⚠️ SEO is dead, apparently... Nah, it's thriving better than ever - we're just scrutinising the wrong data. Here's the proof: Yes, clicks to your website are down, but users and your audience aren't searching any less. Saying SEO is dead is like saying the supermarket is dead because less folks step foot in store. (Tesco's profit is up 6.5% YoY doubling down on my analogy) and their delivery network Whoosh has grown 37% to £500M. Same customer, different storefront. ... And to drop in another analogy... Your audience is still reading the news, they're just buying newspapers from a different news stand. Facebook was once the single place to post social content, now with a more fragmented internet, you have to post that same content across multiple platforms. SEO and the investment of time and energy was solely directed at Google. No one ever optimised for Bing, let's be honest... SEO is now just experiencing that same fragmented shift. If you want the click/citation/mention, you just need to spread your optimisations across several platforms. Google, Claude, ChatGPT - whatever your 'news stand' optimise for it and win the customer where they show up. Stop complaining because they're not clicking on your organic links and instead show up in the right spots. Show up where your customers show up, whether you own the news stand or not. Saying SEO is dead is like posting to MySpace and saying social media is dead. Saying SEO is dead is like saying watching movies is dead because you can't rent DVDs from Blockbuster anymore. You're just looking in the wrong place. Suits me if you think it's dead, it just means there's more room for those of us who see that it isn't. It's definitely not getting any easier, and that's a separate conversation, but organic search is absolutely thriving.

Your high LTV customers are NOT the connoisseurs, the devoted hobbyists or the 'top 1%' in your market. Let's use coffee as an example... Those that love, live and breathe coffee, invest heavily into home brewing, refining techniques, perfecting the grounds puck and constantly desire to chase a better espresso are often the least brand loyal of all of your customers. These seemingly highly desirable customers often buy from many different brands, experiment, change out equipment and invest in the latest gadgets and tech within the space frequently. They're also the most brand agnostic, although they're the biggest spenders in the market. They don't care about your brand, they care about constantly pushing the boundaries. Big spenders, convert well, very disloyal. Then there are customers that are happy with 'good enough'. Those customers find a coffee machine, beans and equipment that delivers results and an espresso that they're happy with. They've no ambition to experiment and find better. Getting this far took a lot of effort. Good enough is perfect in their minds. These customer personas are often the most loyal and very much live the, "if it's not broke, don't fix it" mantra. They'll stick with the same brand, maybe for years, won't explore and will happily re-order the same every time coffee supplies run low. Sounds like a perfect Nespresso customer... Having worked with some incredible ecom brands over the years, this is becoming more and more apparent. 'Good enough' customers are the customers that are most valuable for your brand - not those consumers seeking to push the envelope. That 'expert' customer might have a high average initial order value but you may never see a purchase from them again. That 'comfortable' customer may have a lower initial order, but their LTV will be significantly greater. Sometimes the best customers in theory aren't actually the best customers at all.

Attribution is dead. The sooner you realise this and work beyond it, the better. I'm channeling this 'tough love' approach into the brands I'm working with. Here's what we're up against: - Consent throttles user and session data in GA4, Triple Whale or whatever analytics platform you're using. - LLMs are eroding UTMs in URLs - Direct traffic is up for everyone globally - Apple iOS and Safari delete marketing cookies after 24hrs killing user tracking. - SEO and AI tracking tools are painfully unreliable. They're indicative at best. - Attribution data is theredore patchy and unreliable. Here's my approach: - If you know your customer (which you absolutely should), you'll already know where to find them online. You don't need unreliable attribution data to tell you that. If you sell clothing / apparel to a younger audience, you'll find your customers on Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok. If you sell anti-ageing skincare to an older audience, you'll find them on Facebook and Google. But is that actually the case? 🤔 Marketing has never been about throwing all of your resource into a single platform. It takes customers upwards of 15+ touchpoints to turn a stranger on the internet into a paying customer. You've potential customers aged 35+ on Tiktok. You've Gen Z customers using Bing search. More importantly, the number of ecommerce sales happening on marketplaces like TikTok shop is growing aggressively. You've zero chance of getting attribution data from those platforms. Don't get me started on agentic commerce... Those customers never even visit your website to complete their purchases. A click on a Google ad could drive a sale on TikTok shop. An impression on Instagram could drive a sale on Amazon. My point here is this. You need to drop obsessing over last click attribution and instead understand where your brand needs to collectively show up to win the customer. In 2027, attribution will be heavily blended. At best you'll derive patterns and trends. No more 'cash cow' singular channels to go 'all in' on. Arguably, there never was.

Is there *really* a difference between SEO and GEO? My thoughts, experiences and what I'm seeing is what is fast become a fractured nameset we used to just called "SEO": lukecarthy.com/blog/whats-th…

If most of your customers use iOS, you almost certainly have a marketing data problem. Apple devices throttle the ability to measure multiple sessions for the same user - as a result, you're rarely able to see any attribution data beyond the last click that drove the sale. All assisting channels, campaigns and visits can't be 'stitched' to the session and user that actually drove the sale. That's a massive problem. Let's look at a specific example: - You begin researching mattresses (Google searches, LLM chats, reading buyers' guides etc) - You see a post or ad on Instagram for a new mattress - you click the link and browse through their site. All good. - A week later you see an ad on YouTube; same brand - you click the link and head to their site - 2 weeks later, you're new bed frame is on its way from another retailer and will be delivered tomorrow. You search for 'Emma mattress', click their branded Google Ad and complete your purchase with next day delivery. In this example, iOS only lets you see the 'last click' channel in your analytics platform and Google Ads would take 100% credit for that sale. The data is telling you a very short-sighted story but the truth is, if you never saw that relevant ad on Instagram whilst researching, or didn't see that YT ad at the right time, you likely wouldn't have completed that purchase at all. Why does this happen for iOS users? This is thanks to technology called Apple ITP. It's great for your privacy (as an iPhone/Apple customer) but it's frankly a serious pain in the arse for marketing teams. Here's how it works... After 7 days of inactivity on a website, iOS silently deletes all marketing cookies - or any cookies that were set by JavaScript. It gets even worse... If the cookie was set from an ad click (contains fbclid, gclid, msclkid etc) then cookies are silently deleted by iOS after just 24 hours. So any clicks from ads to your website cannot be attributed to a user's previous sessions if they were more than 24 hours ago - which in many cases, is likely be be 90%+ of your ecom customers. Customers rarely buy anything within 24 hours of visiting your website for the first time, and they're even less likely to purchase during their first session. The problem gets worse as the 'consideration window' increases. So for example: - Buying a new t-shirt as a first-time customer from a household name (low) - Buying weight loss injections from an online pharmacy (high) - Buying a new TV (high) - Purchasing a new skincare routine from a new brand (high) The moral of my story here is this: For all ecommerce brands I work with, I address this data problem first. Instead of losing visibility of users 24hrs after they click ads, I'm able to keep that user, sessions, assisted channels and their purchases aligned for up to 400 days. This is why server-side tracking in non-negotiable if you're in ecommerce (particularly Shopify).

🚨 I've realised that the way we measure SEO performance is broken. Almost every other marketing channel uses a time-based conversion window. Organic search doesn't. Why is that? - Google Ads - 30 day lookback window - Meta Ads - 7 day lookback window - Klaviyo / Email - 5 day lookback window - Affiliates (awin) - 30 day lookback window - Organic Search - Last-click, same session 🤔 That just doesn't make sense. The good news is, by using a custom audience in Google Analytics (GA4), attribution for SEO can be fixed. It allows you to report on SEO performance using the same attribution modelling as Google Ads and practically all other online marketing channels. Not only that, we can also use that same custom audience to produce a ROAS metric for SEO. In my blog post, I detail everything you need to modernise your SEO performance reporting. A whole year has passed since I've written an in-depth blog post (and posted here), so I thought it was time I fixed that.. "How to get a ROAS metric for SEO using Google Analytics" I hope you / your clients find it helpful. lukecarthy.com/blog/how-to-g…

Only the finest, properly Irish oats before hosting today's ecommerce SEO & CRO training day in Belfast with Ecomm Live! What makes my training days different? 🤔 ✅ It's unusual but I barely prepare a deck - I want my training days to be properly dynamic, engaging and led by the conversation and attendees rather than fixed around a deck. "What do you want to learn today?" Kicks off our agenda and helps to steer my delivery so everyone gets the best from training. ✅ AMA throughout the day - Attendees basically have me as their ecommerce consultant for the day. I answer their questions in detail, walkthrough, explain and fix their specific ecom issues live on their sites and I share with the class. ✅ Let's be honest, training is boring - I work hard and put a lot of effort into making it engaging, conversational and collaborative. No one wants to be lectured for 6 hours, no matter how good the content may be. I understand that taking a whole day out of a busy schedule and getting your place of work to sign off the expense is no mean feat. So I'm determined to deliver maximum value on the day. I'm looking forward to this one 🚀! 😎