Is your approach to SEO and content strategy holding you back? Or pushing you forward?
Join Ann Smarty—co-founder of Smarty Marketing and seasoned SEO pro with over two decades of experience—as she leads us in an entertaining teardown and audit session of attendee-submitted content.
Along with Bernard Huang of Clearscope, Ann reviews sites live and gives candid feedback about what she’d do more of—or what she’d do differently.
Watch the full webinar
Top takeaways from Ann's session
1. Shift your perspective on algorithm drops
When your site takes a hit, reclaiming your former rankings and traffic may be difficult, if not impossible. Ann advises shifting focus from regaining lost traffic to strengthening your overall marketing strategy. By adopting better practices and exploring diverse channels, you set yourself up for long-term resilience and growth.
2. Optimize content with heatmaps 🔥
Want to know where your content is losing users? Heatmaps can help you understand what might be frustrating your visitors or causing them to leave. Ann suggests using these insights to eliminate friction points on your pages, keeping users engaged and improving overall experience.
3. Leverage schema markup to build authority
Schema markup can enhance the way search engines and large language models understand your content. Ann recommends using person and organization schema types to establish meaningful connections between your content, authors, and recognized experts, strengthening your authority across the web.
4. Eliminate visual “decorations” that don’t add value
Are your images, videos, or infographics there to serve your audience—or just filling space? If visuals aren’t adding real value, they might be distracting. Ann emphasizes the importance of ensuring every element on the page drives relevance and engagement for your readers.
5. Don’t depend on Google traffic—it’s not permanent
Sometimes you’ll have it, sometimes you won’t. While you are earning organic traffic success with Google, work on what to do next. Build an asset that you can rely on if or when you see traffic declines. Work on customer retention and engagement.
Supplemental resources
Here's the list of tools and resources mentioned in this session:
The Helpful Content Update Was Not What You Think from the Moz Blog
Winning & Losing Big Google Updates: 50-Site Case Study by Cyrus Shepard
Schema markup recommended by Ann: https://schema.org/Person and https://schema.org/Organization
About Ann:
Ann Smarty is the co-founder of Smarty Marketing, a boutique SEO agency in New York. With a career spanning over two decades in SEO, she has held various roles, including being an SEO analyst, Editor in Chief at Search Engine Journal, and SEO community manager.
