, with reference to reliable sources. Recognizing that this fact will not change in 2023, we should consider these three points as the basis of all the content we will produce.
Another issue that occupies the agenda more frequently every year and that we will encounter in many different scenarios in 2023 is Zero-Click Queries, that is, queries that do not send visitors to any website after a search on Google. We are now facing this reality at a much more serious rate. According to research, more than 50% of Google searches around the world end without converting into traffic on any website. Either the user has already found the answer in the Google SERP, or they give up on the query and continue by entering a different keyword. But for me (and probably for many of you too) - yes, the user finds the answer in the SERP and doesn't feel the need to go to any other site. Especially if you have a blog, news, or a website that produces topical content, these developments may seem a bit annoying, but you have to learn to live with it. Even though you won't be able to get traffic to your website, optimizing your page to bring your relevant content to the forefront in zero-click queries and adding markups such as FAQs, videos, images, or reviews to your web pages to be at the forefront of rich results will be of significant benefit.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
But besides all this, the main topic that I think will clearly dominate the coming year is AI-generated content. Especially with Open.ai opening ChatGPT to the end user for free, we are witnessing first-hand how professional and successful content can be created by artificial intelligence. The main point to be considered here is the accuracy and reliability of the content created with artificial intelligence. Although the user encounters very fluent and meaningful content when they read it, it does not seem possible to blindly trust the accuracy of the content created by artificial intelligence in the short term.
The significant increase in AI-generated content on the web must have worried Google, as we often hear different explanations from reliable sources. One of the foundations of these is the useful content update they published in August 2022. Google's biggest concern, and indeed our internet consumers, is the increasing number of search engine-oriented content. In other words, being exposed to trillions of useless AI-generated content that does not comply with E-A-T may cause us end-users to move away from accurate information, while for Google, in the medium and long term, it will cause a struggle that may even shape its basic policies. According to The New York Times, Google has issued a "code red" over the rise of the artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT. CEO Sundar Pichai has assigned some teams to focus on developing AI products, the report said. The move comes as the debate rages over whether ChatGPT could one day replace Google's search engine.
To summarize, we are in the early stages of a development that will reshape the internet from the ground up, and we will soon see much more AI-powered content, perhaps without even realizing it. Considering the rate at which technology has evolved over the centuries, the acceleration in the last few years has been incredible, and Google has a tough act to follow. I encourage content producers and consumers to follow these developments as closely as possible.
Mert Erkal
How to Create a 2023 E-commerce SEO Strategy?
E-commerce SEO has become very challenging in recent years. Not only is there more competition for online visibility, but search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly changing, making it harder for businesses to achieve their goals. Google's updates in particular have become more sophisticated, targeting, among other things, the quality of product reviews.
An example of this is the introduction of the "buying guide" search feature by Google. This feature aims to provide users with informative content alongside product listings, making it easier for them to make informed purchasing decisions. As a result, businesses need to create learning sections on their websites that can answer consumers' most common questions and provide them with the information they need to make informed decisions. This can also help gain backlinks, which are essential for improving search engine rankings.
It is important to use user intent in keyword research to optimize content for search engines. Many SEO tools now show user intent when providing keyword volumes, allowing businesses to understand what users are looking for and create content that meets their needs. This approach can help businesses rank higher in search engine results and drive more qualified traffic to their websites.
Another way to improve e-commerce SEO is to utilize chatbots that integrate with search results in real-time. Chatbots can help businesses provide instant support to users and answer their questions, increasing engagement and improving the user experience.
When creating content for e-commerce websites, it is important to identify product queries to target with informative content by identifying directories that rank well or outrank your website. This can help businesses create content that is both relevant and valuable to their target audience, which can improve search engine rankings.
Finally, businesses can speed up the guide writing and optimization process by using content optimization features with artificial intelligence capabilities. These tools can help businesses identify keywords, optimize content, and increase the readability and relevance of their content, all of which can improve search engine rankings.
All in all, e-commerce SEO is becoming increasingly challenging, but there are a variety of strategies that businesses can use to increase their online visibility. By creating learning sections, using user intent in keyword research, leveraging chatbots, and optimizing content with AI features, businesses can improve search engine rankings and drive more qualified traffic to their websites.
In 2023 and beyond, as the power of AI increases (ChatGPT example), will Google give more accurate results, and in this sense, will the fact that rich appearance, i.e. rich snippets, are much more accurate in all SERPs create problems in terms of the traffic of the sites?
As the power of AI continues to grow, search engines like Google are likely to deliver more accurate and relevant results for users. This is because AI can help analyze large amounts of data, identify patterns and understand user intent more effectively than traditional algorithms.
In terms of rich views, such as rich snippets, it is possible that these will become even more accurate in the future, providing users with even more detailed and relevant information about search results. While this could potentially lead to some traffic challenges for websites, it is important to remember that rich views are ultimately designed to improve the user experience.
By providing users with more accurate and relevant information about search results, rich views can help increase click-through rates and drive more qualified traffic to websites. While it is true that some users may find the information they need directly in search results, there will always be a need for the more in-depth information and context that websites can provide.
Therefore, it is important for website owners and marketers to focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that can provide users with a deeper understanding of topics related to their product or service. In this way, websites can position themselves as authorities in their industry and drive more traffic, even in a world where search results are becoming increasingly accurate and informative.
Overall, the rise of AI and the accuracy of rich views in search results may pose some challenges for website traffic, but ultimately, businesses that focus on providing valuable content and a great user experience will continue to thrive in the evolving world of search engine optimization.
We can expect AI chatbot-powered search engine results to change users' search habits over time. As such, every brand website may feel compelled to include its own AI-powered, trainable and learnable chatbot. Even in their infancy, such services are already becoming available. You can use your blog posts and guides to train these chatbots and have them provide intelligent answers to the questions of users who come to your site.
Finally, in this new search engine world, it will not be a surprise that the work of SEO experts will evolve from search engine optimization to AI-powered chatbot optimization.
What do you think of Google's algorithm updates in 2022?
The last months of 2022 coincided with a very frequent update period. We even read that updates may take longer to complete during some holiday periods. When analyzing the sites affected by the updates, it was very difficult to decide which update news to attribute the drops or spikes to:
In Google Analytics, you can analyze the situations before and after the update much more easily by making notes specific to updates:
The Helpful content update was an update that clearly explains how Google handles all the details on the page. It also explained how to really show all the details and expertise on this page by asking site owners various questions. Since I have already written an article about this update, I don't go into too much detail; but whatever you are selling or producing, make sure you produce it in the best way and cover every topic. Even if you don't have any mistakes in technical SEO work, being incomplete here will prevent you from achieving the SEO performance you want.
I recommend that you pay attention to Google's EEAT metrics and include relevant improvements in your business plans. Spend a lot of hours if you need to, but don't close the business without creating the best page for your target audience.
An update to prevent backlink spam was also announced during the year. John Mueller has repeatedly said not to worry about auto-generated backlinks. Here you can use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to examine your backlink profile and reject links that violate the guidelines and are too spammy with the backlink rejection tool. I generally recommend that even up to the limits allowed by Search Console (1000 lines), you should definitely look at the links here and analyze all the links coming to the site and work to ensure that there are no missed spam links:
Product reviews update was an update that especially affected e-commerce sites. The details of this update are already available in many places. One of the biggest mistakes I personally see is that the advantage or positive aspects of a product are always emphasized on the page. Most of the time, the negative aspects of this product are not presented, even if they are small. For example, when selling the product "non-slip shoes", it is not clearly written that this product will not last in very icy locations.
When differentiating from competitors, for example, if you are selling a case for a gaming computer, you can show that you are different from your competitor by indicating whether the case has a Bluetooth feature.
Finally, core update announcements have already become one of the updated news we see every year. When measuring the effects of core algorithm updates, it is necessary to evaluate our sites not only technically but also in terms of content and quality. If the user is inquiring "how much are the skate prices", it should always be your preference to give them the answer they want without mentioning the rise in the dollar exchange rate or inflation. Google also recommends that you evaluate yourself about Core update updates:
Algorithm updates will always exist in the SEO world. Our action point should always be to be ready for these updates.
Did you allocate the budget for Core Web Vitals improvements in 2022?
It was a year in which we explained the importance of Core Web Vitals improvements and how they will impact our customers, enabling them to allocate extra resources here. Through detailed work with the developer teams, we took various actions to improve the bad metrics to good levels.
On sites with many page types, many different types of errors and work types emerged. For example, CSS & JS files and image files used in page types such as product detail, category, blog, and special page can differ. In order to balance the workload and feel the impact in a short time, it was a year in which we outperformed our competitors in the relevant sectors by applying prioritization correctly.
In the example below, there was a case where we increased the number of Good URLs on mobile devices by reducing the number of errors to zero over time:
We tracked how important CWV metrics such as FCP changed during the year according to CrUx data and if there were serious errors, we sprinted improvements with Dev teams. You can get better positions in the new year by paying attention to site speed and page experience:
In 2023, I also recommend taking a look at the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric.
How to Create a 2023 E-commerce SEO Strategy?
Unlike in 2022, sites prioritizing SEO efforts that prioritize more innovative approaches and user experience will appear more prominent. If you have not created a roadmap before, you should definitely create a roadmap for yourself to increase your organic traffic this year. It will not be useful to know exactly what to do without a goal.
Here are some details I can suggest in basic terms:
Identify the main difference between SEO errors and SEO improvements and adjust prioritization and action plans accordingly. For example, adding new structured data is an improvement; however, it is a mistake if thousands of pages are affected due to faulty code in the structured data:
Make improvements group by group instead of the whole site. For example, you can optimize the product descriptions of your product detail pages in Q1 as part of the content audit process. Instead of creating product descriptions with hundreds of words, you can create shorter but meaningful and effective product descriptions that will impress your target audience.
Analyze your crawl budget at a more advanced level and include enhancements such as If-Modified-Since in your plan. For sites with thousands of URLs, it will be useful to do a little more in-depth analysis in 2023 beyond standard enhancements.
In 2022, Search Console introduced a new tab with Merchant Center enhancements. You can definitely include Merchant Center improvements in your plans during the year:
E-commerce sites that we can evaluate within the scope of YMYL should make all improvements at the point of EEAT, from return policies to transparency. Every step to be taken can bring you very good returns.
Even if you do SEO in the best way, price can always be more important for users. In Google Merchant Center's reports, you can clearly see the status of your price policy according to the sector:
You can even examine these breakdowns on a category basis and make various analyzes to further increase your revenue from the organic channel:
In summer, users' purchasing preferences can of course change according to the seasonal trend. Considering the seasonality trend, you can prioritize the products and categories that can be purchased the most in the relevant months before June, for example, in your SEO strategy:
Tool: wope.com
Finally, the best strategy is to think about your users, not Google algorithm updates.
Did you allocate the budget for Core Web Vitals improvements in 2022?
In 2022, all our focus was on Core Web Vitals metrics. A special team was created to improve our page speed score and releases were made in this context. Even the flypgs.com homepage redesign process was planned to fully serve page speed.
In this context, in addition to Lighthouse and PSI, different measurement tools such as Dynatrace, debugbear; metrics, and terms such as LCP, FCP, and CLS were included in our lives. We transferred these at the senior management level and targeted ourselves.
As we detailed the studies, we had outputs that touched many different business units. In order to find solutions, we came together with 3rd party agencies and included them in the process.
We constantly informed both internal and external teams about the things to be considered in order not to be negatively affected by the work done.
In short, we directed not only our budget but also all our energy to Core Web Vitals metrics in 2022.
This year, under the leadership of the Digital Channel Management and E-Commerce team, our work will continue regularly with the support of our Pegasus Infrastructure and Analysis team, our Nexum software agency, our SEO agency ZEO and our Hype agency on the GTM side.
In 2022, to what extent did off-site play a role in your Digital Marketing efforts?
Every year, we devoted a large part of our SEO efforts to off-site work in 2022.
First of all, we rebuilt our backlink strategy with a focus on abroad. In this context, we regularly detected malicious sites and requested blocking. We identified broken links, reached out to the relevant sites, and took action to fix them, and if this was not possible, we took action to redirect the links internally.
On the content marketing side, we started to give more space to the content we prepared together with influencers such as Travel Trends, thus increasing the rate of sharing and interaction.
Considering the E-E-A-T update, we started to include more influencers as writers on Pegasus Blog. We also supported the pages from another channel by sending monthly e-mails for our blog posts.
We also planned and implemented the actions to be taken at regular intervals for the optimization of our social media channels and posts.
To summarize, off-site activities were as prominent as on-site for Pegasus and will continue to be as important this year.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
When we examine the content created with Chat GPT, which has been much talked about recently, it is possible to say that we can create more natural and successful content with AI in the coming period.
However, it is useful to keep in mind that AI may have limits. Because experience-oriented content, user comments, etc. play a big role in increasing interaction and purchasing decisions, I think AI technology will develop more in areas aimed at improving customer experience and will be used to speed up and facilitate the way experts do business.
What are your thoughts on content created with AI technology?
My take on AI and content is quite simple, these two things are gonna forever be connected from this moment forward. Is it a new tool? Yes, it is, but that is what it is, a tool in the toolbox for content marketers to use. That tool has a chance to make us better, but in the wrong hands, it has a chance to make us worse. In the same way that a professional with an impact drill is going to know how to use that tool to achieve an outcome better than someone without experience using the exact same tool. In the United States, we are at an all-time low for unemployment, yet we have self-checkouts, automated toll bridges, and Internet banking, and that tells me that even when we see high levels of automation, it creates new opportunities for those who are displaced, and those that are still in those roles will rise to the top of their space.
So my advice is simple: don't be average, don't be below average, because if you're doing the bare minimum of work then no matter what you do in life, you'll always be the first one to be disrupted or displaced by new technology. So when you're writing content, do everything you can to create an edge, interview customers, take surveys, use data in your posts, and have strong opinions and hypotheses in your posts, don't just write the definition of what something is with two or three widely reused talking points. Every time I write a blog post or a response to an inquiry like this one, I always try to create it first in chat GPT, and if it gets close to writing what I wrote, then I'm not really adding a unique perspective in the marketplace, and I shouldn't write it.
In your opinion, what was the most critical agenda in the Digital Marketing industry in 2022?
I think one of the most critical events of 2022 was GPT-3. Most people discovered it with ChatGPT, but as someone who had been working on it much earlier, I spent almost half the year trying to improve myself in 'prompt engineering'.
Especially as someone who is trying to make products in this space, it was very important for me to understand the value propositions that AI can offer us. Actually, I think this has been realized a bit late by our industry because what we call ChatGPT here is actually a version of GPT-3 directed by certain prompts. However, people seem to have realized the importance of this more as this interface has become understandable to everyone. With AI becoming so powerful, development in this field has become a very important thing, but I find our own colleagues' thoughts about the coming AI revolution a bit too 'safe space'. Obviously, it is a very important thing to develop a value-added process that can provide us with a very important interface to enable us to get computers to do knowledge work such as 'prompt engineering'. This task, which took up most of my agenda last year, will probably take up a significant part of our agendas this year and beyond.
Which platforms did you add to your digital marketing strategy this year?
As of this year, I started using make.com a lot. The automation that needs to be done is no longer just about taking data from one place and sending it somewhere else. iPeople are now very close to being able to take data, process it with artificial intelligence and deliver answers even to their customers. That's why I had the opportunity to create a lot of automation throughout the year.
At first, I was using Zapier for this, but then I started to find make.com much more flexible. Obviously, it has a bit more of a software-like interface, but that makes it more useful. For this reason, I think that type automation products will become more important this year.
It is also good that open-source solutions such as n8n have entered our lives in this field. It is a good development that such solutions can create alternatives for people working in financially disadvantaged countries. For many people, Zapier may seem like a cheap and accessible product, but it is also very important that open-source alternatives are available in countries with poor economies.
In this sense, I think n8n has a very good future as they have recently launched cloud services and they are progressing very successfully here. Apart from this, our new product wope.com, which we have been working on for about 2 years in the field of SEO Analytics, went live this year.
In this product, we are trying to create a product like 'Google Analytics of SEO' with what I have learned from my 15 years of SEO experience and with the contributions of the consultants at Zeo. In this way, our aim is to be able to bring all the metrics that need to be tracked about SEO together with the user in a single system by scanning their direct sources.
We've put a lot of effort into making this product easy to use, and it's really easy to get onboarded and analyze the benefits with your own data - you can set it up in less than 60 seconds without using a credit card.
If you're in the market for a tool, or if you're actively spending at least 10+ hours a month on SEO, you definitely need the many benefits that a rank tracker can provide. In such a case, I can say that I hope Wope will be one of the new platforms that will come into your life in 2023.
Did you allocate the budget for Core Web Vitals improvements in 2022?
When we launched our new product Wope this year, we paid a lot of attention to Core Web Vitals from the very first day, because most of the decisions made here affect the foundation of the system, and it is not possible to completely improve the situation with the changes you make later. You can only patch it and that's not enough.
That's why it's so important to choose a good performance framework. While the options we used to have were frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue, now there are new products that are added on top of these frameworks for different purposes. The first of these is Qwik. I have been following Qwik for a long time. The creator of this framework is an important engineering team consisting of the founders of Angular, and they provide you with technology tools that allow you to develop websites in a completely performance-oriented way. I think anyone who is about to embark on a major redesign project should definitely try Qwik if they have innovative people on their software team and are not afraid to learn new technologies.
Our new site for Wope has great animations and I think it's normal that people don't understand how we managed to achieve a PageSpeed score of 100 (both mobile and desktop) on a site that would normally load very slowly. I would have been surprised too, but we were able to achieve this thanks to the great advantages Qwik gave us and the hard work and ownership of Necati from our team.
This year, I expect everyone to invest more in PageSpeed to improve their experience because site speed will continue to be one of the biggest differentiators that distinguish us from our competitors.
Epilogue
Thank you very much for reading our guide. While we help you shape your digital marketing strategies in 2023 with our new guides and blog content, we will continue to be with you with the updates we share on our social media accounts and the information you can follow new trends!
