Elena says: “My tip for 2024 is for SEOs and businesses to diversify. This encompasses putting effort into and embracing email marketing, and social media, such as TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, etc.

As SEOs, we focus too much on Google. Yes, Google is the largest search engine by far but Google isn't the only channel you can drive traffic on. Leads from millions of searches are made daily on different social media platforms, so it's foolish not to utilize those platforms.

It's our job as SEOs to find that audience, generate those leads, or help sell those products, whether it's through Google search or TikTok. It doesn't really matter as long as we find our audience, and show our clients or their products in front of that audience.”

Do these channels have anything to do with SEO, or is it simply another opportunity to drive traffic?

“I see it as SEO. For example with Pinterest, you still have to have a strategy, you are still kind of optimizing for keywords, you are still doing keyword research, you are still trying to leverage and rank high. SEO doesn't just equal search engine optimization for Google.

There is obviously a debate about whether TikTok is actually a search engine, but it doesn't really matter. That's an audience. Our job is to get traffic and generate leads online, whether it's a blog content site or an e-commerce site, our job is to drive traffic so that traffic converts into leads, or people buy products.”

Is email included with SEO?

“For email marketing you want to kind of build a community because let's say, for example, COVID happens in your physical brick-and-mortar store and you have to shut down your physical store. Sure you have an online shop, but people obviously are more aware of not spending as much. Everything is very scary. But the people who will remain loyal to your business are your audience. And you build that audience through email marketing, by engaging those people and building a community.

It's easier to build a community by engaging with people and social media is a very powerful platform where you build a community. The traffic you get from Google often comes and goes, but you want to keep those people, so build that community because that is something that you can fall back on when things get hard.”

I remember quite a few years ago, I was interviewing Rand Fishkin about SEO, he hadn't been actively involved in SEO for a while, but he was telling me that the Moz newsletter, which went out at the time, when that included certain links or top resources, then, quite often he would see a jump in where those pages were ranked in the organic SERP, possibly because of the traffic that was driven towards those pages from email. So Google was somehow discovering or telling the fact that those pages were receiving traffic and was possibly testing those pages to be ranked for different keyword phrases. It's difficult for that to be entirely tangible, but do you have any thoughts on it?

“Well, I suppose there is a correlation between direct traffic. And because I believe Google has come out and said that they don't want you to only have traffic on Google. They want you to utilize other channels. So I think that direct traffic does correlate, especially brand searches are extremely important. So to me, that makes sense. Something that I think has possibly added that through email marketing, and that direct traffic.”

Google is interested in promoting pages that are interesting to users, as opposed to just pages that have a certain number of links or authority from a certain domain name. Looking at traffic from other sources would be one way of doing that, I guess. Now in terms of looking at other possibilities, you also mentioned TikTok. How do you measure traffic from other sources that don't necessarily have links that you can see where the traffic's coming from?

“SEO is a kind of marketing, so oftentimes when you have a marketing campaign it's very difficult to make sure exactly what’s delivered what. But for me, putting efforts into these platforms is more about the community, the diversification and promoting your brand and building a brand through that.

If you spend so much time on TikTok that you go viral, people are going to remember your brand, and they're going to search for it later on. So these things are much more important than looking at any numbers at all.”

In terms of correlation, do you attempt to put some kind of value to that traffic for future brand authority, so thus, improving your organic presence in the future?

“Personally, it's all about the brand. It's very obvious these days that if you are an established brand and people search for you, that is going to solidify your position in Google. Often if people are looking for you, they don't find you through a page or through a keyword, they searched for your brand.

Let's say you're a clothing brand and somebody sees your Tiktok, and in a month they Google you, and they buy products from you. How is this not good and how it is not an amazing part of your SEO efforts even though it's not directly an SEO effort? It is something that needs to be considered.

With brand awareness, everybody knows Gucci, for example. So how do they know about Gucci? Because they have done so much marketing and utilizing different channels. And people don't have to search for the best, the most expensive coat, or the most stylish coats, they go to the Gucci website directly. They don’t need to find them through those keywords. This is what you want when it comes to utilizing social media platforms.”

By building that brand, you're enhancing that click-through rate for your brand search. And if everyone is clicking on your result, rather than everyone else’s, Google obviously knows that you are the brand and more likely to serve you for brand terms and related terms.

“Exactly, and it's free traffic. You don't have to pay for PPC. People just have to search for your brand name on Google and they can find you.”

One other platform that you're a fan of using is Pinterest. I associate Pinterest with e-commerce and images with E-commerce. Are only e-commerce stores online that should be utilizing Pinterest?

“Not everything works on Pinterest. So that is why if somebody is to decide to utilize social media channels, they need to do a bit of research. So it very much depends. But for e-commerce, it is very good. For example, especially if you are a clothing and fashion website or an e-commerce website, you can do so well on Pinterest and really, really drive a lot of traffic which is great because people can buy from you, which is all we want after all.”

So what are the one or two tips that you could give about Pinterest SEO?

“So my top two tips for being successful on Pinterest is to utilize video. Now I know a lot of people don't like doing videos but video is very, very, good right now on Pinterest. I think there on a monthly basis around 5 billion videos are being watched or something crazy like that on Pinterest. So utilize videos. It's very simple because you can reuse your shorts from YouTube, TikTok and add them on Pinterest. So generally stick to short videos up to one minute just like shorts.

Utilizing videos on Pinterest is my number one tip and the second one is consistency. But it's not so much about posting once a day, it's about volume as well. So consistency, volume, and videos.

In terms of things that people shouldn't be doing, as with anything when people say, ‘Oh, we do social media, we diversify’ and then you see them posting once a week. ‘Oh yeah, it's part of our strategy. We are doing Facebook, we are doing Pinterest’ but they only post once a week. So if you are going to attack those channels, do it properly.”

It's amazing the amount of videos on Pinterest. I didn't think that so much video would be present on the platform. I see that there are different video aspect ratios that you can choose from 1x1, 2x3 and 9x16. 9x16 is probably the more popular vertical video format. Is that the optimum format and also in terms of what goes into the video itself, is it just a case of diving into the item, the products and giving that a good review or is there a style of video that works best?

“Yes. So I always tell people about Pinterest when they ask me will my niche work on Pinterest. And I always say this, if you can display the end result on your video or pin, then it works.

Let's say you're an e-commerce business online with an e-commerce website and you want to drive more sales and more traffic from Pinterest to your website. What I will do personally, because fashion is so big on Pinterest, is I'm creating one video of how I would style my clothing products using a model. So for example, I have a person, and I'll show examples in one minute how I'm going to style this brand’s coat, jeans, belt and I'll show it off. You want people to think ‘Oh, that's really cool’, and then they're going to click, and I'm going to have products that I can buy them.”

How do you try to ensure that your video is discoverable on Pinterest? Do you need to embed the video on your website as well? Is there a best way of going about doing that and other other ways to actually enhance your ranking for your target terms on Pinterest?

“I naturally embed all my videos on my own posts in my own website, but you don't have to. So let's say you've just shot a one-minute video on TikTok, it automatically downloads on your phone. So you just take that one-minute video you already shot on TikTok and directly upload it on Pinterest.

Reuse your content. You just need to upload it and then optimize for keywords. So for example, how to style a coat with jeans, if this is what you're showcasing. Or other sort of description, a few keywords and hashtags, and add tags to link to your product, or to your page. Maybe it's a blog post where you're showcasing it with product links. Post it, and it's gonna go.

To be honest, a lot of the times when something blows off on Pinterest or even TikTok you really don't fight those off. Just keep on going. But what I will say is that video pins perform much better than just the visual text pins or image pins.”

I think in 2024 we should touch on AI. Is there any preferred AI software or tactic or mechanism that you try to incorporate in your procedures that you can speed things up and do more quickly?

“Yes, I utilize ChatGPT a lot for pin descriptions and it helps me also create Pinterest boards. I use it mostly for Pinterest. When it comes to utilizing AI descriptions it literally takes two seconds. Sometimes I read them, sometimes I don't because I have a prompt. But this is kind of what I use AI mostly.

I don't create content using ChatGPT or anything like that on my website. I'm not a huge fan. I sometimes do AI assisted content that I edit, but I prefer to do it myself. This is as far as I go with AI.”

What’s something that SEOs shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“I'm going to stay on topic here and say that SEOs should stop focusing 100% of their efforts on Google. This is basically what we just discussed. When you start learning SEO, it's often you learn how to get traffic from Google, nobody's teaching you to utilize other platforms. Whilst we should all have strategies in place for Google, since Google owns the biggest slice of the pie, we should also explore other channels.

SEOs should think like a business. For example, you are a clothing brand again, you have your brick and mortar business and an online store. COVID happens you have to shut down your brick and mortar business. And what are you going to fall back on? Your online store. And this is what we're seeing with the recent updates on Google. People lose everything overnight because they have nothing to fall back on because they put all their eggs in one basket and only utilize Google.”

And does this piece of advice apply to every type of business? We've talked about how Pinterest can be particularly effective for E-commerce stores. Should every type of business be trying to diversify their sources of traffic?

“Absolutely. Some platforms will work better than others. So that is why people need to do research and decide what platform works best for them. But the very minimum people can do is build a community at least through email marketing.”

Elena Dyulgerova is an SEO freelancer and you can find her over at SEOwithelena.com.