Einstein Lab Reports - Q3 2023 Blog
Einstein News & Announcements
Lucid 3.0 Beta Updates: Lightspeed Installs Start Rolling Out Next Month
Einstein is proud to announce that we will begin launching the first Lucid 3.0 update next month: the highly anticipated Lightspeed upgrade. The Lightspeed upgrade exponentially boosts the overall speed and performance of Einstein Websites, and we can’t wait to begin rolling it out to our clients.
Clients who signed up for the Lucid 3.0 Beta program will be the first ones to receive the Lightspeed upgrade starting next month. We will roll the upgrade out to all our clients at an undisclosed point in the future.
“Website speed and performance will increase across the board.”
Lucid 3.0 Beta clients will also be the first ones to receive other fundamental upgrades and 3.0 features in the future.
The next planned upgrade involves sitewide schema, which will help offset Google’s indexing issues and improve your rankings for relevant search results. We will provide more information about this upgrade soon, so be on the lookout for our official announcement.
Onboarding & Interviews: Showcase Your Expertise and Authority
We are delighted to announce our Onboarding & Interviews Initiative, an overhaul to the way we gather information about you and your brand. The more information we have about you and your brand, the more we can distinguish your business from the competition using unique content.
“You are the major factor that distinguishes your practice from hundreds of other search results. With hundreds of search results just a click away, your patients and clients are looking for reasons to choose your business.”
Our team has been hard at work developing a new set of processes and interview questions in order to get the necessary information to produce high-quality content. The improved onboarding and interview process is available for new and existing clients, and we strongly encourage existing clients to contact their Einstein Representatives about the initiative as soon as possible.
Increasing Client Conversions
Evergreen Optimizations: Conversion Rates Doubled in Testing
The way that users engage with online content naturally changes over time, which is why we revisit and update content over time. We’ve found new ways to drastically increase the conversion rate of a page which we’ve dubbed Evergreen Conversion Optimizations.
In the past, helpful content skewed heavily toward informative purposes and did not mix well with the type of transactional landing pages you need for Google Ads. Over time, search users have become more transactional as they learn to trust Google’s curated search results. This has helped Google realize that one strong webpage can serve search users and SEO purposes at the same time.
“We can’t control your ad budget, but we can control your return on investment. Evergreen Conversion Optimizations produce higher conversions at a lower cost so you receive the most value for every dollar you spend on Google Ads.”
Gain More Leads for Less
With Evergreen Updates, we can ensure that your content and ad campaigns generate an optimal ROI over time by updating pages to match the new balance of transactional and informational content. Through A/B testing, we've found that the newest batch of optimizations can double the conversion rate of a page while reducing the overall cost-per-conversion of ads leading to the page.
“We tested these variables across multiple practices and saw a significant increase in conversion rates across the board."
Our Evergreen Conversion Optimizations improves user engagement with your content regardless of where the user is in the purchasing process. Some of these improvements include:
- Matching funnel patterns to calls-to-action
- Adding forms and conversion opportunities to the start of the page
- Placing brand differentiators higher on the page
A Global Increase in Conversions
Since Premium SEO Content pages are also landing pages for Google Ads, every Evergreen Conversion Optimization will increase your paid and organic conversions. Google also views a high conversion rate as proof that your content meets the needs of search users, so more conversions will reinforce your paid, organic, and local rankings. Higher rankings will bring in more traffic and conversions, which feeds into a potent cycle that generates leads and revenue.
Industry Trends & Updates
More Algorithm Changes: Core and Helpful Content Updates
Google rolled out the August 2023 core update followed by a Helpful Content update in September. Each broad core update tends to shift rankings across the board, but Helpful Content updates also tend to benefit clients with more authoritative, high-quality content on their sites.
Shifting Local SEO Factors: The Top Weighted Local SEO Factors of 2023
According to an annual Local Search Ranking Factors report, SEO experts reported a shift in what factors have the greatest impact on your local search rankings in 2023.
The biggest shift occurred for factors that specifically affect your rankings in the Local Pack/Finder and Google Map results. Experts across the industry weighed various ranking factors for the Local Pack/Finder and Maps in 2023 and concluded that the top three important factors are:
- GBP Signals: Optimizing your GBP dominates the top spot once again in 2023 as experts say that various GBP signals are the highest-weighted ranking factors for Google’s Local Pack rankings.
- On-Page Signals: On-page signals, such as domain authority and proper keywords, came in second place this year for the most weighted signal groups.
- Review Signals: The importance of reviews remained relatively the same compared to previous years, though it is now ranked third behind on-page signals.
GBP signals dominated the ranking factors for Local Pack/Finder and Map results by a significant margin even as other factor groups switched positions. GBP signals are likely to retain the top spot for several more years since they essentially outsource the burden of collecting information to local businesses while simultaneously improving the quality of search results for Google.
Matching Quality Leads to Your Business
The importance of on-page signals has steadily increased over the years while link signals have decreased by comparison. With the rise of on-page signals, you can gain more control over your local pack rankings with a solid SEO strategy.
Local SEO involves some factors that you can't control such as the proximity of a user, the device they use, past search history, and more. These factors will limit the number of users that see your business in the Local Pack, but this also means that your Local SEO leads are curated by Google and much more likely to convert.
We already knew that content quality and other on-page signals would only become more important over time, and now others in the industry are finally catching on.
Tightened Feature Guidelines: Google Cuts Back on HowTo and FAQ Rich Results
Google officially announced that it will reduce the amount of FAQ and HowTo rich results that appear on mobile SERPs. Google said that this change will provide "a cleaner and more consistent search experience" for its users.
A Quick Review of Rich Results
Rich results are an optional search feature that lets you provide additional information about a page or your business on SERPs. Rich results can visually distinguish your website from other search results and encourage users to visit your site.
- HowTo rich results provide a summary of step-by-step instructions for pages that focus on how to do a specific task, such as “how to replace a 2021 Ford Edge car battery”.
- FAQ rich results list a page’s FAQs in its corresponding SERP result (not to be confused with the “Questions related to your search” section).
What Do the Rich Results Changes Mean for Me?
Google still shows HowTo rich results for desktop users, but FAQ rich results are now limited to "well-known, authoritative government and health websites."
This move reinforces the importance of Google’s EEAT guidelines (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust) and why quality content is essential to rank well in fields like healthcare and law. Healthcare practices that continue to reinforce their authority and EEAT content may become one of the elite few sites to showcase FAQ rich results.
Existing FAQ and HowTo rich results won’t impact your search rankings or prevent a page from showing up in search results, so there’s no rush to get rid of them.
What’s Coming in Q4?
Huge Platform and SEO Upgrades
In Q4, we will continue to focus on product development while closing out the year strong. We suggest you prepare for the end of the fiscal year and start thinking about your goals for 2024.
Take a look at some of our upcoming products, upgrades, and promotions:
- Lucid 3.0 Lightspeed
- New Sitewide Schema
- Lucid 3.0 User Interface
- Google Ads Promotion
- Evergreen Conversion Optimizations
