SEO News

Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—September 2023

Matt Diggity — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 07:46:36 +0000

Stay ahead of the competition with the latest SEO news, analysis, and tips. This roundup, featuring the latest core update and some big AI changes, has everything you need to hit the ground running. Big news opens this roundup. You’ll see the first early analysis on the new broad Core Updates, learn about the removal of FAQ snippets, and find out what’s rolling out alongside Google’s new Search Generative Experience (SGE). Next, you’ll get the latest numbers from recent case studies. You’ll get some data-based arguments for why AI optimization may be the future of SEO and how other SEOs are making the most of these new tools. You’ll also see an analysis of how digital “goliaths” are doing SEO and what one SEO learned as a Google Search Quality Rater. The guides, at the end, will empower you with some new techniques. They teach you how to strike the right balance when creating AI content and how to beat existing power players when jumping into new niches. Google August 2023 Broad Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now https://www.seroundtable.com/google-august-2023-core-update-35927.html Barry Schwarts brings you this news about the drop of the latest Core Update. This one arrived on August 27th and is still continuing as of this writing. The official Google announcement claimed the rollout would take approximately two weeks. However, even three weeks after the launch, Google has yet to announce that the rollout has ended. This rollout may be taking extra time due to the amount of changes. According to the details Google released, all types of content are being targeted for adjustments. Google declined to state the percentage of all queries/searches impacted. Barry reported the first obvious tremors in an update article he published on the 12th. He tracked SEO chatter across major forums and found that there were significant reports of dropping traffic. Several SEOs reported traffic changes as significant as -35%. Most of the volatility may be yet to come. While Google hasn’t given us many details about this core update, they have been more direct about another change. FAQ snippets are disappearing for many results. Google Removes FAQ Snippets from Search Results https://www.sistrix.com/blog/google-removes-faq-snippets-from-search-results/ Johannes Beus breaks down Google’s recent decision to remove FAQs and How-to rich results from most SERPs. The move was announced in a Google Search Central post in early August. At the time, Google claimed that these types of results were being cleared to create a “cleaner” and “more consistent” search experience. Under the new guidelines, FAQs will only be shown for authoritative government and health websites. How-tos will continue to appear for desktop results but not mobile results. So far, there’s no news on if or when How-to results will be removed for desktop users. Google provided this reminder for users who still plan to use markup for desktop searches. Note: With mobile indexing, Google indexes the mobile version of a website as the basis for indexing. To have How-To rich results shown on the desktop, the mobile version of your website must include the appropriate markup. Johannes took a look at how SERPs had changed since the announcement. According to his data, FAQs were nearly completely eliminated from mobile results by early September. This followed the removal of nearly half of them around June of 2023. This was not Google’s only major change this month. They also introduced links to web pages within the SGE’s AI-powered answers. Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) Officially Rolls Out Links to Web Pages Within Answers https://searchengineland.com/google-search-generative-experience-officially-rolls-out-links-to-web-pages-within-answers-431324 Barry Schwartz brings you this news about a new SGE feature that could have major implications for SEO. As announced by Google earlier this month, SGE users will now see an arrow icon next to AI answers that directs them to relevant pages. Google claims that this feature will show the websites that were used to generate the information for the AI answers. Depending on the answer given, it may show one or several sites as sources. U.S. users should already see these changes reflected in searches. In the coming weeks, it will roll out to other countries, including Japan and India. This feature is not necessarily in its final state. Google has tested other models and may continue to update. The move has been supported by many SEOs who want to see their sites get credit for being used to generate AI answers. It may open up a new avenue for optimizing AI. The first data piece of this roundup has some ideas for how that may work. Forget SEO: Why ‘AI Engine Optimization’ May Be the Future https://venturebeat.com/ai/forget-seo-why-ai-engine-optimization-may-be-the-future/ Sharon Goldman brings you this analysis of the potential for AI engine optimization in the future. A series of experts were interviewed on their predictions for how AI optimization might appear and how SEOs should prepare. They predict several major changes that SEOs may need to adapt to, including— Check out the complete article for in-depth interviews with several AI industry players and analysis of recent AI moves by major players. Next, you’ll learn what a recent survey says about how SEOs are using AI right now. (Survey) Generative AI and SEO Strategy: Getting the Most Out of Your Tools https://www.searchenginejournal.com/generative-ai-and-seo-strategy-getting-the-most-out-of-your-tools/493591/#close Matt G. Southern brings you some AI insights from Search Engine Journal’s State of SEO Report. A series of SEO experts were asked to answer questions about the AI tools that were being used in their strategies. The survey revealed some interesting trends, including— Matt predicted some additional possibilities based on the results. He predicts that humans will remain an important part of auditing and perfecting content and that the rising popularity of voice AI searches will mean big changes for SEOs. Next, you’ll find out what’s important in SEO right now, from the perspective of an SEO who tried being a Google Search Quality Rater. I Secretly Worked as a Google Search Quality Rater (You Can Too) https://zyppy.com/seo/google-search-quality-rater/ Cyrus Shepard brings you this look at his time as a Google Search Quality Rater. These raters are responsible for reviewing sites and providing information Google may use to promote or demote sites in key niches. Google had no problem allowing an SEO to sign up. While confidentiality agreements cover parts of the experience, Cyrus was able to share a lot about how the process works and what SEOs can learn as raters. First, the test to become a quality rater is apparently a challenging one. Even with a long background covering Google’s guidelines, Cyrus reported failing it on the first attempt. While he couldn’t provide information about what he was asked to evaluate and why, he did provide a list of the publicly available factors he thought were especially important in light of what he learned. He named “Page Quality” at the top of this list, noting that the current guidelines devote 70 pages to it. He also identified Needs Met, User Intent, and Reputation as factors that are particularly worth studying. Cyrus suggests that some SEO teams could seriously benefit from getting at least one team member to sign on and serve a short time as a Google Quality rater. So far, he’s keeping the position. The guides are up next. First, you’ll get some ideas for creating balanced AI content. Balancing Creativity With Caution When Using AI to Create Content https://moz.com/blog/use-ai-with-creativity-and-caution Bethan Vincent brings you this look at some of the practices she’s developed while working with AI writing tools. Based on her experiences, she created some basic rules that you can apply to create high-value AI content. First, she shares some warnings for big organizations. She stresses that, due to AI using inputs to learn, it is vital that anyone building AI content avoid providing proprietary information. Be careful about entering client information to build content because it could be used to train the model. It may also show up for other users of the AI system. Bethan also warns you against automatically trusting the outputs you receive from AI. While AI hallucination is one problem, she reminds you that there’s also a possibility that even the original information retrieved by AI isn’t correct. Human eyes are still essential for catching errors. She recommends that anyone using AI for quality content create a step to verify sources, figures, and facts. She also recommends that you double-check any links that are created by generative tools. After providing some warnings, Bethan has some advice for using AI to the best of its current abilities. She lays out how she’s developed her own process to use AI for the acceleration of original ideas, to analyze completed content, and to create more variations for a different perspective. Check out the entire guide for some thoughtful tips on how to make AI content better. In the final guide of the month, you’ll learn some strategies for taking on the sites that are already at the top of a given niche. Beating Incumbents at Content in Competitive Spaces https://www.kevin-indig.com/beating-incumbents-at-content-in-competitive-spaces/ Kevin Indig brings you this advice Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—August 2023

Matt Diggity — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 07:00:12 +0000

If you want to amplify your SEO efforts with AI, this is a roundup you shouldn’t miss. We’ve gathered together some of the most essential guides, case studies, and news headlines to keep you ahead of the competition. The guides are the first. They’ll give you the tools you need to use generative AI to increase E.E.AT. scores, understand Google’s own systems, run better campaigns with machine learning, and use ChatGPT to find keyword variations. Next, the case studies will give you real data on what’s working in SEO. You’ll learn how one site grew 200% with image-based SEO, the experiences of SEOs who removed AMP, and the results of an interesting experiment that disallowed humans. At the roundup’s end, we’ve included some headlines you shouldn’t miss. Google is planning some huge changes, Shopify is enhancing its on-page experience with AI, and Google has made a big update to Product Rating policies. 4 Ways to Leverage Your Website’s E. E. A.T. Using Generative AI Tools (Part 1) https://www.ezoic.com/guest-blog-4-ways-to-leverage-your-websites-e-e-a-t-using-generative-ai-tools-part-1/ Saleh Ahmed brings you this two-part guide to analyzing and filling content gaps using AI tools. In it, he covers how you can fill in competitor data and search queries using AI, assign topics more effectively, and generate topic clusters from competitor sitemaps. After an introduction, he starts with some steps for priming any AI you use for content-level improvement. He provides a series of starting prompts you can use to guide the AI toward the right parameters, including all of the following— After that, he gives you examples of how tools like ChatGPT and Bard respond to these prompts and prepare themselves for the next step. The steps are designed so that you can use most major AI systems to complete them. His advice carries you through four levels of different prompts until the tool is ready to analyze your content. The guide continues with advice on directing the parameters you’ve created with these prompts to analyze your content and that of your competitors. Check out the complete guide for more content tips. Next, you’ll learn about some AI systems that may already be impacting your content—Google’s own. Google’s Helpful Content & Other AI Systems May Be Impacting Your Site’s Visibility https://www.mariehaynes.com/google-ai-systems/ Marie Haynes brings you this look at how Google is reshaping SEO with AI. In it, she dives deep into how AI has already significantly changed Google’s ranking system. She follows up with some tips you can follow to avoid big losses across these changes. First, she makes the case that nothing is more important to SEO than aligning with Google’s quality criteria. Now, she argues, AI is doing a lot of the work of judging and ranking content based on that criteria, and she has some ideas for how you can play by AI’s rules better. She comprehensively breaks down how Google’s AI systems have been operating since 2016, with some graphs that track the introduction and resolution of major traffic volatility since then. Then, she takes you through all of the AI/Machine systems that are currently at work. She covers— For each system or series of systems, she gives you some analysis of how they work and what signals they use. She explains how you can do better to please these systems and which factors matter most. The complete guide is incredibly thorough and could provide a good foundation for you or any employees you want to understand AI in SEO. Next, you’ll learn some precise steps you can use to get keyword variations from your favorite AI tools. How to Use ChatGPT to Uncover Keyword Variations Other Tools Miss (Prompts Included) https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-keyword-variations-tools-miss-prompts-429665 Tony Hill brings you this look at how you can use ChatGPT to find keyword variations other tools might miss. The process involves a series of prompts, so you can use the same principles on any of your favorite AI tools. The guide jumps directly into the steps with the basic keyword “drones” as an example. Starting with this single term, Tony takes you through five steps that will get you a narrowed list of effective variations. The guide doesn’t end there. Tony takes you through another set up steps that you can follow to find words and phrases that your potential customers might need. Finally, he provides some best practices for adding missing word variations to your lists. With all the steps laid out, you can test this technique out for yourself in a half hour or so. It may become one of your AI-enabled habits. For now, we’re ready to dive into the month’s data studies. In the first one, you’ll learn how one company used image thumbnails to earn a 200% increase in traffic. Foot Locker Image SEO Case Study: 228% Increase for Google Image Thumbnails https://brodieclark.com/foot-locker-image-seo/ Brodie Clark brings you this case study into a big traffic increase for Foot Locker. As an introduction to the results, he provides some quick background on how Google image thumbnails are generated for category pages. Foot Locker had been an example in an earlier guide he created about thumbnails, and this study looks at the actions the company took to correct their problems—as well as the results. He jumps right into those. Foot Locker went from having no image thumbnails appearing for any of its important category pages to having nearly all pages producing multi-image thumbnails. Brodie illustrates the difference by showing you images of how SERPs looked for Foot Locker results before and after the changes. Even from just one image, the change is striking. The company’s result covers significantly more of the page with half-a-dozen images. In numbers, the changes across the site accounted for a rise from ~60K organic visits per month to now 195K organic visits per month. The traffic is still increasing. Brodie continued by documenting the steps the company took to resolve the issues. He covers a long list of changes they made while troubleshooting issues related to— Check out the complete study for more information about how you can target the same issues with your own sites or clients. Next, you’ll learn how the AMP removal may still affect your sites. How It’s Going After Removing Google AMP Pages 3 Weeks Ago https://www.seroundtable.com/remove-google-amp-status-35724.html Barry Schwartz brings you a condensed look at some of the changes that have followed the removal of AMP. He covers his own site (SEO Roundtable) as an example and provides you with a look into his site data three weeks afterward. He followed the AMP removal guidelines closely, so his experiences may be instructive for site owners attempting the same thing. He recorded a few problems with the initial removal. He warns readers that Google was still referencing AMP URLs in canonical pages early in the process. This turned out to be a delay in reporting that was easily resolved. As many SEOs likely fear, there were some problems with Discover. For a brief time, the site was not showing up at all, and when images did appear, they were not the proper size. This was resolved with a minor fix. Overall, Barry described the process as going smoothly. Several weeks later, no major problems are holding the site back. You should be able to enjoy the same results by following Google’s guide (linked just above) and considering the troubleshooting steps Barry discusses here. The last study in this week’s roundup is an eyebrow-raising test of Google’s cloaking detection and response. Disallow Humans (Bad Cloaking) https://ohgm.co.uk/bad-cloaking/ Oliver H.G. Mason tests Google’s cloaking limits by fully banning humans from his site and watching how Google responds. As a quick reminder, cloaking is when you show two different pages to crawlers and human searchers. Google considers cloaking to be spam and has worked to control it since it emerged as an early black-hat technique in the 2010s Oliver’s test tracked the modern response from Google’s detection systems. Human searchers were sent to a nearly blank page with a simple message about the website being closed. Crawlers could still access the original content. The interesting result was that Google didn’t appear to have detected the change at all. Traffic did begin to decline, but it was a slow and moderate decline even three months after Google had indexed the change. Oliver suggested that the results may have come from over-tuning of Google’s detection mechanisms. He theorized that the systems policing this practice may be primed to hunt for adult topics rather than a page that’s simply empty. The results may be interesting to SEOs who want to run their own tests. For now, let’s jump to the news. First, Google has made a major announcement regarding Howto and FAQ results. Google Reduces the Visibility of Howto and FAQ Rich Results in Search https://searchengineland.com/google-reduces-the-visibility-of-howto-and-faq-rich-results-in-search-430452 Google has announced that they are effectively demoting HowTo and FAQ rich results. As part of the changes, fewer rich results will be appearing in all searches. Fewer FAQ results will appear overall, and How-to results have been restricted for desktop Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—July 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 09:37:17 +0000

This month’s roundup has the latest SEO data studies, guides, and news headlines you need to stay ahead of the competition. To start, you’ll get some data from our studies. The first one is a poll of marketing teams, including major names like Spotify, on their implementation of AI. The next is a deep-dive case study into how one brand took a commanding lead in the volatile insurance niche. Then, you’ll pick up some new skills from our guides. First, you’ll learn how to use the new Google Perspectives feature. Then, you’ll learn how to improve your informational content by using points of view. At the end of the roundup, you’ll find a lot of recently breaking headlines you shouldn’t miss. Learn about mysterious queries, the latest new launches by Google, how Google uses AI, and how to make the most of the newly-available Google Analytics 4. Marketing Teams Are Using AI to Generate Content, Boost SEO, and Develop Branding to Help Save Time and Money; Study Finds https://www.businessinsider.com/marketing-industry-using-ai-save-time-money-boost-productivity-study-2023-6 Aaron Mok brings you this look at a recent client poll by the platform Bynder. The company polled 104 major clients about their AI usage, including major brands like Spotify, Puma, and Canon. More than half of all respondents to the poll reported that their marketing teams were already using AI. They reported using it to automate basic tasks, generate email/social media drafts, and quickly paraphrase other content. Aaron followed up to find out how ChatGPT was being used. He got responses from various founders, marketing directors, and other leaders. They reported using AI for tasks like product descriptions and even generating business proposals. AI is still an emerging technology. The adoption rates seen in this poll suggest that it will play a large role in marketing going forward, especially for companies large companies in competitive niches. Check out the complete article for the link to the study and more analysis of AI’s potential. Next up, you’ll find out how the company Progressive overwhelmed competitors in the insurance niche to become the #1 SEO presence in two years. How Progressive Is Winning the SEO Insurance Industry https://www.kevin-indig.com/how-progressive-is-winning-the-seo-insurance-industry/ Kevin Indig brings you this case study examining the rise of Progressive (a national-scale insurance company in the United States). Several years ago, this company was firmly in 4th place. Now, it’s beating all competitors, and Kevin details how. First, he reminds us that this is an incredibly difficult niche. It’s highly regulated, has strong competition, and the buying cycles are typically very short. It takes serious effort to see movement in this niche. Still, Progressive was able to manage it with three strategies that Kevin goes over in great detail He took several lessons from his analysis that he condensed into several strategic questions you can ask yourself if you hope for the same results: Don’t miss his complete guide if you have some content problems. The results speak for themselves, and he has much more advice (and helpful graphs) for you to learn from. Learn From Others’ Experiences With More Perspectives on Search https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectives/ Lauren Clark (Google’s Product Manager), brings you this detailed look at the new Perspectives feature now available in some searches. She describes this feature, what it is meant to accomplish, and how it pulls its results. As she explains, this is an AI-powered feature meant to provide more access to real opinions from sources across the internet. The new feature will highlight results that are drawn from forums, QA sites, and social media. They will include long and short-form videos, images, and written posts. The features will also include information about the person who posted the content (for example, their name, profile pictures, or the popularity of their content) when possible. Lauren claims that in addition to the other stated goals, Perspectives is intended to make it easier for users to find expertise and experience. The update also comes with some changes to how review content is ranked. See the full guide for a complete introduction to this new feature. Next, you’ll get some ideas on improving your informational content with another kind of perspective. How and Why You Should Create Informational Content With POVs https://moz.com/blog/informational-content-with-povs Victor Ijidola brings you this look at creating more compelling informational content. He argues that by providing a point-of-view, you can make this content drive sales more effectively. In this guide, he lays out how. By using a POV, he means to provide your own perspective or to personalize the information so that it could only have come from your own experience. This practice can help you avoid creating generic, cookie-cutter content. He presents some detailed arguments for the power of the POV. First, he argues, it helps you form a deeper connection with your visitor. Sharing a POV helps readers feel that they are beginning to know you. A relationship is created when you reveal your personality or preferences. Victor argues that the connections you build through authentic perspective can create or attract more committed fans to your content. He also argues that it has the potential to make readers more likely to invest in content after reading the opening paragraphs and eventually more likely to convert. He follows up his arguments with some tips for how you can create some POV-driven content. He recommends exploring your product’s keywords and identifying the areas where you have strong opinions or background. As he reminds you, POV isn’t just about opinion. You want to be able to back up your view. With the month’s guides finished, you’re ready to take on the latest headlines. First, you’ll learn about a bizzare Local Guide Program keywords that may also be appearing in your client’s Google Search Console. The Mysterious Appearance of “Local Guide Program” Queries in Google Search Console https://www.seroundtable.com/local-guide-program-gsc-35575.html Glenn Gabe brings you his own investigation into a mysterious keyword. During a client audit, he found out that the keyword Local Guide Program was driving traffic to pages across his client’s site. The problem was, he couldn’t figure out why. He checked out similar sites and found that the keyword was appearing there, too. These pages did not appear to have any relevance to this keyword or to be participants in a Google program of the same name. All the traffic was coming from desktop searches, nearly 100% of it. It was also coming from multiple countries. Furthermore, it was always reported that every checked page was always ranking #1 for the term. For many sites, this keyword alone accounts for a decent amount of traffic. As of yet, the mystery remains unsolved. Glenn was unable to find any answers on his own, or any answers in the various forum posts that have covered the same topic. SEO should keep an eye on the situation, especially if this keyword is appearing in their client’s console reports. If it’s a bug, the traffic may suddenly disappear after an update—creating an issue for SEOs and their clients. Next, Google has a new feature going live. The Perspectives feature we discussed above is getting it’s own menu filter on SERPs. Google’s Perspectives Search Menu Filter Is Now Live on Mobile in the US https://brodieclark.com/google-perspectives-filter/ Brodie Clark brings you this look at the new search menu filter that appeared shortly after the launch of the Perspectives. Now, mobile users will be able to filter their results down to exclusively the items that appear for perspectives. This development may be worth noting for SEOs. Any filter that limits results to personal essays and videos will likely bypass brand websites or other properties where SEO is typically performed. This may be the start of another big change in how content is valued and produced. Brodie speculates that the entire Perspectives feature may be an attempt by Google to win back some search share from its growing rival tiktok. The Perspectives feature and filter makes it significantly easier for searchers to find short-video results. Make sure that you check out the complete article for some images and explanations of how the new filters work. You’ll find some ideas you can use to start developing content that can rank on this new and potentially revolutionary search features. Next up, Google has another announcement. It claims that its upcoming algorithm will eclipse ChatGPT. Google DeepMind’s CEO Says Its Next Algorithm Will Eclipse ChatGPT https://www.wired.com/story/google-deepmind-demis-hassabis-chatgpt/ Will Knight brings you this look at recent statements by the CEO of Google’s DeepMind projects. The CEO, Demis Hassabis, claimed that the next project, AlphaGo, would be powerful enough to eclipse the current capabilities of ChatGPT. As Will reports, AlphaGo has been in development for a while. In 2016, the program defeated a champion player of the strategy game Go. The project rests on proprietary techniques like reinforcement learning and detailed trees of alternative options to generate more effective responses. While Google may have some high hopes for AlphaGo eclipsing ChatGPT, the program currently remains in development. That isn’t to say Google has been absent from the Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—June 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:39:59 +0000

Read this roundup to catch up on AI and SEO. This summary of May’s top guides, data studies, and news headlines comes packed with 5 fresh items covering new AI systems and the changes they are bringing to search. The first guide will introduce you to SGE—Google’s new AI search augment— and how it works. Then you’ll learn about some new recommended KPIs for content quality and find out how to seize the most low-hanging SEO opportunities on a tight budget. The data studies are next. You’ll see the path one team took from 0 to 12,000,000 users in 2 years. Then, you’ll find out which brands are recommended by AI engines (and why), read a large-scale report on the state of search, and see the data for predictions that AI use will grow by 5x this year alone. You’ll find news at the end. The latest headlines will tell you how to understand news topic authority, and how Google is introducing AI to its results. If you prefer consuming video content, check this out. Google Search Generative Experience: A Look at SGE With 12 AI Overviews https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sge-ai-overview-examples/487918/ Kristi Hines provides you with this in-depth look at SGE (a new generative AI search aid that will augment normal Google searches). She provides multiple examples of how it will handle queries and provide results so that you can start to adjust your SEO. First, she lets you know how to join the partial rollout as a volunteer and start testing all these features for yourself. If you plan to wait until the full release, these examples will give you a good idea of what to expect. These limited examples suggest that SGE works on slightly different principles than desktop and mobile search—at least enough to change the top winners. Make sure you check out the rest of the guide for the other examples and what they can tell you. Ranking in any kind of search takes good content. In the next guide, you’ll get some advice for building better content with more updated KPIs. Your New KPIs to Gauge Content Quality https://sparktoro.com/blog/your-new-kpis-to-gauge-content-quality/ Amanda Natividad suggests you start building content with a new sort of approach. She claims that her development process isn’t meant to produce raw traffic but reliably delivers business results. In this guide, she introduces the KPIs she keeps for her process, what they mean, and how to capture them. Among others, she recommends the following KPIs for content quality— Check out the guide for a complete list of KPIs that prove your content is on the right track. Following KPIs like these can help you claim the credit you deserve for long-term or more abstract strategies. Speaking of helping clients understand your value, the final guide of the month focuses on how you can reorder large SEO projects to start delivering for clients faster. The Ultimate Low-Hanging Fruit SEO Strategy — Whiteboard Friday https://moz.com/blog/low-hanging-fruit-seo-strategy-whiteboard-friday Aleyda Solis brings you this guide to finding SEO’s “low-hanging fruit,” or in her words —” those activities that will tend to have a higher output, a higher impact, and lower effort.” She argues you should be tracking these opportunities from the start so you can use them to mitigate impatience from clients and stakeholders. She recommends that you build a low-hanging fruit analysis alongside your typical SEO audit and use this analysis to develop your SEO schedule. When you identify needs that can be met with low-hanging fruit solutions, space them out so the client sees results for the entire project. She provides some examples of solutions that may work for most types of projects, including— Her complete guide (see the full video) includes a number of low-hanging targets and a flow chart to help you organize and prioritize them. She also has some extra advice on how you can start executing faster for clients. That’s all the guides for the month. The case studies are next, starting with how one team hit 10m visitors in 2 years. 0 to 12,000,000 Users in 24 Months – Sleep Advisor Case Study https://nemanja.com/case-studies/sleep-advisor/?fbclid=IwAR2jZDC1rAMtv9lzOvvDiSS9vZPsFMICT_B-Emgcf1Uzu8x8jvYwcxlRW-Q Nemanja Mirkovic brings you this analysis of the explosive growth of SleepAdvisor.org. This site project between Nemanja and a friend has been ongoing for 5 years. This study looked at a slice of two years when the site moved from no visitors to millions. The analysis starts at the idea stage. Nemanja fully documents how he chose the niche, researched the competitors, and even chose the exact domain for SleepAdvisor. From the start, he says, he focused on having content superior to what niche competitors were offering. He built and scaled high-quality content using an internal team. You’ll also get a lot of information about how he built his team and content process. For the rest of the analysis, he describes how his team acquired backlinks for the site, developed content marketing for growth, and tested social media. When traffic began to pour in, the team made the decision to focus on CRO. He provides examples of how CRO informed his process and how years of CRO testing have changed the presentation of his site. He closes the analysis with all the ways the company successfully (and unsuccessfully) monetized the traffic it generated. You’ll learn about how all of the following monetization attempts played out— For the next data study, you’ll take another look at AI. These systems have been found to recommend brands when prompted. Is this an SEO opportunity? Visibility in the AI Future: Which Brands are Recommended By OpenAI? https://www.sistrix.com/blog/visibility-in-the-ai-future-which-brands-are-recommended-by-openai/ Johannes Beus brings you this exploration of what major generative artificial intelligence engines are recommending brands and how often. This test was performed on OpenAI. The team gave the engine 10,000 product categories and asked it to return recommendations. This immediately yielded some interesting findings for the future of commercial search. Johannes noted— Johannes was also able to determine the most recommended out of all brands. In order, these were— These results have significant consequences for brands that cannot make this list. Generative results are drawn from search engine results, and the winning brands there may have a powerful foundation in coming AI technology. Check out the complete analysis for many other insights, including the list of brands that perform below average and charts of how often certain brands appear. The next case study is a look at the overall state of search in 2023. It’s a helpful large-scale review of everything that’s changed in a tumultuous couple of years. The State of Search 2023 https://www.semrush.com/blog/state-of-search-2023/ Marcus Tober brings you this catch-up resource for all the changes in search. His team calculated total traffic trends based on 50,000 US domains. Nearly 150,000,000,000 searches were analyzed to determine the rise and fall of different factors, topics, and terms. One factor that his team couldn’t ignore was the dramatic increase in Google Search Updates. They tracked how many of these updates landed compared to previous years and how much volatility they caused. For one, they detected that updates are becoming more frequent. Next, Marcus takes you through the major website tends for the last year. As he notes, there has been a 3-year decline in the number of ranking domains. This may result from Google’s work to stop spam from ranking. He notes that this also means larger sites rank for more keywords than before. This may suggest a growing advantage for sites with larger budgets and footprints. The remainder of the study is a detailed, extended graphic that illustrates most of the covered trends. You’ll learn more about: Check out the complete study to catch up on everything that happened over the last year. For now, let’s look to the future. One study predicts that the use of AI will rapidly increase over 2023. Use of AI for SEO and Content to Grow 5X This Year https://searchengineland.com/seo-compounding-value-393965 Danny Goodwin brings you these polling results on SEOs and their agencies performed by BrightEdge. He notes that marketing budgets have mostly been holding steady from the start of the COVID crisis. Budgets are expected to grow again, with many investments going toward AI. He analyzed the following findings from the study: Check out Danny’s write-up to get more analysis and a link to the full AI use study. For now, you’re ready to see the latest news. First, we have an official Google announcement with some important news for SEOs in the “news” niche. Understanding News Topic Authority https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/05/understanding-news-topic-authority?hl=en Google has released this guidance in response to the proliferation of news sites and sites that deal with news content. Over the course of the guidance, they explain how topic authority works for these sites and how Google balances a need for accuracy with other concerns. The company partly explains how topical authority works with “news.” Like many niches, this one works on a number of signals that determine how high you can rank. They include— This short report should help SEOs in the news niche understand what it takes to succeed Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—May 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 22 May 2023 13:39:04 +0000

Are you feeling on top of the competition now that you’re nearly halfway through the year? If not, this roundup should give you the edge you need with the latest data studies, guides, and news alerts. In the first case study, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how a site earned one million visitors. Then, you’ll get a breakdown of the latest review update and another breakdown of what it may target now and in the future. The guides are next. You’ll learn new skills to help you develop content from AI and find out what matters most to make the first page in 2023. The roundup closes with some headlines you shouldn’t miss. You’ll get confirmation that the Reviews Update is finally over, a notice to export your analytics data, the resolution of the ‘site name’ error last month, and some of the latest official guidance on creating helpful content. Examine SEO Case Study: 7 Lessons to 1 Million Monthly Visits https://ahrefs.com/blog/examine-seo-case-study/ Bill Widmer brings you this case study covering Examine.com’s journey to 1 million visits. This is an interesting case, as he notes because the site didn’t focus hard on either SEO or backlink outreach. Throughout the study, Bill details the unique ways the Examine.com team built its audience and credibility. He points out how the site has generated a significant number of mentions from journalists by creating highly valuable data content. Examine.com publishes expert analyses of food and supplement nutrition claims. This is highly valuable content for journalists, allowing the site to pull mentions from news giants like The Guardian. It has over 1000 of these backlinks now. As Bill points out, it owes this relevance to some incredibly high standards for its high-detail content. Only subject matter experts produce the articles, and each piece passes through three different editors (also experts) before being posted. It is a massive investment, but Bill also reminds us that Examine didn’t arrive here by guesswork. By policy, they audit their SEO every six months. This has allowed them to pursue this strategy with the confidence that it would pay off. See the full guide for even more lessons about how Examine reached a million visits—even after being hit by a recent update. Speaking of updates, the next study has some interesting facts about the most recent Product Review Update. It was more volatile than ever. Google’s April 2023 Reviews Update More Volatile Than the Previous Product Updates https://searchengineland.com/googles-april-2023-reviews-update-was-more-volatile-than-the-previous-product-reviews-update-data-providers-say-398825 Barry Schwartz brings you this post-review report on the April 2023 Product Update. It may have felt like this one was bigger or messier than the previous ones. It was, and Barry has the data on why. First, Barry points out this review went beyond previous product reviews by also covering He backs this up with a collection of visuals that cover insights from all the top tools, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Rank Ranger. These charts and graphs cover the times of peak volatility, the number of URLs newly appearing in the top 10 results, and breakdowns of the volatility by niche. For example, you’ll learn about the large impact this update had on health, finance, retail, and travel niches. Why was this update so volatile compared to the past one? The next case study by have some clues. The author argues that the update was targeting a wide-scale but unnamed factor. Google’s Newest Reviews Update Elevates Real-Life Experience https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/googles-newest-reviews-update-elevates-real-life-experience/ Lily Ray has an interesting interpretation of the latest reviews update, and in particular, a theory for why Google removed the word “product” from it. She argues that this update was targeted at real-life experiences. This is a big case to make, but she brought some evidence. First, she notes that Google has recently started to emphasize “experience” in its directions to searchers and search raters. Google defines experience more clearly in their Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines as “Experience: Consider the extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic. Many types of pages are trustworthy and achieve their purpose well when created by people with a wealth of personal experience. For example, which would you trust: a product review from someone who has personally used the product or a “review” by someone who has not?” As Lily points out, Google has built out a number of references to similar terms like “authenticity” and “original research.” in recent history. She also has some data evidence from the recent update. For example, she showed that many big update winners emphasize personal experience. She uses mom bloggers as an example of a niche where the update rewarded sites that focused on personal experience. She also tracks rank changes in audio and entertainment sites that support her theory. Check out the article for her complete argument. I take a wait and see approach to this theory for now, but it’s worth considering as future updates roll out. You’re ready to jump into the guides, starting with a look at how content is evolving with the expansion of AI. How Content Is Evolving Thanks to AI https://moz.com/blog/content-evolving-with-ai-whiteboard-friday Ross Simmonds bring you this Moz Whitebaord on how AI is likely to change the development of your content at every level, from workflow to creation. Near the start of the guide, you can find a graphic that fully illustrates how he expects AI to work for you as it continues to develop. He tracks and explains the changes that are possible for research, brainstorming, briefs, drafts, and publishing. In the rest of the piece, he goes into greater detail on all of this. For example, he talks about how AI can amplify human abilities in the planning stage by generating ideas, expanding them into outlines, and giving you drafts to review before you’ve even really started your day. He argues that SEOs should start focusing on using AI as an augment to the experience and strategy that they bring. Everything AI is still in flux. We don’t yet know how good it will get or how much it will really cost to use effective models. The next guide will focus on the present. It looks at what’s necessary to reach the first page right now. How to Get on the First Page of Google in 2023 https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-to-get-on-the-first-page-of-google/ Joshua Hardwick brings you this look at what he thinks it takes to make the first page. This isn’t just a list of general tips, though, Josh takes you through the entire decision process that takes a failing page and prepares it to compete with the current Page 1 winners. Like many modern guides, it treats understanding search intent as the first priority. He reminds you that the first step is always finding out what is already ranking for the niche. If all results are in one format (for example, a “how-to” guide), that’s likely the only format that will be competitive for that term now. No keyword mastery can overcome this requirement. The full guide takes you through each modern requirement and lays out the tasks you need to complete to move to the one. It’s a good guide for beginners and a decent troubleshooting checklist for experienced SEOs who may have fallen behind on the trends. Now that you have some new skills. let’s jump to the big headlines of the last month. First, the most recent big update has now ended. April 2023 Reviews Update Is Officially Over https://www.searchenginejournal.com/april-2023-reviews-update-is-officially-over/485471/ Roger Montti brings you this announcement from Google about the reviews update that hit your sites starting on April 12th. As of April 25th, the review is officially considered concluded, and any ranking changes will likely have other causes. As we already noted in the case study at the top, this study was confirmed to have affected a lot more than products. Google announced that the update covered reviews about services, destinations, digital products, and more. Only 3rd party reviews (such as GMB reviews) were confirmed not to be included. Roger takes you through some of the post-update chatter from top SEO forums. For many, the mood was not great. SEOs are showing exhaustion with the number of updates they’ve endured in a short amount of time. Many reported large drops. The article closes with some advice on recovering if you’ve experienced drops. You’ll get some more actionable advice in the next news item. It gives you the deadline for saving your valuable analytics data. Export Historical Data From Universal Analytics Before July 1, 2024 https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13510998 Google’s team brings you this announcement that you’ll need to export your historical data out of Universal Analytics (UA) or risk losing it all. While the title only mentions one deadline, there are 2 of them here you’ll need to note if you’re still using this service— The announcement provides you with links to solutions you can use to export your data. They’ll give you the full steps for exporting to existing cloud storage, generating CVS report downloads, or using Google Sheets to Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—April 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 10:37:30 +0000

First, you’ll get hard data from the latest case studies. The studies cover the state of AI in the marketing industry, the winners and losers of the last big update, and whether going viral helps with SEO. Next, the guides will give you some new skills to put to work. You’ll learn how to find out if PBNs are still working, how to apply AI to create SEO-friendly content, and how to do your own tracking of Google Update changes. The top SEO headlines are waiting for you at the end. Google has announced the broad core updates are done and provided some details about how they catch fake reviews. There’s also a new reviews update that’s no longer just about products. The State of AI in the Online Marketing Industry: 2023 Report https://www.authorityhacker.com/ai-survey Mark Webster, writing for Authority Hacker, brings you this massive survey on how digital marketers use their new AI toys. More than 3,800 marketers were included in the survey. They were asked dozens of questions to reveal insights like the following examples: The respondents came from various backgrounds, including website owners, freelancers, agency owners, and more. The results suggest that AI already powers many marketing operations at different levels. The survey also revealed some of the pioneering users’ frustrations. 63% of respondents cited inaccuracies in the copy as a major issue with the current functionality. Despite high trust in some other areas, fewer than 15% of users report trusting keyword data generated by AI. Still, everyone seems eager to forge ahead. 90% of marketers are confident that they will be able to learn and adapt to these new tools. Check out the full article for a complete breakdown of how SEOs report using A.I. Surfer AI Launch Date Announced for May 23, 2023 https://surferseo.com/ai/ Surfer’s AI tool’s release date has been announced. This is the same tool that Matt Diggity helped design which takes care of article research, outline creation, content creation and SEO optimization in a single button press. Watch the case study where Matt talks about his website that grew from 0 to 50,000 visitors per month, with pure AI content. To sign up for the waitlist and take advantage of the launch bonuses, head on over here: https://surferseo.com/ai/ Next, you’ll get a better understanding of the impact of the last Core Update through a look at its winners and losers. Google’s March 2023 Core Update: Winners, Losers & Analysis https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/googles-march-2023-core-update-winners-losers-analysis/ Lily Ray lets you know who is celebrating after the end of the last big update. Her analysis looked at 7,000+ domains and the positions that they held before and after. This update’s winners included some of the biggest sites on the internet. Below, you can see them listed next to the absolute change in visibility they achieved— These were the top 5 biggest losers, based on the absolute loss of visibility they experienced— In her analysis of the list of 7,000 sites, she judged that eCommerce and shopping were the winningest categories, though a significant amount of the growth went to a few huge players (such as Amazon). Reference/dictionary sites showed up in both lists. Bigger reference sites appeared to benefit greatly, whereas smaller reference sites lost a ton of visibility. Lily also noted some strange trends in the travel industry. Sites that directly sell services (such as home sites for hotels) did well, but affiliate sites that rated and reviewed hotels all suffered. This may be an early warning sign of Google’s changing priorities in search. The final case study of the month asks (and answers) how much going viral is really worth as a strategy. Does Going Viral Help With SEO? Not Really https://ahrefs.com/blog/viral-seo/ Patrick Stox brings you this look at the real SEO benefits of having a viral moment. As he notes early on, a viral moment can bring on a huge influx of news stories and social media mentions. That should mean a big change in visibility, right? That’s not what Patrick found. He used an interesting example: The Four Seasons Landscaping company that was (presumably due to a scheduling mixup) the host of a presidential press conference. This business received hundreds of new links as a result of this event, many from the largest print and TV news sources in the United States. Patrick uses analytical sources to show you how the company reacted and benefitted from these new links. As he points out, this company isn’t even hitting the first page for most of its key terms (and most competitors are also small businesses). The company claims, at the time this article was written, that they had netted only 3 new clients from the attention. Patrick follows up with several more examples you can check out in the complete article. Each time, he points out mistakes that these companies made, but the trend remains clear that an explosion of media mentions doesn’t seem to deliver growth on its own. With the case studies for the month closed, you’re ready to move on to the guides. First, you’ll learn about the state of PBNs after the last round of updates so you can decide where they belong in your strategy. Pbns & the Google Spam Update – Do They Still Work? https://rankclub.io/pbn-link-spam-update/ Rob Rok takes a data-driven dive into the performance of PBNs after a series of updates rocked the link-building world. As he noted, “search spam” was a major target of the recent updates. Many suspected that links like PBNs would be targeted. He set up a series of tests to determine how the updates had impacted PBNs. Using a method from one of my old blogs, he sent links from PBNs in his network to a number of small, stagnating test sites. From there, he waited several months to see how the test sites would respond to the fresh link from the PBN. His testing showed a strong and sudden reaction from all the test sites. A few sites jumped into the top 10 results for related terms. Rob concluded that the updates didn’t harm the viability of PBNs. Every single test site saw a response, and they were all positive. Check out the full article to see the data from the test sites and some more analysis from Rob on how these results were possible. Next up, the good people at Moz will help you start putting AI to use with new recommended practices. AI for SEO and Content Marketing: A Friend, Not a Foe (For Now, at Least) https://moz.com/blog/ai-for-seo-and-content-marketing Ann Smarty takes you through a look at how you can start getting friendly with AI. First, she argues that most SEOs shouldn’t feel threatened unless their content never expresses a human opinion or reflects expertise (the two things she argues AI can’t do). It’s not going to replace your pillar pieces, but the value she does see in AI is as a sort of virtual assistant that can be activated throughout the day to kickstart, simplify or automate SEO tasks. She provides you with a long list of ways you can use AI, including all of the following examples she explains in the article: She closes the guide with some extra news about upcoming AIs that are promising even more applications in the future. She introduces you to some projects that may soon help you create your own reliable stock art and convert blog posts directly into videos. For the last guide of the month, we’re jumping back into talking about the updates. It will teach you how to use simple metrics in GA4 to handle your own update tracking. How to Compare Hourly Sessions in Google Analytics 4 to Track the Impact of Major Google Algorithm Updates (Like Broad Core-Updates) https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/ Glenn Gabe brings you a new update-tracking solution he developed based on a Twitter reply. He was recently asked if there was an easy way to compare Google’s organic traffic hourly (for example, while an update was rolling out). A report like this is possible with GA4 , and Glenn helps you build it out so you can see what’s happening to your site live. Glenn takes you through a complete tutorial of his process so that you can follow it yourself. The nine steps cover all the settings you’ll need to apply to get the report that provides the right information. On top of the helpful steps, he uses visuals to show you where to find all the right session, segment, and timeframe options. This guide is a short one because the process is really simple when you know where to look. Once you’ve figured it out, it will be set up every time a new update hits. You may be waiting awhile because, as our first news item states, the last update is confirmed complete. Google March 2023 Broad Core Update Done Rolling Out https://searchengineland.com/google-march-2023-broad-core-update-done-rolling-out-394724 Barry Schwartz brings you this confirmation from Google that the March 2023 Core Update has finally concluded. It was finally listed as Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—March 2023

Matt Diggity — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 18:35:05 +0000

With Google updates, advancing AI capabilities, and possible new search engine players entering the field, this is no time to be uninformed. Fortunately, this latest update is packed with studies, tips, and announcements about all of these urgent issues and more. First, you’ll get a knowledge boost from four fresh data studies. The studies cover what an analysis of 10,000 results can tell you, what consumers really think of generative AI, what the last Google update did to SERPs, and what 9 years of data can tell you about Google’s future. Then, you’ll pick up a few new skills from the guides. They cover some top use cases for ChatGPT, best SEO practices for paywalls, and an analysis of whether AI has “killed” affiliate marketing. The latest news closes out the roundup. Catch up on Google’s latest update announcements, the surprising effects of Lighthouse 10, Google’s new best link practices, and reports of search cooperation with Apple. Affiliate SEO: We Analysed 10,000 Search Results to See Who Ranks https://detailed.com/affiliate-serps/ Glen Allsopp brings you some insights his team picked up after analyzing about ten thousand affiliate-product SERPs. As he states early on, his team wanted to see: Are ‘general’ sites like Forbes completely taking over, or do single-niche affiliate sites still rank well? His team initially spent weeks hand-collecting keywords that point to physical products. They refined their list by focusing on confirmed product keywords like: The team found some dramatic results. First, of the top 100 most represented websites, just 5 were independent brands. In a graphic included in the article, you can see a sample of these supersites, including sources like Amazon, NYTimes, Forbes, and Tech Radar. Next, his team found that for many results, independent affiliates didn’t appear at all. Many results pages were split between major publishers. For example, Forbes alone had first-page rankings for 2,047 of the 10,000 key phrases. The news isn’t all bad for independent affiliates. Glen and the team found that the independent affiliates that did stand out were getting around 1.3 million visits a month. The rest of the study includes pages and pages of facts and insights for affiliates about featured snippets, the speed at which you can develop an independent affiliate site, and the viability of niche sites compared to other types. Both established and independent publishers will have to reckon with AI. In the next study, you’ll learn what consumers say about it. New Data: What Consumers Really Think About Generative AI https://www.kevin-indig.com/new-data-what-consumers-really-think-about-generative-ai/ Kevin Indig brings you this look at the consumer view of AI. He wanted to explore the rates of user trust, adoption, and usage to better understand how online buyers were dealing with the changes. This turned into an official survey that approached more than 1,000 participants. These participants were then surveyed on a number of AI-related questions, including: While the study is filled with statistics developed from the data, the general trend is that consumers are adopting AI technology very quickly. Already 70% of people report using it, and those who use it seem to be highly encouraged to use it additional times. Respondents used Chat GPT for an interesting collection of tasks, including creative writing, problem-solving, and math. Those polled also seemed to consider it relatively trustworthy as a source of information. 70%+ found AI outputs at least a little credible. Check out the full study to learn more about how normal customers are responding to AI. In the next piece, you’ll need to go back to caring about what search engines think. You’ll get a breakdown of how the Helpful Content System update landed. How Google’s Latest ‘Helpful Content System’ Update Is Impacting SERP’s https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/news/how-googles-latest-helpful-content-system-update-is-impacting-serps/ Lily Ray brings you this detailed breakdown of Google’s latest updates, in a piece adapted from her PubCon Austin 2023 presentation. Lily focuses on this update in particular because, as she argues in the piece, it may have a significantly larger impact than everyone expected. She starts by pointing out that the Helpful Content Update also shipped with another new feature—a sitewide signal she calls the “unhelpful content classifier.” This signal sniffs out content that doesn’t break rules but provides low added value or is not particularly helpful (in other words, SEO spam). Lily suggests the possibility that this signal is the early version of a detection system that may be used to spot and penalize AI content. As further evidence, she lays out who was most affected by the update. She lists the following sites as getting a surprising amount of attention from the update— A common factor with this set of sites is that they have problems creating unique content. The right guitar chords are always the right guitar chords, for example. That all of them were hit suggests that the update targeted otherwise good content that was simply too plentiful online. How might that targeting ability be used in the future? As Lily states in closing, Google is not necessarily hostile to AI. The latest messaging on AI suggests that Google does not object to it if… These moves may simply reflect Google unwillingness to let users be buried under a slew of freshly-generated AI results. While we’re on the subject of higher-quality AI content, that’s the focus of the very first guide of the month. ChatGPT for SEO: 9 Best Use Cases (And 4 Suboptimal Ones) https://ahrefs.com/blog/chatgpt-for-seo/ Si Quan Ong and the Ahrefs team have narrowed down (what they argue are) the best AI chat use cases for SEO. In the guide, they list and explain each of these use cases to you—focusing on the specific needs of SEOs. They suggest that ChatGPT may have a valuable part to play in SEO operations in roles such as… For each of these use cases, you’ll be given some great advice for how to use ChatGPT to pull them off. Each description is filled with lists of prompts and images of the bot in action to show you how to get the desired result. After listing some high-potential use cases, the team also treats you to a list of situations where they feel ChatGPT is not used effectively. These include— Check out the full guide to find out why they think ChatGPT can’t handle these tasks satisfactorily and what might change in the future. Next, you’ll be treated to a highly practical guide for getting the best SEO around paywalls. Best Practices for Paywalls and SEO https://www.seoforgooglenews.com/p/best-practices-for-paywalls-and-seo Barry Adams brings this warning to the growing number of online publishers who are experimenting with subscription services. As he points out, the SEO rules can change when you apply a paywall to your sites. He has some ideas for your implementation. First, he breaks down the four different types of paywalls that you can create for your sites. These are— For each of these paywalls, he tells you how users are impacted and what to expect. After that he starts to explain how paywalls interact with Googles. The important thing, he argues, is that publishers need to make sure that Google can see their content. As it so happens, Google has already engaged with paywall publishers, and they’ve released some recommendations. Google recommend metering and lead-in content as paywall solutions. Google has increased options for seeing past these forms. Also, Barry recommends that you use structured data to let Google know it is reviewing paywalled content. Check out the guide for a complete set of guidelines for doing SEO around paywalls. For the final guide of the month, you’ll get one affiliate’s prediction of a future under AI. Did AI Just Kill Affiliate Marketing? https://empireflippers.com/did-ai-just-kill-affiliate-marketing/ Greg Elfrink starts with a question that’s hard to ignore. He asks not is AI dangerous, but if it has already killed at least one market. It’s a long and detailed argument, but Greg takes you through his vision for the long-term impact of AI. He explores many ideas across the entire piece and defends the following personal predictions— The last note may sound optimistic, but it’s something else. He argues that this may be one of the last windows for people to break into affiliate marketing. Soon, it will be significantly easier for anyone to produce enough content to populate a large site. The age and authority you can claim now will significantly increase in value. He closes with some advice about building a brand right now so that AI will be less of a threat. That closes out the guides for this week, and it’s time to jump into the news. First, you’ll learn about one of the latest updates to hit Google. Google Unwraps February 2023 Product Reviews Update With Language Support https://www.seroundtable.com/google-february-2023-product-reviews-update-34949.html Barry Schwartz brings us this breakdown of Google’s most recent product review update. This one hit around February 21, 2023. Google provided a timeline of two weeks for the update, and it has been announced to be complete as of March 7th. The update arrived for more languages than usual, and rolled out for English, Spanish, Read More Read More

The post Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—March 2023 first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—Feb 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:52:12 +0000

SEO is on the precipice of perhaps its biggest shakeup ever. This roundup will get you up to speed on some of the most important research, guides, and news items around ChatGPT and other big changes. You’ll get to see the data studies first. You’ll find out what the numbers say about whether AI has already replaced human writers and the results of Google’s first case study in years. Then, you can learn from some fresh guides. They’ll teach you how to work with pillar pages and how to automate the dullest SEO tasks. The last section contains the most unmissable headlines. You’ll get the latest details about the huge Yandex leak, an unconfirmed Google Update, AI detection tools, and more. Let’s jump in… [Investigation] Has AI Already Replaced Human Writers? https://www.authorityhacker.com/has-ai-already-won Gael Breton brings you this dive into the world of AI content that’s already being placed on top sites. The investigation started with the CNET’s admission that they’ve published more than 75 AI-generated stories in recent history. The investigation found the same byline or tech used for AI content on CNET was also appearing on other websites owned by the parent company, including sites like bankrate.com and creditcard.com. As Gael points out, though, publishers don’t have to report using A.I. to create stories. Using tools (still in testing), he and the team found that it was highly likely that AI was being used on Forbes and across the internet provider reviews niche. He also provides some analysis into how well A.I. articles are performing at bringing in human readers. See the whole article to find out how A.I. measures up against some of the site’s top authors. Next, we have a surprise case study from Google years after the last one. It’s no surprise that Google likes people to follow the rules, but the results of this case study have some big implications for sites that rely on video. How Vimeo Improved Video SEO for Their Customers https://developers.google.com/search/case-studies/vimeo-case-study Google’s Search Central team brings you this case study into how Vimeo addressed one of their biggest challenges by applying Google’s best practices. Vimeo’s problem was that they relied on their customers to handle the work of basic SEO, applying structured data, and submitting sitemaps. Customers weren’t doing this on their own, so many top videos by the service weren’t showing up in search. By adopting Google’s best practices and baking them into the way the product worked, they were able to get around these problems. For example, they made the indexifembedded and VideoObject markup part of their rules, and now customers don’t have to do anything for videos to be indexable. The complete case study contains additional advice on how Vimeo massively improved the searchability of all of its videos by applying the best practice rules without any complex SEO work. It’s a solid analysis for any site that relies on videos and may offer you some clues to handle ranking problems. That concludes the case studies, but there’s a great set of guides coming up. First, you’ll learn why pillar pages do better than blogs, and how to build yours to do the same. Pillar Pages: Why and How You Should Add Them to Your Content Strategy https://moz.com/blog/how-to-use-pillar-pages-in-content-strategy Lauren Fox brings you this guide into pillar pages and where they belong in your content strategy. She defines a pillar page as one that comprehensively covers a broad topic. These are pages that are often thousands of words in length, and provide a complete overview as well as ways for readers to dive deeper into a topic. As she points out early in the piece, research at her company has shown pillar pages outperform normal blog pages in generating traffic, backlinks, and even fresh subscriptions for features like newsletters. She then goes on to explain how you can develop these pillar pages. You’ll learn how to develop them so that they improve your topical authority. You’ll also find out some strategies for mapping supporting pages and creating pillar pages of your own. You’ll have plenty of time to devote to thoughtful content by the time you’re done with the next guide. It teaches you how to automate some of the dullest SEO tasks. How to Automate Dull SEO Task https://ahrefs.com/blog/automate-seo-tasks/ Siew Ann Tan brings you these detailed descriptions of how to automate two different time-consuming SEO tasks. She takes you step-by-step through the work of automating the process of sending assignments to writers and verifying emails for outreach. For the first task (sending assignments to writers), she lays out how to set up an Airtable database for writers and article data. Then, she shows you how to use Zapier to automate different parts of the workflow—all the way to automating the creation of the docs writers will use for delivery. She provides the same level of detail for the next task, describing how you can build a process that finds emails, checks them, and filters your list down to the valid ones in an automated flow. Though this guide only explains two tasks, it can tell you a lot about how to build automated processes for other SEO work. For now, you’re ready to move on to the news. Some major events have happened in the last month, starting with the infamous Yandex leak. Yandex ‘Leak’ Reveals 1,922 Search Ranking Factors https://searchengineland.com/yandex-search-ranking-factors-leak-392323 Danny Goodwin brings you this story about one of the biggest stories in recent search history. Yandex was the subject of a massive leak on January 27th. If you aren’t familiar, Yandex is currently the 4th largest search engine by global market share. A former employee is alleged to have leaked the entire source code repository onto a popular hacking site. The original link contained 44.7GB of stolen files, including information on nearly 2000 different ranking factors. There is already some great analysis. One thread from Alex Buraks dives deep into what these leaked facts can tell us about Google. As he points out, these companies share a RankBrain function, PageRank, and the use of text algorithms. Yandex is also staffed by many ex-Googlers and, according to some Russian sources, requires you to use the same strategies to succeed at ranking. Beyond the standard ranking factors you’d expect, Danny highlights some of the strange ones that have been uncovered so far. Factors like the number of unique visitors and the total percentage of organic traffic play a role, for example. SEOs have only just begun to play with this trove of data. Expect to see many more details about it in an upcoming roundup. For now, you may have seen some volatility in late January. Was it caused by an unconfirmed Google Update? Unconfirmed Google Update Impacting Product Reviews Sites on Thursday, January 26th? https://www.seroundtable.com/unconfirmed-google-product-reviews-update-on-january-26th-34820.html Barry Schwartz brings you this look at a possible update. The mystery is yet to be solved, but you won’t want to miss the facts if you’re in the widely-affected product review niche. Around January 26th, site owners in the product review niche in particular began to chatter about strange dips and jumps that they were seeing in their analytics. Glenn Gabe recorded some shocking surges and drops in a twitter thread a few days later. Glenn was insistent in several messages with followers that Google was pushing some kind of site-level algorithm change. He claimed that his experience documenting these domains let him know that this was not some post-holiday adjustment. Barry expands on Glenn’s graphs with graphs from all of the major Google tracking tools. Mozcast, SEMrush, RankRanger and others all consistently found that something big was happening that day. By February 5th, SEOs in the comments were again reporting big fluctuations. Google has still not provided any guidance or admitted to any changes. With changes as recent as the 5th, whatever this is may still be rolling out. The next big news story works as a companion piece to the A.I. writer study you saw at the top. It’s the announcement of an A.I content detection tool—by the makers of ChatGPT. OpenAI Releases Tool to Detect Ai-Written Content https://www.searchenginejournal.com/openai-releases-tool-to-detect-ai-written-content/478085/ Matt G. Southern brings you this release announcement from OpenAI, the team behind the popular ChatGPT utility. They have released their own AI detection tool as a measure against people using their product for misinformation campaigns or academic fraud. Early testing has shown that the tool is effective at identifying AI text about 25% of the time. That may sound not sound great, but it’s not only OpenAI that has struggled with identifying AI content. It only estimated human-written text as AI about 10% of the time. If you want to start playing with this tool right now, you can here. Matt takes you through the process of putting text into the classifier and then interpreting the results. Based on the percentage, you’ll get a message telling you that the text is likely AI, unlikely AI, or something in between. Matt’s own testing found that the tool has some Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—January 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 08:01:31 +0000

The first roundup of the year is filled with everything you need to stay on top of the competition. First, the guides will help you understand why SEO pros need to master ChatGPT prompts, how to measure SEO properly, and the risks of trying to mimic your biggest rival’s strategies. The case studies will give you insights from the hottest SEO research. You’ll get a full breakdown of the year’s changes, the top recorded Google searches from among ~20 billion keywords, and proof that removing a product carousel affects organic traffic. The latest headlines are waiting for you at the end. You’ll want to know what we’ve learned about the latest link spam update, why several updates have been delayed, and what’s waiting for you on the Google Analytics 4 landing page report. Why SEO Pros Need to Master Prompts: The ChatGPT Revolution https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-pros-need-to-master-prompts-the-chatgpt-revolution/473780/ Vincent Terrasi brings you this look at why prompts may be a greater part of SEO in the coming years. Prompts are the phrases that you use to provoke a response from an AI (such as ChatGPT). In this guide, Vincent claims you must prepare by starting to master prompts now. He defines “Promptology” as crafting your prompt to receive the most effective response in the shortest amount of time. He gives you some tips to get started. He begins by identifying some of the problems He provides you with sets of solutions for each problem and even follows up by helping you fix problems with AI image prompts. He gives you some solutions to repair prompts that deliver images with the wrong resolution or dimension. He closes with some interesting tips on how you can use AI to write the prompts for you. Check out the full guide for a variety of helpful tips. Also read our guide on using ChatGPT for SEO. Next, you’ll learn how to measure the value of SEO campaigns. The ROI of SEO: How to Measure SEO ROI (With Formulas) https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-roi/ Carlos Silva has some advice on how to measure Return On Investment (ROI) when it comes to implementing SEO for yourself or a client. He teaches you the formula SEO ROI = (value of conversions – the cost of investment) / cost of investment. The rest of the guide helps you understand each of these variables so that you can easily plug in the figures from your own project. Carlos’ information is thorough. The first step, calculating your SEO investment, covers all the bases so you won’t forget any costs. You’ll be reminded to track in-house services, freelancers, and the tools you pay for to track your results. He provides several different recommendations for how you can measure the value of the conversions based on how you collect them, such as customer lifetime value (LTV). At the end of the guide, he even gives you some advice for how you can forecast your SEO ROI ahead of time. Several tools are recommended, and you’ll learn how to find the data you need for forecasting in each of them. While you’re thinking about long-term strategy, the final guide of the month may also help. It covers the risks of basing your SEO on what you see others doing. What Is the Risk of Focusing on a Competitor’s SEO Strategies? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/competitors-seo-strategies/473258/ Adam Riemer thinks you should be careful when using your biggest competitors as a guide for your SEO strategy. It seems natural to assume that the top players in the niche must know what it takes to win, but there are risks you have to consider. Over the course of the guide, Adam Reimer covers some of the most significant risks involved with copying a competitor’s strategy. For example, he points out that the most visible leader will also be the most copied by everyone else in the niche. You’re competing with all of them when you choose to follow the leader. Everyone is publishing the same content, and some might be a lot more aged than yours. Doing something innovative in your niche can offer a faster road to growth because you won’t be catching up with the effort of others. He also warns you against assuming that the changes you can track are the key to your competitor’s success. Just because you can see changes and growth does not mean the changes are responsible for the growth. What you copy may be your competitor’s mistake. The full guide contains more advice on responding to competitor strategies without taking on the risks of copying them. With the guides complete, let’s jump into the case studies. This first one is more of a breakdown, but you’ll get a detailed summary of the biggest changes in SEO. SEO 2022 in Review: E-E-A-T, ChatGPT, Search Essentials, and More https://searchengineland.com/seo-year-in-review-2022-390384 Danny Goodwin brings you this detailed look at the SEO 2022 year in review, emphasizing the changes that had the biggest impact on SEO practices. It summarizes the big algorithm updates, tools, company acquisitions, and more. The piece works like a glossary of everything that happened in SEO last year rather than a guide. It covers a wide range of topics, and for each topic, it gives you a bullet point of an important event with a link so that you can read it directly from the source. You’ll learn about: It’s not an exaggeration to say just reading this list will catch you up on SEO. You could have just come out of a coma that lasted all of 2022 and be ready to jump back into SEO by the time you’re done reading it. While reflecting on what happened last year, you may appreciate learning what terms have risen to the most popular in the world. The next data piece covers the top contenders out of nearly 20,000,000,000 keywords. Top Google Searches(From Our Database of 19.2 Billion Keywords) https://ahrefs.com/blog/top-google-searches/ Si Quan Ong brings you these detailed lists that will help you understand what’s trending online. He and the Ahrefs team have organized all of the top terms in the world and separated them into categories. You can quickly browse to see all the top terms for: Each term in the list is paired with its rounded search volume so that you can easily see how many searches they’re really generating. The lists are an interesting resource on their own, but if you are an Ahrefs user, you’ll find some extra helpful information at the end. Si teaches you how to use Ahrefs search tools to locate the top search in any given country or any given niche. You’ve picked up a lot of big-picture details so far. The final case study of the month will dive deep into a specific issue. Is a product carousel on your site causing traffic problems? Does Removing a Product Carousel Improve Organic Traffic? https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/seo-split-test-lessons-removing-product-carousel/ Jandira Neto breaks down the value of removing a product carousel. Jandira used a real eCommerce customer’s site to test the theory that removing the feature would have an affect on organic traffic. Like most Search Pilot studies, this one started with a poll of the readers to predict the results. Most respondents thought the results would be inconclusive, while the next largest group thought the impact would be negative. Fewer than 28% expected a positive result. Jandira provides you with more context for the experiment. The customer had already tested removing this feature on other pages, and experienced significant traffic improvements. This experiment was intended to confirm that it would work the same way with other pages. Traffic began to increase immediately after the feature was removed. It increased by 4000+ sessions in the first day alone. By the end of the 11-day testing window, the page was looking at a 29% traffic improvement. Jandira has some ideas for why this might have happened. First, she proposed that the changes may have improved load times for visitors. She also suggests that the removal improved the page’s freshness signals. That covers the case studies for the month. Now, you’re ready to look over the latest SEO news. First, the announcement of the December 2022 Link Spam Update. December 2022 Link Spam Update Releasing for Google Search https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/december-22-link-spam-update Google announced a new link spam update on December 14th. The stated goal of the update was to leverage SpamBrain. This AI targets unnatural links on search results pages with the goal of preventing them from reaching searchers. The team claims that SpamBrain is now empowered to detect additional behaviors, such as sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links. Google did not recommend that users make any changes to their site to prepare for the update. The timeline for this update was originally announced as about two weeks from the time of the announcement. However, the next news item will explain why that did not happen. Google Helpful Content Update & Link Spam Update Delayed Rollout Due to Holidays https://www.seroundtable.com/google-helpful-content-update-link-spam-update-delayed-34643.html Barry Schwartz brings you this look at Google’s set of Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – December 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 08:25:41 +0000

This latest roundup is filled with everything you need to prepare for the coming year. Catch up on all the latest case studies, guides, and news items SEOs use to make their big moves. First, you’ll get the latest data from the case studies. You’ll find out what 700+ link builders think works (and doesn’t). Then, you’ll learn which metric correlates most closely to organic visibility and which traffic tools most closely match Google’s own measurements. The guides will help you hone your skills and judgment. This month, you’ll discover whether and when it’s valuable to buy backlinks, what ChatGPT can do, and how to develop an authoritative content funnel. Finally, you’ll dive into the hottest news and discussion topics roiling SEO. There’s a new December Helpful Content Update, official guidance from Google about links, and new spam policies. Survey of 755 Link Builders Shows What Works in 2022 https://www.authorityhacker.com/link-building-survey/ Mark Webster of Authority Hacker brings you this look at what link builders think after Google recently announced that links may be less critical in the future than they are now (more on that in the news section). He took this as an admission that links were a significant ranking factor. However, as he points out, this is a topic where SEOs get very little guidance and support from Google. Mark set out to find how SEOs felt instead. The survey samples 755 professional link builders on what works. This included around 500 niche site owners and a selection of about 200 agencies, freelancers, and in-house teams. Among other interesting results, he found that: One of the most striking results of this survey is how many link builders prefer to buy their links. Far from being a fringe group, link purchasers are an overwhelming majority. You should check out the case study for a complete list of everything the Authority Hacker team learned and a deeper dive into each of the implications of the research. Having links still matters, but what matters most about them? The following study will help you understand what factors play the most significant role in performance. Study: Which Link Metric Correlates Closest to Organic Visibility? https://moz.com/blog/link-metric-serp-correlation-study Domenica D’Ottavio brings you this look at which link metrics matter the most if you want to achieve visibility in SERPs. The Moz team analyzed the rank of 6000 commercial keywords focused on the home retail sector, broken into 15 miniature sectors such as beds, sofas, desks, and lighting. The metrics measured for the study were: The study found that topical link profile relevance was one of the most significant factors. It had a positive correlation with organic visibility for 10 of the 15 sectors studied. While relevance stood out as the factor most closely related to performance, the full study suggests that no factor can be left unconsidered when building links. All of them were essential for reliable organic growth. Check out the complete study to get a lot of additional detail into what works best for links. For the final case study, you’ll learn what 3rd-party tool has the best insights into how Google operates. Which 3rd-Party Traffic Estimate Best Matches Google Analytics? https://sparktoro.com/blog/which-3rd-party-traffic-estimate-best-matches-google-analytics/ Rand Fishkin brings you this case study generated from more than 1,000 participants in a Sparktoro study. The participants voluntarily submitted their own private Google Analytics (GA) data so that it could be measured and compared against the metrics provided by: This study aimed to discover the most reliable 3rd-party traffic provider. To measure this, Rand and the team chose to use GA’s user metric (measuring unique visitors) and compare it to the figure that most closely corresponded for each tool. For example, SEMRush uses a “visits” figure, while Ahrefs “traffic performance” figure, and so on. These figures were taken and compared to the numbers created by GA. Rand and the team found that the most accurate tool depended upon the type of site that was being analyzed. The results showed SimilarWeb as one of the best choices for larger websites. However, Datos stood out for smaller websites. In general, all the tools struggled to match the accuracy of GA, which made Rand more skeptical of 3rd party results. Check out the complete article to get more insight into his learning and the reasons for his conclusions. For now, you are ready to move on to the guides. The first one explores the value of links right now. Should You Buy Backlinks in 2022? It Depends https://ahrefs.com/blog/buy-backlinks/ Joshua Hardwick brings you this look at the state of link buying in 2022 and provides some analysis and arguments to consider if you want to pursue link buying as a strategy. First, he covers many of the speculative risks of buying backlinks. Many SEOs fear, based on reports by Google, that purchased links may lose value or result in penalties. Most SEOs (75% of them if the first case study is accurate) don’t seem worried. Should they be? Joshua goes on to break down some of the reasons that SEOs don’t seem worried. First, he theorizes, they don’t have much of a choice. Anyone who has built links knows the process rarely gets far before a link prospect asks for cash. Many top-ranking blogs and informational sites charge for links even if they don’t openly advertise them. Google also has to catch you before there are penalties. Many paid links simply look the same as earned links. With that out of the way, he goes on to fully detail how links are working now. You’ll learn what prices you’ll pay for common links, such as niche edits and paid guest posts, and how links can be built safely. For the next guide, you’ll move on from links and learn about content. The Authoritative Content Funnel https://moz.com/blog/authoritative-content-funnel-whiteboard-friday Amanda Milligan takes you through the process of developing and deploying an authoritative content funnel. Authoritative content is a vital type of content that demonstrates expertise or offers deeper information about a topic. This type of content is notoriously hard to develop, but Amanda makes it easier for you by laying out all the goals you should be reaching for and the types of content used to achieve them. She covers how you should use and develop: Amanda gives you detailed information for each type of content, including how they leverage authority and what type of impression they can create in the reader’s mind. Check out the complete guide for some great resources to help you plan your content. Next, you’ll learn about some of the implications of ChatGPT 3 and what it might mean for the future. We Asked ChatGPT 3 Customer Experience Questions. Here’s How It Responded https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/we-asked-chatgpt-3-customer-experience-questions-heres-how-it-responded/ Jennifer Torres brings you this look at some of the implications for ChatGPT 3—a recent release of an AI bot that has been getting significant attention from SEOs and other groups that sell online. If you need an introduction, this recent guide will tell you what ChatGPT 3 is and why it’s provoking strong reactions across the board. You’ll also get to see what it looks like to use this (currently) free app from the inside. For a more SEO-oriented analysis, you should see Nathan Gotch’s recent video about ChatGPT as a “Google Killer.” It has been provoking some strong reactions from the SEO community. What ChatGPT is capable of may still remain to be seen. It could be the path to effortless content or something visitors tire of very quickly, and Google updates attack relentlessly. If you want to learn more about how ChatGPT has changed SEO, watch this video. That closes out the guides, and you’re ready to jump into the month’s news. It starts with a brand new helpful content update. Official Announcement: December Helpful Content Update https://twitter.com/googlesearchc/status/1600171901669605376?s=20&t=Dm90h6Vh10dbbossFvW0JQ Google’s own Search Central team brings you the announcement that an update is rolling out now. The announcement was made on the 6th but noted that the update had already been in motion since the previous day. So far, Google has told us nothing else. The last Helpful Content Update caused a lot of volatility. It’s too early to say if this one will be like that or a minor update that addresses problems from the first one. You’ll be able to find some analysis of this update in the next roundup. If you have been hit by the update, I recommend watching this video: For now, consider Google’s recent announcement that links have less impact now than they did previously. Google: Links Have Less Impact Today Than in the Past https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-link-signal-impact/472922/ Roger Montti looks at recent statements from a Google SEO office hours video. In it, a Googler claimed that backlinks have less impact as a ranking signal than they did in the past. This isn’t an entirely new position (John Mueller made a similar statement in November 2022), but it has left some SEOs wondering what the future holds. As you saw in the case studies, SEOs have hardly backed down from building Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—November 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 13:03:06 +0000

Start November on the right foot with our latest roundup. We’ve got the guides, case studies, and news items you need to hold your competitive edge. First, you’ll pick up some new tricks from the guides. You’ll get a comprehensive understanding of topical authority, learn how to apply semantic SEO to different niches, and how to measure the marketing channels that are hardest to measure. After that, you can reinforce your hunches with some new data from the case studies. They’ll give you new insights on whether author authority is a ranking factor and what pages are most likely to get “zero clicks”. At the end, you’ll get the latest news. You’ll want to know the latest about the final Spam Update of October, Google’s latest API features, and a new feature called “site names”. What Is Topical Authority In SEO & How To Build It https://ahrefs.com/blog/topical-authority/ In a piece hosted by Ahrefs, Jake Sheridan takes you through the steps of ranking for all of the important keywords in your niche using topical authority. He helpfully introduces the concept for those who need a refresher. Topical authority is what you have when your website becomes the go-to source for a given topic. This is often done by covering the topic so comprehensively (and well) that users don’t need to go anywhere else. As an example of why this matters, Jake shows you fresh SERPs for “mountain bike gifts”. Despite a difference of potentially billions in traffic and sales, Amazon is currently losing this SERP to a small (DR 23) site that only talks about mountain biking. That, and stunning results like this, should excite anyone with a small site who is facing down a big competitor. The catch, as Jake points out, is that Google provides almost no information about how it is measured or how it is weighted compared to other factors. However, he has some ideas. Jake takes you through the steps you can follow to get an approximation of where you stand and start improving. Among other tips, he recommends that you focus on topic-based research and develop clusters (which he fully explains). Check out the full guide to learn more about the potential of topical authority and putting it to use. In the next guide, you’ll learn about the potential of semantic SEO and some niches that can really benefit from it. How To Apply Semantic SEO To Different Niches https://moz.com/blog/niche-semantic-seo Claire Brain of Moz wants you to know how to apply semantic SEO. She argues that it can be applied effectively to nearly every niche. First, she gives you a refresher on what semantic search is and how it works. Semantics are the meanings of language and the study of how those meanings change in different contexts. Naturally, search engines want to understand this so they can deliver the most relevant results. As she covers in the piece, optimizing for semantic search has many benefits. It can deliver a better experience for users and can provide them with more consistent results across different devices. After that, she gets into the meat of the topic, teaching you how to apply this SEO concept across a range of different niches. She provides you with instructions for applying semantic SEO to: Each of these sections is detailed, with niche-specific advice and different tactics depending on how users are likely to respond. Understanding what users want can be a real challenge sometimes, but our final guide has some advice for getting even the most evasive data. How To Measure “Hard-To-Measure” Marketing Channels https://sparktoro.com/blog/how-to-measure-hard-to-measure-marketing-channels/ Rand Fishkin brings you this fresh look at how to find out where you stand with your marketing channels when the data simply isn’t provided for you. He starts with a good explanation of how we got here. As we began to be able to access reams of data from almost every ad marketing campaign, social profile, or website, marketers increasingly grew paranoid about the channels that weren’t as forthcoming. For example, Rand explains how hard it is to prove visitors come from real-world signage, or even channels like podcasts. Without that data, marketers were reluctant to budget. That meant losing out on some opportunities. Rand provides some examples of difficult-to-measure channels, including: He then follows up and advises how these channels can be measured through unconventional signals. For example, he recommends steps like tracking your brand instead of the product name. People hearing about you for the first time from non-internet are likely to Google your company first. He also recommends that you take tracking “unattributed” traffic seriously and watch the trends for proof that you’ve earned some prominence. He further expands this into an in-depth plan that could be used by marketers or site owners to take advantage of this data. Check out the Rand article for some great infographics that simplify everything he’s laid out for you. That closes the guides for the month. In the first case study, you’ll learn whether author authority can be considered a ranking factor. Is Author Authority A Google Ranking Factor? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/author-authority-ranking-factor/ Miranda Miller brings you this in-depth look at whether author authority exists as a ranking factor. As she points out, credibility is already vital to users, and search engines have every incentive to be able to deliver accurate, useful information to searchers. However, that doesn’t mean Google is giving boosts to authoritative authors, or if it is, that those systems are complete and functional. Absent any statement from Google, we’ll have to rely on evidence, and Miranda has collected that for you. First, she introduces you to some important patents that were filed in the early 2000s, she also provides a string of conference speeches, white papers, and other documents on the subject from when Google was first trying to develop this capacity. She points out that Google was filing patents to identify the authors of unlabeled content as recently as 2020. She also shows you that the Search Quality Rater Guidelines state that a low content creator score can cause an overall low-quality score. So, is she convinced that Author Authority is a ranking factor? Not completely. She gives her final verdict as “unclear”. As she points out, readers care about good quality regardless of how Google feels, and that’s enough to take authorship seriously. For the next study, you’ll learn the results of the latest “zero-clicks” research. Zero-Clicks Study https://www.semrush.com/blog/zero-clicks-study/ Marcus Tober of Semrush brings you this latest analysis of the zero-click phenomenon. As he reminds you, “zero clicks” refers to the trend of searchers simply not clicking any link in their search results. This may happen because users don’t like the results or because they simply get the answer without clicking. The Semrush team used data from their own tool to anonymously sample 20,000 users for a deeper look into this trend. Marcus observed and organized five clicking behaviors to see when the users applied each one. His team measured: Among the test group, 25%+ of searches ended in no clicks. The users chose organic clicks nearly half the time, and other types of clicks took up the other roughly 25%. Marcus considered the zero-click rate to be surprisingly high. Nearly 30% of people were refining or replacing their original search. He further breaks down the results across different types of searchers (PC vs. mobile). The whole case study contains some compelling data that may be useful for those who are dealing with this problem in their SERPs or just want to understand where the future or search might go. Let’s close with the latest news. First, Google’s latest spam update is complete. Google October 2022 Spam Update Completed In ~42 Hours https://www.seroundtable.com/google-october-2022-spam-update-done-34286.html Barry Schwartz brings you this look at the latest spam update that was completed in record time. The whole update (launched on October 19th) was already completed by the 21st. For comparison, the previous update in 2021 took 8 days to complete. However, Barry notes that some updates were done even faster—some as quickly as 24 hours. Barry dives a little deeper into what it might mean that the update was resolved so quickly. For example, he notes that there were few complaints among SEOs about this update compared to others. That may suggest it was a very light touch in the first place. At the end of the article, you’ll be provided with a quick rundown of the update and what happened if you haven’t had a chance to catch up. This includes the targets, penalties, global coverage, and other facts (when available) about the update. Check out the full article for a breezy breakdown of what happened. You’ll also find some links to the other spam updates if you want to compare them or examine how the impact has changed. For the final news item of the month, Google has introduced the interesting feature of “site names”. Introducing Site Names On Google Search https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/10/introducing-site-names-on-search Google brings you this new update that allows sites to set a name Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – October 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 06:50:55 +0000

Catch up on the latest SEO trends with this October roundup. We’ve got the data, guides, and news you need to stay ahead of the competition. First, you’ll get actionable data from a stack of compelling case studies. You’ll look at the winners and losers of the core update, how focusing on one topic may be all you need, and evidence that the Helpful Content Update punishes AI content. Next, you’ll learn the latest techniques from the SEO community’s best recent guides. You’ll find out how to do a core web vitals audit, how to pull off programmatic SEO, and the value of request blocking. The roundup closes on the news. Google confirms the end of the product reviews update, announces new local search updates, and updates search console errors about “short content”. Winners & Losers Of The September 2022 Core Update & Product Reviews Update https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/winners-losers-of-the-september-2022-core-update-product-reviews-update/ Lily Ray brings you this comprehensive breakdown of who won or lost the latest major update. First, she warns you that data collection is more complicated now than usual. Google launched multiple updates in a short amount of time, and isolating their effects is near impossible. Due to these conditions, Lily’s analysis combined all the tested domains and didn’t attempt to sort them based on which update affected them. What you’ll see is how the domains are faring in the period before and after the update period. The biggest winners saw as much as 200% growth in visibility. They included huge institutional sites, with the most successful ones being: wikipedia.org amazon.com wiktionary.org facebook.com cdc.gov Lily also documented the sites that lost out on the most visibility. The top 5 that took the most brutal hit were: youtube.com yourdictionary.com Merriam-webster.com linkedin.com fandom.com The data was followed up with some analysis. For example, she noted that music sites massively benefitted from the updates. She theorized that Google may be shifting to show more music media results (rather than lyrics or bios) when songs are searched. Check out the complete study for a lot more data and analysis, including some consequences for niches like stock photography, dictionaries, and eCommerce. Next, you’ll learn how valuable a focused content strategy can be. How We Increased A Client’s Leads By 384% In Six Months By Focusing On One Topic Cluster https://moz.com/blog/increase-client-leads-with-topic-clusters Lydia German brings you this look at how her team massively increased leads for a client by using a content strategy of hammering a single topic. Her team discovered early in the SEO process that searchers responded to one service and term in particular (company liquidation). They focused on just this term and produced a massive guide for the topic that brought even more attention. Lydia documents how the guide was expanded into a hub, and even details how the strategy was measured and cleared with the client. She also documents the work her team did to fix technical problems on the page and promote the completed hub. The end result of a strategy focused on just one service offered by the client was an increase from 95 to over 450 leads. The complete study includes more about how the strategy was implemented and the numbers behind the results. This study is a good argument for thoughtful content, and the next one provides another. In the final case study for this month, you’ll hear one SEOs argument that Google is directly targeting AI content. Case Study: AI Content Punished By The HCU Update https://www.kevin-indig.com/case-study-ai-content-punished-by-the-hcu-update/ Kevin Indig brings you some evidence that you should think twice about using AI content. Before he begins his analysis, he gives a quick example of how easy it is to detect poorly written AI content. He documents how Throughtheclutter.com (a celeb bio site with generated content) went from more than a million visits to zero after the Helpful Content Update. He runs a snippet of the content used by this site through several tools to note how easily and with how much confidence they can detect AI-generated content. He shows that even clear and legible content can be easily recognized. So far, Kevin’s data only supports the idea that the worst offenders are being targeted. Some sites that use AI content, but then polish and edit it, seem to have been left alone. Kevin closes with ideas for how teams can adjust their workflow to avoid risk. That concludes the case studies for this month. The guides are next, starting with a look at what you need to know to perform a solid web vitals audit. 5 Things To Know In A Core Web Vitals Audit https://www.rankranger.com/blog/core-web-vitals-tips Jan Willems Bobbink guests on an episode of the In Search SEO Podcast (a full transcript is included) to cover what goes into a successful audit and improvement of your site’s core web vitals. He argues that five elements are important for ensuring an effective audit: He starts the interview by breaking down and explaining the importance of web vital reports for anyone who might need to catch up. After that, he begins going over his arguments for why his elements make your audits more valuable. For example, his explanation of the first element includes a description of how the visitors who have the worst experiences on your site (because of slow or far away connections) can drag down your site’s overall reputation. He suggests solutions that may be necessary when struggling visitors pass beyond a certain threshold of your total visitors. For example, you can divert some of this traffic to a closer server or recommend the app for users who get poor performance on the site. The full guide contains a comprehensive explanation and advice for all essential elements. You should check it out if you need to improve your core web vitals score. Don’t miss the following guide if you need to make significant updates quickly. You’ll learn how one SEO says you can take advantage of programmatic SEO without getting on the wrong side of Google. 5 Ways Programmatic SEO Can Generate Growth https://ipullrank.com/5-ways-programmatic-seo-can-generate-growth Andrew McDermott defines programmatic SEO “as code-generated web pages that produce a large number of specialized content using data pulled from your database”. He argues this kind of content is capable of powerful growth even when AI content is being targeted. He argues that the essential difference is that programmatic content exists to be useful and serve searchers’ needs. Andrew also argues that enterprise brands are in a uniquely protected place to test out programmatic content without the usual risks because of how Google treats their results. For them, he argues, programmatic SEO offers a lot of growth with little risk. Andrew lays out everything you’ll need to know to start using programmatic SEO. He covers all the steps he uses to implement this SEO strategy and explains each step in enough detail so you can follow along. In the later parts of the guide, he provides a series of use cases to help you apply programmatic SEO more insightfully. If you enjoyed the technical aspects of this guide, the final one for the month will be right up your alley. You’ll get an explanation of a “render gauntlet”, learn why it can cause problems for your site, and discover what you can do about it. Render Gauntlet (Request Blocking) https://ohgm.co.uk/render-gauntlet-request-blocking/ Oliver H.G. Mason takes you through a problem he experienced with a client’s site, and how he ultimately solved it. The initial problem was that pages were being crawled but not indexed. Oliver discovered that the core content on the page wasn’t consistently recorded as rendered by the URL inspection tool. To illustrate the problem with this issue, he takes you through an example of opening Nike’s site and disabling a single one of the bundled script files. None of the core content on the page runs unless the dozens of scripts involved are all successful. Oliver discovered his client’s site had 25 such bundles that needed to load correctly for any content to be rendered. Google wasn’t consistently up to the task of passing through that many obstacles (the render “gauntlet”) to understand the page. Oliver theorizes that presenting too much of a gauntlet causes Google bots to skip over pages without fully rendering them or processing what they would have learned from the rendered content. He provides you with several solutions. Early on, he points out that getting the page rendered server-side would solve this issue (although it would not alert you to the problems). He also suggests you return any content you want Googlebot to see in the initial HTML. That closes out the guides for this month. The last month’s top headlines are next. For the first story, Google has confirmed that its major product reviews update is officially over. Google September 2022 Product Reviews Update Rollout Complete https://searchengineland.com/google-september-2022-product-reviews-update-rollout-complete-388260 Danny Goodwin brings you this coverage of the official end of the Product Reviews Update. This was the last of three major updates that nearly ran concurrently with one another. Over the last month, Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – September 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 09:23:35 +0000

The end of 2022 is fast approaching, but don’t worry. September’s roundup includes everything you need to hit your metrics before the new year. First, sharpen your skills with the month’s guides. You’ll get a breakdown of where algorithm updates may be headed, find out why it’s getting harder to rank for commercial keywords and learn to identify warning content flags. After that, bring confidence to your SEO choices with the latest data. The first case study takes a deep dive into Zapier’s successful strategy, while the second introduces you to UX and SEO red herrings. The roundup closes on the news. You’ll get the latest headlines about the new Core Update, Google’s Helpful Content Update, the new “quick read” signal, and updates to structured data guidelines for articles. Google’s Helpful Content Algorithm Update: Hypotheses from 23 Years of SEO Experience https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/helpful-content-google-algorithm-update/ Wil Reynolds calls on decades of experience to bring you this analysis of the Helpful Content Update. If you aren’t caught up, Wil provides a good summary of the goals, affected industries, and new signals that were included in the rollout. He then breaks down for you who is getting hit with traffic drops and why they are likely in violation of Google’s new priorities. He explains why he suspects they were targeted and who is most likely to be endangered by future updates. For example, one prediction he makes is that publishers that focus on a broad range of topics are in the most danger of being targeted. He identifies sites such as Forbes and CNET as being at high risk. He argues that these sites and others like them may suffer because they don’t specialize, don’t provide unique value, and use automated content. If you’re worried you might be affected, Wil closes the guide with some ideas to get your site and content back in line with what Google wants to see. Your site content isn’t the only SEO factor that may become more challenging. The next guide looks at why you may be having trouble ranking for select commercial keywords. Why It’s Getting Harder to Rank for Some Commercial Keywords (+ What You Can Do About It) https://moz.com/blog/harder-to-rank-for-commercial-keywords Dominick Sorrentino has identified a culprit if you’ve recently had trouble competing for commercial terms. He experienced the problem himself, and his research led him to discover that listicles were taking over the top spots in the niche. This isn’t an isolated phenomenon. He provides data-driven evidence that this problem is widespread and has resulted in serious shifts in many commercial SERPs in just the last year. Dominick and his research team found that the number of lists in the top five positions “…increased by 35.5% from 2021 to 2022”. Throughout the rest of the guide, he explores what can be done now and what kind of actions you may need to take in the future. He suggests you should respond to this trend by seeking out more mentions in list-type content in your niche (for example, directories). “Infiltrating” lists by having your company added to existing high-performing lists can be an effective shortcut. He also recommends that you start producing some of your own list content for commercial SERPs that are rewarding it. These are low-investment solutions, which is good because no one can really say for sure that Google intends for this to happen. Directories have started flexing their growing power (such as by charging extra for new listings) in ways that may attract responses from Google. The last guide of the month also has some content advice for you. It will help you spot and resolve localization problems. 4 Warning Content Localization Flags https://www.rankranger.com/blog/content-localization-warnings Isaline Muelhauser guest starred on the In Search SEO Podcast to bring you troubleshooting tips for when localization goes wrong. She covers some of the ways that content localized for different languages can warn you that it’s not performing as intended. She highlights four warning flags in particular: Over the course of a long interview, Isaline teaches you how to spot each of these problems, and explains the threat that they pose to your long-term success. As an example, she helps you understand the significance of traffic coming from the wrong country. She explains that this warning sign often appears when content is written for a language, but not a specific region. This can be an easy mistake to make. For example, dozens of countries have French as an official language, but they don’t always use words in the same way. If you hire a French writer to produce french-language content for a Canadian website, you may find you’re getting traffic from France without intentionally targeting it. This problem can be solved easily enough by making sure your localized content is produced by locals. Isaline provides the same thorough explanations for the other warning flags. You’ll read the latest case studies. First, you’ll learn how Zapier is bringing in millions of dollars worth of traffic with a powerful SEO strategy. 6 Things I Love About Zapier’s SEO Strategy: A Case Study https://ahrefs.com/blog/zapier-seo-case-study/ Mateusz Makosiewicz takes you on a deep dive of Zapier’s blog strategy. As he points out early in the study, Zapier’s products don’t even have a lot of monthly searches. Yet, the blog brings in more than 1.6 million visitors every month. He breaks down how they did it. To start, he organizes the practices being used by Zapier into a series of principles that you can apply to your own site. He uses traffic data, examples, and visual aids to explain the importance of these principles and how to put them into action. The case study includes breakdowns of how Zapier: This study is a valuable resource for people who want to achieve SEO success in a niche with little or no search demand. Almost all of these practices allow you to benefit from niches with more volume while you’re building your brand. In the next and final case study, you’ll learn how to stop yourself from chasing the wrong solutions to your biggest problems. UX and SEO red herrings: A Case Study https://www.kevin-indig.com/ux-and-seo-red-herrings/ Kevin Indig brings you this data driven list of the “red herrings” that can cause you to make bad assumptions while trying to diagnose SEO and UX problems. He sets the stage by creating an example around three big sites: Wish, Zulily, and TheRealReal. All of these sites had factors in common before they experienced serious traffic loss. All of these sites made users log in to shop, they all used the same business model, and they all declined around the same time. This might be enough to cause some SEOs to start planning updates around these factors. However, using data, Kevin shows that none of these obvious factors provide a complete explanation. He points out that other factors show up on a deeper look including: Kevin’s point is not to claim that these additional factors are more legitimate, but instead to point out that different interpretations can point you in wildly different directions. Without enough research, you’re at risk of wasting time chasing the wrong problem. That covers the case studies for the month. Next, you’ll take in some of the biggest headlines, starting with the latest core update. Google September 2022 Broad Core Update Is Live – What We Are Seeing Now https://www.seroundtable.com/google-september-2022-core-update-34078.html Barry Schwartz brings you a quick summary of the new Core Update that Google started rolling out on September 12. According to the official announcement, the update is expected to continue through the 26th. The update is reported to affect all content. It is also reported to work by promoting good pages rather than applying new penalties to bad ones. While Google has not released a list of changes, Danny Sullivan and other Google representatives have been answering questions from SEOs. Barry collected some threads from Google reps like Danny Sullivan that cover the goals and the scope of the update. That’s all we know for now. Let’s look back on the last big update to hit, and the new signal that it introduced. Google’s Helpful Content Update Introduces A New Site-wide Ranking Signal Targeting “Search engine-first Content”, and It’s Always Running https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-helpful-content-update-new-ranking-signal/ Glenn Gabe breaks down a new site-wide ranking signal that may play a key role in all of your future content. This new signal arrived with the Helpful Content Update. It specifically targets content Google recognizes as either “low-quality”, or “made for search engines.” Once applied, the signal will impose a penalty that will make it more difficult for your pages to appear in search results. If you host a lot of low-value content, the signal will be applied to your entire site. Google’s Danny Sullivan clarified that this signal will impact all content on your site when it is applied, not just the content that is judged to be low quality. The signal is designed to fade away when content becomes compliant again, but you won’t be told which content resulted in Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—August 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 08:43:20 +0000

The third quarter of the year is coming to a close soon. How are your goals going? If you intend to make the final part of the year the best it can be, you’ve come to the right place. This roundup is filled with the insights you need to take the lead in the search results. First, you’ll get the month’s top guides. You’ll find out how to handle advanced keyword research, why expertise matters, and how to investigate traffic drops. Next, you’ll get the data from some of this month’s best case studies. The results will tell you if you can increase your traffic by 50%+ using keywords, what 5 micro studies say about the 2022 Broad Core Update, and what 20k keywords say about Google’s first page. Finally, the month’s top news articles will prepare you for the future. Get the facts on the July 2022 Product Review Algorithm, the newest search quality rater guidelines, and an update on the phasing-out of Google’s cookies. Advanced Keyword Research: 5 Tips For Finding Untapped Keywords https://ahrefs.com/blog/advanced-keyword-research/ Joshua Hardwick thinks that the traditional method of finding keywords (by searching seed keywords and then narrowing them down) may not always give you the best results. He has some alternative methods for you to test out. In the guide, he’ll teach you how to: For example, the first technique helps you find the keywords that are most effective for new pages. Joshua teaches you how to find and analyze these pages to identify the keywords that Google is rewarding quickly. Joshua explains all these techniques in detail and provides good images for the steps to help you put them into practice easily. Targeting the right terms is an important part of ranking. However, the next piece argues that there’s something that matters more… Why Expertise Is The Most Important Ranking Factor Of Them All https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/why-expertise-is-the-most-important-ranking-factor-of-them-all/ In this article adapted from her MozCon presentation, Lily Ray brings up some arguments for why you should focus on the “Expertise” part of E-A-T. Lily starts by laying out a timeline of Google’s messaging on E-A-T, and points out the emphasis they have placed on expertise in recent years. Then she breaks down how expertise is likely being applied now (as evidenced by some analysis of Google features). Next, she explores some real-life sites that are thriving under the new rules. You’ll learn how some bloggers, field service techs, and other types of websites benefit from showcasing expertise. She gives you a lot of actionable analysis about how those websites communicate their expertise by looking at the factors these sites have in common. It may surprise you that some of these factors are as simple as always writing in the first person. The complete guide includes additional tips and a full slideshow from the presentation. Trying to do what Google wants doesn’t always work. You may see some dips after trying something new. Fortunately, our next piece gives you an in-depth look at how to diagnose what’s going wrong. Guide To Assessing A Drop In Google Organic Traffic https://www.mariehaynes.com/guide-to-assessing-traffic-drops/ Marie Haynes brings you this comprehensive guide to pinning down the cause of lost traffic. First, she identifies a long list of the problems that are most likely to be involved. Her guide covers situations that include: For each of these situations, Marie explains how you can analyze whether it’s the cause, why it results in traffic loss, and what you can do to fix it. SEOs at all experience levels can find some ideas here, but this guide works exceptionally well as a diagnostic tool for newer SEOs who haven’t faced these situations. Start with the factors you most suspect are causing your traffic loss, then see if the symptoms here match. That concludes the guides for this month. Next, we’ll look at the case studies, starting with how some extra time with your keywords and clients can produce amazing benefits. How We Increased Organic Traffic by 65% Using Keyword Research Working Sessions https://moz.com/blog/keyword-research-working-sessions Daniel Wood has some ideas for how you can find better keywords through deeper collaboration with your clients. He tested a practice he calls “keyword research working sessions” to determine whether client input would result in better keywords. Keyword research working sessions are meetings between SEO teams and clients to put both sides on the same page. It is a chance for SEOs to understand better how terms are used in the industry and for clients to clarify what they prioritize regardless of what terms perform best. He includes some additional advice on how to structure these meetings and how to draw out the responses that make them valuable to both sides. For Daniel, the session proved incredibly valuable. The practice resulted in a year-over-year organic traffic increase of 65%. In addition to that, the clients reported increases in revenue. Dan argues that there are more long-term benefits the test didn’t measure, such as increased trust from clients. Our next piece dives into the recent broad core update and gives you a deeper look into the algorithm at work. The Google May 2022 Broad Core Update – 5 Micro-Case Studies That Once Again Underscore The Complexity Of Broad Core Algorithm Updates https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-may-2022-broad-core-update/ To Glenn Gabe, the most recent core update didn’t feel like the others. He wanted to figure out what had changed and produced a series of case studies examining the effects on sites in various niches. Glenn used websites belonging to his clients for these studies. This allowed him to access key data for the following events that became part of the study. His studies cover: He tracked the changes to these sites after the May 2022 update began rolling out. For each one, he described his predictions and compared them to what the update actually did over the following months. For example, in the study of the e-commerce site, he confirmed a theory that the May and future updates would begin to punish less-relevant content. In this study, an otherwise well-ranking site suddenly experienced sudden drops. However, the drops only hit blogs that were irrelevant to the rest of the site. Glenn diagnosed this as an effect of Google’s increasing concern over relevancy. The site was able to recover when the irrelevant content was removed. The complete guide includes several insights for SEOs who work in any of the niches covered by the case studies. It can be hard to figure out what Google wants sometimes, but our final study picked up some clues by looking at the state of more than 20,000 keywords. What 20,000 Keywords Say About Google’s First Page https://www.kevin-indig.com/what-20-000-keywords-say-about-googles-first-page/ Kevin Indig analyzes why the top 5 spots matter more than ever, thanks to a declining number of first-page results. The decline is due to the search features that now replace results. However, their use is not always consistent. He analyzed 20,000 keywords to determine how many results were actually appearing in their SERPs, and why. He takes you deeper into the connection between keywords and the number of results, and identifies different relationships exposed by the data. He found: The study is packed full of actionable analysis. For example, he explains how these results prove that targeting shorter keywords can make SEO campaigns less predictable and that when you do so, you should focus on winning the SERP features like the featured snippets. Check out the complete study for advice on how to restructure SEO work to be more effective. That concludes the case studies for the month. Now, it’s time for you to catch up on the news. First, you’ll learn about the new Product Review Algorithm that dropped in late July. Google July 2022 Product Review Algorithm Update Rolling Out Now https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-july-2022-product-review-algorithm-update-rolling-out-now/459209/ Matt G. Southern brings you this look at the latest product review update that began rolling out on July 27th. As has been the case with past updates, there was no warning for this one ahead of the day it was announced to be in effect. There was also no direct guidance from Google on the factors being changed and what SEOs should do about it. However, the review is believed by many SEOs to refine further Google’s ability to recognize “authentic” reviews. The update is believed only to affect sites that feature review content. Google has suggested that no sites are penalized in this update. However, websites with fluffier reviews will likely lose ground as better content is recognized and boosted by these changes. The update was confirmed to be completed on August 2nd when Google updated its update page with new details. This speedy timeline surprised many SEOs who were used to updates ranging from 14-21 days. We’ll likely know much more when SEOs have finished running their own tests and case studies. For now, you should catch up on the Search Quality Rater Guidelines updates that started rolling out at almost the same time. Google Updates Search Quality Raters Guidelines On July 28th https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-search-quality-raters-guidelines-33837.html Barry Schwartz has some details Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – July 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 07:56:09 +0000

Looking for a new way to get ahead? You’ll likely find it in this month’s roundup. There’s a lot to unpack in this list of case studies, guides, and SEO news. The case studies are first. You’ll get the latest data on how to use semantic search, where GSC clicks are going, and whether freshness signals in your titles can improve SEO. Next, the guides will help you sharpen your skills. You’ll find out how to build topic clusters, use new SERP features, estimate any site’s traffic, and balance the value of links. Finally, you’ll get caught up with the latest news. You’ll learn about the instability that followed the last core update, how Apple may be launching a search engine and how Google will be simplifying its search console reports. Using Knowledge Of Semantic Search To Improve E-A-T https://www.mariehaynes.com/using-semantic-search-to-improve-eat/ Marie Haynes brings you this detailed look at how to improve your E-A-T scores by applying semantic search principles. In this presentation, she showcases and explains years of Google statements to help you form a clearer picture of how it all works. You’ll learn the answers to most of the top questions about how semantic search works, including: By the end of this well-researched breakdown, you’ll have a better idea of how to assess content with E-A-T in mind, clarify your entity information, and create effective topic hubs. If you are new to any of these topics, then this is just the resource you need to catch up. Our next piece confronts the possibility that you may not be getting all the data you need for analysis. You’ll find out why Google Search Consoles may be withholding some (or even all?) of your keywords. Almost Half Of GSC Clicks Go To Hidden Terms – A Study By Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/blog/gsc-hidden-terms-study/ Patrick Stox of Ahrefs wants you to know that you can’t completely trust the keyword data you’re getting from GSC. He argues that you may not be seeing all the keywords that are driving clicks to your site. In fact, you may be seeing less than half of them. The team analyzed nearly 150,000 sites. From there, they examined how many keywords were hidden, and how badly sites were affected. They found that there was a significant amount of variation, with some sites missing 100% of their clicks. Patrick follows up the analysis with some tips that you can use to find out how much data you may be missing from your own reports. You’ll get a set of step-by-step instructions to produce a report that tells you more. The study closes with some analysis of why your data may be hidden. For example, he cites statements by Google that some data is protected for privacy reasons. Google may judge that the locations and exact words of some searches give away too many details about the person. You may not know all the keywords to drive clicks to your sites, but titles are still easy to test. The next case study examines whether giving them a freshness update can provide substantial benefits. Can Improving Freshness Signals In Titles Benefit SEO? https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/last-updated-in-title/ Emily Potter of SearchPilot brings you this study on the impact of improving freshness signals in your meta titles. Google may rewrite many titles, she argues, but changes can still produce positive results you can track. This study shows you that some title updates may be really worth your time and effort. The case study covered here examines the impact of freshness signals in particular. Freshness signals are indications that a page is still active and being refreshed regularly. In your metas, these signals might be communicated through phrases like: The SearchPilot team used the first phrase in a split-test, resulting in an 11% improvement during the testing period. Check out the full study to learn more about how you can get similar results. That covers the case studies for the month, and the guides are next. The first one teaches you how to build better topic clusters. 6 Steps To Effectively Build Topic Clusters https://www.rankranger.com/blog/topic-cluster-tips Begum Kaya brings you this in-depth look at how to build topic clusters more effectively than you have in the past. You can find the original podcast episode at the link, along with a full transcript if you prefer to read it. She covers most of the introductory information you need if this topic is new to you, including what clusters are, and their benefits. Then, she goes further and provides you with a series of rules you can follow to avoid mistakes, optimize the distribution of content, and measure the impact. Begum brings a significant amount of e-commerce experience to this talk. It shows in the quality of the examples she uses. If you work in e-commerce, you may be able to benefit more from this guide than the average reader. Because of the potential benefits, organizing your topic clusters should be high on your to-do list if you haven’t already done so. The next piece will give you a preview of Google’s future plans with some of their active SERPs experiments. Amazing Search Experiments And New SERP Features In Google Land (2022 Edition) https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/amazing-search-experiments-new-serp-features-google-land-2022/ Glenn Gabe brings you this comprehensive look at nearly a dozen Google experiments that have happened recently or are still being tested by the company. You’ll get some rare details about nine of them, and what they tell you about Google’s plans for the future. The tests he covers for you include: Let’s dive into the first one as an example. Explore Wonderland refers to a new section that has been appearing at the bottom of SERPs and providing new kinds of visual-packed content. Glenn provides you with several images of these, so you know what to expect. He also includes some analysis from the SEO world about the possible meaning of these new tests. Maybe the feature represents some merger of Discover and SERPs? The guide is filled with interesting analyses about what’s coming next. In our next guide, you’ll learn something you can put into action right now. You’ll learn a method you can use to find competitors’ traffic numbers. Find Out How Much Traffic ANY Website Gets: 3-Step Analysis (With TEMPLATE) https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/how-much-traffic-website-gets/ Robbie Richards has a method that may help you find out the traffic details of any competitor. As he points out, this information is typically hard to get without access to their Google Analytics account. The method that he uses starts with total website traffic and then works downward to isolate data into the segments you can use. He shows you how to find all the following kinds of data for your competitors. He goes further by showing you how to find out what traffic a competitor’s website gets at the subfolder, page, and even keyword levels. You’ll also learn how to track down paid traffic numbers. The guide is built around SEMrush, but 4 workable alternatives are covered in the end section. In the final guide of the month, you’ll learn how to make better choices when judging the relevance of links. Link Relevance Vs. Content Relevance In Link Building https://moz.com/blog/link-relevance-vs-content-relevance Paddy Moogan wants to help you understand the important differences between two link valuation factors: Link relevance and content relevance. Throughout the guide, he argues there are multiple points of relevancy that must be assessed when choosing a link. He identifies link relevance, content relevance, page relevance, and domain relevance, in addition to anchor text. He tells you how to look for each one, and why they are likely to make a difference in the success of your link-building strategy. He also provides you with some of his own insight into which of these factors weigh more, and how they compare to outside factors such as authority and trust. The guide closes with some extra advice on how to ensure links are content-relevant in particular. That’s it for the guides this month. Next up are some of the big news items you can’t afford to sleep on. First, we looked at some evidence the Google May Update wasn’t as complete as announced. Google May 2022 Core Update – Big Tremors After It Was Complete? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-may-2022-core-update-big-tremors-33577.html Barry Schwartz is asking if the May Core Update is really over after instability continued through mid-June. As you learned in the last roundup, the update was officially announced as complete on Jun 9th. However, big tremors continued to hit site data for weeks afterward. Barry collected some of the chatter and some of the evidence that was showing up on charts. For the chatter, at least, the news seemed surprisingly good. SEOs across WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World were talking about seeing reversals for sites that were hit hard. However, some SEOs did report serious declines. Check out the article to get the full set of graphs tracking the volatility. Google has more reason to be concerned about how users are feeling, as of late. News is spreading that Apple may soon launch its Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—June 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 08:21:11 +0000

How are your goals looking as we start entering the second half of the year? If you need an edge, we’ve got the case studies, guides, and news items that will give you that.. This month’s case studies will give you the data you need to stay ahead. You’ll learn how to use SEO to win at affiliate marketing, what 23 million internal links can tell you about best practices, and some surprising results from recent tests. Next, the guides will give you some expert analysis on how to adapt to both the May 2020 Core Update, and the big Product Reviews update from March. Also, you’ll learn about 100+ tools that work as free alternatives. Finally, you’ll get a quick rundown of news headlines you can’t miss, including how Google started trialing a new feature. Wirecutter SEO Case Study: 5 Ways To Win At Affiliate Marketing https://ahrefs.com/blog/wirecutter-seo-case-study/ Michal Pecánek brings you some top insights from a huge case study of Wirecutter’s SEO success. It’s hard to avoid Wirecutter if you’re in the affiliate space. It’s one of the largest review sites in the world, with more than 12 million organic clicks a month. The case study looks at how Wirecutter achieved this powerful position and how affiliate marketers (or any SEO focused on reviews) can emulate their success. For example, Michal shows you how Wirecutter maintains excellent E-A-T signals on every important piece of content. You’ll learn how the website does this through authoritative “why you should trust us” sections, appropriate backlinks, and prudent monetization warnings. In the later insights, you’ll also find out how Wirecutter maximizes the user experience, leverages category pages, and keeps its content fresh. Every insight is well explained with examples you can use to take the same steps on your own site. One issue Michal covers is the importance of internal links, and you can get even more information on that in the following case study. You’ll find out what millions of internal links can tell you about best practices for linking on your sites. 23 Million Internal Links – A Google SEO Case Study https://zyppy.com/seo/internal-links/seo-study/ Cyrus Shepard brings you this comprehensive look at internal links in action. The study covers 23 million links distributed across nearly 2,000 websites. In this article, Cyrus shares essential correlations that he has pulled out from the study that you can use to help you improve your internal linking. First, he cautions you that these are only correlations. Correlations are not always causation, but what you learn may point you toward relationships that Google will never formally explain. Cyrus identified many intriguing correlations, including… The complete case study includes several more findings and more detail about each. You’ll also find some analysis at the end to help you apply it. The final case study of the month also has a lot of actionable advice. It’s a quick rundown of 5 studies that had counterintuitive results. 5 Surprising SEO Test Results https://moz.com/blog/5-surprising-seo-test-results Emily Potter brings you some tests that may contradict the conventional wisdom accepted by many SEOs. These tests were performed on client accounts, so it’s not data that you’ll find elsewhere. The tests covered decisions that will be familiar to you if you often work with SEO clients. As an example, in one of the first tests, the clients implemented a way to force Google to show only custom meta descriptions. It worked, but it turned out visitors preferred the generated ones. In another example test, the team wanted to know the consequences of adding prices to title tags for some product pages. While searchers often reward more information, this test saw noticeably lower traffic for all pages involved. In a final example, the team assessed the impact of adding keyword-rich descriptions to alt-text. This also resulted in no detectable impact, though Emily shares some good reasons you should do it anyway. Check out the full article for more tests and their surprising results. Now, let’s move on to the guides for the month. First, you’ll find out how SEOs are interpreting the recent May 2022 Update. Google Core Update May 2022 First Analysis https://www.sistrix.com/blog/google-core-update-may-2022/ Steve Paine offers you a pro’s breakdown of the year’s first Google Core Update. His analysis gives insight into how the update is playing out, and what steps you may need to take to stay ahead. You’ll learn more about this update and Google’s announcement in this month’s news section. For now, let’s focus on what the early data can tell us about winners and losers. The major trends suggest that video sites were among the biggest winners. Sites like YouTube and TikTok were highly elevated over text results for various SERPs. Highly-specialized knowledge sites also won out over dictionary and Wikipedia-style sites. Steve closes out his guide with advice to help you determine which pages need to be improved to comply with the new changes. He also shows you how to identify the pages that are working well so you can apply their on-page SEO rules to other pages. Check out the complete guide for an extensive list of the winners and losers and how much change they experienced. Next, you’ll learn how you can apply what SEOs have learned from March’s Product Review Update. Analysis Of Google’s March 2022 Product Reviews Update (PRU) – Findings And Observations From The Affiliate Front Lines https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-march-2022-product-reviews-update/ Glenn Gabe brings you this breakdown of the 3rd Product Review Update that started rolling out near the end of March. In it, he breaks down the trends that have appeared as the update has been finalized. The things he has learned have been organized into different insights, each with an accompanying explanation. Most of his recommendations are directed toward affiliate marketers, but any SEO with a product site can benefit. The insights include: Glenn also referenced some strong evidence that sites may not see the actual effect of this update for months more to come. He identified a cut-off point that may be affecting sites that made content upgrades too close to the update’s rollout. Your site may need to endure a period of recrawling and reindexing to be graded on the new best practices. This guide should give you all the early steps to start making improvements to review-style content. Tools can help you complete a lot of SEO work faster, and our next guide will introduce you to 100+ free ones. 110 Top SEO Tools That Are 100% Free https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-free-seo-tools/302553/#close Jon Clark brings you this handy resource you can refer to the next time subscription fees strain your budget. He’s collected more than a hundred different tools that can help you out in a pinch. The tools are organized into different categories, so you can quickly jump to the one that solves your problem. The categories include: Each category has around ten different tools, and Jon has taken the time to explain what sets each tool in the same category apart. These tools, alongside those we recommend in our video below, will help you get ahead without breaking the bank. Now, let’s move on to the news. We’ll start with Google’s official announcement on the core update. May 2022 Core Update Releasing For Google Search https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/05/may-2022-core-update Danny Sullivan brings you this official announcement from Google Search on the release of the recent 2022 Core Update. Unlike our last item on this topic, this one will cover what Google has divulged about its process and intentions. The update was officially announced on May 25th. Google’s stated objective was to refine search results further and make them “more helpful and useful for everyone.” What we saw in practice further reinforced Google’s E-A-T standards and some additional focus on rewarding video content. Google updated the post on June 9th to announce that the rollout was complete. This does not necessarily mean an end to changes for sites affected by the update. Google has reported that some factors are designed to steadily weigh more in the algorithm over months rather than right away. One potential factor SEOs can’t stop thinking about lately is User-Generated-Content (UGC). The following news item examines what Google had to say about its role as a ranking factor. Is User-Generated Content (UGC) A Google Ranking Factor? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/user-generated-content/#close Kristi Hines brings you this great collection of references that cover UGC. As you may already be aware, UGC is content created by users, fans, and critics across the internet. This type of content (taking the form of blog comments, forum posts, and reviews) can be plentiful, but is it useful? Kristi organized the evidence, starting with some direct answers from the Google Team. On multiple occasions, Google has stated that spammy content on your site is a risk even if it was created or published by users. In a statement in 2020, Google employee John Mueller encouraged website owners to ensure that any user-generated content “meets your standards for publishing content on your website.” He also suggested that Google doesn’t differentiate between your content and Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—May 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 23 May 2022 11:58:21 +0000

Do you need to make the most of your second quarter? Stay on top of the SEO world with this month’s roundup of guides, case studies, and news items that you shouldn’t miss. First, you’ll pick up some new tricks from the month’s top guides. Some of SEO’s top minds will teach you how to build large amounts of backlinks quickly, and how to identify when your increased traffic is coming from spam. Next, the case studies will give you the data you need to make better decisions. You’ll learn what the numbers can tell you about link rot, header changes, and SEO aggregation. Finally, you’ll get the latest news. Discover why Google is getting discussed over their recent algorithm update, changes to featured snippets, visual search features, and a minor controversy over content. How I Built 5,660 Backlinks In 30 Days https://backlinko.com/reverse-outreach Brian Dean from Backlinko has some advice on how you can manage an amazing feat—building more than 5000 backlinks in a month. You’ll be introduced to a link-building technique that Brian refers to as “Reverse Outreach”. Brian claims it has significantly more potential to scale than other popular ways of attracting links, such as The Skyscraper technique. To pull it off, you’ll need to flip the script and build content that demands attention (and links) from authority sites. First, you’ll learn how to find what Brian calls “journalist keywords”. You can identify these keywords by using the People Also Ask Google search feature. Topics heavily associated with data-collection-related keywords (for example, topics such as “how many people use X) can point to journalists trying to collect information. Read the complete guide to discover how you can find journalist keywords, how you can build content that takes advantage of them, and where to get the data you need to say something worth quoting. A better backlink strategy can net you a lot more traffic. However, not all traffic gains are proof of success, as you’ll learn in the next guide. How To Identify Whether Your Increased Traffic Is Spam https://moz.com/blog/identify-traffic-spam Zoe Ashbridge of Moz has some ideas for how you can find out if a traffic spike is truly a cause for celebration. She’s devised a checklist that you can use to identify spammy traffic. You’ll learn how the following easily-accessible Google Analytics metrics can prove the presence of spam traffic. Throughout the guide, Zoe teaches you where to find these metrics, how to read them, and which readings suggest that you’re getting hit with spam. She closes with some additional advice on how you can take action against spam traffic. You’ll learn when it’s appropriate to request disavow actions against backlinks, and a method for filtering spam traffic before it starts affecting your data. That concludes the guides for this month, but the upcoming case studies have a lot more advice you can use. At Least 66.5% Of Links To Sites In The Last 9 Years Are Dead (Ahrefs Study On Link Rot) https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-rot-study/ Patrick Stox brings you this case study on link rot. Link rot is a term that describes the tendency of links to stop working overtime. Your links may stop working for many reasons, both intentional and unintentional. The study looks at more than 175 million different links tracked over nearly a decade. It has some insights that may improve your link-building planning over time. You’ll learn why links rot. For example, the study shows that almost half of all links rotted because they were “dropped”. A link is considered dropped when it falls out of the index. This happens when the pages hosting your links can no longer be crawled or indexed, or when the domain itself no longer exists. The full article lays out many other reasons your links can fail. You’ll discover why links can rot due to removal, crawl error, 301/302, and other causes. Now that you’re armed with some new knowledge on link building, let’s look at a different side of SEO. The next study examines a small on-page change that can drive a lot of clicks. SEO Split Test Result: Small H3 Change, Big Click Result https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-split-test-result-h3-header-tag/ Brian Moseley guides you through this split test that studies the impact of optimizing h3 titles. The study was performed on pages from a massive stock photo site. The SEMRush team hypothesized that changing the words (and intent) of a single generated h3 that appears across thousands of pages could increase the clicks driven to the test pages. 3,500 photo and image pages were selected and sorted into variant and control groups. The variant group had the h3 that pointed to additional searches changed from “related tags” to “related photo searches”. The variant pages received 30% more clicks over the life of the study than the control group. While this exact change may not be relevant to many sites, it’s a good reminder that simple SEO fundamentals—even on lowly h3s—can still have a deep impact. If you’re looking for some grander SEO ideas, the next case study has just what you need. It looks at how Uber Eats became an online juggernaut with SEO. Uber Eats: SEO Aggregation Case Study https://www.kevin-indig.com/ubereats-scaling-seo-with/ Kevin Indig brings you this detailed look at how Uber Eats surpassed the value of its parent service (Uber) by positioning itself as an SEO aggregator. As Kevin reminds you, aggregators are sites that drive traffic with (often user-generated) inventory and details. For UberEats, the menu listings, pictures, and descriptions generated by the merchants they partnered with became a powerful traffic driver. You’ll find out how the fledgling service was able to use content marketing and other strategies to cover a huge range of keywords. They could easily generate content like “best [type of food] near [city]” and simply link to their top-reviewed merchants for that region. Merchants also filled their UberEats pages with as much content as possible to drive delivery orders. UberEats was able to rank in many areas just on the power of the merchant-provided content. Check out the full case study to learn more about how UberEats mastered being an aggregator, and how their war with services like Doordash is playing out in the smallest SEO details. That covers our case studies for the month. Next, you’ll get the month’s biggest headlines, starting with a look at the latest algorithm update. Larger Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On April 20th & 21st https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-on-april-20th-33292.html Barry Schwartz brings you this quick look at a Google Update that rolled out near the end of April. Tracking tools such as SEMRush, RankRanger, and MozCast detected high volatility from the point the update began on the 20th, and continued through the 21st. You’ll find some speculation that this is a continuing part of the March Product review update that ended officially on April 11th. Google may be still working on finetuning that large set of changes. Whatever Google is doing, they are not ready to announce it. They still have not confirmed the update or offered any details of what it might be about. Google has been more forthcoming about some of the other big changes and updates this month. Next, you’ll find out what’s coming for featured snippets. Google Tests Big Changes To Featured Snippets https://searchengineland.com/google-featured-snnippet-test-from-the-web-other-sites-say-383702 Danny Goodwin brings you this look at two new featured snippets that are now appearing in a limited number of SERPs. The new snippets are “From the Web” and “Other Sites Say” “From the Web” snippets appear to feature links and websites from up to 3 other websites. It seems to be used in cases where there are differences of opinion, and Google wants to avoid appearing to endorse one opinion. For example, this snippet appears at the top of searches for reviews. The chosen snippet is given a paragraph, and in the new “From the Web” snippet section, competing voices are given a sentence. “Other Sites Say” snippets seem to appear in searches for factual information, and serve to provide additional facts that may not appear in other results. For example, this snippet appears on top of searches for “benefits of carrots”. The main snippet discusses cholesterol benefits, while the “Other Sites Say” snippets provide additional links dealing with blood sugar control and hypertension. These features offer additional opportunities for you to claim snippets even if there’s already one in place. Next, you’ll learn how Google offers you an entirely new way to search. Google Now Lets You Search For Things You Can’t Describe — By Starting With A Picture https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/7/23014141/google-lens-multisearch-android-ios Sean Hollister brings you this look at a new beta search feature in the US that may someday have serious implications for SEO. The new feature lets you drag a picture into a search bar, and then apply notes that find similar items according to your keywords. For example, imagine you find some shoes you like, but they’re in the wrong color. Using this feature, you can take a picture of the existing shoe, and add the search “in red”. This search Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – April 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:12:45 +0000

Don’t miss this roundup if you like to stay competitive. Google has released a slew of updates and new features you’ll need to know about to get ahead. You can get caught up with this month’s top guides, case studies, and news items. The guides this month will teach you how Google docs can help write your meta descriptions, how to get started in machine learning, and how to make use of new analytics and search features. Next, you’ll get caught up on the latest SEO studies. You’ll discover how Google’s approach to title rewrites has changed over the long term, today’s top SEO trends, and the SEO benefits of going public. At the end, you’ll find the news you need to plan your next big moves. You’ll get the latest about the product review update, the new “trust” update, and some interesting new facts about Google’s approach. Google Docs Can Write Your Meta Descriptions https://searchengineland.com/google-docs-can-write-your-meta-descriptions-383257 In this short guide, Danny Goodwin shows you an easy way to generate effective meta descriptions using only GDocs. This strategy can help you develop a lot of titles quickly. Using the auto-generated summaries can also give you insights into how Google interprets a page and what it expects to see in your meta descriptions. To use this method, you’ll need the content summary generator that Google released for business customers beginning in March 2022. Danny teaches you how to get these summaries, spot problems, and use the clues they give you to craft great descriptions. Taking advantage of Google’s machine-learning tools can help you quickly generate tons of well-targeted descriptions. In the next guide, you’ll learn how to use machine learning to accomplish many other SEO tasks. Getting Started In Machine Learning With Lazarina Stoy https://www.rankranger.com/blog/machine-learning-seo You’ll learn what it means to fully implement machine learning into your SEO in this interview with Lazarina Stoy by The In Search SEO Podcast. Lazarina starts by helping you get through some roadblocks that can get in the way of adopting machine learning solutions. You’ll be introduced to some of the limiting beliefs that can stop you from adopting these tools, and learn how to evolve your thinking. Further into the interview, you’ll learn how to identify situations where machine learning can provide the most value. You’ll also get some tips on scrutinizing the output from any new machine learning efforts. Gaining experience with these new tools now can make you formidable down the road. Of course, even some old and familiar tools can introduce new uses. The following guide will help you use some of the latest tools in Google Analytics 4. 10 Of My Favorite NEW Things You Can Do With Google Analytics 4 (Thread) https://twitter.com/CharlesFarina/status/1506044840282271745 Charles Farina shows you some exciting new things you can do after the latest GA4 update in this detailed Twitter thread. He takes you through his ten favorite changes, which may include some you’ve missed. You’ll learn how the tool can now more effectively handle audience conversions, time measurements, funnels, debugging, and other important tasks. Most of the points include image references you can use to find these new functions in your own dashboard. It’s always nice to have information you can use right away. However, if you like to be ahead of the game, our final guide gives you some analysis of what may happen next with Google Discover. What Discover’s “More Recommendations”, Journeys In Chrome, And MUM Mean For The Future Of Google Search https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-search-future-discover-journeys-mum/ Glenn Gabe looks at how Google’s capabilities are growing with Discover’s search assistant. You’ll be taken through his analysis of what’s being tested on as many as a billion users right now. Then, you’ll learn what it may mean for your SEO efforts in the future. The guide gives you a deep introduction to some of the features in testing on Discover. You’ll learn about More Recommendations, a feature that takes searchers to a task dashboard with hundreds of new guiding options. You’ll also learn how features like Collections and Journeys are speeding searchers through tailored paths to the information they want. Glenn closes with some insights into where Google might be taking you in the future. He argues that you’ll need to be ready to adapt to these changes by studying the sites currently being promoted for searches in the new features. That closes the guides for this month. In the first case study below, you’ll learn more about the long-term effects of title tag rewrites. Title Tag Rewrites: 7 Months Later https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-rewrites-7-months-later Dr. Peter J. Meyers brings you this review of Google’s enforced title changes several months later. These changes inspired some backlash from the SEO community and led to Google promising a lighter hand. Dr. Meyers takes you through the data that tells you how their approach changed (and if it did). You’ll get this insight through a measure of more than 10,000 titles that were isolated and tracked to determine how Google’s approach to your titles has changed. The tracked changes are organized into categories to help you understand which of your titles are at risk. Dr. Meyers also offers an analysis on Google’s promises. The numbers suggest that Google didn’t change much after the initial public outcry. As many as 50% or more of your titles are likely to be changed. You should plan accordingly. The following data piece may also help you with your future planning. It looks at some of the biggest trends in digital marketing to help you understand where the industry is moving next. Top Digital Marketing Trends For 2022: Oracle Survey Results https://www.searchenginejournal.com/digital-marketing-trends-oracle/443718/ Miranda Miller brings you this look at the top trends in SEO. These insights come from a mass survey of nearly 1000 SEOs involved in leadership and management roles. You’ll learn what these top professionals think about: The study closes with various other statistics you can use to get a jump on your future planning. You’ll learn about how tech stacks, data insights, and the mood of the professional overall. These results could help you align your practices with the best SEO agencies. If you’re already at the front of the pack, you may care more about big next steps like going public. The final case study can reveal how that will affect your SEO. 4 SEO Benefits Of Going Public (A Unique Study) https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-benefits-of-going-public/ Michal Pecánek brings you this look at how going public affects your SEO. As he points out, this can be a massive boon for your business. You can often get a flood of linked and unlinked media mentions across high-traffic investment, stock, and business sites. You’ll learn how Michal thinks you can best take advantage of this event and what the data says about how it played out in the past. In particular, you’ll learn what types of pages get attention, how the knowledge graph changes, and whether going public may be considered a ranking signal on its own. That concludes the case studies for the month. Next, you’ll get the most notable headlines in SEO, starting with the most recent product review update. Latest Product Review Update https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1506668262540513283 Google directly provides you with this announcement about their product review updates. They claim that the latest changes are designed to ensure reviews come from people with first-hand knowledge. Along with this announcement, they provide you with some updated guidance on how you should present the reviews on your site. While you may find these tips helpful, the updates mostly reinforce the existing best practices. I did my own inspection, and it appears no new criteria were added. You should be fine if you were already following my recommendations from previous updates. Catch up here: This isn’t the only trust-based change Google was making this month. Next in the news, you’ll be learning about Google’s new highly-cited feature. Check The Facts With These Google Features (New “Highly Cited” Trust Label) https://blog.google/products/news/fact-checking-misinformation-google-features/ Google has announced that your content may now be eligible for new “highly-cited” trust labels that are being tested in SERPs. The label is intended to apply to searches that deal with important factual information. The label may appear when a guide, research paper, or other resource is frequently linked by other authoritative sites covering the same topic. This feature could have serious consequences if you deal with YMYL certification. Now, searchers will be able to rapidly scan results to see which ones are qualified as credible. You should only be seeing the effects of this test in English results for the time being. Google has not announced when the changes will begin affecting results. If you’re hungry for even more Google news, they released some key facts about their operations during a spotlight on Danny Sullivan’s career. Google: We Reduced Irrelevant Search Results By 50% & Made 5,000 Changes In 2021 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-reduced-irrelevant-search-results-by-50-in-seven-years-33135.html Barry Schwartz brings you some interesting tidbits from Google’s look back on Danny Sullivan’s career as their Public Liaison for Search. Their profile on his work for the Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – March 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 28 Mar 2022 13:18:10 +0000

March is filled with a surprising number of changes for SEO. Don’t miss this roundup if you like to stay ahead of the pack. First, you’ll learn some new skills from the top guides. You’ll find out why traffic matters for links, what to do when rich snippets steal your clicks, how to pick Google search entities, and why score data can lead to bad decisions. Next, you’ll get some data you can put to use from the newest studies. You’ll learn the results of a split test with substantial implications for how you should structure your titles. You’ll also find out why you may have recently lost a favicon. Finally, you’ll get up-to-date with insights into Google’s latest AI announcement, the status of the Core Web Vitals update for desktops, and the newly-released results from the Pirate Update. Why Traffic Matters For Links In 2022 https://authority.builders/blog/why-does-traffic-matter-for-links/ Are your links being ignored lately? You may find some answers in my most recent post. You’ll get a history of how the value of a backlink has changed and learn what it takes to get the most out of links right now. The guide covers what you need to know about the relationship between traffic and ranking—namely, traffic is a more important factor than it has been in the past. You’ll find research demonstrating the value of traffic and some rules you can use to analyze links. After the theory, you’ll get some step-by-step instructions that can help you find links that move the needle on your site’s rankings. The steps cover identifying links with traffic and estimating the value of the link opportunities you find. The right links can take a page to the top, but even a #1 ranking page may lose clicks to a snippet. Next, you’ll learn what to do when this happens. What To Do When Rich Snippets Steal Your Clicks https://ipullrank.com/rich-snippets-steal-your-clicks John Murch provides this look at how you can respond when a rich snippet starts stealing the clicks you need. As he points out, this can happen even when you hold the top position. In this guide, you’ll learn a series of steps you can take to seize back your clicks. You won’t need a lot of technical knowledge to pull these off. In most cases, it’s a matter of learning how to analyze your content to identify why you’re losing out. You’ll also figure out how to evaluate the intent of your keywords, find more opportunities for structured markup, and leverage the power of “people also ask” features to reclaim lost clicks. At the end, you’ll find some additional tips on building your next content piece to capture featured snippets from the start. One key to claiming more clicks is understanding where your content fits on the knowledge graph. Our next piece looks at learning more about how your topics fit and achieve topical relevance. GSC SEO: Picking Google Search Entities https://www.rankranger.com/blog/google-search-console-entities#tw Darrell Mordecai brings you this detailed look at identifying Google entities and using them to maximize your SEO. You’ll get a quick introduction to entities if you aren’t familiar with the concept. In very simple terms, entities are known quantities that Google uses to verify and interpret other information. These entities are mapped across the knowledge graph. Darren explains how you can use Google Search Console to find entities and build a network of content that covers all the correct information for topical relevance. He breaks down how you can achieve this by improving pages or creating supporting content. He also includes instructions you can use for tracking your new queries over time, a step he argues is essential if you want to be able to scale your results. While you’re planning content for the future, you may want to think closely about how you’re using the data you have. The following guide warns even experienced SEOs about the risks of making the wrong decisions from data. Why Domain Authority (Moz), Authority Score (Semrush) And Domain Rating (Ahrefs) Can Lead To Wrong Decisions https://www.sistrix.com/blog/why-domain-authority-moz-authority-score-semrush-and-domain-rating-ahrefs-can-lead-to-wrong-decisions/ Johannes Beus wants to warn you that there are some pitfalls to using scores such as Domain Authority or Domain rating to decide the viability of any campaign. Google doesn’t have a complete picture of the internet. It draws only from what it can (or will) crawl and, even then, only assesses a portion of that data for ranking purposes. All of the major tools that provide scores are stuck drawing from an even smaller pool, and they can’t be sure they’ve covered the same territory as Google. They also aren’t connected to the Google ecosystem and, therefore, can’t really predict when or if links will be evaluated. The full piece includes further analysis and examples you can use to understand the limits of SEO scoring systems. This isn’t to argue that these scores aren’t useful or even essential in some cases, but you should understand how much risk of error to calculate into your strategies. That covers the guides for this month. Next, you’ll get to see some data from a couple of case studies starting with a look at whether sentence case or title case delivers better SEO results. SEO Split Test Result: Should You Sentence Case Or Title Case Your Title Tags? https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-split-test-result-should-you-sentence-case-or-title-sase-your-title-tags-/ Brian Moseley brings you the next in a running series of SEO split tests that cover getting the most juice out of different elements of your SEO. This one examines whether title case (capitalizing every word) or sentence case (capitalizing only the first word) delivers an edge for your Title Tags. The study was performed using a site where all pages were currently in title case. 70 pages were divided into variant and control groups. The variant pages were all switched to sentence case, and the results were tracked to determine the impact on clickthrough rates. The effects of the study were nearly immediate. The variant pages experienced drops in traffic that went beyond predictions. The loss wasn’t attributable to the pages losing rank because of the changes. It was clear that the change was having an impact at the point of clicking-through. The full study describes the motivations, methodology, and results of the study in great detail. It could be a valuable read for you if you’re planning out the style rules for your next big content project. While we’re on the subject of making an impression on the SERPs page, you may have lost a favicon recently. Our next item examines the reasons that can happen. Favi-gone: 5 Reasons Why Your Favicon Disappeared From The Google Search Results [Case Studies] https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/favicon-problems-google-search/ Glenn Gabe has some ideas for you if you have recently lost a favicon or seen it replaced with a less-appealing generic option. Unfortunately, there are many reasons that this can happen, and you may have to troubleshoot your problem one issue at a time. This article can help you do both. Throughout the piece, you’ll learn some of the most common causes of this problem, including: For each of the causes, Glenn provides you with some background on the problem and what steps you can take to fix it. He closes the article with some additional advice on creating and submitting favicons that will be less prone to disruption in the future. That closes out the studies for the month. Next, there are some SEO news headlines that you shouldn’t miss if you like to stay informed. First is a breakdown of Google’s recent blog post about using AI. Google’s Blog Post On How AI Powers Search Results And What It Means For SEO https://www.mariehaynes.com/google-ai-and-seo/ Marie Haynes provides you with this SEO-centered analysis of Google’s recent writeup on AI by Google Fellow and Vice President of Search, Pandu Nayak. In it, you’ll learn more about how Google is using AI than we’ve been allowed to know in the past. Marie dove into what was said in the release to pull out some critical implications for SEOs. Marie breaks down the statement from Google, and highlights the excerpts that may have the most impact on you as an SEO. She also calls on some background information and experts to cover: She also examines the meaning of Google’s increasing emphasis on high-quality product pages, and closes on some predictions of where SEO goes from here. It’s a highly in-depth analysis that should appeal to you if you care about future-proofing your SEO efforts. Speaking of readiness, you should be ready for the full rollout of the page experience update. It’s finally coming to desktops. Page Experience Update Rolling Out For Desktop Searches https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/11/bringing-page-experience-to-desktop Google’s new page experience update was announced to be rolling out around the end of 2021 and will have some significant implications for you if your sites aren’t ready. As Google clarifies in this release, this is the same page experience update that was already rolled out for mobile devices. The update applies the Core Web Vitals scores to all desktop rankings. That means you’ll need to Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – February 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 13:02:50 +0000

If you want to keep your momentum going into the new year, you’ve come to the right place. Our February roundup includes the tips you need to stay on top. We’ll start with the case studies. First, you’ll learn how well PBNs work in foreign SEO. Then, you’ll discover one SEOs method for achieving 600%+ growth. Next, you will pick up some new skills from our top guides of the month. They’ll teach you how to reclaim keyword data that’s been lost, how to use better SEO formulas in Google sheets, how to extract core web vitals data, and how to keep paywalled content SEO compliant. At the end, we’ll cover the month’s can’t-miss news items for SEO. We have google announcements for you covering new robots tags, mobile search features, and manual penalties that are coming down. How Well Do PBNs Work In Foreign SEO? (A 2022 Study) https://rankclub.io/how-well-do-pbns-work-in-foreign-serps/ Rank Club brings us this comprehensive look at how PBNs work in the foreign SEO market. Using the data gathered from the study, the team sought to answer questions like: The study covers more than a dozen different countries, including both English-speaking and foreign language SERPs. The case study includes separate graphs for each of the covered countries. The team found that the tested PBNs achieved positive results in approximately 85% of cases. They also found that the PBNs take between 6-14 days to take effect. You’ll find additional insights in the full article, including some conclusions about the potential of PBN links. Next, we’ll cover how one SEO massively increased organic traffic through content changes. SEO Case Study: How I Increased My Organic Traffic 652% In 7 Days https://backlinko.com/skyscraper-technique-2-0 Brian Dean brings us this look at how he used the skyscraper technique to massively improve his organic traffic. The Skyscraper technique is a content strategy where you find the best, most linkable content in your niche and create content that improves on it. Brian applies this strategy to a single lagging page to determine its impact in this updated case study. He didn’t even need to create a new piece of content, just update an old one based on his research. The result of this strategy was that the content’s organic traffic improved by 652.17% in only a week. In addition to the data, Brian provides you with the step-by-step process he used to achieve these returns. The guide sections include some great advice—backed up by heat maps and other resources—on optimizing your content around user intent. Optimizing content takes good data. Unfortunately, some data is getting harder to find with the recent Google Analytics platform updates. Let’s jump into the guides, starting with looking at how you can reclaim data that’s been lost. ‘Not Provided’ In Google Analytics: How To Reclaim Your Keyword Data https://ahrefs.com/blog/not-provided/ Mateusz Makosiewicz of Ahrefs brings us this look at finding data that is currently marked as “not provided”. Google has covered up some keyword data to protect consumer privacy. However, this data is not totally gone. You can still analyze it and pull insights out of it. Mateusz discusses several other ways to source this data. First, he shows you how to set up Google Search Console to track and deliver the data you’re missing in monthly reports. He lists all the filters you’ll need to make this possible so you can set up the solution easily. Next, Mateusz covers some free downloadable tools to provide you with the missing information. The guide closes with some advice on putting the missing data to work in your SEO strategies. If you’re looking for better ways to analyze that data for SEO and content audits, the following guide will help. It covers some of the best formula shortcuts you can use to speed up your work. The Best Google Sheets Formulas For SEO & Content Audits https://shellshockuk.com/best-google-sheets-formulas-for-seo-content-audits/ Shelley Walsh brings us this compact guide on managing SEO data better with Google Sheets formulas. She covers a range of useful formulas, including ones that allow you to do all of the following to your existing data: One great thing about this guide is that you can put it into action right now just by copy-and-pasting. If you’ve been using outdated or simplified formulas to get your data in order, you can upgrade your entire sheet in a few minutes. If you’re looking to extract a specific type of data, our next guide may have what you need. It’s a zoomed-in look at how to get Core Web Vitals data from Google. 6 Core Web Vitals Extraction Methods For CrUX With Pros & Cons https://www.searchenginejournal.com/extracting-cwv-crux-seo/ Jose Hernando of SEJ brings us this look at how to extract core web vitals data. He starts with a quick lesson on how Google measures these signals and what kind of data will tell us whether we’re doing a good or bad job. The guide focuses on how to recover CrUX (Chrome UX) data. Fortunately, this data is not difficult to find and interpret. Jose takes you through the six sources you can use to find this data, including: For each one, he tells you what data is available and how you can access it with step-by-step instructions. For each one, he provides a pros and cons list so that you can tailor the source you use to your needs. In our final guide for the month, you’ll learn how to pull off an uncommon SEO skill—making paywalled content search compliant. (Thread) How To Be SEO Compliant If You Have Paywalled Content https://twitter.com/antoineripret/status/1483813748821405700 Antoine Eripret brings us this Twitter thread/guide on how to get credit for content that’s behind a paywall. The guide takes you through all the steps you’ll need to follow to ensure that the right crawlers can access your content. You’ll learn how to add the right markup, how to keep paywalled content safe from unauthorized users, and some troubleshooting steps you can take. He provides helpful examples from major newspapers like the New York Times and La Monde. You’ll get to see some of the techniques used by these sites to get the right results. There is some excellent discussion below the thread about different ways to make this work. That’s it for the guides. Next, we’ll look at the biggest news items for the month. Google Gives Sites More Indexing Control With New Robots Tag https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-indexifembedded-robots-tag/434396/ Matt Southern brings us this look at the new robots tag and some new features coming with it. As he details, this new tag will give you more control over which content gets indexed in search results. The new tag will override the noindex tag in situations where both are present. As an example, Matt points out that you can keep a whole URL out of results with a noindex tag, but apply the new tag to specific content sections. This will allow the sections you choose to be indexable when other websites embed them. This news story closes with some quick advice on how you can start testing the new tag on your own sites. Next, we’ll be looking at a new feature for mobile searches. New Google Mobile Search Feature: People Search Next https://searchengineland.com/google-people-search-next-mobile-search-feature-379370#.YfQRwPo6w7Q.twitter Danny Goodwin brings us this look at a new search feature coming to all mobile “near me” searches. It’s called “People Search Next” and provides searchers with quick links to common next searches. The feature is not replacing any others, so it will appear alongside the existing search features People also ask and People also search for. As Danny demonstrates, this feature is already appearing for many mobile searches. In some examples, it was placed above older features. Google has stated that the feature will expand beyond mobile “near me” searches but has not provided a timeline. The company has also not specified what SERPs are most likely to produce this feature. Publishers With Manual Actions For Discover & Google News https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penalties-news-publishers-manual-actions-32842.html Barry Schwartz brings us this look at a series of manual action penalties applied to publishers active in Google Discover and Google News. The penalties landed throughout January and included all of the following violations: Barry illustrated the extent of these penalties with testimony from several major SEOs. Glenn Gabe and others experienced a wave of clients who needed help getting a penalty removed. Several examples of internal GSC notices are provided. These penalties only apply to Google Discover and Google News rankings. You probably have nothing to worry about if you’re not fighting in that space. If you are, now would be a great time to review the Google News policies. Come back for our next SEO news roundup to learn how to stay ahead of new penalties. We’ll keep you up-to-date with that and so much more. Got Questions or Comments? Join the discussion here on Facebook. If you want to keep your momentum going into the new year, you’ve come to the right place. Our February roundup includes the tips you need to stay on top. We’ll Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – January 2022

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 09:22:07 +0000

If you want to jump into the new year like a pro, you need to keep ahead of your competition. That’s where our roundup comes in. We’ve got the latest guides, case studies and new stories from SEOs top minds. First, we’ll cover the month’s biggest guides. You’ll learn how to avoid the most common link prospecting mistake. Then, you’ll get some deep insights into the 2021 product review update and recent local algorithm update. Next, we’ll dig into the month’s most informative case studies. You’ll discover whether FAQs help SEO, what improves core web vital scores, and how one site more than doubled its leads with content optimization. We’ll close on the news. Google has announced that the big year-end updates are over, and that they’ll be testing a design overhaul for the search bar. Link Prospecting and The #1 Mistake SEOs Make https://authority.builders/blog/link-prospecting/ This guide was developed after seeing many SEOs make the same serious mistake when it came to link prospecting. In it, you’ll find out why the keywords SEOs use to find link opportunities are leading them toward bad prospects. You’ll be introduced to the threat poor link prospecting poses, including research into how some practices can lead to manual penalties. Over the rest of the guide, you’ll learn how to find prospects in a better way by targeting people motivated to work with you. The guide closes on how to build link magnets that attract the best links in your niche. I hope it will be of some value to any SEOs who regularly build new links. Next up, we have some in-depth analysis into the latest major Google update. Google’s December 2021 Product Reviews Update – Analysis and Findings https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-2021-december-product-reviews-update/ Glenn Gabe brings us this detailed look at the product reviews update. He documents the fallout of the update as it rolled out and examines what sets the winners and losers apart. The fallout, as it turns out, was pretty substantial. Glenn provides some examples of sites that were hit by volatility. Some experienced significant traffic loss, some lost snippet slots, and some received sudden boosts to their visibility. He went on to identify the factors that winning sites appeared to share. Strong organization was common on sites that came out of the update on top. Great visuals, actual experience, and explanations of the review process also stood out among winning sites. The guide covers many more insights and provides a convincing number of examples. It will be helpful to any SEOs in the product review niche. For our final guide, we’ll be looking at Google’s other update and what it means. The Vicinity Update: What You Need to Know About Google’s Largest Local Algorithm Update in 5 Years https://www.sterlingsky.ca/vicinity-algorithm-update/ Joy Hawkins brings us this look at an update that flew under the radar of many SEOs. The changes started in November and weren’t announced by Google until December 16th. In the announcement, Google claimed they had completed a “rebalancing” of local ranking factors. This update, according to Joy, was one of the largest to hit local results since the Hawk Update in 2017. Her analysis suggests that the update had a major impact on proximity as a search factor. Proximity is a factor that accounts for the distance between the searcher and the businesses appearing in local results. The closer a business is to a searcher, the more the proximity factor favors that business’ result. Google has steadily made proximity a more prominent factor in local search rankings. More precisely, it has made it harder for businesses without proximity to rank locally. This update may have been the final nail in the coffin for businesses trying to rank in distant cities using SEO. Joy further explains the findings through a small case study of lawyer sites. The legal niche is particularly competitive, and it experienced a lot of volatility as the rollout continued. Joy noticed that many powerful lawyer sites lost the ability to compete in distant areas. The complete guide contains advice essential for anyone working in local search. Next, we’ll break into the case studies that dropped over the last 30 days. We’ll start with a study on the value of FAQs and FAQ schemas. Does Turning On-Page Content into FAQs and Adding FAQ Schema Help SEO Performance? https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/turn-page-content-into-faqs-and-add-schema/ Daniel Haugen brings us this look at the SEO value of FAQs. FAQs and their related schemas have a reputation for improving content performance. This case study takes a long look at whether that’s true, and if it is, what kind of impact you can expect from these content changes. For the test, the experimenters applied a very light touch. Most of the original content was preserved, but the headings above them were changed to questions to make them FAQs. The FAQ schema was then applied, and the page relaunched. The results were promising for anyone who has been promoting a FAQ strategy. Performance improved shortly after launch and continued to improve. Additionally, the page attracted several snippets even though they hadn’t been deliberately targeted. Read the study to learn how much growth you can expect from a FAQ strategy. Next, you’ll learn what the data says about improving core web vitals. Improving Core Web Vitals, A Smashing Magazine Case Study https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/12/core-web-vitals-case-study-smashing-magazine/ Barry Pollard brings us this look at how Smashing Magazine managed to detect and fix the Core Web Vitals score problems limiting their growth. The problem-solving and information-gathering parts of their journey are preserved here as a case study. The magazine’s problem came from the Large Contentful Paint score. This score measures how quickly the page supplies content to the user. It can be tricky to narrow down what’s hurting this score. It involves a lot of site speed optimization factors. Images such as author images were quickly identified as the problem. The magazine had to deliver the images from a separate assets domain, so it had limited options. They were able to solve this problem with a range of different solutions. The study thoroughly documents the trial and error steps that eventually led to a solution. Even the solutions that didn’t work in this case study are well-explained enough that they may work for other SEOs. Our final case study will focus more closely on content. It’s a look at how one team massively increased a law firm’s leads with just content optimization. How We Increased a Law Firm’s Leads by 174% With Content Optimization [Case Study] https://moz.com/blog/content-optimization-case-study Lydia German shows us what is possible with content optimization with a case study focused closely on one legal client. The case study fully documents the methods that the team used to improve the performance of the content. It includes how they used content audits, gap analysis, and competitor audits to target where content was needed most. The process and justifications they used to make each change are also explained for anyone who might want to craft a content optimization plan themselves. The complete plan included creating new content, deleting swaths of old content, and making technical fixes. The results were impressive. The team was able to more than double the number of leads and clicks coming into the law firm. Check out the full case study for ideas if you have a legal client, content that needs help, or just an interest in the content optimization process. For now, let’s move on to the news. First, we can confirm that the product review update is finally done with us. Google December 2021 product reviews update is finished rolling out https://searchengineland.com/google-december-2021-product-reviews-update-is-finished-rolling-out-377654 Barry Schwartz brings us this look at Google’s recent update announcement. The product review update is officially over. It formally started on December 1st, meaning that the implementation and tweaks went on for more than 20 days. In retrospect, this update was an interesting one. As Barry notes, this update was significantly larger than the April update. It also produced more volatility among targeted sites. While review sites got the most attention, in the aftermath we can see that the update hit sites that were outside of that niche. Products began ranking for their own “review” keyword phrases, in some cases. The impact of this review can help us see Google’s intentions somewhat. For example, this review was larger than the last one, but it wasn’t a replacement. It expanded on and reinforced the rules that started coming into effect in April 2021. Google appears to feel confident in the direction of its product review philosophy. If you were hoping for a reprieve after getting hit in April, there’s little hope of that now. Master the product review standards as soon as possible. Finally, we’ve seen signs that Google is testing a design overhaul for their search bar. Google is Testing a Design Overhaul for their Search Bar on Desktop https://brodieclark.com/google-desktop-search-bar-overhaul/ Brodie Clark brings us this analysis of the search bar changes Google is pushing through right now. If you haven’t seen these changes in the wild yet, he Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – December 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 11:36:10 +0000

You’ve made it to the end of the year, but this week’s roundup will give you no excuses for slowing down. We’re closing out 2021 with an excellent set of guides, case studies, and news items. First, we have some guides that show off SEOs latest tricks. You’ll learn how to create topic clusters using Wikipedia, how to get a lot more insight into your bounce rate, and why indexing is getting harder. Next, we’ll look at some case studies. You’ll find a huge analysis of the winners and losers of the last big update and some hard data on building better titles. We’ll close our roundup with the news. Google released some important statements about product reviews, mobile indexing, and crawl bugs. Thread: Does Wikipedia Give You Enough Data To Create A Topic Cluster (For A Niche You Know Nothing About)? https://twitter.com/jsvxc/status/1461011937437777921 Twitter user @jsvxc brings us this Twitter thread shared by several big SEOs this month. He’s developed a fast (5-minute) method to pull topic clusters out of Wikipedia pages when you know nothing about the niche. He details how to run wiki pages through either Ahrefs or other free tools. He provides tips on finding the keywords with intent and how to generate more keywords from free tools like MissingTopics. Using the example of a “personal injury lawyer niche”, he shows how he could generate a list of intentional phrases and answerable queries using only the Wikipedia page as a reference. He admits that this process is designed for situations where you don’t have the time or budget, to perform more intense research. If this guide helps you plan out some content, the next one on the list will help you optimize it. It teaches you how to measure and optimize your bounce rate. How To Calculate, Audit & Improve Bounce Rate For SEO Success https://www.searchenginejournal.com/bounce-rate-how-to-audit/ Kayle Larkin brings us this nuts-and-bolts look at how to take bounce rate seriously as one of your SEO KPIs to track. This guide aims to help you find out what yours is, determine if it’s good or bad, and improve it. Kayle starts by providing new SEOs with definitions and links to Google resources to get them up to speed. She goes over implementing your Google Analytics tag and setting up event tracking for behaviors that align with your objectives. Then, she dives into more technical work. Over the rest of the guide, she teaches you how to organize bounce rates by marketing channels, set up advanced filters for your data, and troubleshoot problems. For many SEOs, bounce rate alone isn’t considered a useful indicator for sites. Kayle addresses this and gives advice even experienced SEOs can use to drive people further into a site. Organic traffic is often a major focus for bounce rate improvements. Before you can develop organic traffic, you’ll need to get indexed – our next guide details why you may find that a lot harder than it used to be. Why Getting Indexed By Google Is So Difficult https://moz.com/blog/why-getting-indexed-is-difficult Tomek Rudzki, writing for Moz, brings us this breakdown of why some websites, particularly large ones, are waiting longer for indexing. For example, he reveals that many of the largest e-commerce stores online fail to get 15% or more of their pages indexed. Then, he dives into a long, growing list of reasons why even pages on authoritative sites are not getting indexed properly. He defines and provides the solutions for all of the following common problems: He includes some instructions for checking your index rate and a list of ways that you can increase the probability that Google will index your future pages. At the same time, he warns that Google has finite resources. In some cases, indexing problems may result from Google downgrading the priority of certain types of pages. That’s it for the guides. The upcoming sections will cover some big case studies that dropped over the last month. First, we’ll look at a big breakdown of the Google November 2021 Core Update. Google November 2021 Core Update: Winners, Losers & Analysis https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/google-november-2021-core-update-winners-losers-analysis/ Lily Ray brings us this look at how the latest major core update changed our world. This update was a contentious one. It dropped just a week before Black Friday, and many e-commerce sites were worried that the impact would disrupt their biggest sales. Let’s see how things broke down. Lily and her team examined nearly 1,500 domains across dozens of niches for this case study. They found a significant number of changes. According to her analysis, reference-style sites were the biggest winners. These included dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other types of educational sites. Several of them saw 200% or more gains in visibility. News and publisher sites took the biggest hit. Major news sites like APNews, Forbes, and Reuters saw statistically significant drops. Lily theorizes that this may be because the algorithm is being retooled to favor fresher content. The full analysis also includes major swings in niches such as health, law & government, and stock photography sites. Google tends to make adjustments to each core update, so stay tuned for additional discoveries. Our next case study examines whether brand names or target terms matter more in titles. The Result Of An SEO Split-Test: Does Adding Your Brand Or Target Terms To Titles Matter More? https://www.semrush.com/blog/the-result-of-anseo-split-test-does-adding-your-brand-or-target-terms-to-titles-matter-more-/ Brian Moseley brings us this look at the value of including brand names vs. target terms in your titles. He measures whether your brand name or a target term appeals more to searchers’ intent. For the test, Brian was given access to a massive recruitment site that helps employers find staff. He changed the titles on nearly 2500 pages. For one group, he made sure the title was always short enough to adequately display the brand name at the end. For the second group, he cut the brand name to include descriptive terms for the service, such as “employees”. The result was that the pages with the brand name performed significantly better than the pages that used the target terms. Brian explored several reasons this could have happened. First, he pointed out that searchers use brand names as a quality signal, especially for big brands. He also theorized that the use of target keywords in titles may have confused searchers. The target terms added to the titles didn’t always match the topics covered on each page. Adding these terms may have led searchers to believe these pages covered different information. Our final case study also looks at title tags. The author has analyzed nearly a million of them to extract some actionable insights. 6 Important Insights About Title Tags (953,276 Pages Studied) https://ahrefs.com/blog/title-tags-study/ Michal Pecánek brings us this look at the state of title tags after Google’s recent changes and minor rollbacks. If you’ve been following the story since September, you know that Google started generating titles for a significant number of searches. After some well-publicized cases of searches returning bizarre titles, Google appears to have backed down a little. They claim that they use existing titles around 87% of the time. Starting from this point, Michal began a project to document what was happening with title tags by examining 953,276 top-10 pages. Using this research, he produced his own data. First, he learned that 7.4% of top-ranking pages don’t even have a title tag. That’s a surprisingly high number for sites that are all in the top 10 for their queries. This may be explained by snippets answering queries better in certain searches. Michal was also able to document how often Google rewrites tags and how they choose to do so. He found that Google rewrites titles 33.4% of the time. That’s quite a bit higher than their advertised rate, but remember this test group only includes top-10 pages. They may be more likely to face changes than sites outside that range. He also found that in 50% of cases where Google changed the titles, they preferred to use the existing H1 title. The data suggested that Google has a special zeal for rewriting long titles. They are 57% more likely to change a long title. Michal’s full writeup contains a lot of other insights that may help you keep your existing titles. That covers the case studies for the month, and we’re ready to look at the news. First, Google has some news about product reviews. Product Reviews Update And Your Site https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/12/product-reviews-update-and-your-site Google recently announced changes to the product review update that landed in April 2021. The new update, rolling out now, will build on Google’s feedback and data from the first one. The new best practices released with this update should be noted by any SEOs working with review sites. First, quality reviews are expected to provide resources that allow users to experience the product. That may include videos, recordings, images, or other media. Second, quality reviews are expected to offer links to multiple sellers so that the reader can choose from multiple retailers. The Google release doesn’t say much Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – November 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 13:47:43 +0000

We’re approaching the end of yet another year. If you want to keep your momentum up for the next one, this roundup is filled with the tips, tricks, and discoveries you need to know. First, we’ve got three new guides for you. You’ll learn how to thrive despite low traffic, how to rank images for mobile searches, and how to turn theories about Google Quality Guidelines into action. Next, we’ve got some case studies from the top minds in SEO. You’ll learn what the data says about the value of CTAs in page titles, the accuracy of keyword tools, and the impact that Google’s policy of rewriting titles has on split-testing. In the end, we’ll cover the news. You’ll learn about the indented results that are rolling into SERPs, the big spam update, and some of the buzz about the future of AMP. Also, you’ll get a peek at our huge Black Friday deals. 3 Metrics for Thriving Despite Lower Organic Traffic https://www.kevin-indig.com/growth-memo/3-metrics-for-thriving-despite-lower-organic-traffic/ Kevin Indig brings us this look at how you can make a website thrive even if you’re currently struggling for traffic. He argues that as long as you optimize the right metrics, you can get closer to your goals while building up an audience. The first metric he covers is direct traffic. Direct traffic is traffic that arrives directly to your site without the use of a search engine. This includes people who click on your ads, arrive from apps, or who know your address by word of mouth. Kevin gives you some ideas of how you can push this metric up through superior content that can make your site a destination. He also provides you with some examples of sites that are doing it right that you can match. The full guide covers two other metrics (referral traffic and returning visitors) and provides you with more ideas and examples to drive them. It’s good advice for anyone who’s struggling with a newer site or needs to thrive in a low-traffic sub-niche. Next, we’ll be looking at one way you can drive up organic traffic: Getting images to rank in mobile search results. How to Get Images in Mobile Search Results https://www.sterlingsky.ca/images-mobile-serps/ Joy Hawkins brings us this look at how to get your images to appear for mobile search results. This is important, she notes, because mobile searches treat images differently. On mobile results, images can appear beside all text searches. They don’t work on computers. Joy argues that you can take advantage of this fact to ensure that your results stand out in all kinds of searches. She shows you how to make sure that your images appear in a step-by-step process. The guide includes a lot of tips that may not seem intuitive until you try them. For example, posting an image at the top of the page makes it more likely to be noticed by Google and displayed in results. She also provides a series of recommendations for what image you should use, what information they should include, and links to additional guides that can help. Overall, it’s great advice for any site that can benefit from accompanying images, such as a field service website. The next guide is effective for pretty much any kind of site. We’ll be looking at a simple breakdown of how Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines work in practice. Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines Demystified for SEO https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-quality-raters-guidelines/ Vince Nero of Ahrefs gives us this guide to making the rater guidelines work for you. As he mentions in his introduction, these guidelines are Google’s most complete descriptions of what they want from your site in document form. However, as he also points out, this document is nearly 200 pages long. Unless you’re in the mood for some heavy technical reading, this guide may be just what you’re looking for. First, he goes over the basic topics covered in the guidelines (such as E-A-T, ownership, and “needs met”) and provides clear explanations for them. Then he lays out a series of tips that can help you implement the requirements that matter most to SEOs. He recommends that you pay attention to what other sites say about you, that you directly respond to positive and negative reviews, and that you clarify authorship/qualifications for important claims—especially on Your Money, Your Life (or YMYL) sites. Many more tips are provided in this short guide to help you bring your site into compliance. Now, we’re ready to start looking at the month’s top case studies. First, how worthwhile is adding a CTA to a page’s title tag? Case Study: Should You Add a CTA to a Page’s Title Tag? https://www.semrush.com/blog/case-study-should-you-add-a-cta-to-a-page-s-title-ag-/ Brian Moseley of Semrush brings us this look at the impact CTAs have on organic traffic. As you may know, CTA is an acronym for “Call-to-Action”. It’s a marketing practice of adding action verbs onto statements to encourage browsers to take the next step (ex. “Buy now”) He starts with a poll he published before releasing the case study in which 60% of respondents predicted that adding a CTA would improve traffic. Let’s look at how that played out. For the case study, over 800 category pages without CTAs were sorted into variant or control groups. The control groups remained the same while the variants had fresh CTAs added to the beginning or end. The test was carried out over 21 days. Over those days, the results showed a clear advantage for the sites that were updated with CTAs. These pages experienced a statistically-significant increase in clicks of 8.3%. Check out the full case study to find some extra analysis on the results and some discussion of why searchers may have shown the preferences that they did. Next, we’ll be looking at another case study with big implications for most sites: Just how accurate are traffic estimates from tools? Are Keyword Tools Traffic Estimates Accurate? (Case Study) https://www.authorityhacker.com/traffic-estimates-accuracy/ Mark Webster of Authority Hacker brings us this look at the accuracy of traffic estimates from keyword tools. First, he asked 47 website owners to (anonymously) provide their complete search data for a one-month period. Then he signed up for subscriptions to six of the biggest SEO keyword traffic tools: For the results, he shows us how each tool estimated the traffic for the 46 sites and how closely each estimate stuck to the real traffic. He generated graphs that show us how much each tool over-reported or under-reported their results. Those results came with caveats, of course. As he pointed out, the “most accurate” tool wasn’t the most accurate in all cases. Additionally, some of the more accurate tools tended to over-report results, while slightly less accurate tools avoided that problem. The full study includes a lot more discussion on how to read the results and what it tells you about which tool to use. Our final case study is a little more “meta” than the others. It looks at whether Google’s tendency to rewrite titles affects what we can learn from split-testing. Does Google Rewriting Titles Prevent Us From Testing Them for SEO Impact? https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/blog/google-title-rewrites/ Will Critchlow of SearchPilot brings us this analysis of what we can or cannot learn from meta-title split testing now that Google is rewriting more than 80% of them. He starts with his conclusion: That split-testing is still valuable and can still tell us a lot about what titles searchers respond to enthusiastically. He defends this in several ways. First, he points out that Google even titles that are changed are rarely changed significantly. Most changes come down to the title being shortened to display properly across a range of devices. He also points out that it’s still possible to build tests that can isolate changes that occur unevenly across results. In other words, the right tests will still be able to tell you if your testing results in measurable differences. The complete analysis comes with a lot more advice on crafting SEO tests and benefits from split-testing titles. Will also argues that Google’s incoming infinite scroll feature (mobile results will no longer have a “page 1”, just one infinite page) will make this testing more valuable. We’re now ready to move on to the news. First, we’ll check out one of Google’s feature rollouts. Indented Results Roll Out at 40% of SERPs https://moz.com/blog/indented-serp-results Dr. Peter J. Meyers of Moz brings us this look at the indented results that Google has started pushing live after months of testing. Indented results are groups of organic results that come from the same domain. Now, when you use certain terms, you’ll see a normal result, along with several others indented underneath it. These indented results guide you to specific pages on that domain that may be more in line with your intent. As an example, Peter shows a search for the Spirit Halloween store. The main result shows you the homepage for the business, while an indented result takes you to a map for stores near you. This feature is now showing Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – October 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 06:40:22 +0000

Are you looking to make some last major moves before we start thinking about next year? Our latest roundup has some tips and research that can help you make the last quarter your best quarter. First, we have four thick guides. They’ll teach you how to beat Google title rewrites and how to build deep links with PR tactics. You’ll then learn how not to get tripped up by copying a competitor’s mistake and how to do faceted navigation better. After that, you can jump into two actionable case studies. The data will tell you how many footer links are a good idea (I bet it’s more than you think) and whether you should really be stressing about big changes from the next update. We’ll close on the news. Have Tiny, unannounced updates plagued october? The data seems to say so. We’ll also look at one of the funnier interactions coming out of Bing and Google’s big case in the EU courts. 5 Ways to Beat Google Title Rewrites https://zyppy.com/blog/5-ways-to-beat-google-title-rewrites-and-a-new-seo-traffic-tool/ Cyrus Shepard brings us this look at how to beat Google title rewrites. As he notes, Google has recently become surprisingly aggressive when replacing this key metadata. Once, it tended to target results where the titles were missing. Now, it will replace even crafted, researched titles. Moz did some recent research on the scale of this problem and found that up to 58% of all titles were being rewritten. If you want to keep your titles out of that figure, Cyrus has five pieces of advice that he covers in great detail. Using clear steps and visual aids, he tells you how to: It’s all good advice, but as he points out, changes may be coming soon. At least some of the effects seem to be unintentional and may be subject to rule changes in updates. Let’s move on to some techniques that may survive better over the long haul. Our next guide has some ideas on how to use content & PR to build deep links. How to Use Content & PR to Build Deep Links https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/how-to-use-content-and-pr-to-build-deep-links/ Tom Jeffery of ScreamingFrog brings us his advice on how content and PR can be mobilized to generate deep links for your sites. Deep links are links that bypass your home page and take users directly to content that’s “deep” in your site hierarchy. Links that go directly to product pages are an example of deep links. The definition has also grown to cover links that take mobile users to content within an app. No matter what type of deep links you need, Tom argues that you may need more of them. He shows us a graph of how his team used deep links to turn a “COVID restrictions by state” page into a lead-generating powerhouse for an insurance company. Building normal links to highly commercial content can be a challenge. Tom recommends that you use content PR techniques that can attract deep links from media, such as building themed “gift guides” around products that are well-stocked but not well-linked You can also create competitions and then use product page links to show the value of the prizes given away free to the winners. Media outlets may link directly to the prize when covering the competition. Finally, he suggests writing thoughtful content about your industry. As a business owner, you have some existing credibility in your industry. Using your own experience to present yourself as a thought leader on important topics can attract links. These are long-term strategies, but the glimpses he gives us into how these techniques have paid off for clients are compelling. Next, let’s turn our gaze on the competition. We may fear what they’re doing right, but what they’re doing wrong can also trip us up. What if the Competition Is Wrong? How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Competitive Content Research https://moz.com/blog/competitive-research-pitfalls Travis McKnight of Moz brings us this look at how to avoid the pitfalls of competitive content research. Competitive analysis has become a major buzzword in SEO for the last few years. Our roundups have included several guides about the data you can analyze to find what your competition is doing or targeting. This guide asks: What if they’re wrong? What if your competitor doesn’t know what they’re doing right, and they’ve decided to spend oodles of money in the wrong direction? You don’t want to follow them, and Travis has some tips that may help you avoid doing just that. His long guide includes advice on how you can: Putting these methods into practice can protect you from pointing your resources in the wrong direction. Our final guide of the month can also help you point your resources in the right direction with faceted navigation. Faceted Navigation: Definition, Examples & SEO Best Practices https://ahrefs.com/blog/faceted-navigation/ Sam Underwood of Ahrefs brings us this important piece about how to develop faceted navigation for your website. Faceted navigation is a kind of UX pattern that carries visitors to their destination faster. It has SEO benefits, but as Sam points out, a lot of risks to control. Faceted navigation is what it’s called when a website filters listings on category pages by their attributes. For example, imagine you’re looking at a list of flights and want to see only the ones leaving on a certain date. The sorting options (often appearing in a nearby menu of checkboxes) are a type of faceted navigation. If you’ve ever narrowed down a long list of flights, hotels, or other products, you understand the value of these options. However, Sam wants to make sure that you understand the risks. The guide covers the potential and consequences of these problems in great detail. Sam follows up with steps you can take to control the risks or repair the damage. Next, we’ll move on to the two case studies for the month. The first will look at the results of a split test study on internal links. SEO Split-Testing Lessons from SearchPilot: Adding Internal Links to Home Page Footer https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/adding-internal-links-to-home-page-footer/ Daniel Haugen of SearchPilot brings us this look at whether you can positively impact organic traffic by adding more internal links to the home page footer. The team theorized that it was possible to increase organic traffic just by adding new links, but they were concerned about how Google would react. They decided to perform the research as a split-test with a control page and variant pages that steadily managed more links. The control and variant pages started with roughly 30 internal links to various categories in the home footer. Variant pages were tested with up to 100 total links in this spot—so many that the font had to be adjusted to a smaller size to display them properly. The results were good overall for the hypothesis. The team found that the pages with the new footer links enjoyed greater traffic on both desktop and mobile searches. No negative SEO consequences showed up in the data, though the UX risks are pretty clear in the highest ranges. The next study examines the strength of core updates over time and examines whether they are getting more or less powerful. Are Core Updates Becoming Less Powerful? [Study] https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-core-update-trends/ Mordy Oberstein brings us this look at Google’s Core Updates and whether the company may have adopted a philosophy to make them less impactful on landing. He admits that this hypothesis may surprise some people who have seen devastating impacts from recent updates. However, he has a lot of data to work from and data points that some SEOs may find hard to argue against. He set out to analyze the rank volatility of every update from the 2018 Medic update. While updates existed long before this point, Mordy chose to start here because this is when Google began openly discussing updates with the public and announcing them as events, rather than just treating them like typical software updates. There have been many updates worth studying in that time: After examining the volatility across each of these updates, the study turned up several important conclusions. Among other findings, the team discovered that the average level of volatility seen during an update has decreased by 51.7% since the January 2020 Core Update. His thorough writeup covers the study in more detail and dives deep into why the changes are happening and how updates have evolved to target different niches more effectively. The whole thing is worth your time, but for now, let’s jump into our news items. We’ll start with a quick review of the algorithm update that shook things up early this month. Huge Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On October 2nd & 3rd https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-32185.html Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable brings us some industry chatter about a big update that apparently dropped between Oct 2nd and 3rd. SEOs across some of the web’s biggest forums sniffed out the update when their site traffic started dropping between 30-50%. Barry provided readings from most major tools so that you can Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – September 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 07:22:33 +0000

September finds SEOs on some shaky ground. A lot of updates have come in a short amount of time and not all of them were announced. This roundup covers some of the updates, plus the latest in SEO tricks and news. First, you’ll learn all about the link-building strategy that could get you links from powerful sites like BBC.com and Vice.com. Next, we have a deep analysis of the title tag update that may cover more than you’ve heard. Then, we’ll follow with a study on how category descriptions impact optimization. Next, we’ll cover some of the month’s most actionable guides. The first writer puts forward his personal list of nearly 20 SEO boosting practices. Then, you’ll learn how to calculate ROI with Google Analytics and whether exact match domains work anymore. Finally, we’ll look at the news. It’s all Google this month. You’ll learn how they’ve changed generated titles, completed the experience update, and (oops) admitted to losing a few days of your data. What is Digital PR? Why It Matters in Quality Link-Building https://authority.builders/blog/what-is-digital-pr/ Starting this list is a guide I wrote for Authority Builders on how to use Digital PR to give your website a serious boost in the SERPs. Digital PR is a marketing strategy that helps you build high-authority dofollow links to your website from real news articles on powerful sites. A solid Digital PR campaign can see you land dozens of killer links from some of the biggest sites on the web. In the guide, I walk you through exactly what Digital PR is, and how it differs from Traditional PR and Press Release Link Building. I then walk you through, step by step, the strategies you can use to land these kinds of links for yourself. You’ll find out: The guide takes you through each of these steps in detail. You’ll learn how they work and how to put them into action. In this next case study, you’ll learn more about the recent Google Title Tag update and how it affects us SEOs… Google Title Tag Update: A Highlight for Extraction Methods & Approaches to SEO https://brodieclark.com/google-title-tag-update/ Brodie Clark brings us this look at the title tag update and includes a small case study that demonstrates how it works right now. He begins with a quick history of how title tags have changed. As he points out, Google has done plenty of experimentation with features like the pixel limit. Google also has spent the last few years modifying and replacing snippets at will. So what changed with the most recent update on the 17th/18th of August? Google appears to have updated how they choose title tags. Brodie found that the new ones tended to be shorter. They tend to remove locations (if there are more than one) and add brands at the end. The SEO Lily Ray was responsible for the case study at the end. She bore down on one page that changed its title and chose the words from outside the page. Eventually, she found that the new title had been pulled from a tag page. You may be waiting to hear what changes you have to make to your site. Brodie didn’t have any advice on optimizing your site for this update. Our stance is that we’re going to wait and see. We have a lot of tests running right now to determine the best way to optimize title tags with the update in place. Stay tuned. Our next case study also deals with content that may be too long. It’s a case study that looks at the impact of removing fluffy category content. The Short and Long-Term Ranking Impact of Removing Long and Fluff E-Commerce Category Descriptions [Case Study] https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/ecommerce-category-description-case-study/ Glenn Gabe brings us this in-depth case study into the actual SEO performance of category descriptions. Imagine you have an e-commerce site with a lot of different categories. For a while, SEOs were recommending that you provide tailored content for each page. You knew people would probably never read the content, but the point was to provide context clues for search engines. Glenn uses this study to take a second look at whether this work really matters. Are we helping search engines give meaning to hundreds of pages, or are we just annoying our readers with a lot of content they don’t want? The study involved an e-commerce site that was updated in stages over several years to watch the effects. In the first phase, the descriptions were all cut to about 30% of their original size. In later phases, they were cut to a single paragraph. The case study found that cutting down descriptions didn’t have any short-term effects. The rankings held. Over the long period, the pages all experienced regular growth to the point that many now rank #1 with no other changes. With the case studies out of the way, we’ll move on to the month’s guides. We’ll start with one SEOs list of his favorite techniques. 19 Ways to Increase Organic SEO Traffic (With Examples and Templates) https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/increase-organic-traffic/ Robbie Richards brings us this look at his favorite 19 methods when a site needs a traffic boost. He covers a lot of the most popular ways to get a site moving. However, even experienced SEOs may pick up something new from this list. Each method is explained step-by-step. You’ll see images of how your templates should change as you’re putting each of the steps into practice. If any of them are new to you, take this chance to pick up some solid strategies. They’re up-to-date, and Robbie will let you know exactly how to pull them off. If these methods work for you, you’ll also find the next guide helpful. It teaches you some ways you can calculate your SEO ROI just by using Google Analytics. How to Calculate Your SEO ROI Using Google Analytics https://moz.com/blog/calculate-seo-roi-with-google-analytics Adriana Stein of Moz brings us this guide on how to measure SEO ROI using some figures that you can find in your Google Analytics console. As Adriana points out, GA is worth using because it helps you break down your audience, set goals, and work toward improvements. She breaks down several figures you can use to calculate ROI from Google Analytics. Let’s use the first one as an example. First, she covers page value. This measurement assigns an average monetary value to all pages viewed in a session where a transaction occurred. It helps measure pages that are important for your site but aren’t where conversions take place. Adriana provides a formula you can use to put a base dollar value on your pages based on its role in the conversion process. Using that information, you can show that the page either improved or declined based on SEO actions that were taken. The rest of the guide will take you through the other measurements, including several that make the most of e-commerce tools in GA. For now, we’ll check back with one of SEO’s (former) most popular practices. Do exact match domains work anymore? Do Exact Match Domains Still Work Anymore? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/do-exact-match-domains-still-work/283759/ Winston Burton of Search Engine Journal brings us this look at whether exact match domains (EMDs) are worth the premium cost in modern SEO. EMDs are domain names that match the keyword the site is targeting. For example, an EMDs for a New York City barber would be www.NYCbarber.com. These domains had a reputation for delivering easy SEO gains in the past. The logic was that if your domain perfectly matched a keyword/phrase, Google would recognize your site as being relevant to that phrase faster than a site by another name. Winston argues this argument is dead at this point for several reasons. For one, Google updates have targeted the relationship between “spammy” domain names and ranking in several updates. There’s no reason now to think the relationship is strong enough to matter. Second, Winston points out, EMDs are most applicable to local results, and domain names are barely applicable there. Instead, sites rank based on their map placement and content’s compatibility with SERP features. Winston says EMDs can still be valuable, but they need to be researched for the impact they will have on your customers before you pay any extra. Many of the EMDs that can benefit are already owned, and usually expensive. I agree that they still work. However, I choose not to purchase them very often for a couple of reasons. First, they cap out the content you can talk about on your site. Imagine that you create a page that’s a little outside the site topic but performs shockingly well. In some cases, you’d want to pivot the whole site around that page now that you know the appetite is there. You don’t have that flexibility with an EMD. If you want to go off-topic, you’ll be fighting uphill for relevance. Second, EMDs are harder to sell. The lack of flexibility means more risk for buyers that market changes could make the Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – August 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 05:10:58 +0000

Need some fresh momentum after the recent core update? You don’t want to miss this roundup. It’s filled with advice, data, and news that’s ready to be applied directly to your sites. To begin, you’ll find out the practices one SEO used to sell a young site for six figures. Then, we look at a presentation on how SEO changes for large sites and a simple flowchart you can use to know when to use a canonical. Next, we’ve got a set of highly actionable data studies. The first one defines the characteristics that are most likely to make your content perform in Discover. Then, we look at a deep dive on why Wise.com stays winning in SERPs and another study on how updates affect image search. We’ll close on the news. Google has announced they now recommend declaring authors in markup and that they’ll now show why specific search results were ranked. Finally, we’ll look at whether a coming WordPress update has the power to boost the core web vitals of a WP site. (Thread) How I Sold a 10-Month Old Website for Six Figures https://twitter.com/TedFrench/status/1425414187455496194 Fellow Affiliate Lab member, Ted French brings us this popular Twitter thread on the practices he used to sell a website for six figures (a $200,000+ profit) after only ten months of SEO work. As he explains in the thread, he has been working on niche sites since 2015. The sites that he develops are mainly monetized with affiliate links or display ads. Like some of his recent sites, the domain for this guide was purchased at auction right after its registration expired. Ted doesn’t discuss the site’s niche but lets us know the metrics he used to choose this site from the auction. He values “big daddy” links more than DA, DR, or other scores. This site happened to have some, and it became the basis for his work. He details all of his steps after taking possession of a site that fit his needs, including: This short thread contains insights on basically all the big decisions you’d make between getting a site and making it pay. The next guide in line is going to focus on large sites rather than small ones. SEO for Large Websites (Presentation Writeup) https://www.domwoodman.com/posts/seo-for-large-websites/ Dom Woodman brings us this look at how SEO changes when working with large/enterprise sites. He lays out the new tools that you’ll need to manage and maintain large sites. His advice covers: This advice is covered comprehensively in the article, complete with examples of template sheets and links to all the tools. It’s essential reading if a large site is challenging you. Our next guide is a bite-size cheat sheet on when to use a canonical, but it inspired a lot of goodwill from even experienced SEOs when it was released. (Infographic) Should I Use a Canonical? https://twitter.com/SEOWorksUK/status/1420048645374754818/photo/1 Billie Geena brings us this quick breakdown of the decision flow to follow when using a canonical. The chart starts with a look at two pages being compared to one another. The chart then flows through all the decisions you’ll need to make to find the correct answer. You can access the infographic, the tweet above, or through the image link here. I think this graphic could make an excellent bookmark for anyone who has trouble getting this decision out of the way quickly. The flow covers almost any issue that could leave you with analysis paralysis and takes you to the next decision. Now that you’ve picked up some things from the guides that came out this month, let’s jump into the case studies. We’ll start with a data-backed look at why content performs on Google Discover. Google Discover: 10 Characteristics of Top-Performing Content [Study] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/best-google-discover-content/414620/#close Lily Ray brings us this look at the common characteristics of content that thrives on Google Discover. The study analyzed 7,200 URLs to determine what optimizations are shared by the top-performing pages. Based on the data, she revealed the following ten characteristics that you can apply to your content: Check out the full guide for more information on how each of these characteristics is defined and to see examples of how they appear in SERPs. Our next item will deep-dive into one particular site and how it has maintained its power in SERPs. Wise.com SEO Case Study: 5 Reasons Why Their SEO Rocks https://ahrefs.com/blog/wise-seo-case-study/ Michal Pecánek brings us this in-depth look at how to do SEO right, with Wise.com as an example. Wise.com is a financial tech company that manages international money transfers. This is a highly competitive niche, but Wise has carved out a position that nets the site nearly 6.5 million visits a month. Using Ahref readings, Michal took a crack at identifying what put this site in such a powerful position. He tied their strength to some of the following practices: His study looks at these practices in detail, shows how they appear in the data, and provides image examples. There’s enough detail that you could easily steal their mojo and put it to work on your site. Our final data study piece looks at some of the fringe readings from the core update and seeks to answer the question: Can core updates impact image search rankings? Google Broad Core Updates and Image Search: Can core updates impact Image Search rankings in addition to Web Search and Discover? https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/ Glenn Gabe of GSQi takes us through this look at how core updates can affect image search rankings. He started looking for the answer after fielding a technical question on Google. However, Glenn was surprised enough by the scope of what he found to do a fuller writeup. He starts with a refresher on how Google ranks images in the first place. He explains that ranking in image search is mostly tied to landing page combinations. That means (roughly) Google may rank images based on how well the hosting page gives context to those images. Glenn argues that this relationship could explain why a surprising amount of image search movement was recorded in the brief analysis. He provides several examples of sites that were hit, and sites that were not—theorizing that the hit sites may have lost SERP features. Danny Sullivan of Google dropped into the conversation at one point to clarify that, yes, core updates may hit image results or any other type of content. Glenn closes with some advice on how to check if your site has been impacted. You should check out the rest of the piece to learn more about how to spot hits to your images rankings and how to recover. With the last case study out of the way, we’ll move to the news. We’ll start by looking at what it means that Google is now recommending authors be declared in markup. Google Recommends Declaring Authors in Markup https://www.sistrix.com/blog/who-wrote-that-content-google-recommends-declaring-authors-in-markup/ Johannes Beus of Sistrix brings us this quick look at what it means that Google wants authors to be declared in markup. This follows the Aug 6th introduction of the new author.url property. The new property was released to give SEOs the chance to help Google determine the correct author of a given article. While Google has done a lot of work to detect authors automatically, this new change will allow site owners to push for recognition more directly. As Johannes points out, this effort doesn’t have the best track record. Both the Google+ channel and the Rel author tag were released to meet this same need. Both were discontinued shortly afterward. Whether this new property sticks or not, some SEOs may benefit from being early adopters. Some site owners in YMYL-niches depend on recognized authorship to rank and will probably benefit from getting on board with new initiatives as soon as possible. Google Now Shows Why It Ranked a Specific Search Result https://searchengineland.com/google-now-shows-why-it-ranked-a-specific-search-result-350659 Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land brings us this surprising move by Google to reveal what ranking factors allowed sites to reach the top of SERPs. The feature, covered in this official release, expands the “about this result” box to identify the factors used to deliver the result. For example, when you perform a search, this box may now tell you: It’s not hard to understand why SEOs might be excited about this change. While this box may not share detailed data about weights and signals, it may provide driven SEOs with a more precise game plan to target the results above them. This feature is already rolling out and estimated to appear in 100% of US searches by the end of August. WordPress 5.9 May Boost a Core Web Vitals Metric by Up to 33% https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-core-web-vitals-boost/413627/#close Roger Montti of Search Engine Journal has some news for us about a WordPress update that could save a lot of time. WordPress is one of the most widely used CMS systems globally, and their next update may boost the core web vitals of millions of sites using it. The change being discussed would alter the default loading Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – July 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 04:49:19 +0000

The next set of core updates just hit, and you probably need some answers. In this roundup, we’ll be looking at the analysis of what’s happened, as well as some other important tricks and advice that dropped this month. We’ll start with three big case studies. First, we’ll look at an analysis of the July Core Update. Then, you’ll find out what 3.6 billion articles can tell you about building evergreen content. Finally, you’ll learn whether data proves that content performs better when it’s easy to read. Then, we’ll move on to the month’s guide. It covers how to optimize for your own In this July SEO news roundup, from core update analyses, to deep-dive case studies, we’ve got you covered. Also find out how branded search can lead to some ….. Finally, we’ll cover the news. First, Google released a search spam algorithm update. They’ve also announced that they won’t be blocking 3rd-part cookies on schedule. Finally, John Meuller declared that sometimes “there’s no SEO solution.” We’ll take a look at what all this means. Analysis: Google Core Update July 2021 https://www.sistrix.com/blog/google-core-update-july-2021/ Steve Paine of Sistrix brings us this look at the Google core updates that rolled out through July. This update is the next phase of an update that first began rolling out in June. The new phase was announced on July 1st and has been rolling out since then. So many updates have dropped in a short amount of time that it’s honestly hard to separate all of the effects. However, Steve has plenty of Sistrix data about the sites that gained and lost visibility, and he noted several interesting movements. Some sites in the entertainment sector did really well. Spotify, for example, jumped in June and then jumped again in the July updates. Last.fm was also a big winner. Not all sites were so lucky. More than a few financial sites took a beating in the spam update that happened around the same time. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Google has been holding these sites to higher standards in the last few updates, and now they may be experimenting with new criteria to judge the sites that survived the last hits. Another interesting effect was that some sites improved after being hit in previous updates. Steve shows that some sites that were mauled during the December update (losing more than half of their traffic in some cases) suddenly recovered. Check out the article for more analysis and a long list of the top winners and losers. Next up, we’ll look at what more than 3 billion data points can tell us about what makes content evergreen. We Analyzed 3.6 Billion Articles. Here’s What We Learned About Evergreen Content https://backlinko.com/evergreen-content-study Brian Dean of Backlinko brings us this look at how to understand evergreen content. A lot of factors were considered in this analysis, including the format and promotional channels. He broke his findings into some snackable bites that can easily be applied to the content you create going forward. For example, he found that lists represent one of your best chances to go evergreen. He also discovered some types of content that had very little chance of achieving evergreen status. His analysis also showed that where content launched or was promoted could play an important role. The full guide contains even more analysis about building content with a high chance of going evergreen. Our final case study also deals with content. It’s a study that looks at whether the readability of your content plays a role in its SEO performance. Flesch Reading Ease: Does It Matter for SEO? (Data Study) https://ahrefs.com/blog/flesch-reading-ease/ Michal Pecánek of Ahrefs brings us this analysis of how the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) Score impacts content performance over time. You may have seen this score used in many content-analysis tools (for example, the Hemingway App). It tells you how easy your content is to ready based on factors such as the size of words use or the length of sentences. But does this score matter? Michal starts by pointing out that Google has never defended this score outright. He quotes John Mueller saying in 2018 that he wasn’t aware of any algorithms that accounted for FRE. The data that Ahrefs collected across 15,000 keywords seemed to confirm that it’s not a factor. Their study revealed no correlation between the FRE score of content and how well it ranked. With that said, Michal was split on whether it should be applied to your content. For one, he points out that poor readability can contribute to many other problems that do affect performance. Bounce rates and low dwell time from frustrated readers can signal to Google that your content is just not serving searchers’ needs. However, you can also frustrate your readers by trying to dumb down content just to chase a score that’s less important than your message. To back this up, Michal provides some additional data on topics. He reveals that the top-ranking engineering pages online tend to have awful FRE scores. However, top food pages have much better scores. He concludes you’re better off sticking to solid writing practices than focusing on FRE. That concludes the data studies for the week. Let’s move on to the guide. How to Optimize for Your Own Branded Search https://moz.com/blog/optimize-for-branded-search Ann Smarty of Moz brings us this look at how to tailor your SEO for branded searches. Branded searches are terms that contain your brand or product name. It can include your business, product, or key team members. As Ann points out, these kinds of searches can be really important to your strategy. For one, they come with high intent. Someone who is looking up your brand is probably close to buying. They’re checking out your company, and what they see on SERPs can be a huge influence. Ann recommends that you assess your position by starting with the suggestion box. When someone types in your brand (even before they’ve clicked on search), you want to know what’s being recommended to them. Quite often, it’s competitors with terms such as: These same types of suggestions tend to fill the “people also ask” box. As she points out, you can’t stop this from happening, but you can optimize for these search terms to guide people back to your own site. For example, you can start building FAQ schemas to provide direct answers to questions about your brand competitors. You can also publish blogs around them or address them in your knowledge base. When your site is the top result or snippet for these brand mentions, you control the conversation. You’ll find some more advice and spreadsheet templates for monitoring and reacting to changes in your brand searches in the guide. For now, let’s move on to the news. We’ll start by looking at some of the “what” questions behind Google’s spam algorithm update and what it’s reported to do. Confirmed Google Search Spam Algorithm Update On June 23rd & 28th https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-spam-algorithm-update-june-23rd-31649.html Barry Schwartz of SEO Roundtable brings us this look at a part of the recent core updates. The spam-specific update started and ended in late June with very few details except for the fact that it was happening. The first part of the spam update took place on the 23rd. A second part followed on the 28th, and both were complete by the end of the day. Barry and other SEOs have learned a little more about it since launch. In a conversation with Barry, Danny Sullivan of Google confirmed that the update was global and that it would cover image results and others. The reaction from the community was mixed. On several forum conversations that Barry covered in the article, people reported that many sites were hit. Others claimed that the update was necessary because the recent core update enabled many new types of spam. You can track the volatility in several tool graphs that Barry provided in the piece. For now, it doesn’t seem that the spam update has resulted in as many changes as other recent updates. However, Google hasn’t ruled out additional spam updates to further control the effects. Google isn’t moving swiftly in all their updates. In our next news piece, you’ll learn why Google has delayed the plan to block third-party cookies until 2023. Google Delays Blocking Third-Party Cookies in Chrome Until 2023 https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22547339/google-chrome-cookiepocalypse-delayed-2023 Alex Castro of the Verge brings us this look at Google’s decision not to phase out third-party cookies. The controversial decision (dubbed the “cookiepocalypse” by some users) has now been delayed by more than a year. In a published statement, Google declared that the delay was planned in compliance with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) law. This law recently resulted in many sites implementing popups to users to allow them to choose cookie options. Google has chosen to work more closely with regulators to ensure that the update doesn’t violate anti-competitive practices. Google has promised to provide more specific dates Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – June 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 28 Jun 2021 06:53:52 +0000

Half of the year is behind us now. With brand new core updates dropping, it’s clear that we can’t take all of our old strategies into the next quarter. If you want to stay caught up, you’ll need to know about the fresh releases we’ll be covering in this month’s roundup. First, you’ll learn some new moves from our guides. They cover how to build white-hat links for local businesses, how to perform different kinds of keyword research, and whether fixing broken links is worth your limited time. Then, you’ll get data you can use from the month’s top case studies. You’ll gain insight into the winners and losers of Google’s most recent core update and how to make it into Google Web Stories. Finally, you’ll see some news from the last 30 days that you shouldn’t ignore. It will cover a (previously) unconfirmed search ranking algorithm, Google’s updates to video best practices, and new penalties for sites that engage in questionable claims. How to Build Safe and Effective White Hat Links for Local Businesses https://authority.builders/blog/local-link-building/ I recently published this guide on how to build local links safely. You might assume that building local links is easier, but regional relevance is vital with these links. That can make for an additional challenge that can be tough to overcome—especially when your local region only has a small number of sites to approach. In my guide, I identify seven different strategies that you can use to build (completely white hat) links for local sites. For example, I lay out how you can: The guide takes you through each of these strategies in detail. You’ll learn how they work and how to put them into action. Excellent keyword research will help you target better sites for this work. In the following guide, you’ll learn about four different kinds of research to perform. There Are Four Kinds of Keyword Research; Make Sure You’re Doing the Right One(s) https://sparktoro.com/blog/there-are-four-kinds-of-keyword-research-make-sure-youre-doing-the-right-ones/ Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro brings us this look at keyword research and how it’s a lot broader than you might assume. He starts by establishing four different kinds of research: As he explains, there are some critical differences in how research is performed based on why the research is necessary. He lays out the goal, the process you should use, and tools that can help you get the job done for each one. The first one (SEO/PPC) is what most people have in mind when they think of keyword research. The goals and processes of that type are well understood. So, let’s use the last one as an example of what he thinks you should be doing differently. For market/audience research, he identifies the goal as learning more about the audience’s preferences so that you can use the data to answer questions like: For the process, he suggests that you should be building personas to match to keywords, rather than just finding top keywords for the niche. He also lists several tools that may help. You can find all of this information for all four research types involved in the complete guide. For our last guide, we’re going to take you back on-site. We’ll look at whether fixing old broken links is worth enough to be a priority. Does Fixing Old Broken Links Still Matter to SEO? https://moz.com/blog/does-fixing-broken-links-matter-seo Cyrus Shepard of Moz brings us this look at the utility of fixing old links. He starts by asking us if we’re familiar with the following scenario: You’ve taken the time to fix a broken link, and you’ve noticed that nothing has happened. As Cyrus points out, this has happened to a lot of people. He starts by looking at some of the reasons that it can occur, for example: He also suggests some methods you can use to identify which reason may be responsible for your fix not working. He closes out the guide with some additional advice and judgment calls on how you should handle broken links. He explains that fixing links is mostly worthwhile. Then, he covers how to prioritize freshness and redirect broken links to relevant URLs. That’s the last of the guides for this week. Next, we’re going to look at some of the data published over the previous 30 days. We’ll start by looking at the winners and losers of the June core update. Winners and Losers of Google’s June 2021 Core Update https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/winners-and-losers-of-googles-june-2021-core-update/ Lily Ray of Amsive Digital brings us this comprehensive look at the June 2021 Core Update and the sites that benefited (or didn’t). If you missed it, Google announced that a core update would be rolling out in two parts. The first part of the update rolled out in early June and was confirmed as completed on June 12. The second part will follow later in July. For now, Lily has the score on who is winning or losing. The analysis is based on the Sistrix Visibility Index. After that, the category of each domain was collected using Similarweb categories to assess how particular niches were affected. She starts by providing the 50 domains that achieved the most significant increase in visibility. That’s followed up with the 50 sites that saw the worst decrease in visibility. As she warns in her preamble, these updates are based on thousands of factors. No one should feel confident that they’ve isolated the reasons that a given site won or lost. However, some strong trends among categories of sites may help us understand this update better. Lily found that: There’s a lot more to digest in this case study, so be sure to add it to your reading list. For now, we’re going to see what the data says about a much more narrow subject: How to make it into Google Web Stories. How to Make Google Web Stories [2021 Study] https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-web-stories-study/ Olga Andrienko of Semrush brings us this look at how you can make it into Google stories based on the data from 2,400 different search results. As you may already know, Google Web Stories is a visual type of content that allows creators to combine video, audio, and other multimedia into a tappable sequence. Google features story results for some searches, and this study looks at what the featured stories have in common. Among other factors, the study examined: The study collected some data that may be very helpful if you want to rank your own stories. For example, Semrush discovered that: In the complete study, you’ll find plenty more information that you can use to optimize your own stories to appear. Given the favorable position they receive in SERPs, getting it right may be well worth the investment. With our data pieces out of the way, we’re ready to take a look at the latest news. Let’s start by examining an unconfirmed search ranking algorithm update that may have dropped in early June. Unconfirmed Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update June 11 & 12 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-ranking-algorithm-update-june-11-12-31586.html Google has been doing a lot this month, but as Barry Schwartz tells us in this piece from the Search Engine Roundtable, not all of it was discussed officially (at least at first). Several updates showed up in site data that were not previously listed in Google’s update reports. We later learned that this was a last-minute tweak of the June update. Analyzing what happened may give us more insight into what Google was trying to accomplish… Barry collected some of the chatter about the final push in this piece. Multiple SEOs in a Webmaster World thread reported massive hits to their sites, with “50% drops” being independently reported by several people. There were also claims that affiliate sites have dropped hard from top positions—some even leaving the first five pages. Barry provided some context for this chatter with some tool data. You can see the changes that happened in his charts of MozCast, Semrush, and RankRanger fluctuations. While Google doesn’t announce all of their changes right away, they were helpful enough to provide some early documentation for another change this month. Google has expanded its “video best practices” document with some notable new passages. Google Just Added a New Section to Their ‘Video Best Practices’ Doc https://twitter.com/brodieseo/status/1401032364004806657 SEO Brodie Clark caught a quietly-updated change to Google’s video best practices. The change involves how pages should be optimized for SafeSearch to keep adult content separate from content intended for all audiences. Google is instructing you to do as much as you can to help them understand the nature of a page. They strongly recommend (bolding theirs) that you group any adult videos away from other videos on your site. For example, they should have their own category page. They also ask that you add metadata to all adult pages—specifically, the content rating markup. They provide some examples in the doc for you to copy-paste if needed. While the guidelines don’t state it directly, the updates suggest that non-compliant sites risk being labeled as adult content. If adult content on your site ends up Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – May 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 May 2021 05:12:53 +0000

As the year’s third quarter nears, you’re in a great position to consider what you need to change to meet your most aggressive year-end goals. If you need some new strategies to turn things around, this roundup may help. First, you’ll pick up new skills from the guides. You’ll learn how to use topic clusters to master content marketing, what local justifications are (and why they matter), and how “jump links” could be your next secret weapon. Then, you’ll get some actionable data from new case studies. They cover how some SEOs have recovered from the December Update, what’s changed with Google’s product review update, and some web vitals scores for every industry. Finally, you’ll get the latest news. We’ll look at what Google has said about new ways to report indexing issues and what you can expect from their spam-fighting A.I. How to Use Topic Clusters for Content Marketing to Rank, Convert, and Strategize https://surferseo.com/blog/topic-clusters/ Michał Suski of SurferSEO brings us this look at how to use topic clusters to power your content marketing. He claims that topic clusters are a 100% on-page, content-focused method you can use to raise your site’s authority without links. He defines topic clusters as a method for organizing your content so that you can serve the needs of both SEO requirements and visiting humans. He takes you through the process of setting up Pillar Pages and Supporting Pages so that you can cover both broad overviews and smaller parts of a particular topic. Employing this strategy can take a lot of work, but Michał provides some strong arguments for why it matters. As he points out, topic clusters make it very easy for bots to make sense of your pages. They also boost your topical relevance, deliver a better user experience, and give your audience a reason to come back. Check out the full guide to discover multiple methods of building topic clusters. You’ll also be treated to a thorough case study into how topic clusters helped a site with no DA score start ranking for 3,000+ keywords—without building a single link. Topic clusters are a great way to target intent. Our next guide also has some advice on how you can do that. Local Justifications Are a Big Deal, and You Can Influence Them https://moz.com/blog/influence-local-justifications Miriam Ellis of Moz brings us this look at local justifications and how much of a difference they can make for your SEO efforts. She starts by helping us understand what local justifications are. As she explains, a local justification is a snippet of text that appears in the local packs that note if a shop/website sells the item listed in the searcher’s query. Imagine you were searching for a new grill. If you type “Grill in (city)” into Google, you’ll get a list of retail stores near you. At the bottom of each listing, you may see text that says “sold here” or “this website mentions X.” That’s a local justification. It matters, Miriam argues, because these justifications can be influenced to empower your local SEO. She points out that 57% of local packs (in a test group of 2000+) featured justifications. Those number shouldn’t be too surprising, because there are now a lot of different ones: For each of these justifications, Miriam provides some advice for how you can influence Google to provide a justification for your listing. You should take advantage of this quickly if you’re in local SEO. Our final guide for the month also has some advice on how you can plant a visual advantage in your search engine result. Jump Links – The Secret SEO Weapon https://seonotebook.com/notes/jump-links-the-secret-seo-weapon/ Steve Toth of SEOnotebook brings us this look at a tactic that has allowed his much newer site to go toe-to-toe with the New York Times for some important SERPs. He claims that the source of this power is jump links. Jump links (sometimes called anchor links) are links that appear in Google results and direct you to a specific spot on the page. Steve hypothesizes that Google loves these links so much because they deliver users to the specific section of the content that answers their query. Not everyone has as much luck with jump links, but Steve takes a special approach to them. He suggests that the key to great performance from jump links is building them into your headers and making sure that you’re structuring them in the form of a question. He recommends that you keep them short and include at least 3 per page. As long as you don’t have a lot of competition yet, this can deliver some impressive results. That’s all for the guides. Let’s move on to the case study. First, we have several months of research that document how one site that suffered serious losses from the 2020 core update has managed to recover. How I’ve Recovered From the Google December 2020 Core Update https://vladkhvatov.com/google-algorithm-update/ Vlad Khvatov brings us this look at how his site recovered from the big hit it took after the December 2020 update. He started with more than 100,00 users a month. For the first few months of 2020, he was lucky to get a few hundred hits a month. Now, that his site is finally growing—fast—again, he has some advice for the rest of us. He started with a major overhaul of his site. He implemented a silo structure for his existing content, rewrote a ton of content that had been stolen, and added 41 pages of new content. He also prepared for core web vitals, improved his site speed, and disavowed nearly 500 links. He documents all of his steps with details about how he pulled them off. He also goes into what it cost him and how much it may cost you to do the same work. It’s valuable data if you’re looking to do a major overhaul, especially if your site is an affiliate site like his. The next case study is also of particular interest to affiliate marketers. It covers one of the most affiliate-focused updates in years. Google’s Product Reviews Update – Analysis and findings from a major algorithm update impacting affiliate marketers, review sites, and more https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-product-reviews-algorithm-update/ Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive brings us this look at Google’s Product Reviews Update. As he explains, the update was expected to reward in-depth reviews and leave thinner content at a competitive disadvantage. Using a series of graphs and live examples, Glenn lays out what happened in extensive detail. He starts with a breakdown of how the launch rolled out and who it affected. After that, he dives into some analysis. He starts by providing some examples of sites that dropped. Anonymous image examples of the kind of content that caused these sites to drop are provided. He also provides some examples of stronger content that did well following the update rollout. He assessed some other factors that may have caused sites to get hit by the update. The aggressiveness and organization of content may be a factor. Whether or not the affiliates disclose that they are affiliates and identify their authors may also play a role. Glenn covers significantly more details in the piece. It’s essential reading if you have an affiliate site, especially if the recent update hit yours. The next case study may have something for everyone. Core Web Vitals Scores for Every Industry https://corewebvitals.iprospect.com/ The team at iProspect has provided this useful resource for those who are preparing for the upcoming Core Web Vitals rollout. They’ve tracked 1,500 sites across 15 industries to assess who is ready and who may be at serious risk of losing out. In the beginning, you’ll find a breakdown of what the Core Web Vitals are: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) I won’t spend too much time on what they cover here because past SEO news roundups have already featured articles that fully broke these scores down. Instead, let’s look at the unique value that their research provides. For the 15 industries that they’ve analyzed, they provide lists of the top-scoring sites and the worst-scoring sites. For each of the sites that appear in either list, they provide LCP, FID, and CLS scores. You can use these lists and the sites that appear in them to develop a great idea of what an effective (or less so) site looks like. You can go to each of the top-scoring sites and borrow from the work they’ve done to prepare. With that covered, we’re ready to move on to the news. Let’s start by looking at your new reporting options if you have an indexing issue. Google lets you report an indexing issue https://searchengineland.com/google-lets-you-report-an-indexing-issue-348264 Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land brings us this news about one of Google’s latest features. You should now be able to report indexing issues directly to the Google search team from the footer of the URL inspection help document. This is a feature that Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – April 2021

Matt Diggity — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 05:02:05 +0000

The first quarter of the year is closing soon. Now is the time to think about what’s working, what isn’t, and how you’re going to end the year on top. In this roundup, we’ve got some great ideas on where you can find an edge. First up is an abundance of case studies. The data has revealed some new ways to write the best headlines and how many google searches end without a click. You’ll also get to hear Google’s response to the research on clicks. Next, you can upgrade your skills with the month’s top guides. You’ll learn how to recognize three under-utilized signals for SEO and how to use the Google knowledge graph to ensure your content features in answers. At the end of the list, you’ll find some top news items. Google has announced a product reviews algorithm update, a fellow affiliate has achieved a $6 million exit, and Google has dropped the newest version of analytics. Also, we may be waiting longer for the core web vitals update. 100m Posts Analyzed: What You Need To Write The Best Headlines https://buzzsumo.com/resources/hundred-million-best-headlines-study/view/#digital-content Louise Linehan of BuzzSumo brings us this analysis of how to write the best headlines based on 100,000,000 posts. By digging through trends, she provided some compelling answers to questions all marketers need to ask. As an example, let’s look at three big questions and what the research revealed for each of them. For the first one, the research revealed that the ideal length for headlines was 11 words and 65 characters. Descriptive headlines that were long enough to explain the information significantly outperformed snappier headlines at half the length. The best number to use in headlines appeared to be “10”. However, all of the next most popular numbers were all in the single digits. So, readers like at least ten, but more than that may strike them as too big a time investment. The research revealed that certain phrases placed at the start of a headline were more likely to create interest. At the top of the list (by a lot) were: The rest of the research is filled with some great insights that you shouldn’t miss. For now, let’s look at some search-centered research. Sparktoro published a controversial (we’ll get to Google’s reply) look at how many searches end without a click. In 2020, Two-Thirds of Google Searches Ended Without a Click https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2020-two-thirds-of-google-searches-ended-without-a-click/ Rand Fishkin of Sparktoro published this follow-up to a 2019 study that showed slightly more than half of all Google searches ended without a click. His latest research (with data sourced from SimilarWeb) shows that from January to December 2020, 64.82% of searches on Google ended without the user clicking on another web property. Rand believes even that number is undercounting the real difference. The research also revealed that the rise of mobile searches played an outsize role in these results. The click-through rate for searches on desktops is still close to 50%. However, for mobile searches, only 21.99% of searches end in a click. Mobile devices account for far more searches around the world than desktops do. Rand suggests that the stunning lack of click-through on mobile may be a direct and intended result of Google’s mobile-first strategy. Rand closes with some concern about the massive and still-growing power of Google as both a leader in search and in advertising. He predicts that zero-click searches are likely to become even more common in the future. His work here attracted a lot of attention, including from Google. In the next piece, we’ll look at Google’s official response. (Reply) Google Search sends more traffic to the open web every year https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-sends-more-traffic-open-web-every-year Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison, brings us this reply to the zero-click discourse. In it, he argues that Google Search continues to send billions of clicks to websites every day, and notes that it has sent more traffic to the open web every year since Google launched. He starts by introducing several factors that should be considered when looking at the changes in clicks. First, he points out; people reformulate their queries. Sometimes, several searches will fail before the user finds the term that produces the results they want. Danny argues that features like “related searches” encourage more zero-click searches than existed in the past. Danny also argued that Google has massively improved its capacity to deliver quick facts. He believes that people increasingly use Google without any intention of clicking because they just want a fast answer without commercial intent. Finally, he argues that many people still prefer to connect with a business directly. Many people perform searches to get a business’s name or address but then choose to contact that business through other means. The discussion will continue and likely be shaped by Google’s next move. Speaking of next moves, let’s look at why one SEO believes mobile-only indexing will cause the biggest SEO shakeup of 2021. Why Mobile-Only Indexing Will Cause The Biggest SEO Shake-Up Of 2021 https://ipullrank.com/why-mobile-only-indexing-will-cause-the-biggest-seo-shake-up-of-2021 Mike King of iPullRank brings us this look at what the switch to mobile-only indexing may mean for the world of SEO. He argues that there are some changes you need to make right now if you don’t want to be left behind in one of the biggest shake-ups to hit SEO in years. The issue he hones in on is parity between mobile and desktop results. He reveals that in a data set of more than 5 million sites, 30.31% of URLs served different internal links for desktop devices than they did for mobile devices. He also found that only 16.29% of pages served the same word count between Mobile and Desktop. This is an issue because Google has indicated that it has already begun transitioning to mobile-only indexing. Those sites that are currently benefiting from links and content that show up only for desktop users are about to lose a significant amount of juice. Fortunately, Mike has some solutions for people who need to act now. He includes methods that you can take to determine if parity issues are affecting your site. He also includes a handy Excel Template you can use with Screaming Frog with step-by-step procedures. He also introduced a new free tool of his own creation called Parito that handles the work of discovering parities. Now, we’re ready to move on to the guides. First, we’ll look at whether click-based signals can be considered a part of SEO and which ones matter most. 3 Vital Click-Based Signals for SEO: First, Long, & Last https://moz.com/blog/click-based-seo-engagement-signals Cyrus Shepard brings us this look at the role engagement signals play in SEO. He starts by admitting that Google is pretty tight-lipped about the practice. While Google has admitted that they use interaction data to assess results, they often refuse to address specifics. In recent answers, they’ve described click data as “noisy” without explicitly denying their use. Cyrus suggests that SEOs can’t get a straight answer because Google doesn’t really want the relationship between engagement signals and SEO to be understood. However, he also argues that there are relationships you can confidently infer based on existing SEO. He defines three engagement metrics: As Cyrus points out, it doesn’t necessarily matter whether or not Google confirms the role these signals play in SEO. All of them are broadly healthy for your site because they all mean more visitors and more attention. He breaks down how you can improve all of these signals and measure your work with metrics for the rest of the guide. Next, we’ll be looking at another possible ranking factor that isn’t widely discussed: The Google knowledge graph. What Is the Google Knowledge Graph (and Does It Affect SEO)? https://www.semrush.com/blog/knowledge-graph/ Michelle Ofiwe of Semrush brings us this look at what the knowledge graph is, how it influences SEO, and how you can make sure your information appears on it. To start, she takes us through an explanation. The Google Knowledge Graph is a database that contains billions of facts on various subjects. It covers everything from niche topics to medicine and science. She uses the example: “When was Semrush founded?” and points out that this simple query will return information about the founders, headquarters, and links to social media profiles. Should this matter to you? She argues that it should. As clicks decrease overall, the feature-centered information drawn from the knowledge graph is getting the most eyes. She has some ideas for how you can make sure that your information is available in the knowledge graph, including: Each step is filled with descriptions that can help you put them into practice yourself. That closes out the guides for the week. Let’s move on to the news, starting with Google’s announcement of a product review update. Google announces product reviews algorithm update https://searchengineland.com/google-product-reviews-algorithm-update-347568 Barry Schwartz is here to let us know that Google has released a new quality algorithm update that promotes “outstanding” product reviews. Google defines these reviews as those that: “..share in-depth research, rather than thin content Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – March 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 05:05:02 +0000

The world is starting to get back to work with the shutdowns ending. If the last 30 days are any indication, the world of SEO is already back at full speed. Many great pieces have been published, and this roundup will carry you through some of the best. First, we have a bumper crop of guides. We’ll start by looking at how to create linkable assets, what you need to know about Google Passage Ranking, and how beginners can approach link building. You’ll also learn about some pro email outreach strategies. Next, we’ll look at some data studies that popped up last month. You’ll learn what the data says about the importance of topical authority and discover what’s possible with a look at the world’s most extensive list of content marketing examples. At the end, you’ll find some of the biggest news drops in the last 30 days. Is Google adding dozens of new manual actions? Are they pulling back on featured snippets? Is SEO Andrew Ansley being extorted by a journalist who hates GoDaddy’s customer service? We’ll find out … Creating Linkable Assets https://authority.builders/blog/creating-linkable-assets/ I’m starting this list with a labor of love that I published at Authority Builders. A lot of great pieces have been written about where to source good links. I wanted to make a guide on how to build the kind of content that attracts links. This kind of content is known as a “linkable asset.” Knowing how to create linkable assets is important because out of all the blog posts ever published online—millions upon millions of posts—only 6% have ever received a single backlink. Think about how many wasted hours that represents. Probably more time than was spent building all the great monuments of the world put together. I think it’s possible to make it into that 6%, and this guide details the process. I studied some of the most successful content online and organized them into categories. You’ll find more categories and descriptions on how to recognize them in the full article. I also laid out some steps you can follow to turn any of these types of content into successful linkable assets. You should find everything you need to start link building. Creating great content can reward you with more than just links. Passage ranking has recently gone live, and the next guide includes some important releases on how to make the most of it. What Is Google Passage Ranking: 16 Key Points You Should Know https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-passage-ranking-martin-splitt/388206/ Roger Montti brings us this look at some of the answers that Google has provided for questions about passage ranking. Passage ranking refers to Google’s new power to pull out and rank sections of your content rather than the entire page. Google’s Martin Splitt provided the answers during a recent virtual conference. The whole video chat can be seen here. It includes a lot of advice that experienced SEOs may be able to use. SEOs who are just starting out may benefit more from our next item: a beginner’s guide to link building. The Beginner’s Guide to Link Building https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-building Tim Soulo of Ahrefs brings us this helpful guide that can be easily passed off to the beginners that you know or are mentoring in SEO. It covers the basics of link building, including why links matters, where to find them, how to assess them, and how to start building. It also includes a list of the best tools for beginners. This is a helpful resource because a lot of the big guides about link building have outdated advice at this point. This one starts with some of the most up-to-date arguments for why you need links and the impact that they have on your site. I liked that this list provided a lot of good sources and told beginners how to take advantage of them. It covered: The final section lists some of the best tools available that beginners can use to research backlinks, research content, and perform email outreach. It’s a great guide to send to anyone who has been passing their link-building questions to you. Our next (and final) guide for this roundup includes a novel technique for picking up links using email outreach. 4 Unique Link Building Strategies involving Email Outreach https://www.nichepursuits.com/link-hunter-review/ Shane Dayton at Niche Pursuits brings us this podcast interview with Jeff Oxford. In the interview, Jeff lays out some unique approaches that he has taken to attracting links from top sites. He covers several strategies, including: I found the first idea particularly interesting. Jeff lays it out like this: You reach out to sites with great but outdated content (not hard to find with all the recent updates), and offer to rewrite it for them to get it fresh for 2021. This doesn’t involve much work on your part. You need to identify the passages that are no longer applicable and replace them with fresh advice. While you’re at it, you can insert links to more modern guides on your sites and see if they pass review. There’s also some advice on how you can sell this pitch to the sites that you’ve targeted for outreach. If you’ve used this strategy a couple of times, you can use stats as proof that your rewrites will bring their content back to life. He also covers how to earn links by creating specialized listicles. You identify several blogs you want links from and then organize them into a niche list. For example, you could do: Top 80 Crossfit Blogs, Top 60 Animal Welfare Blogs. Reach out to the sites to find out if they’ll link back. They may appreciate being mentioned enough to give you a free link. There’s a lot of other great advice here that’s worth checking out. Jeff is an insightful guy who has spent some time in the Chiang Mai SEO community, and he often comes up with great stuff. Let’s move on to the case studies. First, we have some data that demonstrates the importance of ‘topical authority’. Importance of Topical Authority: A Semantic SEO Case Study https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/importance-topical-authority-semantic-seo Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR recently shared on OnCrawl how he increased monthly traffic from 10,000 to 200,000 over the course of a few months by using semantic SEO and topical authority. The semantic web refers to the way that information is organized on the web. It allows machines to read data by using taxonomy (referring to the relationship between objects) and ontology (the nature of objects). Recent Google moves, like the introduction of BERT, have been focused on making Google more effective as a semantic search engine. Koray used these principles to optimize his content, based on the principle he describes below: “To be an authority for a topic in the eyes of a semantic search engine, a source should cover a thing’s different attributes within different contexts. It must also reference similar things and things in parent and child categories.” Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR Throughout the study, he shows how he optimized his sites without using any of the following traditional SEO strategies: Instead of these traditional strategies, he recommends that you take steps such as: He includes data to support these ideas throughout the study, along with tips on how you can implement them yourself. These tips are more practical to advanced users who have high-level tools at their disposal. For those advanced users, the data could be game-changing. The next case study on our list is helpful to users at any level. It’s (supposedly) the world’s largest list of content marketing examples. Content Marketing Examples: The World’s Largest List https://growthbadger.com/resources/content-marketing-examples/ Kyle Byers of GrowthBadger brings us this massive, browseable library of content marketing examples. While it’s not exactly a case study, it is a great resource that you can use to find samples of effective content fit for campaigns. It’s helpfully broken down so that you can sort by either the format or type of strategy. Based on either category, you can narrow the list down to only one of the following subcategories for each of the large categories: You don’t just get image examples, either. Each entry includes a description of the sample and some ideas for how you could put something similar into practice. It’s a great destination when you’re having trouble brainstorming your next content marketing strategy. Now, let’s move on to the news. First, we’ll look at Google’s 12 new types of manual action penalties. Google Adds 12 New Types of Manual Action Penalties https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-adds-12-new-types-of-manual-action-penalties/395539/ Matt Southern of SEJ brings us this look at 12 new types of manual action (as in, issued by a human reviewer) penalties being introduced by Google. All of them are responses to violations of Google News and Discover policies. In the past, only violations of Google Search policies were targeted with manual penalties. Now, your site may attract penalties if your site appears in either of these features and you do the following: If you manage to have a penalty applied to your site, you Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – February 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 04:38:04 +0000

SEO’s best minds are clearly back at work. An impressive set of articles were published this month, and this roundup will take you through the best of them… We’ll open with some case studies. First, you’ll learn what three separate case studies have to say about what went down with the December 2020 update. After that, you’ll learn how many URLs you can “request indexing” for before you hit a limit. Some fresh guides are next. They’ll teach you about the latest best practices for PBNs, how to find keywords without help from historical data, and how to analyze SERPs to rank more effectively. Finally, we’ll look at the news. There was a search ranking algorithm update on January 28th that you shouldn’t miss, plus a Google-employee’s ruling on what does and doesn’t qualify as “duplicate content.” Google’s December 2020 Broad Core Algorithm Update Part 2: Three Case Studies That Underscore The Complexity and Nuance of Broad Core Updates https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/december-2020-google-core-algorithm-update-part-two-case-studies/ Glenn Gabe brings us this look at what we can know about the latest core update from three different case studies. The first case study covers the results of a news publisher who focuses on a highly-specific niche. This site was hit hard over 2020, even though it appeared to be doing most things right. As Glen put it, the site had E-A-T galore. Several core authors produced the news stories. They were qualified and their authorship was prominently displayed. Additionally, the site had over 2 million inbound links, including some of the most authoritative sites in the world. None of this stopped them from getting hit in the January update and again in the May update. Glen recommended tackling this with a series of steps targeted to problems with news sites including: By the time the December 2020 update rolled around, the site’s traffic grew by $140%+. It’s a story that may offer some options to other struggling news sources. The second case study involved a site that did not welcome the December update. This affiliate site lost more than half of all its traffic. Through several graphs, Glen diagnosed what he believes is the cause. In this case, he thinks that low-quality content has been allowed to overwhelm the core site content. It’s difficult to say because this study hasn’t been concluded yet. Affiliate sites that have been hit may want to stay tuned. The final case study looked at a site that had every reason to praise the December update, especially after it had been hit so hard by the May update. This site was large-scale, and it was operating in a tough niche. The May update destroyed more than 40% of its traffic. Again, Glen noticed that a growing pile of thin content defined the site. It also had some problems with intrusive ads and mobile issues. While these issues were steadily corrected, nothing changed until the December update, when the site regained 40% of its traffic—almost overnight. These case studies can offer a lot of ideas to sites that have been hit across 2020. If you want to make some major changes to your own site, you may be interested in knowing how many URLs you can request indexing for at one time. Our next case study may have your answer. How Many URLs Can You “Request Indexing” For in GSC? [Case Study] https://nickleroy.com/blog-posts/request-indexing-gsc-limit/ Nick LeRoy brings us this quick look into how many indexing requests GSC will tolerate from you at one time. The “request indexing” feature was completely missing from GSC for several months. Many SEOs were excited to see it come back, but they may not have noticed that the functions have changed slightly. Nick’s case study helped to clarify some of those changes. Before the tool was taken offline, the limits had been tracked to about 50 URLs/day. Nick tested the new limits with a site that launched with more than 500,000 new pages. These limits may be concerning for SEOs who rely on fast indexing or might be launching new sites soon. Nick theorized that the new limits may be there to prevent automatization of the whole process. It’s something to watch. For now, let’s move on to the guides. We’ll start with Rank Club’s look at the best PBN practices for 2021. 2021’s PBN Best Practice Guide [Backed by Data] https://rankclub.io/2021-pbn-best-practice-guide Rob Rok of Rank Club brings us this data-backed look at how to use PBNs right in 2021. He didn’t theorize about what might work. Instead, he tracked what his busiest customers were doing and turned it into a set of recommendations. He broke the guide down by Tier 1 and Tier 2 PBN links. Tier 1 links are the PBN links that you build directly to your site. Tier 2 links are the PBN links that you point toward your incoming links to increase their power. For each set, he tried to answer the biggest questions. For Tier 1 links, he focused on questions like: Q: How fast can I build PBN links to my site? A: Approximately 3.29 per month. Q. How many PBN links can I build to my website? A: The average number built to one domain is 7.12 Q: Do PBN links work on YT videos? A: Isolated testing has shown they do, but as of yet, clients are not using them that way. For Tier 2 links, he focused on questions like: Q:How many Tier 2 links should be sent to a given URL? A: The average is 2.63, though clients have been successful in building as many as 13 at a time. Q: How many Tier 2 links can be built at a time? A: The average number of links per order is 20.53. Q: Should I use tier 1 and Tier 2 links together? A: Nearly 25% of all PBN users choose to use both of them together. Nearly a dozen more questions and answers are covered across the full guide. Many of the questions and answers are reinforced with graphs, charts, and other helpful data representations. Now that you’ve learned something you can do with links, let’s look at how you can improve your keywords. Moz has some advice on how you find keywords when you can’t rely on historical data. Finding Keyword Opportunities Without Historical Data https://moz.com/blog/find-keyword-opportunities-without-historical-data Imogen Davies brings us this in-depth look at what options you have when researching a keyword with no historical data. As she points out in the introduction, Google has confirmed that 15% of daily queries are combinations that have never been searched before. A lot of opportunities are likely to be buried in those queries, but it’s hard to imagine successfully ranking for them when there’s no reference point for what works. Standard keyword tools aren’t going to be helpful here because they’re built around analyzing historical data. Imogen recommends three alternative strategies: For mining “People Also Ask,” Imogen suggests that you should start by going large-scale. Use SERP API tools or repeated searches to track all of the related searches that real people make. Scraping autosuggest is the next recommendation, and it’s easily done with the URL query string she provides for you to paste right into the search bar. It provides you with a complete list of all the suggested queries that are associated with your keyword. She recommends that you follow up on either of these strategies by grouping everything you find into topics and themes. This will help you plan your content and get ahead of competitors on unserved queries. Our next piece has some more advice for you on how to serve your searchers better. This time, you’re going to do it by analyzing SERPs. How to Analyze SERPs to Win Big in Rankings https://cxl.com/blog/analyze-serps/ Adam Steele, writing for CXL, brings us this look at how you can analyze SERPs to win big in rankings. He starts with a short history lesson on how SERPs have changed. He points out that features are frequently the top result for most searches, and that nearly all searches are now intensely customized for intent. This emphasis on intent has turned out to be a great thing for SEOs. Now, we have a simple, visual way to confirm what Google thinks a keyword means. All we need to do is perform a search and analyze the SERPs that appear. Adam’s guide takes us through how we can use that analysis to confirm that a content plan will satisfy the keyword’s intent. He starts with a clear example. He performs a search with the word “Apple” and shows what comes up. There isn’t a single first-page result for the fruit. Instead, it’s all about the tech company. Good luck ranking for the word “apple” if what you’re selling comes by the bushel. He also points out that making even small shifts in the query can change the intent significantly. As an example, he points out the difference between the terms “my SEO sucks” and “why does my SEO suck.” Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – January 2021

Matt Diggity — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 04:51:14 +0000

Are you looking to hit the ground running coming into the new year? You can, thanks to a fantastic SEO community that closed out the last year with some of their best work. First up, some epic guides. They’ll teach you how to build links to the right pages, the best SEO practices in 2021, and how to use trend analysis to understand your audience. Then, we’ve got three thick case studies. You’ll learn what an in-depth analysis can tell us about how search intent evolved in 2020 and the December core update. You’ll then see a breakdown of the sites that were the biggest winners and losers of the last core update. We’ll close with the month’s news. You’ll get the latest on the second wave of the core update (and whether it’s finally over). The SEOs Guide To Building Links To The Right Pages https://authority.builders/blog/which-pages-should-you-build-links-to/ We all agree that you should build backlinks, but it’s harder to find advice on what pages need backlinks the most. That’s a gap I’ve tried to fill with this guide on carefully choosing the pages that should receive links. In this piece, I try to answer the questions: What kind of content should you link to? Does the skyscraper outreach technique work? Should you build links to your home page? Let’s start with the first one. When deciding what content you should link to, you should consider two important categories—information and commercial. Most SEOs believe you should only build links to informational content. I disagree. I think there are some interesting potential positive effects in building links to commercial content. If you link directly to a page, that page gets 100% of the link juice. It’s not diluted as it goes through the tiered links. Don’t you want your commercial pages to have that power? Next, let’s re-examine the argument behind the Skyscraper technique. This technique depends on your creating a massive piece of content that can attract links. Then, you put internal links throughout the content so the link juice will spread around your site. Again, does it work? I tested this theory myself. If you want a page to rank and rank within a reasonable amount of time, you need to build links directly to it. Finally, should you be building links to your home page? Your home page isn’t often keyword optimized or a money page. However, if you want your backlink profile to appear organic, you need to make sure that the homepage is getting links. A typical site has 40-60% of its backlinks pointing to its home page. An easy way to keep the ratio balanced is to send citations to your home page. Sign up for business directory or industry listing sites to make it easy. Backlinks are an essential part of SEO, but the next guide claims to cover the entire topic. Let’s look at Backlinko’s guide to SEO in 2021. The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2021 https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year Backlinko brings us this massive guide into all the factors that will be defining SEO in 2021. Is it genuinely definitive? That’s for you to decide, but no one can argue that Backlinko isn’t giving it all their effort. In a series of chunky chapters, they cover many of the most important topics in SEO. In them, they provide their personal advice for handing topics like: Each chapter is laid out with a significant amount of detail, including steps and visual aids. The chapters are followed by a “quick tips” section that they use to break down some of the practices they believe are going to be most effective in 2021: We’ll likely see this guide continue to evolve as the year moves on. For the next guide, let’s focus on what it is that our audience wants. This guide will teach us how to analyze trends. Trend Analysis: How to Understand Your Audience’s Search Behavior https://www.searchenginejournal.com/trend-analysis-audience-search-behaviors/390673/ Kacie Gaudiose brings us this guide to understanding disruptions in user search behavior. As she points out, trend analysis has always been an essential part of marketing. Now, we have some new tools to shed light on how users are behaving. She recommends a stripped-down process that only requires your insight and some free tools. You’ll need a tool to see search volume data. As an example, she breaks down the difference between pre-quarantine and quarantine search interest. She explains how audiences search patterns have changed (and affected): Using quarantine as an example and Google Trends as her tool, she shows how significantly searches have changed. “Video games” proved to be a noteworthy sample. “Video games” as a term experienced a significant peak at the start of quarantine. It experienced its biggest search peak in 5 years. “Video game consoles” also rode this wave. Lounge clothes, baking, outdoor living, and other niches also experienced these changes. Kacie has some ideas on how we can turn those insights into actionable strategies. First, she recommends using the “Related Queries” feature in Google Trends to get a more detailed look at what’s driving search trends. For video games, a significant number of new searches were driven by phrases like: This tells us that people aren’t just looking for video games. They’re looking for ways to connect with friends or family. That’s information that we can use to develop targeted content for the keywords. Now we can easily build content, metadata, and internal linking. Now, we’re ready to talk about the month’s case studies. It starts with a massive research project on search analysis. The Great Search Intent Analysis of 2020: Top SEOs on User Intent + Big Data Case Study on Intent Changes https://surferseo.com/blog/search-intent-case-study/ Michał Suski of Surfer SEO brings us this seriously in-depth look into how the most prominent SEOs meet the demands of user intent and follow up with a significant data study. He starts with a bold declaration: That user intent is becoming the foundation of content optimization—even equal to backlinks, technical SEO, and content in the page evaluation process. All of the SEOs he asked agreed with him. So he polled a ton of SEO experts such as Matthew Woodward, Gael Breton, Robbie Richards, Viola Eva, and myself to find out whether there was a consensus answer to the following questions: In answer to the first question, the SEOs all agreed that they considered understanding user intent to be a core practice. Some, like Kevin Indig, argued that user intent was so crucial that no other ranking factor applies if you can’t properly analyze it. The second question involved more varied answers. The SEOs suggested such varied tactics as analyzing the whole of page 1 or looking at the SERP features for closely-related keywords. The case study may provide more insight. The Surfer team looked at how search intent has changed over time by crawling 37,000 keywords in Sept 2017. They were recrawled after the BERT update, May Core Update, and then the December Core Update. The team noted that there were significant changes to the intent of the keywords after each major update. Many keywords were reverted or reset between the updates, but 15% of all keywords changed cumulatively. This tells us something about the direction core updates are heading. In the next item, we’ll dive deep into the most recent one. December Core Update Analysis: Sorry Google, You Have a Spam Problem [Opinion] https://www.seobility.net/en/blog/december-core-update-analysis/ David McSweeney of Seobility brings us this breakdown of the December update and some issues with it that SEOs shouldn’t miss. First, it was big. As he notes in an early graph, SEMrush detected that nearly 10% of searches experienced some changes. For some sites, these changes meant the loss of 50%+ of their traffic. David tried to answer two questions with his analysis: He theorized that this update was another attempt at enforcing the E-A-T standards that were recently introduced. As he points out, though, it’s not hard to find searches where these standards aren’t being met. He tagged me in for part of the analysis. I submitted some stats for a health site that has been well-rewarded by the update. This example site isn’t currently applying any E-A-T principles. It’s a repurposed site that’s getting by almost entirely on links. As further evidence, he investigated some claims made on Barry Schwartz’s site about SEOs who were having trouble beating cloaked redirects. Sure enough, keywords like “Free Classifieds” are returning explicit adult results. David seems to feel that the update mostly missed the mark, but he had some closing advice for SEOs who got hit. For the time being, his advice is to keep working on satisfying user intent, developing E-A-T signals, and earning good backlinks. Google may be struggling to identify these sites right now, but they are putting a massive amount of effort into figuring it out. For our next case study, let’s take a more in-depth look at who lost and won. 1,000+ Winners and Losers of the December 2020 Google Core Algorithm Update https://www.pathinteractive.com/blog/seo/1000-winners-and-losers-of-the-december-2020-google-core-algorithm-update/ Writing Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – December 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:09:47 +0000

We’ve made it to the final month of the year, but that’s no excuse to slow down. This month has been a significant one for SEO knowledge. What you’re about to learn can help you rocket-boost your operations into the new year. First, I’ve got three deep data dives for you. You’ll get to review an analysis of real link building campaigns, what the research says about optimizing for snippets, and how to recognize the anatomy of an SEO attack. After that, you’ll review an unusually-rich set of guides. You’ll learn how to use Google Discover to drive traffic, how to leverage keyword mapping, and how to match the user intent to SERP features. Finally, we’ll look at the month’s most prominent news. You’ll learn the details of the latest December core update, what was covered in Google’s crawl stats announcements, and why auto-generated news stories dropped and then vanished earlier this month. 7 Real Link Building Campaigns Analyzed (And Why They Work) https://youtu.be/wgciR42EbC8 Mark and Gael of Authority Hacker bring us this intensive look at real-life link building campaigns. Multiple sites were put under the microscope to examine exactly what they were doing and how they were doing it. They covered high-ranking websites in all of the following niches: The two hosts examined the backlink profile for each of these sites and dissected what work was being done to build them. The first casino site—Slotsia.com—provides a great example of the type of things Mark and Gael were able to learn. They quickly pointed out how this site could attract high-value links from news sites by creating a “top party cities” feature that attracted local newspapers. The CBD site they reviewed—Waytoleaf—ranked number #1 with tactics many might assume are outdated. They built posts on blogging sites and then promoted those posts with forum comment links. That work was apparently worth 800,000+ visits a month. These are just a couple of examples. The strategies were radically different but gave both sites top rankings in their niche. It’s worth checking out every site in this video to build some new ideas for your own backlink efforts. Now that you have some ideas for links let’s look at some data about on-page changes you can make to rule SERPs. How to Optimize for Google Featured Snippets [Research] https://www.semrush.com/blog/featured-snippet/ A.J. Ghergich of SEMrush brings us this research into how to optimize for Google Snippets. The study looked at which keywords were involved, where they appeared in the results, and how the winners earned them. To complete the research, 1 million SERPs with featured snippets were isolated from 46 million different mobile searches. Patterns were pulled out of the isolated data to reveal some interesting statistics, including: The research revealed which keyword categories were most likely to trigger a snippet. In the top five were: The biggest priority for most SEOs is likely how to earn the snippet. The research had some interesting things to say here, too. Queries also significantly increased the chance of a snippet appearing, but the starting word made a huge difference. For example, 77.63% of keyword phrases starting with “why” triggered a feature, while phrases beginning with “where” triggered one only 18.59% of the time. That’s only a taste of everything in this large set of data. Actioning what you learn from these statistics may allow you to capture features like never before. Now that we’ve gone over some data about getting the attention you want, let’s take a look at some you don’t. The next piece covers the anatomy of a negative SEO attack. The anatomy of a negative SEO attack https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/11/26/the-anatomy-of-a-negative-seo-attack/ Manick Bhan, writing for Search Engine Watch, brings us this look into the most common types of negative SEO and what steps you can take to recover after an attack. He identifies the following types of attacks: For each of these, he shows you how they work and how they might appear when they first seep into your backlink profile. These examples are reinforced with images of how these attacks can be recognized in the wild. After that, he goes into the steps you can take to protect your profile from attacks. Depending on the type of attacks, He lays out some methods you can use to recover, including: That covers the research for this month. Now, let’s into the guides that will give you step-by-step instructions on how to be a better SEO. First, we’ll look at what Ahrefs has to teach us about how to rank and drive traffic with Google Discover. Google Discover: How to Rank and Drive Traffic https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-discover/ Michal Pecánek brings us this guide into how to make the most of Google Discover—the automated personalized mobile feed that tracks and then delivers stories based on your online activity. Discover may be Google’s shot at providing the social media experience right from the search page, and it seems to be effective. As Michal points out, the Ahrefs blog had received over 150k clicks from Discover in just the last six months. Michal analyzed how Discover generates a feed, how it organizes stories into categories, and what caused people to click links. His advice includes: Michal closes by reminding us that outstanding performance on Discover is only a byproduct of applying these tips. Even without attention from Discover, these practices can improve your SEO and bring in more diverse traffic. Our next guide is also focused on how you can bring in a large spectrum of traffic. The writer argues that the right keyword practices can help you competitively rank for hundreds of different keywords. How to Leverage Keyword Mapping for SEO Success https://www.searchenginejournal.com/keyword-mapping-seo-success/ Viola Eva brings us this argument for the necessity of mapping. She defines the goal of keyword mapping as assigning a large target keyword cluster to each page. That cluster should include the main keyword, all variations, and the supporting keywords. She claims that large topic-spanning content pieces based around keyword mapping are vastly superior to multiple independent pages focused on one aspect of a topic. It hasn’t been very long that it made sense to focus on such a large body of words to do SEO properly. However, as Viola points out, this requirement opens the path to a lot of possibilities. For example, she shows the stats for a particularly well-performing piece of content built for a software client. Thanks to the ways this content was mapped, it is currently ranking for more than 600 different keywords, including: To try to target these keywords independently, Viola argues, would have significantly increased the risk of cannibalization. By mapping keywords based on a wide range of terms, you can create evergreen content with a long lifespan. She closes with some advice on how you can avoid cannibalization. You can use tools or just review the 1st page for each keyword in Incognito mode to determine if the same results come up. To follow up on this argument, Ahrefs has some freshly updated advice on doing keyword research for SEO. How to Do Keyword Research for SEO https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-research/ Tim Soulo of Ahrefs produced this recently-updated guide that takes you through the complete process of keyword research. This is a true beginner’s guide that will tell you everything you need to know from start to finish. It may also help if you’re an experienced SEO but haven’t updated your research procedures in a few years. In six chapters, it covers: Each chapter is filled with examples, images, and warnings about what to do if you run into snags. The Keyword targeting section is an excellent example of the kind of value this guide provides. It covers how to identify search intent and structure titles using your keywords to meet that intent. It tells you how to analyze any content you’re going to build based on the content type (for example, blog or landing page), content format (how-to, listicle, opinion piece), and content angle (with a budget, without a budget, etc.) If you’re the type of SEO who fields many questions from beginner friends, it’s the type of guide you can just link to and trust that they’ll get good advice. The keyword research tools it recommends at the end are all free, which makes it even more useful for this purpose. Our next piece moves into some more experienced territory. We’ll be looking at how to combine user intent and SERP features. Successfully Combining User Intention and SERP Features https://www.sistrix.com/blog/successfully-combining-user-intention-and-serp-features/ Kevin Indig of Sistrix brings us this look at how to combine user intention and search features. As he points out early on, Google’s strategy for the future depends on search features. Through these visually-rich results, Google hopes to implant itself into the entire customer journey. Kevin claims that by focusing on a SERP strategy feature, he has doubled the traffic to his G2 family of sites every year. The rest of the article lays out the strategy that he uses. First, he highlights the importance of focusing on only Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – November 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 05:01:28 +0000

With the holiday season almost upon us, this month may be your last chance to buckle down and meet your goals. Fortunately, this month’s rich set of guides and data breakdowns will give you the edge you need to make two months of progress in one. The guides are first. They’ll teach you why online businesses make the best cash flow investments, how to create copy for higher conversions, and a possible cause for high rankings that don’t correspond to increased click-through rates. After that, you can catch up on the latest data. You’ll learn a process for predicting the ROI of SEO, whether there’s evidence that Google’s next update will leverage BERT, and Youtube’s dominance of Google video searches. Finally, you’ll get the latest SEO news. It includes a breakdown of Google’s AI announcement, some recent chatter on how site sections can impact an entire site’s rank, and an official announcement of my Black Friday deals. Why Online Businesses Make the Best Cash Flow Investments https://diggitymarketing.com/recommends/empire-flippers-cashflow-investments/ Sarah Nuttycombe of Empire Flippers brings us this defense of why online businesses make the best cash flow investments. A cash flow investment is an investment that is intended to deliver early and constant dividends instead of maturing at a later date. Sarah argues that online businesses excel as cash flow investments, possibly better than any other alternative out there. She starts her case by comparing online ventures to traditional cash flow investments such as rental properties, dividend stocks, or savings accounts. As she points out, these conventional and trusted investments have some severe drawbacks, including: She then compares those limitations to the natural advantages of online businesses, namely that: She makes good arguments for each benefit, based on the many ways that websites can be leveraged into different opportunities. Reading through this guide could give you some new ideas on making your own website’s pay. One reliable method to make websites pay is to make the content perform better. The next guide in line has some ideas on how you can do that. SEO Copywriting: The 19 Best Tips To Increase Traffic and Conversions https://www.seobility.net/en/blog/seo-copywriting/ Chris Collins of SEObility brings us this guide based on his theory of how to optimize. He begins by pointing out, any copy you create has two jobs from the start. It must attract people to the page (SEO), and it must work to convert the people who are attracted to a specific action. Working toward one goal alone won’t work. With that in mind, Chris launches into a series of themed tips around serving both goals simultaneously. Among other suggestions, he recommends that you: In addition to these off-the-beaten-path tips, he also has many tips on handling some of the most common advice you receive on writing copy, such as building better titles and doing competitor research. Excellent copy is great, but copy alone isn’t going to help you win the war on SERPs. You need great image SEO, too. Our next guide will help you diagnose an image search problem that may be holding you back. Image Packs in Google Web Search – A reason you might be seeing high rankings but insanely low click-through rate in GSC https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/image-pack-rankings-in-google-web-search/ Glenn Gabe of GSQI brings us this guide on how to respond to an odd ranking situation: You’re winning the ranking war with your images (at least according to GSC), but no one is clicking. You then search yourself and find out that your (apparently dominant) result doesn’t even appear in the search. This isn’t a new situation. In his research, Glenn found that many people were experiencing it and some suspected that a bug might be responsible. He decided to do a bit of his research to determine the most likely culprit. First, he theorizes that SERP’s features may not perform well at all for images. As in, most people were likely to skip the image packs and scroll down to the results. It’s also true, he points out, that every image in a block gets the same rank—meaning #1 isn’t as high as you think it is. He points out that clicking an image in the pack doesn’t take you to the website that hosts the image. It takes you to the image results—where you’re free to copy, enlarge, or perform other actions on an image without ever visiting the site. Furthermore, he shows that knowledge panels (another major destination of ranking images) work the same way. Clicking on the set of images that appears will take you to another SERP feature. He concludes that due to these factors, an error is not likely the cause of images that rank #1 and don’t translate to clicks. It comes down to that images just may not be very fertile ground for getting website visits, no matter how well they do. That covers the guides for this week. Our next roundup set is going to focus on the numbers. We’ll start looking at how you can generate ROI projections for SEO based on traffic and revenue. The ROI of SEO – How to predict traffic and revenue https://www.kevin-indig.com/the-roi-of-seo-how-to-predict-traffic-and-revenue/ Kevin Indig brings us some helpful revenue formulas for different SEO-related business models, packaged with some advice on how to project the value of SEO recommendations made to clients. His advice comes down to a section he originally included in an earlier guide: With that in mind, he launches into a project for selling revenue that relies on two relatively simple steps: He recommends that in your proposition, you narrow traffic predictions for five possible focus areas: Starting with any of these areas, Kevin presents a step-by-step process you can use to project how the traffic may increase. He recommends that you: Each of these steps is laid out with complete instructions, and some tool recommendations you can use make them easier. He follows up with a series of formulas you can use to customize this method for e-commerce, marketplaces, SaaS, and other business models. It’s helpful stuff if you like the business end of SEO, but let’s get back to the elbow-grease end of it for our next item. It looks at the evidence that Google passage indexing is leveraging BERT. Could Google passage indexing be leveraging BERT? https://searchengineland.com/could-google-passage-indexing-be-leveraging-bert-342975 Dawn Anderson at Search Engine Land brings us this look at passage indexing, and whether the next update will utilize BERT. Before I go any farther, let’s refresh your memory on both those terms. BERT is a part of the Google algorithm that launched as part of the major update in late 2019. The acronym stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.” If that’s not helpful, don’t worry. All you need to know is that it greatly expanded the algorithm’s capacity to understand the context in human speech. Our other term, passage indexing, refers to Google’s capacity to rank specific passages of a whole piece of content and display them in SERPs. So, back to the main question: Is this technology used to power Google’s work to deliver key passages directly to searchers? Some of Dawn’s evidence points to “no,” or at least “not necessarily.” First, the update that’s going to come for passages isn’t about retrieving passages; it’s about ranking them. That’s a different sort of technology. Second, as Dawn points out, BERT as a model isn’t quite ready to index passages across every search. BERT is only being utilized in about 10% of all searches so far, and if it is being used to massively index passages, it’s probably getting help from other, larger models. Regardless of the model that’s being used—and this article goes into many of them—the takeaway for SEOs is mostly the same: Modern content needs structure and focus more than ever. “Keywords” will increasingly matter less than clarity when it comes to ranking. Our next set of data looks at how video is performing in SERPs and whether there is any way to rank if you aren’t on the internet’s leading video platform. YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020 https://moz.com/blog/youtube-dominates-google-video-results-in-2020 Dr. Peter J. Meyers at Moz brings us this look at YouTube’s truly dominant hold on Google Video searches. He opens with the results of a case study that looked at more than 2.1 million searches. If you’ve tried ranking video content before, you probably know that YouTube is dominant, but would you have guessed that results from that site control 94% of all page one carousel results? The carousel is the primary way that videos are presented in searches, so controlling the carousel is the same as controlling those searches overall. The case study further revealed that the next top video results (Khan Academy and Facebook Video) couldn’t even break 3% of the share when put together. The study also went further by looking at the popular “how-to” category of video searches. In this category, Google was even more dominant, landing between 97-98% of all carousel results. Expanding the test to 10,000 search phrases across separate categories didn’t change the results, Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – October 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 03:36:17 +0000

You’ve got three months left to make this year the one that breaks all your records. With everything you’re going to learn in this roundup, that may be more than enough time. We’ll start with a pack of guides. You’ll learn how (and when) to use tier 1 vs. tier 2 PBNs, why websites are an evergreen business, and how you need to change your tactics to handle in-house SEO. Then, we’ve got data you can use to impact your operations. Learn how top SEO companies are optimizing their sites, whether emojis in subject lines can affect your open rates, and what causes rank volatility by the numbers. Finally, we’ll close with two news items you can’t miss. Learn the results of SEOs voting on the best Facebook group and whether we have reason to believe that Google will soon be launching authority profiles. PBNs: Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 (When to Use What) https://rankclub.io/tier-1-vs-tier-2/ Rob Rok of Rankclub brings us this look at modern PBNs, and two types of links that play different roles. He identifies tier 1 and tier 2 links and describes when you should use them. Tier 1 PBN links are the links that you build directly to your site. Tier 2 links are the ones that you build to your inbound links. For example, if you land a link from a major news site, the tier 2 links you build toward that page (rather than your own site). For both types, Rob explains the use cases where they do the most good. He recommends that you build tier 1 links when: He recommends that you build tier 2 links when: The advice applies to most situations where you need to build links, and the next piece is also going to be relevant to nearly everyone—both beginners and jaded veterans. The people at Flippa make the case that websites are an evergreen business. Websites Are an Evergreen Business – Here’s Why https://flippa.com/blog/websites-are-an-evergreen-business-heres-why/ Ron Stefanski argues that websites represent an evergreen business model with nearly unlimited potential compared to brick & mortar enterprises. He defines evergreen businesses as those that don’t need aggressive marketing to generate profits and offer investors less risk. There aren’t many people in SEO who would disagree. However, understanding his arguments may help you get over some doubts or unlock some extra potential from your websites. He points to the facts that websites: To support these arguments, he lays out how they apply to sites in key niches. He uses Weight Watchers as one example. WW is a site that has been around for more than a decade and benefitted from how easily websites can adapt. That adaptability has allowed the site to effortlessly float from focusing on diets to lifestyle programs and devices without ever having to stick to just one. Wherever the audience for weight loss goes, WW can follow. These kinds of transitions would be disastrous for a brick and mortar business whose customers expect to find specific items in stock. Websites chiefly focus on information, though, so they can go wherever the interest does. As evergreen as websites are, their evolution isn’t always voluntary. What it takes to optimize a site is still in flux. The next guide is going to help you catch up with the latest strategies for in-house SEO. How to Master the Art of Inhouse SEO https://www.kevin-indig.com/how-to-master-the-art-of-inhouse-seo/ Kevin Indig brings us this comprehensive look into in-house SEO, why it’s different, and how you should do it. He starts by breaking down the differences between agency SEO and in-house SEO. For example, in an SEO agency, account management is almost as important as SEO itself. You have to balance client demands with the ideas that produce results. You’ll often have to deal with lengthy approval processes. In-house SEO is different, Kevin argues. Here, you’re much more likely to own your project and have free reign to experiment. However, that doesn’t mean in-house SEO is free of conflict. For example, in-house SEOs may have trouble getting resources—especially design and engineering resources critical to their work. This often happens because SEO is slow to work, and these resources often have their own projects. For this problem, Kevin identifies some solutions: The guide is filled with additional advice, including how to solve the problem of technical SEO being lumped as a marketing expense and the challenges of showing SEOs value. It’s great advice for anyone starting in SEO or just making the transition to working in-house. That covers the guides for this month, but there’s a lot more to learn in the upcoming case studies. To start, let’s look at how the top SEO companies optimize their websites by the numbers. How Top SEO Companies Optimize Their Websites https://sitechecker.pro/top-seo-companies-study/ Ivan Palii of Sitechecker has a lot to tell us about how the top SEOs in the world are optimizing their sites, but he’s happy to let the data do most of the talking. The top tactics are broken down across 30+ graphs that cover: After the graphs, he used public data to track exactly what top SEOs were doing to their websites. He spotted SEOs like Nathan Gotch making small tweaks to meta data to improve CTR. In other examples, he caught Adam Enfroy doing some title experiments, and Brian Dean fixing some typos. It’s a great look at the exact tweaks that practicing SEOs are using to keep their sites optimized. In the end, he showed that only 9 of 100 of the top SEO websites didn’t make any changes. In SEO at least, it seems that fortune favors the busy. With the next case study, let’s look at some advice you can apply off-site. You’ll learn whether emojis boost your outreach or land you a 1-way ticket to the spam folder. Emojis in Email Subject Lines: Do They Affect Open Rates? [DATA] https://www.searchenginejournal.com/emojis-in-subject-lines/378280/#close Shelley Walsh of Search Engine Journal brings us this massive case study involving nearly 4 million emails, and the impact emojis in subject lines have on open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes. Using SEJs own massive mailing list as a test group, Shelley sent a series of messages through June and July. Emojis were added or withheld from SEJ’s: She hypothesized that the attention-drawing properties of emojis didn’t make up for the downsides. As she puts it: Just because you get attention, it doesn’t mean your reader likes it. The question, though, is what did the data say? On the first measure—open rates—the results seemed clear. Subject lines without an emoji had an open rate of 52.94%, compared to 47.06% for emojis. CTR was a little different. In 11 out of 15 campaigns, the CTR was slightly higher when there was an emoji in the subject line. However, the news only got worse from there. Emojis not only drove a higher rate of dropped subscriptions, but their use also resulted in more abuse reports to Google. Too many of those can cause your outreach address to be labeled as spam. Let’s turn back to website optimization for the final case study of the month. We’re looking at what causes rank volatility, as demonstrated by several studies. What Causes Rank Volatility and How to Deal With It https://www.rankranger.com/blog/rank-stability-studies Darrell Mordecai of RankRanger brings us this look at the possible sources of long-term volatility. He does so by making case studies of volatile pages. The first case study is a page on the website Allrecipes. This page jumped back and forth more than ten positions over 20 days for the keyword “learn to cook and bake.” At least, in this case, he found the problem easy to diagnose. The SERP itself was a mess of different intents, and Google’s algorithm has not figured out which intent should be served for the keyword. His recommendation for this problem was to research and include subtopics that had more stable SERPs. This wouldn’t stabilize the page’s position for the main keyword, but he theorizes it would ensure good traffic from other SERPs. Another case study in the set looked at the performance of easyjet.com for the keyword “UK flights.” This page was reliably holding position 11 before it hit some turbulence that forced it either up or down, depending on the day. Once again, this page was hardly alone in seeing shifts. The SERPs for UK flights did bizarre things like promoting a page 20 positions overnight, and then revoke all of that growth the next day. In this case, the volatility was traced back to a bug. Google admitted to the bug after some prompting, and the SERPs stabilized. While this isn’t a fix, understanding whether you’re looking at a mistake, a Google update or a penalty should be a part of your problem-solving process. He reminds you that you can do so by checking bug reports on places like Search Engine Roundtable. With the case studies out of the way, we’re ready to get to news and community updates. We’ll start by looking at the Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – September 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 04:56:50 +0000

The last quarter of the year is here. It’s time to ask yourself if you’re beating your personal records from last year or losing ground. If it’s not looking good, this roundup may be the boost you need to clear the final stretch and come out a winner. In this month’s guides, we’ll cover Ryan Stewart’s 1-day SEO hack, a breakdown of the three stages of link building, a new method for finding local SEO keywords in bulk, and a neutral look at whether PBNs are still performing. Then, you can catch up on the latest research with case studies. You’ll see the data on building backlinks with a stat page, a breakdown of Google user behavior, and whether your SERP position affects how much room Google gives your description. We’ll close with the news. This month, a college kid fooled tens of thousands of people with an AI-generated blog, and Apple made moves that suggest it may be launching a search engine. Get More Organic Traffic in 1 Day?! https://youtu.be/_KZ5-MrxBEU Are there any hacks left in SEO? Ryan Stewart often says ‘no,’ but now he thinks he found one. He’s bringing us a technique that he used to create 1-day growth on three different test websites. Ryan theorized that if he purchased an old post on one website, then redirected it to a new copy of that post on a different website, the new page would inherit the old one’s power. He based this technique on an earlier test by Brian Dean (who authored one of the upcoming case studies this month). Brian bought an entire SEO website to merge into his site, but Ryan wanted to prove that even a single page could work. Ryan started with the top-performing post for a keyword he desired. The process was simple. He pitched the current owner, asked if he could buy the whole post for his site (priced at $650), and requested that the original page be 301’d to the article’s new home. When the original owner agreed, the new page on Brian’s website experienced this in one day: That may sound easy, but he cautions us that it’s not. For one, it’s expensive. Anyone giving up a post strong enough to pass this kind of power will expect a fat check. Additionally, this sort of redirect operates like an endorsement. There may not be a price a website owner will accept if it means sending their nurtured traffic to a sketchy site. Don’t worry. As he explains, you can still work this strategy by doing something as simple as buying a site at auction. It’s a great hack, though it’s expensive in proportion with its value. If you prefer cheaper DIY strategies, the next guide will help you do that with local keyword research. If you don’t have the budget to acquire these types of links, don’t worry. Our next guide will introduce you to a lot of new options as you learn what to build along the 3 stages of link building. 3 Stages Of Link Building: What Links To Build And When https://authority.builders/blog/3-stages-of-link-building/ Authority Builders brings us this deep look into the why, how and when, of building links in 2020. These link building tips start with a theory on how we paint the picture that we want Google to see when it looks at our links. That theory goes like this: Each backlink is graded by the power, relevance and trust it signals to Google. Power is measured by how authoritative the linking page is on its own. This is difficult to measure now that PageRank is no longer public, but we often still see the effects of it working when we build links. Relevance is measured by how contextually appropriate the link is to the page. Relevance comes from: The niche of the linking page The overall niche of the linking domain The niche of the anchor text Trust is the most difficult to measure, but this article has two possible theories for how it is measured. The first hypothesis is that Google relies on (possibly handpicked) “seed sites” that are older, heavily trafficked, and known for high-quality content. These sites are marked as trusted, and the sites they link to inherit some of that trust, which they can then pass on to other sites. The second hypothesis is that trust is a byproduct of ranking. Domains and pages that can be ranked (fewer than 10% of all existing sites) pass on trust to the sites that they link out to. Using these three priorities, Authority Builders then breaks down three stages of a site’s life, and what matters most. The stages are marked by: The Sandbox: This stage covers when your site is brand new, and truly authoritative links look suspicious. The theory goes that the best links to build in this stage are relevant guest posts because they’re brand new content (like your site). Trustworthy stage: This stage covers the time when your website has established itself as helpful to its audience. In this stage, you should focus on power, by doing outreach to sites that are already powerful. Link insertions are a good way to get into better sites. Authority mode: This stage covers your site as soon as new content placed on it can start ranking immediately. This is the time when trusted top-tier editorial links start to matter. They can be built by investing in shareable content and media mentions. This blueprint is measured with a case study in the article that shows a brand new site brought to the point that it can attract 120 quality backlinks per month. The results are great, but following this blueprint will take a couple months. The next guide will help you make some progress in days with local keyword research. How to Identify Local SEO Keywords in Bulk https://localu.org/how-to-identify-local-seo-keywords-in-bulk/ Deciding which keywords to target for local searches can be a hassle, especially if you’re trying to help a company with dozens of locations and a variety of products/services. Digging for the keywords that return local results can take hours, but Fion McCormack may have a solution for us. His method starts with an unstructured list of all the keywords you want to test for local relevance. You can grab these from whatever tools you use (SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.) to find bulk keywords. When you have them, you’re going to: Convert that list of keywords into Google search query URLs (create the URL that is produced when you run the search through Google) Import the URLs into Screaming Frog Set a unique identifier (Fion used the “more locations” element that Google places at the bottom of all map packs) Run SF on your URLs to automatically filter the list by local results only That sounds easy, right? It is, but only because Fion was nice enough to provide us with all the sheet templates, Excel functions, and SF commands that turn this job into a breezy string of copy-pastes. It’s always great to learn a new technique that makes your work simpler without getting a speck of dust on your white hat. In the next guide, though, we’re going to wade into an issue that’s a point of contention in the SEO community—The world of PBNs. PBNs: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask https://www.searchenginejournal.com/private-blog-networks/377296/ If you read this blog regularly, you know that I’m no stranger to PBNs. I’ve done large-scale PBN case studies and covered techniques you can use to measure the link juice PBNs provide and test PBNs before adding them to your network. I’m not that neutral on them, so my readers may find Jeremy Knauff’s coverage in this guide refreshingly even-handed. He covers the questions most newbies are nervous to ask, along with the technical details and pervasive myths that surround them. Pre-penguin, there was not much debate at all: PBNs were some of the best links you could build for the money. Where they are now is the focus of this guide. First, he establishes that PBNs are still very much with us. They have changed a bit. Today, they tend to be “living” sites with high-quality and regularly-upgraded content. As a result of this change, Jeremy points out, many people are using PBNs without being aware of it. Some of the most authoritative guest posting services use them, and many niche sites you might be tempted to do outreach to may also secretly be PBNs. From that understanding, the guide confronts some myths: Myth 1: PBNs don’t work: They do, and they may already be working for you. Myth 2: They’re garbage: They’re nearly impossible to tell from real sites when they’re built correctly, even to a human visiting them. Myth 3: Google can easily identify them: Avoiding the same registration info, hosting, themes, content, and links will make them look and act like a normal site In the end, Jeremy refrains from saying whether or not they should be used Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – August 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 04:02:43 +0000

If you prefer to live life on the cutting edge, this roundup is for you. Several of SEO’s most innovative minds have published pieces this month, and we’ve got them covered here so you won’t miss out. It starts with some chunky guides. You’ll learn how to get the perfect length for a blog post in any niche, some advice on doing a 100K launch with no ads, plus a neat method you can use to scale keyword research using Python (don’t worry, you can copy the code out of the article). After that, we’ve got two case studies for you. Learn what the data says about how to discover any website’s traffic, and whether Google is effective at crawling tabbed content. Google dominates our news section this month. You’ll catch up with announcements about a new paid GMB profile, the death of the structured data testing tool, what Google revealed during their recent congressional hearing, and what was up with all the recent rank fluctuations. How Long Should A Blog Post Be to Win the SEO Game https://surferseo.com/blog/how-long-should-a-blog-post-be/ Marta Szyndlar of Surfer brings us this new assessment of what blog lengths work best for SEO. There have been other studies on this. The article links to several of them (Hubspot, Neil Patel, and Backlinko) in the first section. However, Surfer takes a different approach to the question altogether. They, Marta argues, believe that “ideal length” is worthless to apply to most types of content. This is because there’s evidence that Google prefers different lengths depending on the topic. It’s not just the algorithm, either. Sometimes searchers want fast answers, and they’ll bounce from a long-winded article. The article quotes a personal experiment by Matthew Woodward, where he culled more than 20,000 words from an article after realizing his own content was many times the length of competitors. That action alone took his result from the 7th page to the 1st. The question becomes: How do you find the sweet spot? This guide recommends a simple competitor analysis process where you average out the right length from the top 10-50 results. You’re going to want to use tools to do it, but the guide covers the manual method first. That method involves merely clicking on results, copying all content (including any comments they have, because Google considers that part of the count, too), recording them in a sheet, and then averaging the results. Watch out. It’s possible to go wrong with even these simple instructions if you pick the incorrect results. The guide reminds you to try to match intent when considering competitors. Do not average results with a different form or purpose, or results that are apparent outliers. If you are a Surfer user, the following sections detail how you can use the various tools in the suite to do this work. You can sweep up all this information from the SERPs page, or just enter each URL into another tool to see the ideal length. Our next piece moves out of content with some advice on how to promote just about any product without using ads. How to do a $100k Launch with No Ads in A Single Month https://twitter.com/Charles_SEO/status/1269368908588281856 This great tweet-thread by Charles Floate covers the methods he used to generate more than $100k over 31 days that followed the launch of a new product. He did it without paying for a single ad. The product, in this case, was an eBook. Not everyone has the kind of reputation Charles does. His credibility certainly played a role in driving sales, but the process he used has implications for many types of products—notably how he generated hype. After optimizing his marketplace and landing page, he ran a non-ad campaign that included the following: Generating social proof reviews by distributing free copies to influencers and then leveraging the reviews/grateful comments as they came in Offering the book at a discounted price for 1-month Releasing older paid content for free to promote the new developments coming with the new eBook Filling outreach emails with free information to reinforce the value of the paid product Recruiting affiliates experienced with eBook sales All of these tactics can be used alone or combined with the rest. None of them even has a price tag if you handle them yourself. The closest thing to an ad buy here is working with affiliates, and the affiliates only get paid when you do. The next piece coming up will also appeal to the DIY’ers out there. It’s going to show you how to combine Python and a free Google account to scale keyword research. Using Python & Google Sheets to Scale Keyword Research for Local SEO https://ardentgrowth.com/using-python-and-google-sheets-for-local-seo-keyword-research/ Skyler Reeves of Ardent Growth brings us this new process for saving a lot of time on keyword research. It should be said that this guide may come across as a little complex for newer SEOs, but the process it describes could be valuable for a professional agency. The guide covers the theory and explanation of the process, along with how it can be used to collect better data, build more accurate predictions, and even automate the tricky parts. It starts with a Google doc filled with standard crawl data (quickly yanked from a free audit tool like ScreamingFrog). In addition to information like URLs, categories, links, and the number of live sessions, you’ll be looking at the existing keywords and how they compare to the best ones. The guide doesn’t cover how to find the best keywords—assuming you understand that already. It skips right to assessing your competitors by recording the following data from the top 3 competing pages for each of your target URLs: The content type (blog post, service page, a landing page) The number of do-follow referring domains An estimate of the page’s link velocity over the past 12 months The PA and DA of the URL With this data in hand, you can apply a series of provided formulas to rapidly determine what pages need your attention, and how much potential they have for improvement. Once the sheet is set up (which will take some time and elbow grease), it can be repeated in about 5 minutes. A whole website can be analyzed—and the recommendations justified with data—in an impressively short time. Sometimes the best research is the data you lift from people already doing the right thing. Competitor analysis is the subject of the first case study we’ll be covering. It’s going to show you how to find out how much traffic any website gets. Find Out How Much Traffic ANY Website Gets: 3-Step Analysis (With TEMPLATE) https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/how-much-traffic-website-gets/ This first case study isn’t a study in itself, but a process for performing mini studies when you need to know a competitor or research target’s traffic. Robbie Richards takes us through a process that can help you determine: Which of your competitor’s channels drive the most traffic? Which subdomains get the most visits? Which pages/posts pull in the most organic traffic? This process uses the SEMRush tool, but understanding how it works may give you the insight you need to do this same research using the tools you already have at hand. The data is recorded in a spreadsheet template that is provided for download. First, Robbie argues, you need to analyze website traffic based on how you monetize your site. For example: for Adsense/ ad revenue, you need to drive ad impressions and should focus on the top results. For an eCommerce store, you need to look at product category subfolders to see where they’re getting traffic with commercial intent. For an affiliate site, you’ll need to dissect traffic by keyword modifiers like “best,” “alternative,” “top.” Once you know what information you want to track, the guide details a 3-step process you can use to: Check global traffic data to understand visits and engagement Find out how much organic traffic a website gets (at the subfolder, page & keyword levels) Find out how much paid traffic there is These are covered using different SEMRush tools, but the article closes with some of the tools that you can use as alternatives. Tools like SimilarWeb, Alexa, and Ahrefs have many of the same functions. You’ll even get some screenshots to show you where to find that data in each tool. Our next case study is also concerned with traffic, but more specifically, with the effect that tabbed content has on it. SEO Split-Testing Lessons from SearchPilot: Bringing Content Out of Tabs https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/seo-split-test-lessons-bringing-content-out-of-tabs/ Emily Potter of SearchPilot brings us this quick case study on the issue of tabbed content. In the past, SEOs have had trouble pinning down Google on the subject. This is content that is only partially revealed until a visitor clicks on something like “read more.” Accordions and drop-down content are other examples of this style. Many SEOs prefer this type of content because it makes for much cleaner pages. It’s almost necessary for the mobile versions of many sites. However, Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – July 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 06:20:20 +0000

A few months after the last big update, we’re all finally starting to find our feet again. We’ve added some new terms to our vocabulary and some new tools to our skill sets. Now is the time to start thriving again, and this roundup is going to help you do that. We’ll start with some case studies. You’ll learn how one company turned SEO, outreach, and content into a $6B valuation. You’ll also see how effective guest posts are in 2020, a process for increasing traffic by more than 300%, and what the data says about category dilution. This month’s guides will teach you what role CSS and Javascript play in SEO, whether E-A-T can be employed as a ranking factor, and whether Google uses sentiment analysis. Then, you can catch up with the latest news stories. Find out if Google is using ‘sentiment analysis’ to rank pages, review an extended explanation of how Core Web Vitals are used and find out how you can start getting analytics data right in Google Search Console. The Canva Backlink Empire: How SEO, Outreach & Content Led To A $6B Valuation https://foundationinc.co/lab/canva-seo In this piece, Ross Simmonds takes a deep look into how Canva grew to be valued at $6 billion. It’s an important lesson for SEOs because this company managed its explosive growth by applying the same content and backlink principles that you use on your sites every day. They just did it in some impressively innovative ways. One of their early (and impactful) decisions was to create multiple landing pages for the same product. They did this to cater to the intent of customers that were coming in from different types of searches. The first landing page focused on serving people who were ready to order. It targeted terms like “create certificates” and “make your own template”. The second page, however, targeted terms like “free certificate template” to serve people who preferred information over action. The landing page optimization didn’t stop there. They also created a rapid-deployment template for their content so that new landers could be created on the fly for each relevant search term that gained popularity. Canva also excelled through their backlink strategy. All the pages that sprout off the main pages (close to 100 for the invitations category alone) each have long lists of backlinks. Today, they have more than 5 million total, including hundreds with 80+ domain rating scores. The backlinks were achieved by (among other strategies) buying other sites in the same niche and directing links on those sites toward the main brand rather than just closing them. There’s a lot to learn from Canva, but let’s narrow our focus to just one aspect of building backlinks for the next piece. Here’s a study Authority Builders just published on how effective guest posts are in 2020. How Effective Are Guest Posts In 2020? (100 Links Tested) https://authority.builders/blog/how-effective-are-guest-posts/ There has been a lot of debate about whether guest posts are really effective, including by some people from Google’s senior team. Matt Cutts dismissed the practice as dead. What does the data say? To find out, the Authority Builders team gathered a set of randomly-selected websites that work with us. The list was narrowed down to 100 pages by enforcing the following methodology: The URL must be ranked on pages 2-4 The URL must have no links currently pointing to it The first condition helped us single out pages that were trusted by Google but lacked the PageRank to make it to the first page. The second condition allowed us to isolate the results of the experiment while protecting the test sites from becoming over-optimized. With the list in hand, we put together a budget and built one new guest post to each page. For the links, we used an exact keyword for the anchor text. Some interesting things happened. First, 87% of the URLs we tested saw an increase in rank. Other pages had a spottier reaction. One jumped and then dipped again. Several others didn’t react until much later. However, those that did respond could do so very quickly. One page jumped ten positions in two days. You can check out the graphs for yourself, but we’re all pretty comfortable saying that guest posts are still going strong. Speaking of strong, let’s take a look at how one site increased its traffic by more than 300%. SEO Case Study: 313% More Organic Traffic with Real Examples https://ftf.agency/seo-case-study/ This case study examined three websites in different niches (Ecommerce, B2B, and Hospitality) to determine what factors played the most significant role in successfully increasing the traffic. The Ecommerce site was only a few months old when the experiment started, and it was taken from 35,000 to 225,000 organic visits. The B2B site went from 800 visits to 3,600. The already-successful hospitality site went from 210k visits to 306k. While this is a case study, the article begins to focus on the “why” and “how” just after the introduction. The data on the changes is followed by some detailed info on how each site was scaled with or without content, and how the backlinks were chosen. As a bonus, all that information is followed up by an item-by-item list of all the actions that were taken to improve the site. This guide portion takes you through the steps of: Crawling the site Analyzing the core SEO data Making recommendations Building a keyword matrix Conducting a content gap analysis Creating a content map Developing new content Promoting that content Building links 7000 words later, you’ll have a good idea of how to manage a modern SEO campaign, and the data to prove the traffic is worth what each of these steps cost. The next case study is a bit more bite-sized, but the implications could be huge for you if you’re involved in local search. 99 Problems But Category Dilution Ain’t One https://www.sterlingsky.ca/99-problems-but-gmb-category-dilution-aint-one/ ‘Categories’ is a Google My Business feature that lets you self-declare the purpose of a business on your, or your client’s, GMB pages. Experiments performed earlier last year suggest that Google responds quickly and negatively to category confusion. For example, if you select both “septic tank cleaning” and “ice cream” to describe your business, you’re not going to rank well for either one. But what about more closely related categories? Is adding as many relevant categories as you can harmful? Colan Nielsen of SterlingSky performed several experiments to find out. The first test case was a relatively successful GMB page for a personal injury law firm. This page had a lot of categories, and the experiment involved removing all except the most essential categories to see if ratings would spike as a result. In fact, they did not. A followup experiment with a different law firm produced the same results. Removing categories didn’t help or hurt. The final experiment looked at the effect of adding additional categories to a healthy listing for a dentist. A slew of new categories related to dental services was added. The outcome here was a lot more positive. While there was no change in ranking for the core keywords, there was an improvement for keywords related to the new categories that were added. In these examples, it seems that category dilution isn’t a real danger as long as those categories are related and relevant. Let’s move onto this month’s guides. In this first example, you’ll learn the role that CSS and Javascript play in SEO. Understanding CSS and JavaScript SEO https://seranking.com/blog/css-and-javascript-seo/ Most SEOs can get by without a lot of web development knowledge. However, there are limits to that. Site performance is a crucial part of SEO, and being able to optimize or resolve coding errors by yourself may be the only thing that can keep a project under budget. This guide by Sylvia Shelby covers what you need to know about both languages, and also provides processes you can use to close a number of related errors. The first part of the guide explains what these languages are, how they’re implemented on sites, and how Google processes them. Knowing this much can help you avoid many errors in the first place, and each explanation is well-illustrated with images and charts. The next part of the guide covers best practices that can make a big difference. For example, an infinite scroll can appeal to readers, but Googlebot can’t click or scroll as a user can. A simple solution covered here is to enable paginated loading. The solutions for a range of other problems are also covered, including situations when: Google can’t crawl CSS and JS files Google can’t load CSS and JS files Neither is loading fast enough Caching is not enabled All of these problems can halt your SEO growth if they aren’t handled. In the next guide, we’re going to look at another factor of your website with a murky relationship with ranking. Is Google E-A-T really a ranking factor? Is Google E-A-T Actually a Ranking Factor? – Whiteboard Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – June 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 05:42:54 +0000

Is your second quarter going the way you planned? May was a wild month for SEO. Changes came down that were not explained, but now, we know a lot more. The case studies, guides, and news items of this roundup will help you get back on track. We’ll start with some juicy case studies. This month, you’ll get a deep dive into the May Google Core Update, the numbers on digital PR as a link building strategy, and a data breakdown on the real power of rich snippets. Then, you can expand your personal toolset with the month’s most cutting-edge guides. You’ll learn how to make your content succeed, how to create SEO-friendly URLs, and how to take the business intelligence approach to SEO link building. Finally, we’ll cover the month’s breaking news. You’ll discover the real culprit of the ranking fluctuations, review Google’s closing notes on the May 2020 update, and find out why web vitals have replaced speed reports in Google’s search console. May 4th Google Core Update Analysis https://surferseo.com/blog/may-4th-google-core-update-analysis/ Surfer brings us the first of what will likely be many deep dives into the May Google Core Update. It was a big one, and the effects (not all of them intended, as we’ll discuss in the news items) were felt across most niches. What those effects were, is the subject of this piece by Michał Suski. He compared a list of thousands of keywords to find out how their SERPs looked on April 22nd, May 8th, and May 11th. Each keyword was analyzed against the following factors: domain organic traffic referring domains exact keywords density partial keywords keywords in title and H1 tag page speed metrics wordcount All of these were tracked to determine the content of the pages that lost or won in the update. This comparison resulted in several interesting implications for the future: Winners had more authority than losers on average Winners had about 60% more backlinks than losers Winners pages have 10% less content on average than losers Winners pages tended to be less “optimized” Among other insights in the article, it seems possible right now that Google may be drifting away from ranking signals that are easy to game, including precise-match keywords. This is hardly the last word on the May Update, but it may be a good starting point for your first optimization efforts. Link building seemed to win out, so let’s dive right into some more data about how to do that right. A deep-dive into the performance of digital PR as a link building tactic https://digitaloft.co.uk/digital-pr-success-study/ Rather than guest posts or collaborations, Digital PR campaigns focus on earned media coverage from online sites. The target of these efforts isn’t only the links built by the published story, but also by the people discussing and sharing the story. This method and its results have undergone an intensive round of testing by the people at Digital Loft. For the experiment, data was gathered from more than 500 digital PR campaigns. Some of the data was provided directly by agencies and other sets were drawn from already published case studies. They found: Digital PR campaigns earn an average of 42 links More than ½ of all links come from domains between DA20 and DA70. However, 20% of links come from DA70 and above DPR campaigns earn a smaller ratio of nofollow links than other link-building schemes An average DPR campaign sees 1000+ social engagements These findings could mean a lot to you if you have the kind of budget to do a PR campaign. Most of us are going to need to focus on more budget-conscious ways of attracting attention, including by claiming the best possible rich snippet. Rich Snippets: Everything You Need To Know In 2020 [With Case Study] https://www.seobility.net/en/blog/rich-snippets/ Snippets have enjoyed a lot of attention for the last couple of years. SEObility is here to show us what the data says about how to claim them and how they behave as of now. This piece is part guide and part case study. The guide portion covers some of the best practices for claiming snippets. The case study examines people using the schema, whether Google chose to recognize it, and if there is an upper limit on the snippets per search. The findings point toward some possibilities for anyone working to take control of a snippet: For ‘how-to’ related results, less than 20% of results are currently using the how-to schema In 20% of cases, Google failed to show the rich snippet even when top results had implemented the schema perfectly In all cases where the score was DA70 or better, the snippets were always present This study was gathered from a small (~100) sample group of keywords, but the implications are still important. There are a lot of snippets left to claim out there. Let’s move on to the guides. First, we’ll look at what Sparktoro can tell us about how to resonate with the “right” audience. Want Your Content to Succeed? Make it Resonate with the Right Audience (no, not that one) https://sparktoro.com/blog/want-your-content-to-succeed-make-it-resonate-with-the-right-audience-no-not-that-one/ Rand Fishkin is here with a new way of looking at how you can target your content more effectively. He starts by breaking down the limits of building and measuring content exclusively to convert. He makes the point that the audiences that make up powerful channels come from: Current customers: people who have already purchased Potential customers: people who are the right fit, but haven’t bought yet Potential amplifiers: journalists, other bloggers, event organizers, etc. Broader community: Content consumers who aren’t customers He claims that content marketers must recognize that a content audience can be much larger than a product or sales audience. Not everyone who reads is, or should even be treated like, a buyer. Instead, they can be treated like something that could be more valuable: amplifiers. Why market content to non-customers? Because—he argues—you can then use them to massively amplify your existence to people who are more likely to be customers. In the end, his argument is one for quality, and for building content that’s usable for more people. Next up, Ahrefs has some of their own ideas about how you can make a better impression. This time, by using SEO-friendly URLs. How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs (Step-by-Step) https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-friendly-urls/ We’ve known for years that Google prefers simple and appealing URLs, but many have struggled to define what that means as far as implementation. In this guide, Ahrefs guide lays out their interpretation of the most optimized URLs. They provide you with a well-explained series of rules that you can apply to your site including: Remove any special characters Limit the use of numbers Try to boil it down to a single keyword phrase Make it all lowercase (some servers can treat them differently) Structure it like a sentence The second part of the guide goes a little deeper. It looks at the anatomy of the rest of the URL (Protocol, domain, subdomain, slug, etc.) and discusses how you can work to optimize each part. They also provided a list of detailed recommendations for this part: Use HTTPs Choose your top-level-domain carefully Use subdomains only if necessary Avoid keyword repetition Avoid dates Nearly all of the advice in this article is directly actionable and easy to implement the next time you’re making changes. The next piece is a little more theory-driven but, hopefully, just as useful. It’s a guide to taking a business intelligence approach to link building. A Business Intelligence Approach To Link Building https://trafficthinktank.com/bi-link-building/ In this guide, Cody West of Traffic Think Tank argues for the benefits of treating your link building strategy as a serious business venture. He champions a method called Business Intelligence (BI) that uses data and scenarios to define goals and minimize risk. In the piece, he breaks down how to make the tactical, resource, and profitability considerations that go into a superior plan. You need to be able to answer questions that relate to your bottom line: How are you choosing the most important link from a domain? How many links do you need to build to close the “Domain Authority” gap? How much is that going to cost? The next part of the guide reads more like a deep-level backlink analysis guide that helps you work out a plausible ROI for your efforts. It details how you can make precise counts of the resources you need. Now, we’re ready to look at some of the top news of the month. First, we’re going to cover the real reason behind some of the ranking fluctuations that rocked May. May 2020 Local Ranking Fluctuations Were The Result of a Bug https://www.sterlingsky.ca/local-ranking-fluctuations-may-2020/ Near the end of April, many SEOs who were paying attention noticed that local rankings had become surprisingly volatile. It wasn’t just that the order was changing, they were erratic. Positions seemed to be fluctuating on a weekly basis. You may have noticed the second wave of ranking fluctuations that began around May 4th when the Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – May 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 18 May 2020 06:59:35 +0000

The last couple of months have been crazy for everyone. Now, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s time to hit the ground running. Need to gather some momentum? That’s where we come in. This month’s roundup is filled with all the latest tricks to carry you forward. First, we have the month’s top guides. You’ll see the latest keyword research tips from Moz, get actionable advice for building tier 2 links, and pick up a new technique to track anchor text for incoming links. After that, we have some data-packed case studies. Learn some new ways to analyze Google Core Updates, what the data says about how Coronavirus has impacted SEO visibility, and why you should “launder” irrelevant content by turning it into duplicate content. After that, we’ll catch you up on the latest news. Get the latest on the recent algorithm updates. Then, learn what Google has to say about old content, find out how much GMB impressions have collapsed, and discover whether Google is still not indexing new content. The Keyword Research Master Guide https://moz.com/keyword-research-guide Now is a great time to start thinking about the fundamentals of what we do. We can come out of this with better standards and practices, and pretty much everything begins with keyword research. This timely guide from Moz has some ideas for how you can optimize your methods to be in line with the latest updates. It covers a range of topics including: How to distinguish between valuable and time-wasting keywords How to pull “seed” keywords from search data and competitors How to transfer what you’ve learned into a content strategy How/when to make on-page tweaks What tools provide the most essential data (Moz may be a bit biased here, naturally) Not all this information will be new, especially if you’re a regular reader of our seo news roundups. However, Moz is one of the biggest names in SEO, and their guides can influence what clients expect from SEO agency reports. Better to be ahead of the curve, right? If that’s where you like to be, RankClub’s Tier 2 link building guide offers you an efficient way to take the lead in links. RC’s Tier 2 link building Guide https://rankclub.io/tier-2-link-building-guide/ A lot of factors go into the value of any given link. This guide makes the case that you can supercharge the best links you’ve built by pointing additional links toward those placements rather than your website. According to Rankclub, these secondary (tier 2) links can make links that are already strong into long-term authority engines. Even better, they claim that this strategy is now simpler to pull off than it was in the past. PBNs have replaced GSA spam, web 2.0 blogs, and complex 3-4 layer tier schemes as a one-stop source for effective tier 2 links. The guide covers how to recognize proper tier 1 and tier 2 opportunities, some options for variety, and even some data from a tier 2 experiment. While the tier 1 and tier 2 links you build are important, you also need to analyze the links that you didn’t build. The next guide in line will tell you how to track the anchor text for incoming links—using only Google Tag Manager. Tracking the anchor text for incoming links in Google Tag Manager https://www.thyngster.com/tracking-the-anchor-text-for-the-incoming-links-in-google-tag-manager/ The anchor text that strangers are using to link to your site can tell you a lot about what information visitors find most valuable. This data can be key to your anchor text optimization efforts, and this guide by David Vallejo tells you how you can finally start collecting it. This process uses a custom HTML tag to make an XMLRequest to a PHP file that scrapes each visitor’s referring source and copies the anchor for your review. If some of that sounds like gibberish, don’t worry. While this method does require some coding, all of the code is provided for you. You can simply paste it into place. As the author himself states, the code is pretty rudimentary. You or your developer may be able to improve on what’s there. If that still sounds a bit complicated, don’t worry. The author has also provided a video for the entire process. If this guide whets your appetite for backend optimization, you’ll also enjoy the next one. Ahrefs has found that some SEOs are breaking their own pagination. Here’s how to find out if you’re one, and how to fix it. SEOs Are Breaking Pagination After Google Changed Rel=Prev/Next — Here’s How to Get It Right https://ahrefs.com/blog/rel-prev-next-pagination/ Google announced late last year that they no longer recognized the rel=prev/next markup. In response, SEO teams across the web began changing their implementation. According to Ahrefs, that may have been a mistake. First, they point out that Google isn’t the only party that ever used this markup. Other search engines still do, and it remains part of the ADA (American Disability Act) compliance and part of the standards published by the World Web Consortium. Google seems to have some other way to get the same information. That’s not something that other parties that use the tag can do anytime soon. Furthermore, a lot of SEOs who set out to change their implementation may have made things worse in unexpected ways. The guide contains some plans to help if you: Canonicalized the first page Orphaned your own content with misapplied noindex tags Blocked crawling and cut off later pages For each one, it also tells you how to find out if you’ve made any of these mistakes. That covers the guides for this month, but the upcoming case studies teach their own kinds of lessons. First, let’s look at an argument for why you need to change the way you analyze core updates. Google Core Updates: Stop Analyzing them like it’s 2013 http://www.evolvingseo.com/2020/04/23/google-core-update-analysis/ If you’re an SEO, you’re probably pretty confident in your understanding of traffic, and how to tell when and how an update has affected it. This chart-packed piece by Dan Shure may put that to the test. He shows you how to break down your averaged traffic, and how to analyze whether an update was better or worse for it than the first glance suggests. He argues that analyzing traffic changes at the domain level is one of the least-insightful ways to judge whether a core update was good or bad for a website. The problem with assessing domain traffic is that there is rarely a domain-level solution for the effects of updates. Instead, different pages are taking hits or climbing based on other factors. He suggests (and lays out) a plan for segmenting your traffic by: Pages Page Types Query Query Types Device Type This, along with EAT-based analysis, can give you a lot more information about what an update really did to your site. Thanks to the algorithm update that just dropped, you’ll have a chance to put this into action. More on that in the news items. Unfortunately for us all, core updates are likely less responsible for big traffic changes lately than the Coronavirus. The next case study examines the impact that has had on visibility. How the Coronavirus Has Impacted SEO Visibility Across Categories https://www.pathinteractive.com/blog/seo/how-the-coronavirus-has-impacted-seo-visibility-across-categories/ Nearly every niche is experiencing volatility right now because, as this case study points out, the intentions and motivations of searchers are in flux. Some goods no longer fit in most family budgets, while others have experienced massive surges (like gaming consoles) and even shortages because of their increased value during the quarantine. The study examines the effect the Coronavirus has had on 18 niches, including all of the following: Addictions & Recovery Alternative & Natural Medicine Beauty Finance Food & Drink News & Media Nutrition & Fitness Restaurants & Delivery TV, Movies & Streaming Video Games, Consoles & Entertainment A series of charts break down not only who the winners and losers are, but also how much they’re winning or losing and which domains are benefitting. Altogether, it provides some great data you can use to target your advertising or affiliate marketing to where the money is moving right now. If you are responding to sudden changes in visibility, especially on older sites, you may be struggling to manage some old content. The next case study has some ideas for what you can do. Launder irrelevant content by turning it into duplicate content https://ohgm.co.uk/laundering-irrelevance/ There aren’t many satisfying methods yet for dealing with expired content. Oliver HG Mason has an idea for a workaround: turn it into duplicate content and apply what already works there. His method leans on the fact that duplicate content (when canonically linked) more reliably passes along ranking signals than irrelevant content. He claims that by… Replacing irrelevant content with content from a preferred destination page Making the copied page canonical to the destination Waiting for Google to confirm the relationship And then 301’ing the copied page directly to the destination page …you can create a relationship where ranking signals flow Read More Read More

The post Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – May 2020 first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – April 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:21:39 +0000

There’s no dodging the elephant in the room. These are tough times. Take a deep breath and remember: things are scary, but working online puts you in a great position to survive. If you want to thrive, here’s a roundup of the items from the last 30 days that you can’t miss. First, pick up some extra insights from the month’s case studies. You’ll learn what the latest numbers say about page sentiment and why it matters. You’ll also get to see how much internal linking alone can do for SEO, and review the latest COVID-19 industry impact research. Then, expand your skills with new guides. You’ll learn what role content auditing plays in a 6-figure website sale, plus the hidden ranking factor you may be deleting. Then, you’ll get 28 SEO pro’s opinions on the best ways to build links. Our news and analysis items will get you up-to-date on the big Amazon affiliate commission cuts, plus other coronavirus projections for SEO. You’ll learn what consumer polls reveal about what SEO services are valuable, and why Google’s results were so volatile last month. Let’s begin with what ~20,000 pages worth of data tells us about page sentiment. We Analyzed 17,500 Pages’ Sentiment with NLP. Here’s What We Learned https://surferseo.com/blog/sentiment-analysis-seo/ Michał Suski of Surfer takes a deep dive into a signal that he insists will be really important in the coming years: sentiment. Crawlers read sentiment by looking for terms that suggest an opinion (such as great/wonderful/beautiful for positive, or weak/boring/ugly for negative). But what happens when they read it? Does a certain sentiment do better or worse? The research seems to say so. Of the nearly 20,000 pages that were tested (all were top 10 pages for their terms) not even %1 were identifiable as neutral. 84% of the sites analyzed were dominated by positive results. In fact, 57.6% of SERPs reviewed had only positive-sentiment content in the top 10 positions. This may be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, most sites in top spots worked hard to get there so they could sell products. That doesn’t work as a strategy if you can’t be positive about your niche. That said, positive content is such an overwhelming preference of searchers that it may be worth working that preference into your strategy. Now that you have some ideas for content, let’s look at what the next case study says about your links. The author claims that you can improve your rank using only internal links. Internal Link Building Case Study: How much can Google Rankings improve with only Internal Links Added? https://www.nichepursuits.com/internal-links-case-study/ Good internal linking has long been considered an SEO fundamental, but few SEOs would risk saying to a client outright that it could make pages rank. This case study, though, seems to be suggesting that exactly. While only a single site was tested, that site experienced no other changes except for 108 internal links that were seeded across 47 pages. In a little over two months, 77% of the pages that had internal links added improved in rank. Another 15% stayed the same, and under 10% of pages experienced any decreased rank. The improved rank led to increased traffic for several pages during the experiment. Without knowing much about the site, it’s hard to say that everyone could expect these kinds of results. However, the process for trying it on your own sites is laid out very clearly. If the time is worth it to you, this strategy might be good for some minor bumps across the board. How COVID-19 Has Impacted Google Ads Results for 21 Industries [Data] https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/03/18/covid-19-google-ads-data By now, it’s clear that COVID-19 is going to have a long-term global impact. That’s likely to mean a lot of changes for the SEO industry. This is one of the first case studies that look at the short-term impact and what it’s going to mean tomorrow and into the next month. Overall, clicks and conversions are down. Conversions, in general, have dropped by a fifth. This probably comes down to consumers who are nervous about making any less-than-necessary purchases. But there is some rare good news. There are some industries that have seen improved performance. Nonprofits and charities Health and medical Business management Finance Beauty and personal care On-demand media Most of these niches are positioned to help us with our new reality. On-demand media, for example, is in much higher demand because everyone is bored indoors. Business management is exploding as more people are working from home. It’s not all good news, of course. Industries like travel & tourism have taken massive hits. Many bars and live entertainment venues have been shut down by government orders. It doesn’t look like this means you’ll have to give up, just transition to where the real growth industries are. That covers the data for this month. Now, it’s time to move on to the guides for the month. In the first one, you’ll learn how a content audit played a role in a website selling for six figures. How my Content Audit Process Secured a 6-Figure Sale of my Website https://trafficthinktank.com/content-audit-process/ In this first guide, author Curt Storring claims that content audits put him in the position to sell a pet-niche site for a six-figure sum. He performed two major content audits over his ownership of the site. Both were followed by periods of record growth. His process follows these steps: Updating underperforming content to meet current best-practices and search intent Removing irrelevant and thin content Adding relevant supporting content He lays out how to diagnose these problems. Correcting search intent is a major theme of these sections. Among other processes, he describes how you can use a simple Google search just to see if you and Google agree on the intent of a key phrase. There’s also advice on how to record this info properly to make it more actionable. There’s a template available for download that will save you the work of putting together a sheet yourself. This type of optimization covers a lot of different factors. In the next guide, you’re going to learn about one that demands very little optimization. All you have to do is stop deleting it. The Hidden SEO Ranking Factor That You’re Probably Deleting https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/seo/case-studies/image-seo/ Matthew Woodward starts this guide with insights from a past experiment. He built a series of sites to test if embedding hidden image EXIF data into images affects rankings. The results of the tests seemed to suggest that this information does help with ranking. That presented a new problem—a lot of plugins delete this data. WP Smush, Shortpixel and Imagify are given as three examples of plugins that strip hidden EXIF data. These plugins have the good intention of making the images more manageable, but they do so by taking out data in addition to compression. The guide provides several solutions. First, there are instructions for finding the “preserve EXIF data” option in some of these tools. After that, you’ll find some instructions for checking this data, and a tool you can use to add data to images without them. Now that you have some ideas to help you action changes to both your content and images, links are the next destination. But why settle for one perspective on links when you could have 28? How To Get High-Quality Backlinks – 28 SEO Experts Share Their Tips https://authority.builders/blog/get-high-quality-backlinks/ This Authority Builders article asked 28 top SEOs to summarize what they considered to be the best advice on building links. A lot of influential names chimed in, including Glen Allsopp of Detailed.com, Mark Webster of Authority Hacker, and Dixon Jones. The advice takes a lot of different paths. For example, several SEOs choose to emphasize the role of content in getting good links. They point out that building links is about building something worthy, such as a useful video, tool or another resource. Others put more importance on how you approach sites. They led with advice on how to properly identify authoritative sites, build relationships with them that will actually lead them to read your emails, and pitch in respectful ways. Others focused on how recent tools like HARO could accelerate your efforts. It’s worth it to review this article just to get a sense of what successful marketers agree on, or don’t. Let’s take a look at the news from this month and where we can find hope in these times. First, Amazon’s concerning rate cuts. Big Amazon affiliate commission rate cuts among latest program changes https://searchengineland.com/amazon-affiliate-commission-rates-cut-332966 A wave of commission cuts are coming to Amazon on April 21st. While Amazon isn’t stating the reason for the changes, it’s likely that the strain from nationwide quarantine is playing a huge role. The cuts are serious. As you can see in the table of examples below, rates for some major products were cut by more than half. Amazon also went a step farther. They stopped working with 3rd-party affiliate networks and have started working only Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – March 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 10:11:38 +0000

This month’s items are a real toolkit for dedicated SEOs. Many of them focus on areas that aren’t often covered. That means you may catch your competitor’s sleeping. It starts with a pair of detailed guides. First, you’ll learn why some feel that web design and UI matter more in 2020. Then, you’ll get some advice on how to pitch to the press like a pro. After that, here comes your data fix in the form two chunky case studies. Is your keyword traffic tool giving you good data? Does the top search result just keep getting lower? Numbers don’t lie, but you may want to interpret the data for yourself. Finally, we cover the news. Don’t miss Google’s response to a Moz post or some fresh tips on how to future-proof a content site. Finally, catch two dispatches from Google on how they treat nofollow links and whether to worry if your content is being scraped. Let’s dive in. First, we’ll look at why one SEO is arguing that web design and UI matter more than ever in 2020, and what changes may be necessary to keep up. This is why web design and UI matter for SEO in 2020 https://seobutler.com/web-design-ui-ux-seo/ This article begins with an interesting note— “Google Search Console now throws errors for elements of design and has even partnered up with https://material.io/ to help guide and influence your design.” This much can be confirmed… What it means for the future is another question, but this author theorizes that following Google’s own design choices will lead you in the right direction. For example, the first element discussed in the guide is ‘white space’. This is a very old design term that refers to the amount of empty space in a complete image (in our case, a web page). The author points out that Google’s own research from the early days shows that they discovered white space conveys trust and authority. They reserve tons of room for it on all their services, including (most notably) Google.com. Similar arguments are applied to other design elements throughout the article, including typography, tone, direction, and headings. The author does an impressive amount of work connecting each suggestion to Google’s guidelines or other work they’ve published. Does that mean applying these suggestions can help you rank? Not necessarily, and that claim isn’t made. However, it is fairly pointed out that these design choices all work to the benefit of human readers. Doing a better job of that rarely goes wrong in the long run. While your mind is still on how to present yourself better, let’s look at a more direct guide. This one claims to teach you how to pitch to the press like a PR Pro. How to Pitch the Press Like a PR Pro https://www.canirank.com/blog/how-to-pitch-journalists/ If building higher-quality links is one of your big goals this year, you should be considering the fertile ground of major news sites. News sites such as the New York Times, Vox, and Wall Street Journal have massive amounts of authority. Naturally, journalists aren’t looking for your average blog fare. If you want those links, you need to approach them the right way and offer the right kind of value. This guide claims that it can help you do that. It takes you through the journalists’ mindset, complete with data about how many pitches the average journalist gets (as many as 100), and surveys about what practices annoy them the most (having no clue what subjects they report on). That’s followed by a step-by-step section where the guide teaches you to develop hooks designed for journalists and to put the focus on your credibility. This is illustrated with an example pitch near the end. It has all the elements you need marked for easy practice. Now that you’ve picked up some new tricks, let’s look at our collection of case studies for the month. First, we’ll take a look at the big keyword research tools and what the data says about where each one stands this year. Large Scale Study: How Data From Popular Keyword Research Tools Compare https://backlinko.com/keyword-research-tool-analysis Better keyword research is an important part of competing for business online. Is your favorite tool starting to lose its edge? This study by Backlinko takes a look at where some of the biggest names have changed. The study looks at a long list of popular tools: Google Keyword Planner Ahrefs SEMrush Moz Pro KeywordTool.io KWFinder LongTailPro SECockpit Sistrix Ubersuggest If you’re looking for a clear winner, you won’t really find it in this article. The emphasis is more on the specific ways that each one stands out. There might be more variation than you’d imagine. The quality and volume of automated keyword suggestions received a lot of focus. The advantage in that category went to paid apps. In other cases, it wasn’t immediately clear who had the advantage. The different tools appear to use wildly different calculations to estimate measures like keyword difficulty scores and CPC costs. In the final case study of the month, we’ll look at a more measurable metric. This one is so precise you can measure it with a ruler—just don’t be surprised if you don’t like the answer. How Low Can #1 Go? (2020 Edition) https://moz.com/blog/how-low-can-number-one-go-2020 From the earliest days of Google, SEOs have chased after the glory of the top SERPs spot. According to this case study by Moz, the top isn’t as lofty as it used to be. In fact, the ‘top’ result may take you 3-4 scrolls down the page to even locate. This, as the study points out, has a lot to do with the introduction of sections that have replaced the first organic result. Ads, featured Snippets, local packs, and video carousels have all played a role in forcing organic results further down the page. How much further? According to Moz, by as much as 2800px. That’s longer than most people want to spend scrolling. Of course, the numbers aren’t as bad as 2800px for most searches. Queries that don’t typically return video results are far more likely to have organic searches higher up. However, as Moz points out, this is a trend. Is that the whole story? Google says no. In the first news item of the month, we’ll be looking at their response to this very case study. Google’s Response to Moz Article Critical of SERPs https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-challenges-moz-article/352078/ So, Google was not entirely pleased with the results of that last item. They came out shortly afterward with a response seeking to clarify a few matters. Google begins with the argument that there isn’t a distinction between old-style organic results and new types such as the featured snippet. Both earn their position organically through the algorithm. Furthermore, they argue, these new forms represent more effective ways of addressing user intent that weren’t possible before. Moz used “Lollipop” as an example of a search that didn’t have any organic results until the 2000px mark. They made this claim on the basis that everything from videos, songs, and lyric results were stacked before the organic result. Google claims that example just proves how dynamic other forms of results have become. They insist that the “clutter” that appears above organic results has a better chance of meeting searcher needs. Maybe you find one argument more compelling than the other. It’s true that results have more functionality than before. However, it’s also true that Google’s recent changes have come at a loss to organic results in more ways than the one discussed here. Let’s leave it there. Next up, a neat bit of analysis into how to future-proof a content site investment. Future-Proofing A Content Site Investment https://onfolio.co/future-proofing-a-content-site-investment/ This piece was a little too hypothetical to be placed among the guides, but I know the ideas discussed here are right up the alley of a lot of affiliate SEO marketers. The author has some fresh theory on how you can maintain the value of existing sites if their original focus becomes less lucrative. You can create a website that doesn’t leave you too reliant on one type of traffic or revenue, and you can do it with affordable, devalued domains. The plan is to create informational content on the sites that were originally designed for affiliate needs. Visitors to most affiliate sites don’t come back. They come in off a link, convert once (if you’re lucky), and then leave. That’s an insecure form of traffic over the long-term. However, you can earn more (and different) traffic by developing tailored informational content to keep those buyers coming back. Informational content drives the repeat visitors that Google considers so important. To attract them, you have to get closer to understanding the needs of the customer who you’ve attracted to the affiliate product. The article uses the example of drones. If you can attract someone to a site for an affiliate sale of a drone, you may be able to make a regular visitor out of them by appealing to their Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup — February 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 05:38:46 +0000

By now, most of us have shaken off the fog of the holidays and are really leaning into what we want to make out of this year. If you’re ready to buckle down and break your own records, this roundup is for you. Almost every item here points you to something you can upgrade, tweak, or optimize in your current campaigns—right now. It begins with a beefy set of guides. They’ll teach you how to write superior outreach emails, how to scale organic traffic (but not with blog posts), how to launch content market campaigns without missing a detail, and how NLP is changing everything. After that, our case studies will give you an in-depth look at the state of your Affiliate SERPs in 2020, how your blogging needs to evolve and whether LSI keywords work the way you’ve been told they do. Finally, don’t miss the top SEO headlines of the last month. There are new changes to snippets, odd traffic trends around the massive Forbes website, and a report that Google is backtracking on its desktop search results redesign. There’s plenty to get to, so let’s dive right in. First, how much do you think you could increase your outreach with just a simple hack? Increase your Outreach Conversions 67% with this Simple Hack https://authority.builders/blog/improve-outreach-conversions It’s possible to set up your blog outreach emails in a way that makes your targets leap at them. It’s not hard, and I’m not asking you to take my word for the kind of results this method gets. You can find the data right there in the article. The premise is simple. Figuring out what content is irresistible to your target may not be as hard as you think. The guide breaks it down into three steps. Identify their weaker competitors Research their content gaps Show them the gap and pitch them the content they’re missing (for free, even) It gets a little more complicated than that, but each step is well-explained in the article. In cases where tools are used, you’ll see screen captures so you’ll know where to go to find the data you need. The end result of following these steps is that you can reach out to a target with the content they’ve been craving. Once you get this process, it’s easy to delegate to an outreach team. While you’ve still got writing strategies on your mind, let’s look at Backlinko’s ideas for how you can do better at content marketing in 2020. Backlinko’s Guide to Content Marketing in 2020 https://backlinko.com/content-marketing-this-year Backlinko’s guide to content marketing in 2020 is one of the largest you’re going to find, but let’s look at whether it’s the one you’ve been waiting for. The content includes seven beefy chapters that are unusually specific in their conclusions. They are: Double Down on Video Content Promote With Email Publish “Be The Source” Posts Get Engagement (and Reach) on LinkedIn Create More Epic Content Jump On Emerging Topics Content Repurposing 2.0 Content Marketing Tactics for 2020 Some of these changes are going to require large budgets and risky bets. Backlinko makes the case (in this chapter and others) that there is a ton of data that supports the changes. For one… Other trends are used to make the case that future content marketing is going to require you to blaze trails. That could mean new perspectives that haven’t been covered, focus on “big” ideas and powerful conclusions, and continue heavily repurposing (if you haven’t started already). All worth a try, but you have to admit it’s pretty bold to release the “2020 definitive guide” in January. We’ll see how powerful its predictive power is pretty soon. If you’re in the mood to think about the future of content, you’ll also want to learn what the next guide can teach you about “natural language processing”, or NLP. How Is NLP Changing The Way We do On-Page SEO in 2020? https://surferseo.com/blog/nlp-on-page-seo-2020 Natural Language Processing is a big trend in SEO, and this guide focuses on how you may be able to make your content ready. While theoretical in some places, the advice here is based on some solid communications from Google. When BERT landed, it’s role as Google described it was to “improv(e) language understanding, particularly for more natural language/conversational queries”. Is it possible to “optimize” for NLP? Perhaps… and the guide section focuses on some of the ways that you can look at your own standards and optimize them for the future. Mainly, the argument is that you need to focus on the areas where you have control of your website’s structure, the quality of your articles, and the links that are coming and going. The rollout of BERT represents a serious enhancement in the ability of AI to determine the legitimacy of “related” content, including what tone the content takes toward its subject. It’s a call to action for everyone to run a tighter ship. Tighter procedures can be a particular challenge when you’re trying to scale up, but CXL claims to have a fresh theory for how to do that without creating a ton of carefully-prepped blog posts. “How to Scale Organic Traffic (Without Writing a Million Blog Posts)” https://cxl.com/blog/scale-organic-traffic/ This guide makes the case that you can do that you can seize traffic by creating new products—as long as you have the budget to justify it. The argument made here is that some sites (Quora is the example used here) have managed most of their growth in recent years not by competing for terms, but by expanding their features to create compelling new destinations on their site that drive new traffic. Features can be a massive driver of new traffic, and this guide illustrates how you can: brainstorm product features; narrow your list of potential features; deploying those new features in an SEO-friendly way The guide goes deeply into steps you can take to make new features that can meet those standards. It even includes some closing advice on how you can make a case for new product features to your clients. Not everyone is going to have the budget for a solution at this scale, but the companies that are facing stagnation across a slate of terms are sometimes the ones with 6-figure budgets. Going bold could certainly work out for them. If you’re ready for some more data, you’re ready to jump into this month’s rich collection of case studies. First, we’ll look at how affiliate sites are behaving in SERPs and examine the question of whether general sites are dominating niche ones. Affiliate SERPs in 2020: A Detailed, 1,000 Keyword Analysis https://detailed.com/affiliate-serps This study began with a look at the rankings of 1000 affiliate-populated keywords. The idea was to determine (based on some odd readings) whether general sites have started to outperform hyper niche sites for the same terms. Those odd readings included the fact that publishers like Business Insider were snatching up top spots for certain products like toasters. The team picked a slate of affiliate marketing keyphrases including: Best electric toothbrush Budget GPU reviews Best portable AC The terms were searched, and more than 2000 websites were sorted by hand to determine whether they fit into one of several categories including: General review sites Niche affiliate sites Hyperniche affiliate site Social media SEO agencies While the experiment began with the question of whether niche sites were losing ground, that didn’t seem to be the conclusion of the data generated. In the end, (compared to general review sites), hyper niche sites caught the first place spot 33% more of the time. Additionally, when a niche site ranked, it was first in 53.4% of cases. eCommerce sites didn’t fare as well. When they managed to get a spot on page one, it ranked first just 1.7% of the time. There are arguments made here that a niche-focused or hyper niche-focused site would make a better investment. However, there are a lot of factors that need to be looked at. For example, there can be a huge disparity in size or domain authority between two results. Another factor that should be looked at is how much work these sites put toward creating competitive content. Our next item is going to cover how bloggers feel that they’re meeting the latest content standards. [New Research] How Has Blogging Changed? 5 Years of Blogging Statistics, Data and Trends https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/blogging-statistics/ This poll of 1000 bloggers looks at how the business of creating blog content has changed in the last five years. The polls covers a lot of different questions, including how long people are spending on writing blogs, how many images get used, how often keyword research is part of the equation, and how often publishing happens. A lot of the answers won’t be new, but it’s interesting to look at just how strong and sustained some of these trends are. To no one’s surprise, blog articles are getting significantly longer. That extra time accommodates the massive increase in words from an average Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup — January 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 06:26:37 +0000

A new year may be upon us, but we’re not quite done reflecting on the last one just yet. It was filled with news and advice you need to know if you’re involved in SEO or affiliate marketing. What news was that? Well, have I got a roundup for you. We’ll start with the top guides. In this month’s collection, you’ll find a beefy guide to SEO in 2020 and a list of mistakes to avoid when managing an outreach team. You’ll also learn from well-illustrated examples of successful amazon affiliate sites and content. After that, make sure you catch the month’s most intriguing case studies. Learn what the research has to say about where blogging is going, the meaning of last year’s biggest trends, and how one source says you can come out as a winner of every algorithm update. Finally, we get to the headlines. Google made some important announcements last month that are definitely worth checking out. They include a report on all the biggest search trends, a clarification on when to disavow unwanted links, and the rollout of neural matching to all local searches. Let’s start with Backlinko’s huge guide to SEO in 2020. The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2020 https://backlinko.com/seo-this-year Backlinko has just published what they are calling the “definitive” 2020 SEO guide. I’ll let you be the judge of that, but no one can say they didn’t put in the elbow grease. The guide includes 9 full chapters that cover: Domain authority 2.0 The rise of visual search The significance of video The significance of voice search The significance of backlinks What it means to optimize for featured snippets What is means to master search intent How to treat decreasing CTR Sure, not all of this information is going to be new to you. However, there is enough here that everyone should be able to learn something. It helps that the guide is packed with graphics, embedded videos, and even some podcasts to provide extra depth. Is that enough to make it the definitive SEO guide of 2020? Maybe, but I bet there’s going to be some competition for that title before long. Look for those in a future roundup. For now, let’s look at what 7 successful examples can teach you about how to develop an amazon affiliate site. 7 Successful Amazon Affiliate Websites (That You Can Learn From) https://ahrefs.com/blog/amazon-affiliate-websites If you’re someone who learns best by reverse-engineering what works for your competitors, this may be the affiliate marketing guide you’ve been waiting for. This guide presents seven successful affiliate sites and then dives deep into what makes them tick. Each example is packed with stats you can compare, including DR, number of referring domains and estimated organic traffic. After the stats, each section features a more strategic analysis that looks into questions like how the site creates content and builds trust with its unique audience. Different niches are well-represented in the article. That should make it easy to find something comparable to yours. They include: Survival gear Home-brewed coffee Dog food PC Parts Adventure travel Some of the sites here have an estimated revenue in the millions, so don’t feel bad if you’ve got a long way to go to match their polish. There are a lot of ways to reach the next level with an affiliate site. Now, let’s look at how you can make fewer mistakes when you’re managing an outreach team. 11 Mistakes to Avoid when Managing an Outreach Team https://authority.builders/blog/outreach-team-building-mistakes/ This guide features Pete King’s experienced take on how to avoid the potholes of managing an outreach team. Across 11 points, the guide covers the mistakes that are most likely to slow down your process, eat up too much of your time or blow up your budget. Pete argues that you can build an agile team as long as you put systems in place so you don’t… Hire for the wrong skills Lose track of the actions being performed Track meaningless KPIs (Here’s our recommended seo kpis to track) Leave your team without the right leadership Get dragged into processes that should be automated Piss off webmasters You may be able to use this guide to improve an existing process, but it’s also detailed enough that it could help you build your first team. If you like doing things at a large scale, you’ll probably also enjoy the next item coming up, a guide to content frameworks for startups. SEO for Startups: 7 High-Converting Content Frameworks (With Examples) https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/seo-for-startups/ This guide approaches content building in a different way than many of the guides you may have seen in the past. This guide is aimed at growth-stage startups trying to attract more qualified traffic. It recommends this be done by developing content along one of seven provided frameworks. What’s a content framework? It’s a model for making sure that a certain type of content meets a certain set of goals, and avoids certain dangers. Think of it like a template, but for the content’s strategy instead of its look. The article introduces 7 of them that are based around some of the most common types of articles in affiliate marketing. Alternative to [Brand] framework Comparison framework Best Tools for [Specific Task] framework How to Choose the Right [Product or Service] framework Industry Trends framework Product Use Case framework Alternative to [Brand] framework is a great starting example. So, what is “alternative to brand” content? Think of any topic where you’re setting your product up as an alternative to a more established brand. When you write this type of content, you need to provide information that matches searcher intent. You also need to avoid getting sued, which can be a risk when you’re making statements about a competitor’s products. The framework provided in this article provides a series of rules for writing this type of content, and for the other 6 types it describes. The guide closes with a large section on how to analyze SERPs to qualify your keywords and make the content more effective. If you follow this guide, you could end up putting a lot more blogs out into the world. But how many are out there already? How many are published each year? What length do SEOs feel delivers the best results? If you’ve ever found yourself asking those questions, you shouldn’t miss the first case study in our set. How Many Blogs Are There? (And 141 Other Blogging Stats) https://growthbadger.com/blog-stats/ This data-driven piece has come out just in time to provide you with some insight into the state of blogs across the internet as we move into 2020. It draws together surveys, polls, consumer reports and other types of data from recent research to give you a broad look at what the future may bring. Plenty in here may matter to you if you’re involved in the strategy or production of content. For example, did you know that… Or that, If not, it may be a good idea to give the stats here a scan. Now, let’s turn to our next case study, a look into what changed with each core update over 2019. SEO research in 2019 – A Summary of Rank Ranger’s Findings https://www.rankranger.com/blog/seo-research-2019 Google can seem pretty unpredictable at times, but as long as you have two points, you can start drawing lines. This roundup item aims to help you do that by providing data into what changed after each update landed. The study breaks up the data by the months the updates hit, making for four in total. These are the… March Core Update June Core Update July (Unconfirmed) Update September Core Update For each of these, you get tables of data about what changed and where. The tables show you how much volatility there was in the top 3, 5, and 10 results for a variety of important niches such as travel, home/garden, health, finance, and gambling. This could be useful information for you if you’re in one of those niches. You could make all kinds of predictions (or bets) by interpreting the data in your own way. But what if you could do better than risky odds? In the next case study, the author claims you can win every Google core algorithm update. How to Become a Winner from Every Google Core Algorithm Update https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/how-to-become-a-winner-from-every-google-core-algorithm-update/ This ambitious case study takes a deep look into a site that came out of every update of the past year as a winner (after the first one). From that example, they make an interesting case that you can follow the same path to come out the winner in future updates. Sounds like a bit of a bold claim, right? Let’s see what they have to say. How would you do that? They have suggestions. In each section, they discuss how the algorithm change affected their site and what changes they made. After the first one, the changes mostly worked out for their site, but they claim it took a lot of work Read More Read More

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