SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of techniques and strategies that help websites and blogs rank better on search engine results pages, such as Google, and in the answers given by Artificial Intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT. The goal is always to become the best possible answer for readers.
Showing up at the top of search engines and in AI answers exactly when your ideal audience is searching sounds like a dream, doesn't it?
A Search Engine Optimization strategy has precisely that focus: turning your content and/or website page into the ideal answer to what people are searching for.
That is what you will learn here: what SEO is and the step by step process to turn your website into the best result for both people and search engines.
To do that, you will see: (feel free to click and read the topics that interest you most)
- SEO in 2 minutes: A quick guide for the curious and for beginners
- What SEO is
- How search engines work
- Why is SEO so important?
- Ranking Factors
- How do you do SEO?
- Keyword Research
- Search Intent
- EEAT
- On Page SEO
- Off Page SEO
- Technical SEO
- GEO: How to be mentioned in AI answers
- How GEO works
- How to do GEO
- SEO Metrics
Let's get started!
SEO in 2 minutes: a quick guide for the curious and for beginners
SEO stands for search engine optimization.
It is a set of techniques focused on making your website the best answer for search engines and for Artificial Intelligence tools.
To do that, you need to identify what people are searching for and how they search when they want to solve their pain points. Every search is performed through a keyword.
When you identify which keywords have relevant search volume and the potential to lead people to hire your service or buy your product, you create a page that answers that search intent in the best possible way.
We call this process Keyword Research.
To have a website worthy of appearing at the top, you need to make optimizations both inside and outside your site (On Page and Off Page).
On Page improvements:
- A title that attracts clicks
- An eye catching description
- Quality content
- Smart linking between pages
- Good use of videos and images
- Demonstrating expertise and experience through real cases and examples
- Having an author who is a specialist on the topic
- Fully answering the search intent
Off Page improvements:
- Earning links from relevant, trustworthy third party websites
- Building a strong brand
- Being cited, mentioned and linked by relevant news outlets
- Getting good reviews
- Having your brand well referenced by the public
On top of that, to succeed with search engines and Artificial Intelligence tools, you need to structure your website very well from a technical standpoint.
This involves improvements that give Google's bots, AI agents and users a good experience on the site they visit. We call these improvements Technical SEO.
To track results and evaluate your strategy, we use tools that help you:
- Map and choose keywords
- Track your website's rankings
- Analyze organic traffic
- Map AI prompts and your volume of mentions and citations
- Run a full audit of your website and identify improvements
The main SEO tools are: SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz Explorer. These are the most complete ones, although many others are used for specific tasks such as audits.
Google offers two free tools for monitoring your website: Google Analytics and Google Search Console. With them you can track your traffic, rankings and the health of your site.
Well, if you only wanted to know what SEO means, this brief summary is enough.
But if you want to understand how to put your company, brand or website at the top of Google and inside AI answers, let's move on to the most complete and practical guide you will find!
What is SEO?
"SEO stands for search engine optimization, meaning it is a set of techniques focused on turning your website and blog into pages that search engines want to rank at the top of their answers. If they want to deliver the best answer to users, SEO becomes directly about understanding what people want to find and delivering pages and content that Google (and others) would be embarrassed not to present as the ideal answer."
Every day, people run billions of searches using search engines such as Google.
SEO consists of improving your website so that it becomes the best answer for the search engine to present to people who are trying to solve their problems or clear up their doubts.
The search engine's goal is always to present the best possible answer to the user.
That is why, if you want to appear at the top, you need to know how to prepare your website for it.
Why SEO is so important
First of all, your own personal experience is certainly an example of this.
What do you do when you don't know something?
Exactly, you use a search engine or an artificial intelligence tool. It is the natural behavior of everyone.
Everything we do goes through a search engine, whether it is to clear up a doubt, look for news, shop online, check a game score, research information for a trip and so on.
Second, search engines are used at every stage of a buying journey, from the moment of the initial pain point to the specific search for a product or service:
- Top of Funnel: What is SEO, Volume 4,400
- Middle of Funnel: How to do SEO, Volume 210
- Bottom of Funnel: SEO agency, Volume 1,600
Therefore, SEO is important to attract qualified traffic, generate leads and, above all, convert visitors into customers.
In addition, search engine ranking strategies are important for building your brand's authority with your audience.
Is there a more qualitative endorsement than having your website considered by the world's largest search engine as the best answer?
And finally, and no less important, if you don't do SEO, when people search for the problems your brand or company could solve, they will find the answer on your competitors' websites.
How search engines work
Google search works in an automated way, with its crawlers scanning the web to find websites and content, evaluate them and rank them.
So we have three pillars in how search engines work:
- Crawling
- Indexing
- Ranking
Let's understand this process better:
Crawling
This happens in an automated way through crawler robots, which search across the entire internet for new or updated pages.
The most popular of these robots is Googlebot. However, other search engines and tools have their own bots that also perform this crawling work.
In general, they navigate and are guided by links pointing to these pages.
In other words, the more links a page receives, the easier it is to be found.
Indexing
This is a process of analysis and processing so that crawled pages become part of Google's index.
If you have ever been to a library, you noticed that books are not arranged randomly, but organized by theme and author.
Content is interpreted and organized in a large global database, a digital index.
When a user runs a search, the search engine filters its content database to deliver the best possible results.
Ranking
This process of filtering and selecting what will be presented is what we call ranking.
That is where Google's famous algorithm comes into play.
It evaluates content by identifying its relevance, quality and trustworthiness in order to deliver the best possible answer to the person performing the search.
To carry out this ranking, the algorithm evaluates a number of factors. It is estimated that Google has more than 200 ranking factors.
Let's take a closer look at some of them.
Ranking factors
These exist so that the ranking process actually delivers the best answer to the user.
First of all, it is important to highlight that the most important factor is this: fully answering the question the user searched for.
In other words, answering the search intent.
I won't list here all of the more than 200 factors Google uses, but it is very important to understand which ones have the biggest impact on your website:
Content quality
Backlinks, relevant links received from third party websites and news outlets
Web mentions, similar to backlinks, mentions are important for building authority
Brand/site authority, the overall perception of your brand online
Author authority, AI tools and search engines place a high value on delivering content written by specialists and people with real experience on the topic at hand
A well structured technical foundation
User experience, page quality, information organization and ease of navigation
These are some of the factors that will most impact a website's success with AI tools and search engines.
Time to learn, then, how you can put your website at the top of search engines and on the radar of Artificial Intelligence tools.
How to do SEO? Or how to rank at the top of Google (and of AIs)?
I like to say that SEO breaks down into two main pillars:
What people are searching for
What people want to find
To rank at the top of search engines, we will follow this path:
Keyword research > content that answers the reader's pain > on-page optimizations > external optimizations (Links, PR, outreach) > optimization for AIs > technical SEO
Let's start from the beginning.
Keyword Research (what people are searching for)
Picture the scenario: you land first place on Google for "how to brush the hair of albino platypuses."
Something to be proud of? Of course not.
Because nobody is searching for that. That is why keyword research is essential to identify what people are searching for.
"A keyword is the way a person writes their question into a search engine"
| For the user | For the publisher |
|---|---|
|
|
Types of search
Every keyword reveals an intent.
And each distinct intent generates a different type of result. There are 4 main types of search:
Navigational Search
That search you run just to get into another site, instead of typing the domain into the address bar.
For example, you want to access a company's site, a store, or a specific social network, and you search for its name in the search bar.
Transactional Search
These are searches focused on transactions, meaning you are already searching with the direct intent of making a purchase.
This applies to products as well as services:
Informational Search
It is quite possible you found this content through one of them.
These are the searches that solve users' questions, and they are the most common. They are usually where AI Overviews show up the most.
They are typically searches with "what is," "how to," "why," "how does it work," and so on, and also to check information we hear about online.
Local Search
These are the ones where results only make sense if they are near the person who ran the search.
What good would it be to search for a Japanese restaurant in Belo Horizonte and get results in São Paulo?
The search engine itself interprets this type of keyword and knows the answer only makes sense locally. So it delivers a relevant answer based on my location.
And I do not even need to specify the city in the search.
Other types of search
These are the 4 main types of search, but they can branch into other types which, generally speaking, are variations of these:
- News
- Institutional
- Music and videos
- Specific products
- Academic searches
- Specific information (weather, date)
- Images
And there is more…
Head Tail and Long Tail Keywords
We can also split keywords into two types: Head Tail and Long Tail.
This distinction matters for SEO, because it directly impacts your strategy and how you organize your content.
The main differences between them are:
Head Tail
| Long Tail
|
|---|
A very important detail I like to highlight is that it has nothing to do with the length of the search term!
I have seen a lot of people teaching that long tail keywords are longer terms with more words.
The main factor that makes a keyword long tail is its specificity.
Which of the keywords below do you consider long tail:
Notice that the longest one is Pelé's name. Yet it is the least specific.
Vitor Peçanha (one of my mentors in digital marketing), although well known in the industry, is absolutely specific.
My name is even more niche.
Pelé, on the other hand, even though we use a name that is not commonly used, is an icon. That is reflected in the search volume of the term.
Take a look at the chart below (I made it for my SEO Masterclass course); it illustrates very clearly why we use the term "long tail."
The relationship is directly tied to search volume, meaning to the specificity of the keyword.
In general, the more specific it is, the clearer the purchase intent and the higher the probability of conversion.
Refrigerator brings a lot more traffic, but "Brastemp Frost Free Inverse 573 liter refrigerator" is a search from someone who knows exactly what they want and will very likely buy.
Now that you have the basics, let's get to the main part.
How to choose a keyword
I want to use a practical example from when I worked at Rock Content.
Look at the traffic of these pages and answer: which is the most important keyword?
Rock Content was a Content Marketing company. That was the service being sold.
Some of these keywords (KWs) had the sole purpose of bringing traffic, such as "resignation letter" and "Instagram image sizes."
Although relevant to the customer, they were far from the buying journey.
"Digital Marketing" brought absurd traffic, positioned Rock as the market's main reference, and was an SEO success case because we ranked first for the most contested term.
"Content Marketing" was our core business, made us a reference, and had good conversion.
"outsource content marketing" was bottom of funnel, little traffic, but an extremely high conversion rate.
Of all of them, the least important is the one that brought the most traffic. The two most important were the ones bringing the least traffic.
Traffic matters, but, seen in isolation, it is a vanity metric.
What to consider when prioritizing
Goals
Traffic, conversion, closing deals, sales objections. What is your brand's current need?
Search volume
It is essential to invest in terms people are actually searching for.
Using good tools you can identify good keywords and how people are running those searches.
But high volume is not everything. Remember, as we said, long tails may bring low traffic, but ready to buy.
Persona maturity
Does your potential customer already know the type of solution you sell? Do they need to be educated?
If they do not know it, it is more important to invest in educational, top of funnel content.
Buying journey
It is important to know your persona's buying journey. Do they usually search for a pain and not know the solution? Or is it a popular, already known product?
This directly impacts how you build your strategy. It is important to invest in keywords that cover the persona's entire pain, from discovery to choosing the solution.
Your domain's authority
If your site is already established and your brand is relevant in the market, you will likely be able to compete for any keyword.
However, smaller brands and new companies will hardly be able to rank for head tail keywords that are heavily contested in the market.
"For smaller clients and new brands, I always look for long tail, less competitive terms. It is a way to start building brand authority and a door to win rankings and traffic faster." Bárbara Coelho, SEO Mapping and Strategy Specialist
Competition
The more contested a keyword is, the harder it will be to rank.
Some tools show competition or difficulty metrics. Although it is not a number to believe blindly, it helps you find less contested opportunities.
(Caption: Example of keyword difficulty in the SEMrush tool)
If you do not have a paid tool, you can run a Google search and observe the brands that are ranking and the quality of the pages.
Unknown brands and poor content ranking are a sign of opportunity.
Keyword tools
To do good keyword research you need to use good tools. Even though it is possible to identify some terms using the Google search bar itself.
However, when you use a tool you get essential information. With them you can:
- Identify opportunities
- Check search volume
- Run a competitive analysis
- Identify how hard it is to win the terms
- Find keyword variations and long tails
For that, I will share the main tools in the market, split between paid and free. Then I will show in practice, in summarized form, how to run research in each scenario.
Best free tools:
- Keyword Dominator (excellent for e-commerce)
- Keyword Everywhere (browser extension, pretty cool)
- Keyword Shitter (lol)
- Google Autocomplete (already mentioned)
Best paid tools:
- Moz Keyword Explorer (Free trial)
- Ubersuggest (some free searches)
- QuestionDB (some free searches) (very good in the AI era)
Now you know how to identify terms that are worth investing in. That is the first pillar, what people are searching for.
But SEO is mainly about what people want to find.
Search intent (What people want to find)
Do you know why you use Google?
Because it delivers what you want to find!
If you were not satisfied with the results, you would switch search engines. The same goes for ChatGPT.
Satisfying answer, more searches and questions.
So the secret of SEO is not to treat Google as an enemy or as an algorithm to be manipulated, but to understand that you and Google share the same mission:
Deliver the best possible answer to the reader!
If your site is the best possible answer, the greater the chance Google puts you at the top.
Therefore, it is essential to understand exactly what the person wants to find and the pain they need to solve in order to deliver the best answer.
Let's see it in practice.
What do you think someone searching for "cute puppies" wants to find?
Images or videos!
And if the search were "most beautiful dog breeds"?
Lists, obviously with images.
And if the search were "dog scratching a lot"?
The answer is informative texts, to solve the reader's problem.
See? The user does not need to explain how they want the result; Google interprets and understands.
If you search "height of the Eiffel Tower" or "size of the Eiffel Tower," Google will deliver the same answer: 300 meters.
That is why what we call zero-click searches are so common today.
Google already delivers the solution right away, with no need to click on any site. This can happen through an AI Overview or some feature on the page:
For the search engine, what matters most is solving the problem of the person who ran the search.
Time to identify how you will apply this on your pages!
How to identify what people want to find?
The process of having the best page or content on the internet goes through two questions.
The first is: "What do they have that I do not?"
In this case, "they" are the ones Google already considers the best possible answer for the search you want to rank for.
That is, the top positions on the SERP (results page).
This text, for example, aims to rank first for the searches "SEO" and "what is SEO."
So I need to know my competition and understand what they do well and what cannot be missing from my page so that it perfectly answers the search intent.
We can notice educational content, focused on beginners. And a SERP that displays videos.
Right away, I know that to win the top spot I need content that speaks well to beginners and that a video can help a lot in that endeavor.
After that, I will visit each of these pages and observe:
- Which topics are covered
- Which themes are most recurring
- What are the strengths of these pages
- What language is used
- What is the differentiator of the first place
- Which media they use (videos, photos, infographics, checklists)
In short, dissect the results.
Observing the AI Overview and which points it found most important to summarize the topic is essential to understand the most relevant points for the reader.
Identified your competitors' strengths and already know what cannot be missing from your content?
Great! But everyone on the internet is already doing that.
Now to the second question, the most important one: "What do you have that they do not?"
That will be your big differentiator. Many Google results pages (SERPs) show results so similar that it makes no difference at all whether you read the first or the fifth place.
That does not mean they are bad, but that they are generic. They tick a checklist, but fail to deliver a clear differentiator.
While creating this content, I noticed my competitors used very few practical examples and barely mentioned tips they had actually put into practice.
Essential EEAT signals (I will explain shortly), but not evident in their content.
That could be my differentiator!
A text with personality, with practical examples, where each tip is not generic advice but is illustrated with what I have done (and still do) and that has delivered results.
Your experience will never be replicated by AIs or competitors. Use that as a differentiator.
And beyond that, look at what is missing from their page:
- Media: images, videos, infographics, checklists
- Practical day-to-day examples
- Success cases
- Humor, creativity
[!tip]
You can run this entire process with paid tools, such as SEMrush, Niara, or the Netlinks App.
They run this SERP analysis and already highlight the main topics of each competitor. Niara and Netlinks even create the content brief for you.
Or you can use Artificial Intelligence on your own. Write a good prompt, ask it to evaluate your competitors and highlight strengths and weaknesses and where you can stand out.
Also, upload the Google Quality Raters Guidelines file so your AI can study and understand what matters most to Google. Feel free to use this guide to educate your AI as well ;)
Use your differentiators to become the best possible answer for the keyword you want to rank for.
Do not settle for being just one more piece of generic content.
Speaking of differentiators, we will now look at one of the most important points in the SEO universe:
EEAT: Experience - Expertise - Authoritativeness - Trustworthiness
You have probably had some symptom and searched Google to understand what you had.
Imagine that during a headache you come across the following results:
Which of the two would you believe?
EEAT is a framework used by Google's human raters to analyze online content.
Yes, Google has human raters too, not just the algorithm.
These raters have a guide called the Google Quality Raters Guidelines.
The feedback from these raters trains the algorithm to recognize quality content automatically.
Within these guidelines, the EEAT concept is pointed out as a major pillar of content quality.
Think about the meme I created above: the internet is infested with "thumbs-up guys" spread all over, talking about topics they do not master and have never practiced.
Yet they read articles and replicated knowledge optimized with SEO checklists.
In this context, Google introduced the concept of YMYL, "Your Money, Your Life," to classify content pages that, if inaccurate or false, can cause real harm to users' health, finances, safety, or well-being.
Health, investment, finance, insurance, and life-decision sites saw an enormous impact on traffic.
That is because Google started requiring a rigorous quality standard for this content: EEAT.
It did not take long for this framework to be applied to practically every type of search, although with different levels of rigor.
Let's dive into each letter of this acronym:
Experience
Initially, the acronym was just EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). In 2022, Google added Experience.
This addition shows the importance of online content demonstrating far more than just theoretical knowledge about a topic; you have to show in practice what is being written or mentioned.
Look, writing an SEO guide is not hard. You can take the top 10 results on Google, build an outline based on all of them, and develop a text according to what you read.
Freelance writers do that. ChatGPT (not literally) does that too.
Replicating theoretical knowledge is very easy. I can write a step-by-step on how to drive a Formula 1 car without ever having even driven a go-kart.
What has to set our site/blog apart is our lived experience. You can trust the tips I am sharing because I use them and I have results and cases to prove it.
Putting, for example, Rock Content in first place for the most important term of that time:
Or getting Tray cited by artificial intelligence (more details on the strategy in the GEO section).
It is not just about knowing, but about having done it in practice.
Expertise
Expertise concerns knowledge about the specific subject.
If you propose to talk about a topic, for Google, it is essential that you are a specialist in it.
In other words, it is no longer just about creating good content, but content signed by someone who truly understands the subject.
Even if a medical piece gets the concept right, if it is not signed by a doctor, it will not have credibility with a reader or with the search engine.
It is basically someone taking responsibility for everything that was written, thus generating credibility for the content. The image of Dr. Drauzio Varella above illustrates this perfectly.
It is important to stress that it is not enough to just have a specialist signing generic content.
EEAT is not just changing the author.
It is important that the text demonstrates that knowledge, which should go beyond generic internet content.
Beyond that, blending in practical experience is essential to truly prove the author is not just an avatar with a name.
On the internet, anyone can say or have said anything:
Another important point to highlight here is that your content should focus only on the market where you have expertise.
Some time ago it was absolutely common for a site to dominate many searches across various distinct subjects. If the content was good and it got backlinks, there was a good chance of ranking.
At Rock Content, for example, we ranked for a surreal variety of terms ranging from marketing, entrepreneurship, Portuguese grammar mistakes, and even business management.
We dominated many markets back then, because the content was very good.
We hit a peak of 7 million visits in September 2021.
However, note how in 2023 traffic starts to drop. That drop happened especially in content that was not directly related to digital marketing, such as "resignation letter," "how to use Excel," "omnichannel," among others.
You can check the chart of other companies that had a similar strategy, such as Hubspot and Conta Azul.
Google currently places a lot of value on a concept called Topical Authority.
Your site/blog should cover content within your expertise.
Authoritativeness
Authoritativeness is a very important aspect.
Let's go back to the medical example:
Which of these two doctors would you trust?
Both have expertise in the subject, both have a medical license number, and both have hands-on experience.
However, one you have no idea who they are, while the second is a reference in Brazil and appeared constantly on television.
That is authority!
Drauzio has enormous credibility with people.
Authority is built. And in SEO it comes mainly from:
- Mentions around the web
- Backlinks
- Success cases
- Positive reviews
- Branded searches
The more relevant sites and people speak well of you or your brand online, the greater your authority.
Trustworthiness
According to the Quality Raters Guidelines itself, Trust is the central and most important element:
How many times have you visited a consumer complaint site before buying a product?
It could be a large company with plenty of authority in the market; still, you want to see what people think.
A page that demonstrates experience, expertise, and authority may still not be trustworthy.
For instance, a financial pyramid scheme created by great investment specialists. People with expertise and authority, running a scheme to deceive people.
It is essential that your site conveys credibility to your audience and to search engines, and for that some elements are key.
- About Us page
- Security certificate (HTTPS)
- Security seals (especially for online sales)
- Positive ratings on consumer complaint platforms
- Few or no negative mentions online (if there are any, work to reverse them)
- Comply with data protection regulations
- Have a positive perception on forums and social media
- Have a physical address (not mandatory, but recommended)
I like to say that good SEO starts with a good product or service.
If people like what you have to offer, you are already halfway to securing your credibility online.
How to improve your EEAT
Although with this foundation you already have an idea of what to do to build authority online, I wanted to leave some practical tips that can create an immediate impact for your business.
1\. Have a trustworthy author
Do not just change the author, but find someone in your company (it can be you) who has credibility to speak about the proposed topic.
If they already have relevance in the market, even better.
If not, build it. Create content for your blog, record videos, keep an active LinkedIn profile, take part in forums, and so on.
Do not forget to create a good author page, with a description and relevant links about your work in the market. Plus use a good author card within the content.
Here is my own example, which you will see when you reach the end of this text:
2\. Earn good reviews
One of the ways to generate more credibility online is having people speaking well of your product or service.
So encourage your customers to leave reviews on your products, offer exchanges, a discount on the next purchase, but make sure you get good reviews and in high volume.
2.1 Earn good reviews (UGC)
Do not limit yourself to review ratings on your site; remember that Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and others directly impact Google rankings and, most of all, AI mentions.
Having strategies to encourage users and influencers (from micro to larger ones) to talk about your products makes all the difference.
People love watching product reviews and seeing in practice what others thought of a product.
Word of mouth is still the best marketing a brand can have.
3\. Get featured on media outlets
More than Link Building 4.0 (I will explain later), Digital PR is an indispensable tactic for building authority online.
Getting space on media outlets (big and small) generates credibility for the brand and improves its perception with search engines and Artificial Intelligence.
4\. Have cases and social proof
One of the most impactful ways to show your expertise is by telling the success stories your brand has built.
As an example, check out some Netlinks success cases!
And whenever possible, collect customer testimonials for your pages:
5\. Wikipedia
The largest online encyclopedia is also one of the main sources for AIs, besides being very well regarded by search engines.
Here we have three main fronts:
1\. Create your own page (huge EEAT, it is very hard to have a Wikipedia page)
2\. Earn brand mentions on Wiki pages.
Easier than creating a page, you can edit existing articles mentioning your brand where it makes sense.
3\. Be used as a reference.
This can happen naturally if your content is truly good, and you can also enrich pages with information sourced from your site/blog.
To achieve all of this, check out my complete guide to using Wikipedia in your SEO strategy.
6\. Topical Authority
An important factor for EEAT is being recognized as an authority on a specific subject.
If you go to the emergency room with a knee injury, you want to be evaluated by an orthopedist, not a cardiologist, even though both are doctors.
I myself have been in the Digital Marketing market for years, I have written about Marketing, Storytelling, among other topics, but I am an SEO specialist.
It is important that you or your company/brand specialist goes deep into a specific topic in which you should be recognized as an authority.
For that it is essential to produce in-depth content, in different formats, with practical examples, with unique information and tips that can differentiate you and position you as a specialist on a subject.
On Page SEO
If SEO is divided into two pillars, what people are searching for and what they want to find, the second pillar can also be divided into two:
On Page SEO and Off Page SEO.
The first concerns all the optimizations we make within our pages to make them irresistible in the eyes of people and search engines.
Off Page concerns what we do outside our pages to gain relevance and authority.
I will present the main On Page optimizations you need to make to reach the top of Google.
1\. Quality Content
I have already talked about the importance of quality content that meets EEAT requirements and is the best possible answer for the user.
So, in this section, I want to teach you how to evaluate whether a piece of content is really good for SEO.
Answers the user's intent satisfactorily
Does the person need to search more to have their question answered? Does the content ramble a lot before answering the intent?
These are factors to guide your evaluation.
Well written
Generic content, written any old way, loses out badly.
Having well-written content, with its own voice and a strong brand identity, makes all the difference for credibility with Google, with AIs, and, of course, with your reader.
Time on Page
In Google Analytics you can track how long, on average, people stay in your content.
This is a great indicator of whether your content is interesting enough to hold the reader for a long time.
Bounce Rate or Engaged Session
Another metric provided by Google Analytics that works as a good indicator is the Bounce Rate or Engaged Session percentage.
Basically these metrics show whether the reader had any interaction with your site before leaving it.
A good indicator of whether your content has led the reader to practical actions on your site.
Pages per visit
This is a pretty cool metric you can track in Analytics. How many pages, on average, people visit on your site.
The more pages, the stronger the indication that your content has generated interest for people to read more and more pages on your site.
Backlinks, mentions, and shares
A great indicator of a content's quality is whether it receives external links.
Not the links you earned through outreach, but those that came naturally.
People who considered your post on a subject the best possible reference to use in that anchor text.
Beyond that, mentions of your content, shares on social media, and also comments are a great quality benchmark.
I will never forget the day a LinkedIn Top Voice I admire highly praised a text of mine:
2\. Title Tag and H1
Every published piece of content will have two titles, which can be the same or different.
The Title Tag (or SEO Title), the title that appears on the SERPs.
And the H1 (or internal title), which is the title shown once the person has clicked on your content.
Because they have different functions, I like to use different titles, although extremely similar ones.
The Title Tag is the first impression a person will have of your content. Its primary goal is to win clicks.
Because it is the first impression, you need to invest time in creating your title.
The H1 will have a different function, of reaffirming that the page really delivers what the reader is looking for, but it can go further and promise something more.
Take this example:
Above you see the title for Google's results pages (SERPs). And below, the H1.
The first has a character limit, so I need to communicate everything I want in few words. With the internal title I can go further.
On the SERP I place the keyword further to the left so the person glances and understands that content has what they are looking for.
In the H1 there is no such need and I can highlight the promise: reaching the top of Google and growing traffic.
Title Tag (SEO Title)
| H1 (Internal title)
|
|---|
And the other Heading Tags?
The H1 has that name for hierarchical reasons. It is Heading Tag 1. In other words, the main title of your page.
You can use various other subheadings in different sections of your content. H2, H3, and so on.
The importance of using Heading Tags well:
- Shows Google the most important information in your text
- Makes it easier for crawlers to interpret
- Search engines will define the main topics covered in the post
- Optimizes text reading (scannability)
3\. Meta Description
Besides the Title Tag, the snippet that appears on Google in the SERP results has one more element of utmost importance: the Meta Description.
As the name suggests, it is a brief summary of what is found on that page.
Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, but they can have a direct influence.
That is because their main goal is to increase your CTR, that is, to convince the reader that your page deserves to be clicked.
Beyond that, it helps readers and search engines understand the central focus and main promise of your content.
In the Rock Content example above, which dominated the top spot for SEO for over 5 years, see how the focus and promise become clear:
- SEO is the strategy to reach the top of Google
- In this post you will learn how to execute it, even as a beginner
The characteristics of a good meta description:
- Use the keyword (and variations)
- Summarize and lead the reader to read your content (clear benefits)
- Approximately 150 characters
- Answer the search intent
- Do not use a chunk of the text's introduction
- Do not mislead readers (never promise what the page cannot deliver)
4\. URLs for SEO
URLs directly impact your pages' rankings.
They need to be friendly and attract clicks, as well as make clear what the main topic of the address is.
They are what will direct people and crawlers to every corner of your site.
Getting this wrong can compromise good content.
That is why I am leaving here the most common mistakes I see people making, so you do not fall into any of them:
Avoid URLs that make no sense to the reader
mysite.com/9fgle5/e?HXED=itj95225gjt44yjkm5&=f#loaddelay
Avoid numbers in URLs
Imagine if you decide to expand the list (lol)
Avoid enormous URLs
mysite.com/everything-you-need-to-know-to-succeed-in-content-marketing
Do not use improper characters
Crawlers do not read special characters. Look at what happens with a LinkedIn post URL that automatically pulls the title with special characters:
See what happened to the word "diferença"?
Do not overdo subdirectories
mysite.com/marketing/digital-marketing/content-marketing/blog/how-to-make-urls
Well, now that you know what NOT to do, it is important that I show you the path to perfect URLs.
- Be easily interpretable
- Short and friendly
- Contain the keyword
- Aligned with the title
- Avoid articles, linking verbs, and other fillers
- Use hyphens (bots do not read underscores)
- Few subdomains/subfolders
- Do not use the date in the URL (content becomes dated and you cannot update it)
- Use HTTPS (SSL Certificate)
- Be careful with excessive redirects
- Whenever possible, avoid parameters
- Evergreen (a URL that will not become outdated even if the content is updated)
Some examples of good URLs:
https://netlinks.co/seo-agency/
https://netlinks.co/blog/what-is-seo/
https://loja.cestanobre.com.br/categorias/cafes-chas-e-achocolatados (category)
https://loja.cestanobre.com.br/produtos/capsula-cafe-mogiana-nespresso-3-coracoes-10un (Product)
[!tip]
> Warning: > > If you identify wrong URLs on your site, they can be changed. > > But be careful!!! > > When you change a URL you are creating a new page, with no authority at all, and Google and the AIs will not know it is the same page. > > To solve this, whenever you change a URL, set up a 301 redirect to the new page. > > If your site is WordPress you can use the following plugins: > > https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/ - To set up 301 redirects > > https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/ - If you redirect a page with many internal links, you do not need to change them one by one; you find and replace in bulk.Write the block text here.
5\. Internal Linking
Internal linking is essential for organizing a site and also for securing good rankings.
Links are the means by which bots navigate between pages online, so the more links a page receives, the faster it will be indexed and the greater its relevance.
The importance of internal linking:
- Shows which are your most important pages
- Helps Google find your new pages
- Makes navigation easier (users and search engines)
- Improves a page's quality signals
- Reduces bounce rate
- Increases pages visited
- Time on site
- Guides the reader through the funnel
- Increases conversion chances
Best practices for internal linking:
The closer to the home page, the more important
The Home Page is the most important page on your site.
That is why every page that receives a direct link from the Home is interpreted as a very important page.
A good example of how you can use this in your favor is what I did on Rock Content's Home Page:
There we had the most important links, such as our rich materials, courses, free tools, and also service conversion.
Of course, there was also a link to the blog. Our biggest asset.
Naturally the content is linked within the blog, but the main KWs I wanted to rank first for, which were very competitive, got direct links from the Home.
They pass authority between your pages
Internal links pass authority between them, so your main pages need to be the ones that receive the most backlinks!
It is also very important to remember that you should avoid making links with the same anchor to different pages.
If you do not know which is the most important, you will let Google decide for you, and it will not find any of them all that important.
Focused on getting clicks
Internal anchor texts need to be focused more on getting clicks than on a direct anchor match.
Exact match matters more in external linking, to gain authority for specific searches.
But prioritize clicks in internal linking.
Storytelling and conversion
Internal linking will guide your customer through the funnel.
Your CTAs always need to be designed around "what is this person's next step."
The person who is reading the content "what is SEO"
Bonus: is it good to make external links?
This is a common question. Should I risk taking a person out of my own site?
Despite that risk, external linking is very well regarded by search engines, because:
- It enriches and optimizes the user experience (which is Google's focus)
- It strengthens an argument and provides credible sources (E.E.A.T)
- statistics
- numbers used
- specific information
- Google understands your site better (what your market is, which sites are related to you)
Topic Clusters
This section could fit under either content or linking. But I believe organization and architecture are what make this strategy so effective.
This tactic consists of content groupings to fully cover a subject you want to be recognized as a specialist in.
These groupings will always focus on a main piece of content/keyword. That post will be complete and will cover an entire authority topic.
We call this post the Pillar.
The post you are reading now is our Pillar content on the topic of SEO.
Several secondary subjects here will not be covered exhaustively, but they point to other content that covers those subjects more completely.
For example, learn everything about Topic Clusters here!
Topic Cluster is a long tail, a secondary KW about the main topic which is SEO.
The first link in this secondary content should always point to the Pillar page.
And the pillar page links back when mentioning that secondary topic. See the example below:
Some of these satellite posts can also be pillars of other smaller clusters. For example, Link Building is a satellite of SEO, but a Pillar on its own topic.
- Link Building (Pillar)
- What are backlinks
- What is Link Bait
- Link Building tools
- Broken Links
This internal linking organization can have a big impact on your pages' rankings, in addition to showing Google how you are an authority on that subject.
6\. Images for SEO
Images are essential to a Google ranking strategy.
According to data from SQ Magazine, Google processes 13 billion searches per day and 10% of those searches are via Google Images.
Inside Google Search Console you can filter to see clicks and impressions from image searches.
A large portion of results pages show images, even without selecting the images tab.
When we think about products, images are indispensable.
How to optimize them to help your rankings?
- Choose the right name when saving your image (avoid DDC0097)
- Reduce the image size (they can hurt page performance)
- Do not drop them just anywhere in the text (Context)
- Use the alt text the right way
- Page title and URL
Alt text is the main optimization element of an image.
- It is what appears if the image is broken
- Screen readers (used by visually impaired people, for example) read the alt text when they reach an image
- It helps crawlers understand images
For alt text, the ideal is for it to be a description of the image, preferably using the content's main keyword.
7\. Videos for SEO
It is increasingly common for Google to answer searches by displaying videos.
Sometimes they are first place on the SERP, depending on the user's intent.
It is also worth remembering that the second largest search engine in the world is a video platform.
They greatly amplify content and increase ranking chances, impacting mainly:
- Engagement and time on page
- Reduced bounce rate
- Increased sharing
- Boosting backlink acquisition
Just like images, some optimizations are important.
- Choose a good platform (YouTube, Vimeo)
- Add transcripts and/or captions
- Put effort into the title and description
- Embed the main video first; just like backlinks, the video that appears first on a page is considered the main one by search engines
- Optimized for mobile display
- Easily shareable
One point I also like to highlight is to always use the video well contextualized.
Do not put a video on a page just for the sake of it. The video needs to be contextualized and fit well with the subject of that passage.
Bonus: Content Length
What is the ideal length for a piece of content?
Maybe you have heard that the longer the content, the better. To rank you need the most complete content.
Or else that nobody reads 10,000-word texts and that you should produce shorter, more direct content.
My view: there is no rule.
The ideal content length is the one that fully and satisfactorily answers your persona's pain.
So master the subject and know your audience well. The content needs to be the length they will actually read and deep enough for their question to be resolved.
I have won the top spot with 1,000-word content and even with 13,000-word content. You just need to know the subject and the reader.
Off Page SEO
If On Page SEO is the pillar of everything we do inside our pages to rank well, we have another one, just as important, which is Off Page.
Off Page SEO consists of all the ranking strategies we run, but executed outside our site.
Among the Off Page factors are:
- Backlinks
- Mentions, with or without links (even more important in the AI era)
- Social signals (performance on social media)
- Comments and reviews (external sites)
- Direct searches for your site/brand name
- Site and brand authority
- Influencer Marketing
It becomes clear here that a good part of Off Page SEO consists of good branding and ensuring a strong, respected brand in the market.
SEO and Branding go hand in hand. Both strengthen each other.
Good branding ensures:
- Brand mentions
- Natural backlinks
- Branded Search
- Direct Traffic
However, it goes far beyond what an SEO team or strategy will impact.
So let's focus this section on what, to this day, remains the main Off Page factor.
Link Building
Link Building consists of an authority-building strategy through the acquisition of backlinks on relevant domains (sites).
Each external backlink passes authority and trustworthiness to the site that receives it.
That is because a backlink is seen by Google as a recommendation.
Site X trusts site Y enough to reference it directly on its own site and allow its users to visit that other address.
And of course, the better and stronger the site sending that link, the greater the authority passed on.
Another important point is the site's market.
If a psychiatrist gets a link from a major health insurance provider, they gain a lot of relevance and authority from it.
However, if they get a link from Volkswagen, no matter how great the domain authority, it will not be such an impactful link.
After all, what does Volkswagen know about the quality of a psychiatrist?
In some cases, a link from a smaller domain but with a similar theme can have more impact than a link from a huge domain in a completely different market.
Link Building vs Link Earning
As the name says, Link Building is a construction strategy. You need to prospect, find partners, negotiate, and earn your mention/link.
A very important strategy is what we call Link Earning. It allows you to earn links naturally and not just through outreach.
Link Building
Link Earning
Prospecting and backlink acquisition strategy.
Creating a site and content that receives links naturally because of its quality.
The best possible backlink acquisition strategy is: having a site that deserves to receive links.
So let's understand how to earn good backlinks for your site!
How to identify a quality backlink
The first step in a Link Building strategy is finding good links to prospect.
For that, it is important to understand some evaluation criteria to know whether a link is worth pursuing.
1\. Domain/page authority
The stronger a brand and the higher the quality of its site, the greater its authority.
We do not know for certain all the factors and the weight Google gives them, nor the exact authority score a page/site has.
Nevertheless, some tools provide metrics that take Google's main ranking factors into account to estimate the authority of a site/page.
They are:
- DA (Domain Authority) by Moz
- DR (Domain Rating) by Ahrefs
- AS (Authority Score) by SEMrush
- Rank by DataForSEO
- Netscore by Netlinks (which is basically an average of all the others)
There is no right value for considering a domain good or not.
It is worth comparing with sites in your market, sites of relevant brands, medium and small, to understand, within your context, what a good domain is.
2\. Natural link
The quality of a link depends a lot on how natural it is within the page's context.
For example, in this content I made several natural links to tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush.
But imagine you go to the footer of a marketing site and find a link to "FIAT cars."
That is not the kind of link you want to earn.
3\. Anchor text
Another important factor in the anatomy of a perfect backlink is the anchor text.
The anchor text basically tells Google: this link answers this specific question.
That is, if Google finds a backlink with the anchor "keyword tool," it understands that the page receiving that link answers the search "keyword tool."
But be careful!
Always receiving links with the exact keyword (exact match) can be a sign of algorithm manipulation.
It is good to vary anchors to have a natural-looking link profile and not raise black hat suspicions from the search engine.
Prioritize links that contextualize your page and sound natural within the partner's content.
Avoid generic links like "click here," "learn more," etc.
And the link with the address, without an anchor (e.g.: https://netlinks.co/blog/what-is-seo/).
4\. Link type (Follow/Nofollow)
In a page's code, each link will have an attribute called "rel," which is short for relationship.
This rel shows the search engine what the link's relationship is with the page being pointed to.
We have some types, such as sponsored, which means that link was sponsored.
Here we want to focus on two very important ones: follow and nofollow.
A follow backlink is the one that passes relevance to the page it points to. It says, I am directing people there and I affirm the site is genuinely good!
Nofollow is the one that does not pass authority to the page it points to. At least, not explicitly.
The ideal link, and the one we want to receive, is obviously the follow. It passes more authority and has a far greater impact on rankings.
But that does not mean receiving a nofollow is not good. It is worth receiving this type of link, especially from large domains.
Even though it does not pass authority explicitly, it passes it indirectly. Even if that domain is not endorsing your site, it trusted you enough to cite you.
5\. Link position on the page
The closer to the top of the page, the more relevant. It is no accident that the most important links on your site are in the header.
The same happens in content.
The first link that appears is the most important, the one that receives the most authority. It is as if that authority gets diluted link by link.
So getting a link on a page full of external links where your link is in a poorly privileged position is not ideal.
And if you send a guest post (I will explain later), make few links, or just one, to focus the authority gain on the page that matters most to your strategy at that moment.
6\. New domain
Do not confuse this with a young domain!
Older domains usually have more authority.
By new, I mean previously untapped. New links you have never received before. Domain variety is a decisive factor in building authority.
5 links from 5 new domains are worth more than 10 links from a single domain you already had links from.
So, best practices to secure good links:
- Links from new domains with good authority
- Within your market
- Links your competitor has and you do not
- List your main pages and track positions
Link Building tools
For a good link acquisition strategy you need a good tool.
Through them you:
- Track the links you receive and their quality
- Evaluate the volume of backlinks, their quality, type, and anchors
- Map opportunities and analyze the quality of potential partners
- Compare your profile with competitors' (and steal their partners)
- Evaluate partners' authority
Among the best in the market are Ahrefs (for links, I think it is the best), SEMrush, Majestic, Link Explorer, among others.
Link Building Methods
I will briefly go over some methods you can use to earn good backlinks.
1\. Link Bait
As I said, there is no better way to get a backlink than to deserve a backlink.
Link Bait consists of producing content so good that the mere fact it exists already creates a strong chance of it being linked to.
It needs to generate value and have a differentiator from everything else.
Value can come from:
- Extremely in-depth content
- Practical examples only you can give
- Exclusive data
- Research
- Original charts and images
- A free tool
2\. Guest blogging
Just like SEO, guest posts have died many times.
Just like SEO, they remain very relevant.
A guest post consists of publishing content on a third-party site as a guest.
Beyond backlinks, you reach and engage with a new audience.
They need to generate value and have quality; after all, it will be your showcase to a new audience.
To find good partners, just follow the tips I gave on how to identify quality backlinks.
3\. Broken links
This tactic consists of going into relevant sites where you would like a link, finding broken links, and suggesting one of your pages to replace the current one.
For that, you can use a tool like Check My Links or Check Broken Links and run them on potential partners' pages.
When you find a broken link for which you have the perfect content to replace it, just reach out to the partner and hope for the best.
4\. Digital PR
Digital PR is not exactly a Link Building strategy; after all, good online public relations work is essential for:
- Increasing EEAT (authority building), as already mentioned
- Mentions on relevant media outlets (essential to be cited by AIs)
- Gaining visibility and recognition from people who have never heard of your brand
- Acquiring links that boost your domain's authority
However, of all the links you earn, backlinks acquired on large media outlets are among the most relevant.
News outlets have credibility and authority, both for search engines and for AIs.
Technical SEO
If On Page SEO and Off Page SEO are the two pillars of the SEO strategy, they rest on a foundation that supports everything.
That foundation is what we call Technical SEO.
Although it is not the big differentiator for putting a site at the top of Google, without it you do not even show up.
This technical part is what ensures your site will be crawlable and indexable.
It improves how crawlers understand your site and directly impacts the experience of bots, AI agents, and people who visit your site.
Let's understand the main technical aspects for your site to win over Google's crawlers.
Sitemap
The sitemap is a file or text document developed to make it easier for search engines to index pages.
It matters because:
- It is the structural map of your site
- It shows the search engine the hierarchy of your pages
- It makes crawler navigation easier
To create a sitemap you can use a sitemap generator, a reliable AI (preferably paid), or a WordPress plugin (such as Yoast or Google XML Sitemaps)
Site architecture
The sitemap needs to reflect your site's Architecture.
This architecture will determine the browsing experience for the search engine, AI agents, and your users.
It needs to present the hierarchy of your pages.
The home page is the site's main page, the one with the most authority.
This page needs to link to the most important pages, such as categories, service page, about us, blog, etc.
Home Page
Refrigerator Laptops Television
Brastemp X - Consul Y Dell X - Acer Y - Macbook Z Philips X - Samsung Y
Pagespeed
This metric is one of the most important for search engines, as it reflects a site's loading speed.
A slow site is a nightmare for user experience. We live in an era of immediacy.
And the algorithm reflects its users' impatience.
To measure your Pagespeed and get improvement insights you can use Pagespeed Insights, Google's own tool:
You can also use the following tools for comparison and other suggestions:
- GTMetrix
- Pingdom
- Web Page Test
Main elements that impact performance:
- Script loading
- File minification (JS, CSS, and HTML)
- Compressing images (tinypng, smush plugin)
- Critical CSS
- CDN
- Cache
- Hosting
Optimization is essential, but the idea is not to think your competitor ranks better because their performance score is 97 while yours is 92.
It is not about having the best, but about having enough performance not to be excluded from search engines.
Obviously the goal is always to get as close to 100 as possible, but it is important to clarify that one point more or less will not have a big impact on rankings.
Fast Pagespeed does not make you rank above competitors\. But bad Pagespeed guarantees you\ never will\.\
Mobile Optimization
Since March 2018 Google has adopted what we call Mobile First Index, meaning Google prioritizes indexing pages in their Mobile version.
Currently, Google only indexes sites with Mobile pages. In other words, if you do not have a site that performs well on phones, you will not appear at the top of search engines.
Some practices are essential for a site to perform well on mobile:
- Responsive site
- Image compression
- Use fonts optimized for mobile
- Minification of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
- Simplified navigation
- Content scannability
You can test your site using the Mobile Friendly Test tool.
Use Schema markups
Schema Markup is a type of structured data code that makes it easier for search engine crawlers to read and understand your site.
Beyond that, these optimizations are what make it easier for search engines to build snippets to display your site on the SERPs.
Snippets like those from recipe sites:
Which display ingredients, rating, and recipe cooking time.
And also product snippets, like on Google Shopping:
Google itself provides guides for building Schemas for each different type of page.
User Experience
I have already said that Google's goal is to present the best possible answer to the reader.
This concerns not only the quality of the content or the product offered, but also the quality of the experience the person has on the site.
The simpler, smoother, more intuitive, and more pleasant, the better. The more time a person spends on the site and the more pages they visit, the higher the quality of that experience.
GEO: how to get mentioned in AI answers
"GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, refers to a set of techniques used to make your website and your brand get cited and/or recommended by the leading Artificial Intelligences on the market"
In 2025 SEO died.
For the fortieth time. It dies a lot.
In 2025 its death happened because of the boom in queries through generative AIs.
But just like in every other SEO death, it stayed alive and well right next to its own coffin.
AIs did not kill SEO, they expanded the possibilities for people to find answers and solutions to their problems.
If before SEO was basically about optimizing to rank on Google, today, when we think about search engines (even though technically not all of them are), we have several channels where people clear up their doubts and find solutions.
People's behavior is changing.
ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others are winning over more and more users who previously would solve most of their prompts using Google.
And if you are not prepared to optimize your website and the perception the market has of your brand, you will probably be invisible to AIs.
But relax, I am going to teach you the main practices to put your website on the radar of ChatGPT and your favorite AI (and all the others).
These optimizations are what we call GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), also known as AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization).
I like to call it SEO for AIs. After all, the idea is still to become the best possible answer to your persona's questions/searches.
So let's understand how to show up in AIs!
How GEO works (SEO for Artificial Intelligences)
Before getting into the techniques, I need you to understand how generative AIs work.
Unlike search engines, AIs do not work through the crawling, indexing and ranking process.
AIs interpret a question, understand the context and build a direct answer.
LLMs enable this capability by processing natural language queries as complete sentences, instead of isolated terms.
This process is called Query Fan-Out, which would be something like "query branching."
For example, you run a main search and, to deliver the best possible answer, the AI itself will run other queries to build that answer. It would look more or less like this:
Main Search
"What is the best e-commerce platform for mid-sized companies?"
Branching Process (Query Fan-Out) or Query Branching
- Query A: "List of the best e-commerce platforms"
- Query B: "Which platform has the most integrations"
- Query C: "Tray or Nuvemshop?"
- Query D: "Shopify or Tray?"
- Query E: "Is Tray reliable?"
- Query F: "Which companies use platform X?"
- Query G: "Tray complaints board"
Final Answer: Synthesis of the collected data
If they work differently, then, is the formula for success also different?
Not necessarily.
The foundation for showing up in AIs is already having a successful SEO strategy.
Therefore, everything you have seen so far has the potential to get your company/brand cited by AIs.
But, of course, a GEO strategy is not limited to traditional SEO!
How to do SEO for Artificial Intelligences (GEO)?
A GEO strategy starts with good SEO, but it does not stop there. It is important to understand all the sources that impact an AI's query process when it puts together an answer about your market.
That is why the first step is fundamental to success.
1\. Understand the perception the market has of your brand
The first step is essential to understand what AIs think about your brand, your competitors and, above all, which sources they use to compose their answers.
For example:
The Chat gave me several options, always citing a source where it got the information.
Test different prompts and see when and how your brand was cited.
You can use Netlinks' free tool to run a test with random prompts across several AIs at the same time to understand the perception of your brand.
Also, try some searches asking directly about your brand to understand how the AI perceives it.
Check out the investigation I did on my own name:
It is important to understand how AIs perceive you and, mainly, the sources they are using to draw conclusions about your brand.
Also visit websites and forums that you know host discussions and reviews about products in general, even if, at first, they have not been cited directly.
Sites like Reddit, YouTube, TikTok and so on.
See how different videos have over 100 thousand views on TikTok with boxing glove comparisons.
Or the number of discussions on Reddit about a specific Whey Protein brand:
Let's dig a little deeper into the importance of UGC.
2\. Earn user-generated content (UGC)
People care about what other people think and about the experiences they have had.
How many times have you decided whether to buy something based on reviews, a friend's opinion, an influencer's opinion and so on?
It is no coincidence that Reddit is one of the main sources cited in AI searches.
Ratings on Google reviews, on complaint platforms and on other similar channels directly impact whether AIs consider a brand trustworthy or not.
Look at this example: when searching for the best accounting firms in São Paulo, ChatGPT presented me with a ranking based on Google Reviews:
In the case of software, it may use information from Crunchbase, Capterra or G2.
And if you own an inn, it is important to have good reviews on Yelp, Hotel.com, Tripadvisor and booking.com.
Identify where your persona gets information, because that is most likely where AIs will look for reviews and user-generated content.
While investigating a friend's candy shop, the iFood rating and even TikTok were used as references:
So earning good reviews is essential to gain credibility with AIs.
Encourage your customers to talk about you, go the extra mile in service and delivery, offer gifts and discounts for reviews, do trades, hire niche influencers, but do not settle for having no one speaking well of you on the internet.
Especially where your potential customers and the AIs are getting their information.
3\. Build good partnerships
Have good partners within your market.
When large companies and relevant websites talk about your brand, that boosts your relevance and credibility with AIs.
Look at this example, ChatGPT citing a guest post I wrote on their blog while I was at Tray:
And Perplexity citing it too, but a different guest post, with the same topic on King Host's blog:
Never let anyone tell you that guest posts are dead (haha).
These examples show the power of a good partnership and how relevant brands influence the answers of generative AIs.
4\. Produce quality content
Although I already covered this in the traditional SEO strategy, it is worth reinforcing here.
Quality content is an education tool for Artificial Intelligences.
Besides making them trust your brand more while they use it to compose their answers, it gives you visibility and can still generate clicks to your website:
The example above shows Perplexity citing Tray as a source in an informational prompt about suppliers from China.
A relevant search for store owners who, even without clicking the reference, saw Tray positioned as an authority in the market.
The same content was also cited in AI Overviews:
This works with top-of-funnel informational content and also with bottom-of-funnel content.
Look at this example for the bottom-of-funnel search: e-commerce platforms.
Tray cited as the main reference for one of the most relevant searches in the market, thanks to quality content.
5\. Earn co-citations
Read the following sentence:
"To keep your food cold, the ideal thing is to store it in a refrigerator, like a Brastemp, Electrolux, Consul or Matheus Pereira Refrigerators"
Do you know the brand "Matheus Pereira Refrigerators"?
No. But it seems trustworthy, right?
After all, it was cited alongside the leading refrigerator brands on the market.
That same impact can be created in AIs.
So if you manage to get your brand cited alongside major market players, it will be perceived as reliable and high quality.
Besides that, you can find sites where your competitors are cited and you are not. Do not let them be cited alone (haha).
[!tip]
Use Google Alerts to create alerts for your competitors' names to identify places where they are cited and you are not.
[img:fe1ca6e4]
Then go after it and get them to cite you too!
6\. EEAT, Digital PR and Link Building
All these factors have already been mentioned as fundamental to traditional SEO, but they deserve a reinforcement here.
All this work of acquiring relevant links, press citations and building authority for your brand's specialists is essential to being cited by AIs.
One of the first things AIs evaluate is who wrote the content they are citing.
Just like with Google, an author carries a lot of weight when it comes to being considered a good reference.
Thinking about AIs, earning only backlinks may not be enough, which is why PR work should focus on brand mentions along with a specialist tied to it.
Look at this example from Tray:
Their director is so relevant that Carta Capital used a quote from him to reinforce an argument and educate the market.
That builds credibility with AIs.
Do not settle for just getting links to specific anchor texts. That impacts search engines, but not so much AIs.
The focus here is to be used as a reference, to have your specialists become references in the market.
Well, now you know how to do SEO for search engines and for Artificial Intelligences.
But knowing how to do it is not enough. You need to know how to measure your strategy.
SEO Metrics: how to measure your SEO and GEO results
To identify whether an SEO strategy is succeeding, it is essential to know which metrics matter and how to analyze them well.
Traffic is no longer the metric of SEO success, especially in an era with fewer and fewer clicks.
Besides, traffic for the sake of traffic is a vanity metric. There is no point in having plenty of visits if they do not generate business.
So which metrics really matter?
Let's break this data into groups:
- Traffic Metrics
- Ranking Metrics
- Site Health Metrics
- Backlink Profile
- GEO Metrics
Let's dig deeper and understand how these metrics help you evaluate your strategy and define next steps.
Traffic metrics
We should not look at traffic as the single metric of success, but knowing how to analyze it is indeed very important.
As a raw number, it may have little to say. But going deeper in the analysis can bring impactful insights for your SEO strategy.
Here are some tips on what I analyze to understand the quality of my traffic:
Expected growth:
- Compare growth in the same period of the previous year
- Compare month over month growth
This is important to analyze whether we have been receiving clicks, whether pages that used to get visits are losing traffic, and so on.
The goal is not to grow for the sake of growing, but to grow in a healthy and strategic way, focusing on relevant pages.
Traffic quality:
- Conversions
- Pages per visit
Here we understand whether we are in fact reaching our persona or receiving visits from people who will never become customers.
To measure conversions you can use Google Analytics itself or a CRM such as RD Station or HubSpot.
Most visited pages:
- Are they the most important ones?
- Traffic per page
- Are important pages growing?
Ranking Metrics
In practice, this is where an SEO strategy has the greatest impact.
After all, ultimately, SEO is about placing our pages at the top of Google and inside AI answers.
This is where we have the greatest impact and the greatest control.
Traffic can change completely overnight, due to behavior, SERP changes, or changes in the AIs.
But your brand's exposure and ranking are the constant of SEO. Being the answer!
With or without a click.
Here, constant monitoring is important to map the keywords that are gaining and losing positions.
You can use SEMrush, Ahrefs or Netlinks' own app to track your rankings.
See an example of a client dashboard in our app:
The position overview and also the ranking of the main keywords:
A tip I always give is to map keywords ranking between 6th and 20th that were published more than 4 to 6 months ago.
They hold your greatest potential for gains with a good update or new backlinks.
How to track and use ranking metrics:
- Define which are the main keywords for the strategy
- Track their positions
- Create Topic Clusters to strengthen them
- Identify attack opportunities (competitor analysis)
- Find updates that can generate big results
- Define when to attack and when to defend
Health Metrics
To track your blog's health, audit tools usually present a site score from 0 to 100.
You can use tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs and Screaming Frog.
Or, if you are or become a Netlinks client, we have our own audit tool inside our App:
In general, we should always aim for a score of 100 and fix errors in order of importance.
The tools themselves already point out which errors are the most serious.
In the case of our tool, it also correlates with Search Console data, pointing out which pages have more clicks and also have errors, optimizing your priorities.
I want to test the Netlinks app right now!
Current status:
Map the site's main errors and take a general overview of its health
Next steps (insights)
- Set an error correction goal (month/quarter)
- Define priorities
- Find opportunities
- Simple errors that generate big impact
- E.g.: Use a plugin to compress images
Backlink Profile
Mapping your backlink profile is essential, because it:
- Reveals the quality of the links you receive
- Directly affects your site's health
To do this mapping you can use tools I have already mentioned as examples, such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, Majestic and Link Explorer.
With them you can assess your overall authority, total number of backlinks and whether you are receiving healthy or toxic links.
In addition, you can map the authority of the domains linking to you, the types of backlinks and the attributes (follow and nofollow).
Remember that, although they do not pass authority directly, nofollow links are very important. A company with only follow links has a suspicious backlink profile.
With these analyses you can evaluate your current situation and plan the next steps of your strategy.
Current status:
- Backlink profile
- Link quality
- Domain quality
- Anchor text quality
- Follow/Nofollow volume
- Pages and anchors that need more links
Next steps (insights)
- Win backlinks my competitors have and I do not
- Approach potential partners
- Apply new Link Building strategies
- Prospect partners my competitors do not have
GEO Metrics
It is still not easy to measure a GEO strategy with the precision of traditional SEO.
That is because each AI composes its answers in different ways, using different sources and, above all, answering different people.
In the same room, two people can run the same prompt and receive quite different answers.
Even so, some tools such as SEMrush and Ahrefs already deliver highly relevant metrics for tracking the strategy.
These tools generally provide the volume of citations, mentions and pages cited by AIs across various brand related prompts.
In the Netlinks app, you can simulate prompts and track whether you or your competitors are being mentioned.
The app delivers Share of Voice and the percentage of citations.
This way, we can track growth and define actions to get cited by the AIs that still do not mention our brands.
Another important metric is tracking, via Google Analytics, the traffic coming from each Artificial Intelligence to your blog.
To set this up, I invite you to read this content: how to view and analyze your AI traffic
To outsource or not to outsource: that is the question
Now you know what SEO is, how to execute it and how to measure your results.
Which raises the question: can you execute all of this?
You have the option of hiring a professional and building an SEO team. That is how I worked for most of my career.
Or you can trust an agency with real results and experience across many different markets.
If you want to trust Netlinks to execute it, talk to us!
And let the author of this content apply all of this to your site!
FAQ
Is it better to build an in-house team or outsource SEO?
It depends on your moment and your structure. Building an in-house team offers more control and exclusive dedication, but it requires time for hiring, training and management. Outsourcing to an agency brings consolidated experience across various markets and faster results.
How long does it take to see SEO results?
SEO is a medium to long term strategy. In general, the first consistent results start to appear between three and six months, depending on the competition, the current state of the site and the consistency of the actions executed.
Can an agency understand my specific market?
Yes. An agency with experience across various segments knows how to adapt strategies to the reality of each market, identifying opportunities and adjusting actions according to the particularities of your niche.
How can Netlinks help my site?
Netlinks executes every SEO stage you learned about in this content, from strategy to results measurement. If you want to entrust this work to someone with real experience, talk to us!
