Matt Diggity

Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup — February 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 06:37:56 +0000

Don’t miss February’s roundup if AI’s impact on SEO has been on your mind. Many of this month’s pieces deal directly with AI and how it is advancing and being optimized. Catch up now so you don’t fall behind. The guides are first. You’ll learn more effective ways to use AI, what big changes to Assistant mean for search, and how to rank quickly with entity AI SEO. The case studies and experiments are next. You’ll see what the data says about growing traffic without SEO, how a company generated 400k+ in revenue with money keywords, and how to most effectively block content from appearing in Google searches. The roundup closes on the SEO and AI news and discussions you shouldn’t miss. You’ll get the latest headlines about changes to core web vitals, examples of how Google grades content from a live audit, and some reasons AI-generated content may rank over original news. ChatGPT for SEO? You’re Using It Wrong https://ahrefs.com/blog/youre-using-chatgpt-wrong/ Joshua Hardwick brings you this piece about making the most of ChatGPT (or other generative text tools you may prefer). He argues that many SEOs aren’t using these tools to their full potential due to some common mistakes. Throughout this guide, he identifies these mistakes and provides some advice for overcoming them. For example, he discusses the mistake of asking AI tools questions they can’t answer. If you ask an AI to provide data only available through analytical tools, you will likely get a bad answer with flawed data. He provides tips for developing prompts that allow the AI to provide more helpful answers. Joshua also argues that asking an AI tool to simply write an article is a mistake. He recommends a different approach where you provide guidance and solicit ideas over several prompts to generate more elaborate responses. Check out the full guide for more tips on how to make the most of AI tools. Joshua addresses other mistakes and how to overcome them. For now, Assistant and Search. Did Google Just Quietly Launch a New Search Ecosystem? https://www.mariehaynes.com/assistant-and-search-did-google-just-quietly-launch-a-new-search-ecosystem/ Marie Haynes introduces you to some changes being made to Google Assistant, which may affect how users search for your site. Google published a blog post with the changes. Marie summarizes the major details: “The microphone icon will now trigger Search Results” from within the Google app…also…the microphone in the Pixel Search bar will now activate Voice Search instead of Assistant.” Marie argues that these changes make voice search a much more important feature. She points out that Assistant delivers websites (in addition to other sources) in response to spoken queries. Throughout the rest of the guide, Marie explains how Google Assistant works and delivers results. She takes you through what users see when they make commercial and non-commercial searchers. Several helpful images are provided to help you. She also reminds you that Bard is coming to Assistant soon. These and other changes may lead to an overhaul of the entire search ecosystem. Marie closes with some theories on where Assistant may go from here and how its capabilities are already evolving. Check out the complete guide to start preparing for a big voice search transition. Next, you’ll learn some tips you can put to use right now to rank more effectively. Entity AI SEO: How I Rank #1 In 10 Hours (Semantic ChatGPT Workflow) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1I_GgJJ7F4 Julian Goldie brings you this video explanation of how he was able to rank in only hours with entities using AI. For the guide, he uses ChatGPT and Autoblogging AI, but you can do the same with your AI tool of choice. The compact 12-minute video includes all the steps you’ll need to follow for your own ranking experience. Julian starts with a helpful explanation of entities and explains how you can differentiate them from related concepts like keywords and LSI. Once you’re caught up with all the definitions, he guides you through the process that he uses to create entity-focused content with AI. He uses his preferred tool for these steps but explains all the principles of what he’s doing so that you can apply them to any tool. As he’s going through the steps, he gives you an inside look into how he evaluates and modifies the first drafts that he’s given by tools. You’ll get some good advice on pruning AI results that you can use in almost any project. Check out the full video to get a great introduction to entities and how content can be used to target them. For now, you’re ready to move on to the case studies. First, you’ll be looking at one of my most recent experiments. It’s an SEO experiment…without any standard SEO. How I Grew Traffic 37.9% on Google, Without doing SEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DgWUgtZGqQ I was able to achieve a 40% increase in users and a 37% increase in sessions without using traditional SEO. I didn’t create optimized content or links as part of this experiment. I also didn’t use AI. I still achieved over 800 referring domains, including Microsoft and Google. My agency did this through “programmatic SEO.” You’ve seen this before, most likely on real estate websites or other nationwide businesses with local fronts (such as hotels). Thousands of pages are generated to supply a home page to each region. The case study involved a software client not ranking for any keywords beyond their own brand name. We built thousands of programmatically-generated pages to cater to each location where they did business. As I show in my video, travel, and currency conversion tools do this regularly and generate millions of visitors. Before the video continues, I will give you a breakdown of the pros and cons of using this process. The pros can be compelling, including the potential to draw significantly more links from all sources. The video takes you through all of the steps I followed to generate programmatic pages for my client. I describe how I found the scalable keywords I needed, how to recognize head terms and modifiers for your content, and how to base your pages on search intent. I’ll also show you how I use various accessible tools like Google Sheets to create better-generated content for programmatic pages and how I help Google identify all these new pages. This isn’t a technical process at all, but as you’ll see, the results were impressive.In the next case study of the month, you’ll see how SEO changes can be reflected in revenue. How Cognism Generated $441K in Revenue With Money Keywords https://moz.com/blog/money-keywords Joe Barron shows how one SEO strategy generated nearly $450k for one company with declining traffic and ranking. Joe’s team decided to move forward with money keywords and were surprised at the results. Before he jumps into his process, he describes some of the changes in how his team thought about strategy. Previously, they focused on top-of-funnel keywords. However, this generated too much traffic that didn’t act when arriving on the page. Joe’s team transitioned from educational content to what he calls converting content. He defines these as keywords people only use when they want to buy something. He lays out the steps his team followed in choosing these keywords and how to recognize the business potential in each one. Once the keywords were chosen, Joe’s team went through several other steps, including publishing the content and optimizing for conversions. Joe describes how this change in strategy required his team to think far more about off-page SEO than they had in the past. He discusses how his team drove backlinks in several different ways. He also lays out the criteria they used to choose good sites. The results of the experiment were impressive. Page views increased by 72.1%, and our average engagement time increased by 13.6% from 2022 — 2023. The tested pages generated 832, and 242 deals. Of those 242 deals, 53 were closed-won, generating $441k in revenue. How to Use Data-Nosnippet to Block Specific Content From Being Used in a Google Search Snippet [Experiment] https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/how-to-use-data-nosnippet/ Glenn Gabe brings you this in-depth experiment into blocking content for being featured in search snippets. As he explains, he has been receiving a lot of messages from website owners who are displeased with the snippet Google has chosen to represent their site. He argues that though this is a problem, there are ways that site owners can effectively limit what content is used to generate a snippet. He runs an experiment to demonstrate how effectively this can be done with the data-nosnippet tool. As he explains, you can use the data-nosnippet attribute on any div, span, or section html element. The experiment started with a page that had a meta description but showed other content in the snippet. He added a span tag in the HTML containing the text used to craft the search snippet. A data-nosnippet attribute was then added to that span tag. He provides some helpful screenshots and other images to guide you through the process of blocking content on your own. See Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—January 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 13:19:19 +0000

Jump into the new year with the biggest stories in SEO. This roundup covers AI, SEO heists, and big hints from Google about what’s coming next. First, you’ll review some recent data, analysis, and case studies. You’ll learn some new SGE insights, find out what tests revealed about removing meta descriptions, and learn whether the “SEO heist” we discussed in the last roundup was worth it. Next, you’ll find some guides to help you develop more effective SEO. They’ll teach you what to expect from SGE and Generative AI and how SGE will likely impact your organic traffic going forward. At the end, you’ll find some of the top news stories of the new year. It’s all about Google’s latest moves, including phasing out third-party cookies, the company’s response to a massive spam attack, and removing the previously posted SGE end date. New Google SGE insights: Content formats, YMYL, product views https://searchengineland.com/new-google-sge-insights-content-formats-ymyl-product-views-435849 Danny Goodwin brings you a trove of data covering Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). This feature represents a huge shift in Google’s search capabilities and has already started driving some changes in some vertices. Danny introduces you to some of the changes revealed in a recent study. For example, SGE is now showing up for 84% of all searches. When it does show up, it most often takes the form of an opt-in option where users can voluntarily request an AI-generated answer. SGE is also showing up in some very predictable formats. 48% of the time, it appears as an ordered list. An unordered list appears about 38% of the time, and a product-view result appears about 8% of the time for product queries specifically. Google has also implemented some SGE warnings for YMYL results. Answers may include warnings about results not being age-appropriate, not representing legal, medical, or financial advice, or possibly dangerous. Product views are yet another area where Google is experimenting heavily. For products, Google provides SGE-related listings, carousel groupings for multiple preferences, and value cards for specific products. Check out the entire article for more analysis and links to the research. Generated meta descriptions have been another major part of Google’s AI adoption. In the next article, you’ll find out what happens when you remove the ones you’ve created. Does Removing Meta Descriptions Improve Click-Through Rates? https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/removing-meta-descriptions Noe Servin brings you this look at a recent Search Pilot study. The study involved removing all listed meta descriptions over the recommended character limit from an e-commerce site, even from pages that had carried those descriptions for a long time. This allowed Google to rewrite them based on the page content autonomously. Search Pilot opened the test with a quiz of their followers. The polled SEOs didn’t agree much with the results. 42% believed the test would have inconclusive results, while the rest were split between the view the test would have positive or negative results. The results of the test showed that there was an average 4.2% increase in monthly organic sessions when the descriptions were removed, and Google’s generated descriptions were allowed to assert themselves. Ultimately, Search Pilot recommended the client to move forward with applying these changes to all applicable pages based on the result. Check out the complete study for more information about the test and its results. Next, you’ll look back at the recent SEO heist with AI content, and how it is playing out from the perspective of experts. An Agency Used AI to Pull an “SEO Heist”: Was It Worth It? We Asked Experts https://blog.hubspot.com/ai/seo-heist Curt del Principe brings you this biting analysis of how one agency founder used generative AI to pull off a heist that stole 3.6 million in traffic from a competitor. Curt asked experts to give their view of what happened, whether it is (as some critics call it) “the death rattle of the internet.” You can grab the backstory for this heist from our last roundup or read this full piece to get an idea of what happened. For now, you just need to know that the heist involved downloading a competitor’s sitemap, turning all URLs into blog titles, and using those titles as AI prompts to produce thousands of pieces of content. As Curt admits, this did work for a surprising amount of time. The site achieved significant growth over more than a year. According to Google, this shouldn’t be able to happen. The Google team has many times alluded to algorithms that catch and punish derivative content. They were effective at diminishing spun content sites in the early 2000s. He theorizes that the algorithms didn’t work this time because new AI articles have a different construction than old spun articles. The heist didn’t involve stealing the competitor’s content, just the subjects of that content. Some experts were asked whether this agency created a “black hat roadmap” for SEO. Some agreed that was a reasonable worry. If AI content can perform at the same level as human content, it could easily crowd out human-created content. However, the experts Curt polled are skeptical that this will remain a problem. As they point out, hundreds of effective tricks for gaming Google have come and been squashed. They also pointed out that the original writeup of the heist didn’t cover conversion data, which may have been significantly lower than the traffic alone suggested. How Google will deal with issues like these remains to be seen, but check out the complete piece for more analysis. For now, let’s jump into the month’s guides, starting with an idea of what to expect from SGE in 2024. Google SGE And Generative AI In Search: What To Expect In 2024 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sge-and-generative-ai-in-search-what-to-expect-in-2024/504578/ Kristi Hines brings you this look at the evolving landscape of AI and how you may need to adjust your strategies to deal with the evolving landscape of AI in search. She starts with some coverage of recent surveys suggesting that people are highly interested in AI-powered search. About a quarter of US adults already trust AI results, and a third are convinced the results are factual. Kristi believes that Google is chasing even higher levels of adoption and reminds us that Google’s CEO and other officers have described the evolution of search with generative AI as one of Google’s top priorities. New changes, including increased speed and ad placements, have already been announced. Google also focuses on new features that drive organic search traffic to websites. Advertisers have already been told that they can expect native ad formats for SGE, greater connectivity with Bard, and more. Kristi notes that based on Google’s statements and actions, local searches may be a big focus. One-third of SGE results already include local packs. Overall, Kristi argues that SGE is here to stay. Far from a temporary project, it may be one of the most important parts of Google’s search results going forward. However, she also argues that there is a high potential for SGE results to push down organic results like featured snippets did. She argues that there are steps that SEOs should take to be better prepared, and makes some predictions, including: Make sure you check out her full article for more analysis of Google’s statements and how SEOs can prepare. For now, let’s dive more into one specific topic that she covers: GEMini, and its implications for the future of AI. Hidden Gemini: Google Is “Humanizing” the Search Results to Protect Itself Against the AI Storm https://www.growth-memo.com/p/hidden-gemini Kevin Indig brings you this look at how Google is attempting to humanize search results to protect itself against some of the consequences of the incoming AI storm. Google has already launched a system called “Hidden Gem.” This system is designed to find and boost content in forums and blog posts that have proven helpful to readers but have not been given a normal chance to rank. Kevin believes that this will target content that has good user engagement but has struggled on domains without strong authority. As he points out, we have already seen some effects of this policy, with sites like Reddit and Quora appearing for more searches. Kevin argues that one of the biggest benefits of boosting forums is that many of them already impose user verification in some form. By promoting forums, Google can rest on the work these forums already do to verify users rather than try to handle verification itself. He believes that the conversation offered by forums provides value that goes beyond what an LLM can produce. As he points out, forum conversations aren’t just frank answers, they can be funny, sympathetic, or provided by experts with a long history of good standing in the community. Kevin has some ideas for how you can leverage hidden gems for growth. He recommends collaborating with gems through paid influencer campaigns, creating or buying profiles on top forums. He also recommends starting your own community. Check out the complete guide for more tips on using hidden gems. In the final guide for the month, you’ll get a Read More Read More

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Case Study: The Programmatic SEO Approach that Got Attention from Oracle and Google

Matt Diggity — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 13:23:43 +0000

What if I told you there’s an SEO tactic that allows you to create hundreds of thousands of high quality pages at scale and at a fraction of the cost of doing so manually? Welcome to Programmatic SEO. In this case study, you’ll learn how my team at The Search Initiative grew our client’s organic traffic by 38% sessions. This was achieved by adopting a programmatic approach to SEO. Instead of hiring writers, we designed a single page template and let programming do the rest, creating 500 pages.. On top of this, the site received links from over 700 referring domains including industry heavyweights like Oracle and Google – without us doing any link building ourselves. In this case study, you’ll learn how to: If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, I cover some of the key insights in this video. Before that, here’s some more information about our clients goals and the main challenges that we overcame during the campaign. The Challenge The client operates in the software industry, offering a platform to secure and manage open source development for processes that involve custom combinations of tools and platforms. The client didn’t have any visibility for keywords that would make them money which meant that there was a large pool of lucrative keywords that were missed out on. Ranking one or two new pages wasn’t going to cut it. So we created a long-term plan on how to attain tens of thousands of keywords and without manual effort optimizing each page… programmatically. Find out how you can overcome these challenges for your website by following the steps below. Generating Content Through Programmatic SEO Traditional SEO focuses on enhancing a website’s search engine visibility through high-quality content and keyword-centric landing pages and blogs. In most cases, it’s a perfect way of building keywords, links, and mentions, as long as your content is well-crafted and adds value to the end user. But what if there was a way to do this at scale? What is Programmatic SEO? Programmatic SEO (often referred to as pSEO) involves creating landing pages at scale through automation with the aim of ranking them on the search results pages. Each page is uniform, targets a single unique keyword and is created using automated tools and a database. You’ve probably already used websites that have created pages in this way. Real estate websites, eCommerce sites, and even content sites (examples below) have been using this method to pass information from one system to another, allowing them to create thousands of properties or product pages populated with data from suppliers with generated titles, headings, images, descriptions etc. Here’s an example on Realtor.com. If you were to search “houses for sale in [location]”, you’re likely going to find the following kind of pages in the results. Los Angeles New York Note how the layout of each of these pages is identical, but the content (i.e. the properties) change. A quick Google search reveals that there are 19,495 cities, towns and villages in the USA. Realtor.com can’t possibly create a page for every location manually. Instead, they use programmatic SEO. What’s the Difference Between Traditional & Programmatic SEO? Although the goal of both of these is the same, to grow organic traffic, the difference lies in how this is achieved. Traditional SEO focuses on growing search visibility over a long period of time with a focus on producing high-quality, unique content that targets higher competition keywords. Programmatic SEO achieves the same goal, but at a quicker pace as you’re creating multiple pages with an identical layout at scale from a database, templates and automation. In most cases, if your template takes a page and duplicates it, only changing just the keyword – that sucks for users and will likely also get penalized by Google for having large amounts of duplicate content. However, if you use a template to create thousands of products and generate helpful content that accurately describes the specific product, you’re creating value to the user, which is what Google is looking for. However, when it comes to local SEO you do indeed get a free pass and only need to change the city name in order to be “unique enough”. Example Uses of Programmatic SEO Apart from real estate websites like Realtor.com, here are some other examples where websites have employed programmatic SEO to build their pages. Informational Sites Informational sites like Nomad List use programmatic SEO to help users find the best places to live, work and travel. The site takes data about things like cost of living, internet speeds etc for places around the world and produces landing pages in a way that is easy to understand and read. The site is essentially taking readily available data and repurposing it to provide valuable insights to its audience. Directories and Workflow Apps Zapier, a workflow automation tool that integrates thousands of applications and tools, programmatically made landing pages for every single tool they work with showing custom workflows that can be made with the unique combination of the user’s chosen tools. In the financial sector, Wise made a template for a landing page for every single currency they work with, helping their clients convert between any number of currencies. Travel Itinerary Planners Platforms like TripAdvisor and Expedia that help users plan their travel itineraries implement programmatic SEO to dynamically generate destination guides, optimize meta tags for popular attractions, and create content tailored to specific travel preferences. For example, TripAdvisor aggregates hotels based on location so that when you search for keywords like “hotels in japan” or “restaurants in london”, you’ll see pages like this: Job Portals Job search websites like Indeed or Glassdoor often use programmatic techniques to generate job listings, company profiles, and other content for search engine optimization. The template for their job listings pages remain the same. The difference here is that the content is generated by their users i.e. companies and individuals uploading the job listings to their system so that they can be displayed in the relevant listing pages. These are just a handful of examples, but regardless of your industry or size of website, you can make use of pSEO to generate pages at scale. Pros and Cons of Programmatic SEO Here are some of the advantages of Programmatic SEO: But before you commit to pSEO, here are some things you need to be aware of: Despite these disadvantages, and even if you don’t have a massive website, you can still incorporate pSEO into your SEO strategy. Read on to find out how… How to Generate Content Through Programmatic SEO Creating truly programmatic content requires data that needs to be sourced to create content for hundreds, if not thousands of pages. We’ll start by identifying keywords that you can target at scale and data sets that you can use to integrate into your content before using Google Sheets and ChatGPT to build out your web pages. Finding Scalable Keywords For programmatic SEO to be effective, you need to be able to target hundreds or thousands of similar keywords using a single page template. This requires identifying relevant keywords that have many variations that are similar. One way to do this is by entering a seed keyword relevant to your website into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool. For example, if you had a website about everything vegan, you might use terms like “vegan restaurants”. Then click on the Matching Terms report, which shows an expanded list of possible keywords related to the seed keyword. Top tip: consider refining the search results by adjusting the Keyword Difficulty to less than 20 and the Domain Rating (DR) of top-ranking sites to less than 30. This filter will show keywords that are easier to rank for, even with limited backlinks. Identify patterns within the keywords to see which of these can be used to create pages for programmatically. In this case, many of the keywords refer to a particular location, preceded by the term “best” i.e. “best vegan restaurants in chicago”. You can do this by sorting the keywords by “Term” as opposed to “Parent Topics”. You now have 176 keywords (in the USA) that follow a similar pattern for you to create pages for. Identify Modifiers In the previous example, the keywords identified can be split into two categories: head terms and modifiers. The head term is the top-level category of the keyword that you’ll aim for i.e. best vegan restaurants. The modifier is what turns the head term into long-tail keywords (these are highly specific search terms that have lower search volumes) i.e. in chicago. Here’s another example… For a travel website, you could have the following head term and modifier combination: “things to do” + “in [location]”. You could also narrow things down further by adding a secondary modifier: “things to do” + “in [location] + “for [target audience]”. By the end of this process, you’ll have a long list of keyword variations that you can now start to generate content for. Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—December 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 14:23:08 +0000

You need this month’s roundup if recent core or review updates have hit your site. It curates some of the freshest, most in-depth coverage of updates and other urgent SEO topics. The case studies are first. You’ll have plenty of data to sift through, starting with a deep dive into the impact of the Helpful Content Update. Then, you’ll find out the real size of Google’s index and see some numbers on Google Discover traffic declines. Next, you can pick up some new SEO tricks from the guides. You’ll learn how to recognize and respond to the three different SGE snapshots and how to mine Reddit for SEO insights using your favorite AI tool. You’ll also discover the results of a massive SEO “heist.” Last, you’ll get caught up on the latest news in SEO. Discover why some Google patent requests may offer clues for the future. You’ll also read the announcement closing the November Core Update and November Reviews Update. Analyzing the Long-Term Impact of Google’s Review Updates and What That Could Mean for Sites Impacted by the Helpful Content Update (HCU) https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/analyzing-long-term-impact-google-reviews-updates/ Glenn Gabe brings you this deep dive into how the HCU and other recent updates have impacted sites. For site owners who may be new to the topic, he provides a quick history of how the update has evolved and explains why you may not get any announcements of future changes. He then lays out what he’s learned about the update, using graphs of real client sites, direct statements from Google, and his analysis. His first finding was that things look bad for many review sites he’s analyzed. He describes many of them as “basically shut down.” These sites dropped by as much as 70%+ overnight and then never recovered. However, he argues that sites can recover. His review of the most affected sites found that many of them, unfortunately, had obvious reasons for being targeted. He provides some tips (backed by evidence) for how sites can lose the “not helpful” classifier through content and UX updates. Check out the complete analysis for evidence about how the review updates work and how you can stay on Google’s good side. Next, you’ll get some information that Google rarely discusses about its index size and capabilities. Google’s Index Size Revealed: 400 Billion Docs (& Changing) https://zyppy.com/seo/google-index-size/ Cyrus Shephard brings you this behind-the-scenes look at some information revealed in Google’s recent trial. As Cyrus points out, there are trillions of pages out there. Google never had or claimed the ability to deliver them all. However, they’ve never discussed how many sites were eligible for Google searches. Court documents revealed that the true size of this index was 400 billion documents. To put this in perspective, he reminds you that Wikipedia alone has 7 billion pages. The existing index includes ebooks, PDFs, and other kinds of content. The total space reserved for web pages is probably well under the reported figure. He notes that this makes Google’s index only about half the size of the Wayback Machine’s index of pages. These numbers suggest that web pages are fighting for limited space. Cyrus believes they may be fighting over even less in the future. Cyrus examines the belief that Google’s index expands over time and argues that there’s a possibility it’s shrinking instead. Google suggested in some documents that they had taken action in the past to shrink the index, and Cyrus believes they may be motivated to do it again. Check out the complete breakdown of the data for some of the reasons Cyrus expects a smaller index in the future and some of the forces he believes will be driving that change. Next, you’ll learn why so many publishing sites are struggling after the updates and what may be causing it. Traffic Declines in Google Discover, Top Stories & Google News Affect Publishers Across the Globe https://www.amsive.com/insights/seo/traffic-declines-in-google-discover-top-stories-google-news-affect-publishers-across-the-globe/ Lily surveys the damage done to the online publishing niche in the aftermath of the two broad core algorithm updates, between September and November. She notes that the chatter she is hearing from publishing site owners is bad across many different languages and regions. She was able to draw some data from an SEO community post she started. In it, you can find SEOs sharing evidence of pages that had gone from millions of clicks a month to zero by the conclusion of the updates. She also surveyed over 150 site owners to learn (among other facts in the full article) that: She breaks down her survey respondents to draw out a lot more data. She covers the kind of sites that are affected, the amount of traffic they’ve lost, and where they are located in the world, and which updates caused the issues. Check out the complete piece for a ton of other information, including some theories on what’s causing the volatility. Now, you’re ready for the guides. You’ll start by learning about SGE snapshots, and how much traffic risk you can expect from each one. The 3 Main Types of Google SGE Snapshots and Their Level of Ranked Pages Traffic Risk https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/the-3-main-types-of-google-sge-snapshots-and-their-level-of-ranked-pages-traffic-risk/ Aleyda Solis breaks down the different SGE snapshots that may affect results in your niche and examines the possible risks that they represent to your traffic. For site owners who need to catch up, SGE snapshots are AI-generated results based on user queries. Site owners with ranked pages are concerned that these previews may replace the need for clicks (like other past Google features), or direct SGE users toward only a few sites. Alyeda describes three ways that the snapshot may behave and analyzes the risk level of each one. She covers— Check out the complete guide for more information about how each of these snapshots behave along with plenty of helpful images so you can see these snapshots in action. They may play a large role in organic search going forward. In the next guide of the month, you’ll learn how to mine Reddit for insights using generative AI programs. Build Your Keyword Tool With Python and ChatGPT: A Subreddit Insights https://moz.com/blog/build-reddit-keyword-research-tool Amin Foroutan teaches you how to set up and automate a process he’s discovered for pulling SEO data out of Reddit. He uses ChatGPT for his work, but you should be able to follow along with most other chat programs you prefer. He starts by explaining how to apply for an API key with Reddit (you’ll need it for the process to work). He also explains how to use the Notable plugin, which will be important for the process. Even if you’re not technically inclined, you should find it easy to follow the steps, and there are a lot of pictures to help. Jumping into the process, he shows you how to structure a prompt and use the tools you’ve set up to generate tons of insights for keyword research, gap analysis, and more from the most-used terms and topics on Reddit or individual subreddits. Check out the complete guide for some prompt templates, examples of results, and ideas for doing even more with the data you’ve produced. In the final guide of the month, an SEO team “steals” 3.6M traffic from a competitor and wants you to know all about it. We Pulled off an SEO Heist That Stole 3.6m Total Traffic From a Competitor https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509?s=46&t=qFIUJibFQHvKJNqpZweO-g Jake Ward tells you how he nabbed more than 3 million in traffic, including 480,000+ in October alone. The process he describes is shockingly simple. In the thread, he summarizes it as: He lays out each of the steps in more detail across the entire thread, though it doesn’t get much more difficult than that. He describes how he found the right competitor, exported the sitemap, generated article titles from the URLs alone, and then produced the content with AI. The 3.6 million count was achieved after about 18 months of work, though he argues that this process moves faster with AI tools than it did even a few months back. Check out the entire thread for more information on his process and some images and data he’s provided. Now, you’re ready to jump into the month’s top news stories. The first one covers what you can learn from Google’s latest patent. Google SGE & Generative Summaries for Search Results Patent https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sge-generative-summaries-for-search-results-patent/502573/#close Kristi Hines takes you through Google’s latest patent, and what it can teach you about Google’s next moves. As it turns out, the patent deals with SGE and has major implications for the future of search. She covers Google patent US11769017B1. This patent is described as a “method for creating summaries of search results using large language models (LLMs).” It covers the integration of Google SGE and generative AI search summaries. The patent is highly detailed, and Kristi links to several sources where you can check out the entire application. Among other interesting reveals, it shows you how the snapshots you read about earlier work. In an included image from the patent application, you can see Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup – November 2023

Matt Diggity — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 08:57:12 +0000

Don’t miss this roundup if AI SEO and Google’s recent updates have been on your mind. The guides, case studies, and news items we’ve got for you will catch you up on everything happening. This month’s guides focus on AI and a recent change in Google’s algorithm. You’ll get tips on how to future-proof your marketing for AI, advice on how to incorporate AI chat into your SEO, and a breakdown of how to respond to a broad core update. The case studies are next. First, you’ll learn how Google changes your searches, then you’ll learn what happened to one site when they experimented with removing content. Finally, you’ll get some of the biggest SEO headlines of the past month. Google has announced another update and may have already started a different one. You’ll also learn about Google’s mobile-first indexing announcement and discover how a presidential executive order may impact your marketing tools. How to Future-Proof Your Marketing for an AI-Centric Search World? https://sparktoro.com/blog/how-to-future-proof-your-marketing-for-an-ai-centric-search-world-5-minute-whiteboard/ Rand Fishkin brings you his vision of how marketing departments may need to adapt to AI in the coming years. He posits a hypothetical future where Google search results may look more like the output of an AI tool—with links and snippets replaced with generated statements that include information, advice, and possibly only a few tailored links. There are at least a few reasons to believe this might be what’s coming, and he spends most of his analysis discussing how this new model might play out and how you need to adapt. As far as preparations go, he argues you need to tie your brand to words and phrases people enter into search experiences so that it can be mentioned. If Rand is right, this may be the only kind of SEO that matters in the future. Check out his full piece for tips on adjusting to AI-driven changes for SERPs in the next few years. Next, you’ll learn how you can adopt the AI chat technology that’s already here. How to Incorporate AI Chat and Software into Your SEO Workflow https://moz.com/blog/incorporate-ai-chat-into-your-workflow Katherine Waiter Ong brings you this look at where the current generation of AI chat tools belongs in your project development process. She has a series of ideas for how you can put these AI tools to work, including some she has already put into practice. The detailed guide covers prompts that you can use in all parts of your workflow, including: She gives you plenty of alternate prompts for each task so that you can test them out on your own preferred AI Chat program. In the final guide of the month, you’ll get a broad core explanation that can help you troubleshoot site problems. Google’s Broad Core Algorithm Updates: Important Points and Frequently Answered Questions for Site Owners and SEOs https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/google-broad-core-updates-important-points-and-frequently-answered-questions/ Glenn Gabe provides a guide for site owners who are having a bad time with the recent broad core updates or those who just want to understand how core updates work on a deeper level. He covers the major points, including what site-level quality algorithms are, how content is judged, and what makes content “quality.” You’ll learn some recovery steps that you can follow to improve your performance next time. As he explains, improvements aren’t likely to be recognized until the next update rolls around. Take that time to implement some of the higher-impact improvements Glenn recommends. He covers his “kitchen sink” approach to remediation and provides evidence for why he believes Google is looking for significant improvement over the long term. He advises you to look at content, UX, ads, affiliate setup, and technical SEO across your site. Check out the complete guide for more information on playing the long game with broad core updates. For now, you’re ready to move on to the month’s case studies. The first has three different case studies on the impact of Google’s Search Generative Experience. How Google Changes Your Searches (A Study of 10,000 Queries) https://moz.com/blog/google-modifying-searches Dr. Peter J. Meyers analyzes over 10,000 results to tell you what’s really happening with your queries. His analysis follows a recent wire article published (and then withdrawn) claiming Google was replacing searches with branded searches. Google has denied that charge, so Myers launched a case study into what they really were doing. He tracked thousands of results and recorded how they were changed. He then applied his own analysis to the changes and their intent. From his results, he created several categories of the changes Overall, he argues against bad intent on Google’s part. You can see his data and make up your mind for yourself. The next case study is a bit of fun, but it might have some real implications for site owners. You’ll explore what really happens to a rank when content gets deleted. I Deleted the Content From Two Posts to See if They’d Still Rank. Here’s What Happened https://ahrefs.com/blog/impact-removing-content/ Patrick Stox brings his personal experiment into removing content and its consequences. You might be surprised to learn this isn’t necessarily a death sentence for your pages. He starts with an interesting reveal from Google’s John Mu. In it, Mu explains that it’s not necessarily Google’s policy to stop ranking pages that lose content. He goes as far as saying that Google may continue to show an empty page if it serves some relevant search purpose. His simple test involved two old blogs with decent traffic. The content was removed on August 8th, and then restored on the 20th. First, he found that Google was able to detect when the change happened. Traffic dropped immediately, but what he noticed was that most of the rankings only lost a few positions. The rank loss remained consistent, without growing worse over the course of the experiment. He offers some final notes toward the end of the experiment. He argues that more testing will be necessary to understand the long-term effects. Additionally, he points out that a recent test to remove links had a similar outcome. Now, you’re ready to catch up on the news. The first item is the announcement of November’s updates. Announced: November 2023 Core Update https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/11/q-and-a-on-search-updates Google Search Central’s team brings you this news of several major updates, including the newest core update. They acknowledge that this news will surprise some SEOs who didn’t expect another one so soon after the October update. This update will focus on a different core system than last month’s. They clarified that their guidance is the same for both updates. However, as the announcement clarifies, this won’t even be the only update rolling out in November. In the same statement, Google confirmed that an update to the review system would also be rolling out. With this announcement, they also said they will no longer give updates on review system changes. This will be because the updates are moving to a format of regular, ongoing changes rather than big rollouts. The core update began on the 2nd of November. The rollout is predicted to take about two weeks. However, in many past updates, Google has exceeded these deadlines (sometimes by several more weeks). The rest of the announcement contains some helpful resources on updates for site owners who may want to review information about what to do next. Another update may have also landed near the end of October. The next piece brings some data and chatter about it. Google Search Algorithm Ranking Update October 25 (Unconfirmed) https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-ranking-update-36269.html Barry Schwartz brings you this analysis of an update that may have had an impact on some sites out there. It was not announced before it began acting on rankings, but drove some interesting volatility and a lot of chatter from SEOs. The volatility that he was tracking began to spike around October 25th. Barry takes you through the major tools and what they detected. You’ll get to see the results from about 10 of them to get an idea of how the tools are measuring the action. Barry also covers some of the active chatter from the SEO community. A number of SEOs responded that they experienced sudden drops or increases that leveled off over the day. Some reported the traffic spikes had also resulted in much higher conversions. Ultimately, it wasn’t clear what had caused everything that had been recorded and discussed. This may have been an aftershock of the earlier update, or it might have been testing or preparation for the November update. Google did have one major announcement to make just before October ended. On the final day of the month, they declared that the long-delayed mobile-first indexing had finally arrived. Mobile-First Indexing Has Landed – Thanks for All Your Support https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/10/mobile-first-is-here The Google Search team brings you the news that the trek to mobile-first indexing is finally complete. This process has been ongoing since early 2016. The final date was pushed back multiple times before it finally was declared complete with this statement. Google included justifications for the change in their writeup, Read More Read More

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Diggity Marketing SEO News Roundup—October 2023

Matt Diggity — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 12:17:19 +0000

October’s SEO roundup comes in the aftershock of several huge Google updates and developments that may determine the future of AI content. Get caught up here with the latest case studies, guides, and news. First, the case studies will update you on the latest data. This month’s items are about the updates, including how Google foreshadowed some Helpful Content Update (HCU) changes, how the HCU deployed from rollout to impact, and what you can do about HCU visibility loss. You’ll also get two perspectives about the winners and losers of the core update. After that, the guides will help you adjust to some of the new changes. You’ll get two looks at how to take advantage of recent AI upgrades. Finally, you’ll get caught up on the month’s biggest news. Google confirms the helpful content update is complete, has quietly removed the tag “Written by People, and has made the controversial announcement that links are not a major search factor (I have some thoughts about it). The September 2023 Google Helpful Content Update – Did Google’s Announcement in April About Page Experience Foreshadow What We’re Seeing With the Current HCU(X)? https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/september-2023-google-helpful-content-update-hcux/ Glenn Gabe brings you this look at the Helpful Content Update and why it may be having the impact it had on the hardest-hit sites. He takes you through some recent statements by Google and provides data to help you understand how these ideas are now being used. He starts you with some image examples of sites that saw significant drops. Glenn argues that he’s found an important pattern in these hard-hit sites: They all have the dual problems of unhelpful content and bad UX. Among other trends he noticed on these sites were large ads, auto-playing videos, pop-ups, and other intrusive elements. Google has become more committed or more advanced at targeting these issues as of this update, and as Glenn explained—they warned you. Glenn refers to a recent change to Google’s guidance on helpful content. It recommends that website owners focus on user experience overall rather than trying to score higher core web vital scores. He argues that this policy is now being enforced, and the sites hit by this update were the first to feel the effects. The changes to best practices go beyond web vitals and require website owners to think more carefully about ad placement, readability, and other issues that compromise content quality. Check out the complete guide for more of Glenn’s thoughts. For now, you can jump into some theory on what to do about these changes if your website is targeted. You’ll start with one of the most comprehensive HCU breakdowns yet available. Google’s Helpful Content Update: Full Review, Analysis, and Recovery https://on-page.ai/pages/helpful-content-update/ Eric Lancheres brings you this deep look into the HCU, which he argues is one of the most impactful updates in a long time. He tackles the motivations behind the update, some theories for how the algorithm works now, his ongoing tests and experiments, and so much more. He starts with a comprehensive look at the signals Google was putting out before the update landed. You’ll find a list of links to all of the official statements and his arguments for what they’re hinting toward. Then, he gives you a history of the “AI Classifier,” an AI-driven process that he argues was a large part of this update and that Google is using to judge article-type content in particular. He covers some theories of how this process works and how it may be evaluating your content He also makes a case for how he believes the Google Algorithm itself is changing after this update. He introduces the new “helpful score,” which is now a ranking factor, and shows you how it may already be leading to serious changes in your ranking position. That’s really only the beginning of his analysis, however. The rest of the article features before-and-after comparisons, small case studies of affected sites, and his predictions for the future. His article has far more than can be covered here. Make sure you check it out to find some solid advice and a ton of graphs and data to help you make sense of what you’re seeing. Next, you’ll find another perspective on HCU, focused on the steps you can take right now for recovery. The September Helpful Content Update: Why You Were Affected and What You Can Do https://www.mariehaynes.com/the-september-helpful-content-update-why-you-were-affected-and-what-you-can-do/ Marie Haynes brings you this look at corrective actions you can take if your site was one of those hit by the latest HCU. She has a theory for why many sites were negatively affected. She argues that there are strong reasons to believe that sites most affected were those that prioritized SEO tactics over authentic first-hand experiences. Her analysis spotted the following trends among the affected recipe and lifestyle sites— She diagnosed most affected sites as having low-value or unhelpful content. As she points out, if the Helpful Content System detects low-quality content—it becomes a site-wide classification Only a few sections or pages of bad content need to exist to cause problems for your entire site. She believes that the rater guidelines offer some clues to help you recover. First, she recommends that you shift your content goals toward what is being rewarded, namely: See her guide for a more complete explanation and more tips. The next guide also has some ideas on quality. It will teach you the importance of utilizing quality data. Now that you have somewhere to start with the HCU, let’s jump into the months next big update. It starts with a look at the winners and losers of the core update with an analysis from the Sistrix team. Google Core Update August 2023 – Data and Analysis https://www.sistrix.com/blog/google-core-update-august-2023-data-and-analysis/ Steve Paine brings you this post-update look at how the changes are affecting major sites in UK search. He tracked the volatility through the peak on September 1st until the announcement it had concluded on the 7th. He includes for you several tables that cover the biggest winners and losers. You’ll find the 20 largest winners and losers by both percentage and absolute changes in position. As a preview, here are both the top 5 winners and losers by change in absolute position— Steve identified two niches in particular as worth some extra attention. Large general retail sites seemed to experience lost rankings across the board. Reference domains seemed to do much better than they have during recent updates. Their positions mostly didn’t change. Next, you’ll get some more Analysis on this update from the team at Amsive. Google August 2023 Core Update: Winners, Losers & Analysis https://www.amsive.com/insights/seo/google-august-2023-core-update-winners-losers-analysis/ Lily Ray brings you this next look at the Core Update. She focused her analysis on some of the factors that may be driving the changes, including the rise of AI content, and changes in how Google perceives user experience. She starts with a look at the most affected sites broken down by their niche/category. She found that some categories were highly over-represented. Among the most affected were news sites, review sites, health sites and travel sites. Reddit.com was recorded as one of the most rewarded sites, with a 64.68% increase in its visibility. She dove further into this result, noting that UGC (user-generated content) sites in general experienced very good results, though none were close to matching Reddit. Among the losers, she highlighted the results of some news sites, some of which saw declines in visibility over 70%. Lily also identified what appeared to be a trend with significant gains and losses among different review sites. Review sites that emphasized the user’s personal experience were rewarded, while sites that lacked real experience seemed to see declining visibility across the board. Additionally, she noted that many lyric sites rewarded in the March update seemed to lose a lot of their gains. Check out her full analysis for more information on winners and losers. For now, you’re ready to move on to the guides. To begin, you’ll learn about the importance of quality data and how to build it. What Is Quality Data and How It Connects Search, Content, and AI Success https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-quality-data-and-how-it-connects-search-content-and-ai-success/496287/ Lemuel Park wants you to understand the essential role of quality data in building a foundation for enhanced AI, search, and content marketing strategies. He identifies poor quality data as a root cause of numerous problems, including operational disruptions, useless insights, and bad decision-making regarding search. Quality data, he argues, will have the following attributes— He has some ideas for marketers who are looking to improve the quality of their data so that they can use it more effectively. Among other strategies, he argues that you should— See his entire piece for more advice on the importance of data quality, and how businesses can do more to ensure it. Next, you’ll learn how generative AI fits into the future of branding, and how the knowledge graph can help. GenAI and the Future of Branding: The Crucial Role of the Knowledge Graph https://moz.com/blog/gen-ai-and-the-future-of-branding Sara Moccand-Sayegh Read More Read More

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88% Monthly Traffic Growth & Outranking Amazon (SEO Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 12:39:44 +0000

Going up against big competitors in your industry, like Outlook India for Affiliate sites, Amazon for eCommerce sites or Wikipedia for informational queries, isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible either. With careful content optimization, following the right UX best practices and building authority with quality backlinks, there’s nothing stopping you from doing what we did with our client’s rankings. In this case study, you’ll learn exactly how my team at The Search Initiative increased our client’s organic traffic from 72.4k to 136.4k sessions in under a year – and outranking the likes of Amazon for important keywords. In this article, you’ll learn how to: If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, I cover some of the key insights in this video. Before that, here’s some more information about the website’s goals and the main challenges that we overcame during the campaign. The Challenge The client is an online adult store primarily targeting the United States. The main objective for this campaign was to grow visibility for commercial intent keywords so as to drive organic traffic to important category pages, with the ultimate aim of generating more online sales through eCommerce. One of the first things we did to build the site’s domain authority and ranking power so that it could compete against the likes of Amazon – one of their main competitors for adult toys – was to leverage the power of AI to execute a blogger outreach strategy. Didn’t think Amazon rank for these kinds of keywords? Think again… At the same time, with the client operating in such a lucrative market, we needed to build topical authority and present them as a credible source of information. To address a lack of topical authority, we implemented a content strategy that focused on creating informative blog articles that are related to the adult toys that the client sells, and the niche in general. For any website looking to improve conversions, you need to ensure that you’re providing users with a great experience; and that everything works as expected. The client’s website lacked basic UX best practices that were costing them both money and traffic. Finally, to improve the positions of the client’s “money” keywords (i.e. the ones that have a commercial intent and bring in the most conversions), we focused our attention on optimizing existing and creating new category pages (more on this later). Learn how to tackle these challenges for your website by following the steps below. Building Backlinks With Blogger Outreach (& AI) When it comes to boosting the rankability of a web page, few SEO tactics come close to being as powerful as link building. One such link building tactic that we employ (and have continued to get great success from) at TSI, is blogger outreach. Blogger outreach involves finding topically relevant websites who you can then reach out to for a link back to content that their audience will find useful. Let’s break down the main steps on how to do blogger outreach – with the help of generative AI tool ChatGPT. Link Prospecting There are a number of ways you can find link prospects, but in this case study, I’ll show you the cool new way of how to do it – using ChatGPT. Link prospecting is about finding niche relevant websites that can link back to your website. I recommend using GPT4 in conjunction with the WebPilot plugin enabled. To do this, go to Settings and enable plugins. Go back to the chat and open the Plugin dropdown and select WebPilot – this is a plugin that enables GPT to scan live websites as opposed to relying on its training data from 2021. So here’s a prompt that you can use to find these prospects: Using the WebPilot plugin for ChatGPT, please give me a list of 20 popular websites within the [enter your niche]. Here’s an example of a response from GPT providing websites from the audio tech niche. It was able to find an article that lists 30 popular audio tech sites, and it asked if that’s what I wanted. I said yes, and it listed the sites along with their links. Now, AI tools like ChatGPT aren’t perfect (yet), so It’s important to manually check each of these sites to ensure they’re relevant to your website. You can also apply a similar approach to identify online communities within your niche. Here’s a prompt: Using the WebPilot plugin for ChatGPT, please give me a list of 10 popular online forums/communities within the [enter your niche]. Here’s the response from ChatGPT: By the end of this process, you should have a considerable list of potential websites to get a backlink from. Getting Contact Details Once you’ve prepared your list of websites that you want to reach out to, the next step is to find the contact information for them i.e. an email address of a writer at the site, or via their general contact form. You can usually find email addresses on the contact us page of the website (see why having one is important?), but if you’re unable to find one, you can use a tool like Hunter.io. Hunter.io is a tool that you can use to do this – they have a Chrome extension that allows up to 25 searches per month for free. If you’re using their website, enter the domain into Domain Search and hit enter. You can see that the tool has found 21 email addresses for the example site. Pitch Creation The most important step in this process is the pitch – this is what will be the deciding factor on whether or not you’ll get a backlink from your prospective site. The key to crafting a great outreach pitch is ensuring that you’re adding personally relevant information about the website that you’re pitching to. This doesn’t mean that you can template the process, but that you still need to personalize the pitch based on who you’re pitching to. In general, you need to explain: To create a pitch worthy of securing backlinks, why not use the help of ChatGPT? Here’s an example of a prompt that you can use to do this: Using the WebPilot plugin for GPT, please write a blogger outreach pitch to [enter prospective website URL] (might want to include their about page) with the goal of writing a guest post for their site. Please include a subject line. My website is [enter your URL], and it’s on the topic of [insert your niche]. Guidelines: Here’s what ChatGPT came up with: GPT even provides a compelling subject line that you can use. Monitoring Progress Once the emails have been sent out, all is not done. You should monitor your progress to identify which pitches (and subject lines) worked the best. Blogger outreach is something that constantly evolves over time, especially as not every website will get back to you on the first go. You can also ask GPT to provide a template for follow up emails… Learn more about how to carry out blogger outreach in detail here. Here’s a look at the kind of results we’ve got from this link building campaign: Building Topical Authority with Engaging Blog Content Apart from optimizing and creating new content for your website’s core landing pages (i.e. the pages that drive your business), it’s important to grow your topical authority – which is a concept that’s been thrown around a lot in recent years. Read on to find out what it is, why it’s important and how you can build it for your own site. What is Topical Authority? Topical authority refers to a website’s perceived expertise and credibility on a specific topic or subject area. Search engines like Google aim to deliver the most relevant and high-quality content to searchers’ queries and use signals like topical authority to determine the ranking of web pages in search results. Websites that consistently produce high-quality, informative, and relevant content on a specific topic are more likely to be seen as having topical authority. Here’s an example… Imagine you’re venturing into the realm of sustainable fashion. Crafting a single article that revolves solely around ‘sustainable clothing’ might not be sufficient to thrive in this niche. Why? Because sustainable fashion is a broad subject, and attempting to encapsulate its entirety within a single article would be an overwhelming task. To establish yourself as an authority in this field, your content needs to cover a wide range of topics within sustainable fashion, including: Why is Topical Authority Important? Google associates a website with a topic in order to rank it as a relevant resource for search terms about the particular topic. By having a lot of content about a specific topic on your website, you create opportunities to add internal links between the pages so that Google and users are more likely to find your content more easily. Doing so also helps increase your topical authority in the eyes of Google and helps show that your website is the go-to Read More Read More

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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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How to Grow Traffic by 368% (Market Disruption Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 07:49:21 +0000

Whether you’re starting out from scratch or growing your existing brand’s organic search presence, there’s nothing stopping you from disrupting the search results pages of your industry one step at a time. The key to doing this is keyword selection. Combine this with killer, shareable content and a solid link building strategy, and you’re well on your way to boosting your organic traffic. In this case study, you’ll learn exactly how my team at The Search Initiative increased our client’s organic traffic by 368% and monthly revenue by 445% despite their industry being dominated by a big competitor. If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, I cover some of the key insights in this video. In this article, you’ll learn how to: Before that, here’s some more information about the website’s goals and the main challenges that we overcame during the campaign. The Challenge The client produces and sells nicotine alternatives that use natural ingredients instead of tobacco. The brand and product had close-to zero online presence when joining the agency and their main competitor had already monopolized the market – so the main objective for the campaign was to build organic traffic from the ground up and generate online sales through eCommerce. One of the main challenges was the fact that keywords that had any substantial search volume were extremely competitive and dominated by their main competitor. As a start-up, the client’s site lacked the topical and domain authority required to be able to compete for such terms. Instead, we focused on building visibility by targeting informational search queries about quitting smoking such as smoking alternatives. By focusing on producing more content on the blog, we needed to make sure that the client’s products were showcased in the articles so that users were enticed to click through and place an order. This was achieved by implementing a related posts section (designed to keep users longer on the site), a sidebar (so that we could add calls to actions) and adding internal links (to drive users towards relevant product pages). To build the brand’s online presence, we focused our link building efforts through digital PR, so that people would start to know that the brand and product range existed. Check this video below to learn more about digital PR. Finally, we rounded off the strategy by making sure that any technical issues holding back the site’s performance were addressed. The two main issues that we tackled was to implement a more user-friendly URL structure (so that they were easy to read, remember and share for users) and to improve the page performance (by compressing and minifying files that were large). Find out how you can overcome these challenges for your website by following the steps below. Informational Keyword Targeting With the commercial keywords out of bounds due to high competition and lack of topical authority, we focused on building the site’s keyword visibility for informational search terms instead by producing content around question-based keywords related to smoking. How to Find Question Based Keywords to Target I’ll show you two ways to find question-based keywords that are relevant to your site’s niche. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer The first is using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool. You can now go ahead and write an article about the lifespan of cats. People Also Ask If you don’t have Ahrefs, you can still find informational keywords from the People Also Ask section in Google’s search results. In the above example, Google added the two following questions “What is the friendliest cat to own?” and “What is the kindest type of cat?” when expanding the original question “What is the best cat for first time owner?”. Writing Content for Informational Search Terms Once you’ve found the informational keywords that you want to target, the next step is to start writing the content. Here are some tips on how you should do this: Here’s what you need to look for: Use your competitors as a baseline for what you need to include within your page. You should also look at how they have optimized other on-page elements such as the title tag, H1 heading, meta description and their URL for the target keyword. For example, here’s the featured snippet for the keyword “how long do cats live”. And here’s where the answer is taken from within the ranking page. As you can see, the page provides a clear and concise answer to the question right at the beginning of the article. Then it goes into much more detail about the lifespan of cats later on in the article by covering more specific topics like which type of cats live the longest etc. The short answer caters to users who just want an instant answer to their search query whereas the rest of the article is for users who want to learn more. This is especially important if you’re writing about a topic that can impact a user’s physical, mental or financial well being. But even websites that don’t fall into this category need to demonstrate their expertise in order to build trust. Here are a few ways you can achieve this: Following the above steps will help grow your keyword visibility for informational search terms. Redesigning The Blog for SEO Apart from optimizing and expanding the content on your blog, it’s also important to ensure you’re following best practices in making it as functional as possible for users. Below are things that you should include within your blog to improve navigation and overall usability. Add Related Posts A Related Posts section provides readers with additional relevant content that they might be interested in. It helps users discover more of your blog’s content, increasing their engagement and time spent on your website. In addition to this, related posts help: How Should I Choose Related Posts? When selecting the related articles, make sure that they are indeed relevant to the current post so that readers are naturally encouraged to continue reading. Where Should the Related Posts Be Added? The most common place to put your related posts section is towards the bottom of the page. How Many Related Posts Should I Include? When it comes to how many related posts to include, I recommend aiming for 3 to 5. Adding too many will confuse readers as to what to read next and dilute the importance of each related article. How Can I Add Related Posts? One of the most popular WordPress plugins for related posts is the Contextual Related Posts plugin. It’s a free plugin that automatically generates a list of related posts based on contextual cues from your blog post’s title and content. All you have to do is install and activate the plugin. If you’re looking for something that allows for more customization, check out the Custom Related Posts plugin which allows you to pick your related posts manually. Add A Sidebar The purpose of most blog posts is to provide information, not to sell. However, that doesn’t mean that you can convert users looking for information to customers. One way to do this is to leverage the space in your sidebar by adding calls to action (CTAs) and other enticing content. Here are some examples of what you can add to boost engagement and conversions: Building out your sidebar by adding these elements can transform the engagement levels on your website. Add Internal Links You’ve already learned about internal links in the form of Related Posts, but let’s focus on internal linking in its most traditional form. The idea of internal linking is to add a hyperlink on one page on your website to another page. These links help establish connections between different pages, improve website navigation, and assist search engines in understanding the structure and hierarchy of your website’s content. Here are some tips on how to implement internal linking on your blog: Use Relevant Anchors: use descriptive anchor text (the clickable part of the link) that accurately reflects the linked page’s content. If possible, try to use anchor texts that include the main keyword that you’re trying to rank on the linked page. Strategic Placement: incorporate internal links so that they fit naturally within the body of your content. Link to Relevant Pages: distribute your internal links across relevant pages to ensure a well-connected website structure. Don’t Overdo It: avoid excessive internal linking on a single page, which can confuse users and dilute SEO value. Link Back to Your Blog Post: don’t forget to also add internal links back to your blog post too so that it too can benefit from other pages’ authority. Building Brand Awareness With Digital PR Considering that the client’s brand had no online presence and the product range itself had zero search volume, the site needed a boost in domain authority. The best way to do this is with backlinks. Instead of general blogger outreach, we showcased the client’s product range with content that highlights smoking alternatives, targeted towards people looking to quit smoking and built awareness of their 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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How to Grow Traffic by 60.99% & SEO Topical Authority (Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 08 May 2023 09:05:20 +0000

Whether you’re working on a brand new website, or building your existing site’s organic presence, it’s important to showcase your topical authority to both Google and your audience. They want to see that the information you provide, or the products that you sell, are of great quality and are coming from a credible source. That’s why it’s essential to present yourself as an authority through your content and your backlink profile. In this case study, you’ll learn the exact steps that my team at The Search Initiative took to increase our client’s organic traffic by 60.99%. In this article, you’ll learn how to: Before that, let’s find out a bit more about the website’s goals and the main challenges faced during the campaign. The Challenge The client is a website selling health supplements in the United States, who joined the agency having already decided that they wanted to migrate their dated website and build a fresh site from the ground up with SEO in mind. One of the main challenges of this campaign was to make sure that the migration was carefully planned and executed to ensure that the site’s original rankings and traffic were sustained. We also added E-E-A-T signals that established the client as a trustworthy and authoritative voice within the industry – read on to learn how to do this. The next focus was to produce well optimized content for the product pages by writing compelling descriptions that convert as well as producing supporting blog content to build topical relevance and improve keyword visibility for informational keywords. Finally, to build the backlink profile of the new domain, we boosted the newly optimized product pages by executing a link building strategy, including HARO (which you’ll learn all our tricks soon). Find out how you can overcome these challenges for your website by following the steps below. Executing an SEO-Friendly Site Migration Making the decision to migrate your entire website shouldn’t be taken lightly. In some cases you might not have a choice, which is why it’s worth being aware of the risks and challenges that you might face along the way. Apart from potentially completely losing or breaking parts of your website, a site migration can also have significant impacts on your SEO. I’ll walk you through the process of an SEO-friendly site migration below, but for now, let’s look at what a site migration actually is. What Is a Site Migration? A site migration is the process of making significant changes to a website’s structure, technology or design. Here are some examples on why you might want to consider a site migration: Unsure about which hosting provider to use? Check out my video below. How Site Migrations Can Impact SEO A site migration is a substantial task that requires rigorous and thorough research and planning before you even begin to execute the strategy. With many moving parts and teams involved, it’s important to be aware of the SEO impacts that this can have. For example, without careful planning, you may lose your site’s precious rankings and traffic due to incorrect URL mappings and redirects or, you may encounter slow site-wide loading times as a result of incorrect server configurations. Even after the migration is complete and everything has gone to plan, it’s crucial to monitor progress to ensure that your site maintains and/or builds as much organic visibility as possible post-migration. SEO Site Migration Checklist I’ve put together this checklist so that you can be sure that your migration will be executed in an efficient and SEO-friendly way. Due to the scope of the work and risks involved, it’s good practice to plan your site migration for a time where, should things go wrong or there is a temporary dip, the impact is minimal. This is of course, assuming that your business has some seasonality to it. A site migration before or during the holiday season is not advised. The last thing you want to do is lose out on all of the potential traffic from a peak season as a result of your migration not being executed properly. Likewise, some days of the week may be quieter than others. For example, you may find that the start of the week is the best time to do your migration as fewer people browse your site at this time. Personally, I always migrate on Saturdays. Therefore, make sure to pick a smart migration date that allows time for you to monitor progress and iron out any issues that are presented post-migration. Using an SEO web crawler tool of your choice (i.e. SEMRush, Screaming Frog, Sitebulb etc), crawl your website so that you have a comprehensive record of everything that is on your website before the migration. For example, this will ensure that you have: You should also create a backup so that if for whatever reason the launch of your new site doesn’t go to plan, you can always revert back to the original if needed. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to backup your website. This precautionary step is vital in making sure that you have peace of mind before launching. The next step is to create a copy of your website so that you can test and revise all of the changes that you intend to make – this is called a staging site. This staging site should be uploaded to a new server and ideally, should be on a separate domain or subdomain so that you can compare your new website to the original site before the launch. This’ll allow you to check and verify important things like making sure that the URLs from your old site are correctly redirected to the new site. Another important step is to make sure that you block access to this staging website from Google. This is to prevent both the staging site AND the original site from being indexed by search engines and in turn, potentially competing against each other for rankings. There are several ways you can do this: Add the following line of code to your pages: <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> You can’t carry out a migration without a clear and well organized URL map. Mapping your URLs involves keeping a list of all of your existing URLs so that you can match them up with the new URLs on your new website and implement the necessary redirects correctly. This is why crawling your original website comes in useful. In addition to your crawl, you should also compile your URLs from your XML sitemap (this is a file that serves as a roadmap for Google to access your pages). You can access your sitemap via the following URL: example.com/sitemap.xml Your URL map can be as simple as this: Original URL New URL Redirected? olddomain.com/old-url/ newdomain.com/new-url/ Yes/No If you’re changing the structure of your URLs or combinings old pages into a single page, remember to map all of the combined pages’ URLs to the correct new URL. When it comes to actually migrating the content (i.e. your HTML files, images etc), I strongly recommend doing so in small chunks. The more pages you move at once, the higher the chances of something going wrong. So take your time and carry out the migration whilst carrying out checks and tests at each stage. This’ll make it easier for you to identify any potential issues that may arise. This is also your chance to update any of the content if you need to. Without implementing proper 301 redirects, your new pages will not receive the traffic and PageRank (ranking power) of the old pages, which will significantly impact the new site’s rankability. 301 redirects are a way of indicating to users and search engines that the location of a web page has permanently moved. Using your URL map, you can go through each of your pages and implement a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL. If for whatever reason you have an old URL that is no longer needed, you can redirect it to another relevant page on your website, or serve a custom 404 page to let users know that the page no longer exists. Once you’ve redirected your URLs, you also need to remember to update all of the internal links (hyperlinks from one page on your site to another) on your new website. You can find all of the internal links from your website crawl that you did right at the start of the process. You should change all of the internal links from the old URLs to the new URLs to avoid unnecessary internal redirects. Imagine you had the following scenario. If you don’t update the internal link, then Page A would have an internal link to Page b. But, when clicked, Page b would redirect to Page B. This creates an unnecessary internal redirect that when multiplied across thousands of requests, can seriously affect page load times. Therefore, you should update the internal link so that, you have: Although your 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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The Definitive On-Page SEO Checklist For 2024

Matt Diggity — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 01:23:34 +0000

As much as having great content, a sound technical foundation (i.e. having a mobile friendly website) and link building can get your site on the right track for SEO dominance, sometimes, it’s the little things that can make the biggest difference… I’ve over a decade of experience in the SEO experience, and I understand the importance of optimizing on-page SEO elements for achieving search engine dominance. Therefore, I’ve created the ultimate On Page SEO Checklist so that you can ensure that the primary elements of your site pages are well-optimized. Quick Summary What is an On Page SEO Audit? Let’s get one thing straight, when I’m referring to “On Page SEO”, I’m not talking about optimizing content for reader retention or writing content to meet search intent – that’s for another article altogether. Instead, I’m talking about optimizing the core elements of a web page such as the page titles, headings, meta descriptions and images on your website for the primary keyword that you want to rank for. These are individual factors that can help improve your site’s ability to rank and lead to more organic traffic. For example, get your title and headings wrong, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve written the best piece of content, it’ll simply struggle to rank. Why? Because, an On Page SEO Audit also makes it easier for crawlers and human visitors to understand what the content is about without much effort. Why are On Page SEO Audits Important? An On Page SEO Audit is important because it can identify issues with your content that could hurt user engagement and confuse the crawlers. For example, unclear page titles that don’t include your primary keyword will decrease click-through rates, while also making it harder for the search engine bots to understand the purpose of your content. Poorly-optimized URLs or the lack of headings will make your pages harder to navigate for both internet users and crawlers. If there are a lot of images on your website, but they lack the alt attribute, search engines won’t know what they depict. Interlinking is another essential part of SEO that should be examined during an On Page SEO Audit. It is a way of showing Google which pages are to be considered the most valuable on your website. This can also help boost the rankings of individual pages and can make your website easier to navigate and improve user experience. I’ll go through each of these elements in the On Page SEO checklist below. On Page SEO Checklist In order to make the most of this On Page SEO checklist, I highly recommend performing keyword research for your core landing pages. Taking this step will help make the next steps much easier to do as you’ll be able to identify the target keyword (or other search terms) for your pages. Here are the SEO tools that you’ll need to complete your On Page SEO checklist: Page Title Optimization What is a Page Title? A page title (or title tag) is the HTML element that defines what the title of a web page is. Here’s the title for The Search Initiative homepage in its raw HTML form: <title>The Search Initiative - SEO Agency</title> Here’s how it appears in the search results: And here’s how it appears in a browser’s tab: Why Audit Your Page Titles? Page titles are one of the Three Kings of On Page SEO with the other two being the URL and H1 heading. I’ll go into detail about URL optimization and H1 headings later on in this article, but for now, let’s take a look at why page titles are so important. Page titles are a very important part of search engine optimization for both users and robots. The title tag of your web pages is one of the first elements that users look at when deciding whether or not to click through to a page from their search. Well-written, engaging titles are known to increase click through rate (CTR) and engagement. The main purpose of auditing your title tags is to ensure that they inform the audience (and search engines) what they can expect to find on your web page. They’re essentially a precursor for the main content on your site. Page Title Audit Checklist When auditing the page titles, you should ensure that they are: Avoid page titles like this that are over-optimized: Cheap Holidays and Cheap Trips to New York | Book Cheap Flights Today Instead, aim for page titles like this: Book Cheap Holidays & Flights to New York Today | Tripster Heading Optimization What is a Heading? Headings (aka header tags) are used to convey the hierarchy and structural outline of the content on a page to search engines and users. There are six kinds of HTML Header levels where the H1 tag is the largest and the H6 tag is the smallest. Here’s an example of a heading hierarchy <h1> This is a H1 heading </h1> <h2> This a H2 heading </h2> <h2> This a H2 heading </h2> <h3> This a H3 heading </h3> <h2> This a H2 heading </h2> Here’s what the headings would look like: Why Should You Audit Your Headings? Breaking up your content with headings makes it much easier for users to navigate through your page and find what they’re looking for. Likewise, from an On Page SEO point of view, headings provide better context for search engines as they’re able to understand the hierarchy and structure. Aside from this, they may also aid your chances of appearing in the Featured Snippets. Here’s an example for the keyword “how is vanilla extract made”. Let’s see where the featured snippet text is taken from… Importantly, notice that the heading is exactly the same as our search intent query. H1 Heading Audit Checklist When auditing the H1 headings on your site, ensure that: H2-H6 Heading Audit Checklist When auditing the remaining headings on your website (primarily H2 headings), ensure that they: Meta Description Optimization What is are Meta Descriptions? The meta descriptions summarizes the main content on your web pages is about in one or two sentences. Here’s an example: <meta name="description" content="This is a meta description"> Why Should You Audit Your Meta Descriptions? Despite the fact that they are not a ranking factor, meta descriptions should still be given importance because Google often displays them as part of the search results. If you’re still not convinced, take it from Google, who say that they should “generally inform and interest users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about. They are like a pitch that convinces the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for”. Essentially, this means that well-written descriptions may be the deciding factor as to whether or not a user clicks through to your website or not. Moreover, if you include your primary keyword or other search terms within your descriptions, then Google will bold any words from the keyword within the search results. For example, if our target keyword is “ruby chocolate”, then you can see that Google highlights all instances of the term within the results. Meta Description Audit Checklist During the auditing process, you should ensure that your descriptions: URL Optimization What is a URL? A URL (Uniform Resource Locator), is the unique address of any resource on the Web. Why Should You Audit & Optimize Your URLs? You should audit and optimize your URLs because this is one of the things Google recommends you do in their SEO Starter Kit. The article recommends using simple, friendly URLs. This is because the URLs of your site are usually one of the first things that both users and search engines will see. URL Audit Checklist When auditing/optimizing the URLs on your site, you should ensure that they are: This not only makes it easier for users (and search engines) to understand what your post is about, but it also makes it much easier for other sites to link to you. Avoid URLs like this: https://cycling.com/unicycle/red-2192734i.html They come across as unnatural, confusing, and unfriendly. A more meaningful and user-friendly URL would be: https://cycling.com/unicycle/red/ After making your URLs user-friendly, you’ll want to make them SEO-friendly too, which I’ll explain in the following points. For example, https://bestrouters.com/buy-wireless-routers/ could be shortened to https://bestrouters.com/wireless/ Instead, use hyphens (-). You want URLs like this: https://cycling.com/best-unicyles-under-300/ Instead of: https://cycling.com/best_unicycles_under_300 Here’s what a standard optimized URL structure would look like: For example: https://bestrouters.com/wireless/ is better than https://bestrouters.com/wireless-routers/ Image Optimization What is Alt Text? The Alt Text (or alt attribute/alt tag) of an image is the HTML element used to textually describe an image on the Web. Here’s an example of an alt tag: <img src="my-image.jpg" alt="This is an image."> Why Should You Audit & Optimize Alt Tags? Apart from improving your website’s accessibility and enhancing the experience for visually impaired users, there are also On Page SEO benefits to auditing and optimizing the image alt attributes on your site. Search engines can’t “see” the 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

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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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How to Grow Traffic 114.25% With a Content Driven SEO Plan (Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 14:47:57 +0000

Great content is the bedrock of SEO. Without it: In this actionable case study, learn the exact strategy that my team at The Search Initiative took to increase our client’s organic traffic by 114.25% in 12 months. In this article, you’ll learn how to: But first, let’s find out some more about the site’s goals and the main challenges that were faced during the campaign. And if you prefer to consume your content via video, you can watch the full break down here: The Challenge The client is a finance lead generation website targeting the United Kingdom. The main objective of the campaign was to drive further organic traffic to the core landing pages and diversify the types of keywords that the client was ranking for by targeting terms with an informational search intent as opposed to just commercial intent. The site had many core landing pages which targeted commercial intent keywords, but was lacking in content that focused on ranking for information search terms. This was a missed opportunity to address different stages of the user’s journey as well as create content rich pages that could be used to build backlinks and to improve internal linking. We created a content plan for groups of topically related articles known as Power Hubs (aka Content Hubs), which you’ll learn how to do soon. The content plan also involved creating new core landing pages (aka “money pages” that are the most important for your service i.e. product pages for an eCommerce website) to target informational keywords. As the content strategy primarily focused on creating new pages via the Power Hubs, the next challenge was to carry out an outreach strategy with the aim of boosting their rankability while simultaneously building the overall authority of the domain. Finally, we identified two core technical drawbacks facing the website: poor main menu navigation which resulted in a bad user experience and lots of orphan pages (i.e. URLs with zero internal or external links pointing to them) which prevented the pages from being crawled by Google. Follow the steps outlined below to find out how you can overcome these challenges for your own website. Targeting Informational Keywords With Power Hubs There are four main types of keyword groups each of which have a specific purpose or intent. They are: It’s important to optimize your website to target a wide variety of keyword types as they correspond to different stages of the searchers journey. For example, users searching for informational keywords tend to be at the beginning of their search journey as they’re likely researching a topic that they aren’t familiar with whereas those searching transactional terms are further along the journey as they’re closer to making an actual purchase or performing an action (i.e. subscribing to a newsletter). This client’s website was lacking informational content that catered to the former group of searchers which meant that they were missing out on ranking for a large subset of keywords related to their niche. Instead of writing stand alone informational articles on your blog, you can grow the amount of informational content on your website by writing and publishing Power Hubs. What Are Power Hubs? Power Hubs (aka content hubs) are content pieces that comprise a single pillar page that is supported by a group of supplemental pages each of which are topically related to each other. These pages are then connected to each other with hyperlinks i.e. the pillar page links to each of the cluster pages and vice versa. What Are the SEO Benefits of Power Hubs? Publishing Power Hubs have the following SEO benefits: How to Find Potential Topics for Power Hubs I’ll show you three different techniques to find potential topics for Power Hubs – two of which are free! Ahrefs Keywords Explorer The first method is via Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer tool. 💡 Top Tip: use the Terms filter on the left hand side to see groups of topically related keywords that contain similar (or common) words. This is a great way to find your core topic for the pillar page. Let’s look at the keyword opportunities for “art”. In this case, you can see that there are several keyword variations related to what nft art is with a parent topic of “nft art” – making it a great keyword choice for our pillar page. This is because the pillar page should target a broader topic (“nft art”) whilst cluster pages target more specific subtopics. As you did before, use the groups in the left sidebar to find topically related keywords. Without even clicking on any of the groups from the left sidebar, you can start to spot certain keyword groups and topics for your cluster page. Each of the above could be a cluster page that goes into detail about how people can create, buy and sell NFT art. For example, here are some 133 additional keywords that you can target for “how to make nft art”. Related Searches If you don’t have Ahrefs, you can also use Google’s Related Searches section to find pillar and cluster topics. In this case, we have “nft art” again. As you can see, Google and Ahrefs’ results both align as we’re seeing similar keywords appearing. The pillar page can target “nft art” with cluster pages targeting specific terms like “how to create nft” and “how to sell nft art”. People Also Ask Another great (free) way to find keyword ideas for your pillar and cluster pages is via Google’s People Also Ask section. This is especially useful for finding informational keywords. All three methods can be used to put together a comprehensive list of keywords to target for both the pillar page and the supplementary cluster pages. Before you know it, you’ve got the building blocks for your Power Hub… 💡 Top Tip: If you really wanted to take things to another level, you could repeat the same process to create a Power Hub within your Power Hub. I’ll explain… Let’s go back to Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and look at the additional keywords that we could target for “how to create nft art”. Use a similar approach to finding cluster page ideas by looking at whether there are further ways to group keywords. In this case, we have groups for “digital” and “3d” NFT art. This means you can turn your cluster page about “creating NFT art” into its own pillar page, with its own cluster pages. After identifying these keywords, the next step is to start writing your Power Hub! How to Write Content for Power Hubs Let’s take a look at how you should go about writing your content hubs: Here’s what you should look out for: Based on this, write your content so that it aligns with the content that Google has already rewarded on the competing pages. Always remember to write content that: Internal Linking Strategy for a Power Hub One area where Power Hubs differ slightly, is with the internal linking strategy. What Is Internal Linking? Internal linking is the process of adding a hyperlink from one page on your website, to another page on your website. Importantly, in the context of SEO, the links you add to other pages on your website should be relevant to the linking page. For example, if you have a website that sells mens socks, you might have an internal link from a blog article about Christmas gift ideas for men to one of your product or category pages. What Are the Benefits of Internal Linking? Internal linking has benefits for you, the user and search engines like Google. How to Structure Internal Links for a Power Hub Power Hubs provide many internal linking linking opportunities, for example you should add internal links from the: Following the above will create a network of links for Google and users to follow. Frequently Asked Questions About Power Hubs What Can a Power Hub Include? Apart from written text, Power Hubs may also include a range of other types of content that are beneficial to improving the overall user experience such as: What’s the Goal of a Power Hub? The main purpose of a Power Hub is to provide informative and educational content that is suitable for all users. This means that you should aim to include content that applies to both beginners and advanced users alike. Ultimately, you want to include as much information that showcases your expertise within a particular topic as possible. How Do Pillar and Cluster Pages Differ? The main difference between pillar and cluster pages is that: Improving Keyword Visibility for Informational Keywords As mentioned before, it’s important to ensure that your website targets a range of keywords so that you capture users at different stages of their search process. The client’s site was well optimized for transactional intent keywords (i.e. where users are looking to perform some sort of action such as making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter), but the site was lacking pages that targeted an informational intent. This 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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How To Grow Traffic 90.97% With A Custom SEO Plan (Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 12:18:29 +0000

If you aren’t keeping every aspect of your website’s SEO performance in tip-top shape, you’ll struggle to see much organic growth. Every SEO campaign is different – some websites require more focus on just one or two of the core components of SEO (content, backlinks, and technical factors) whereas others may require optimization and improvements across the board. These SEO issues can be discovered by carrying out an SEO audit of your website which can uncover a whole range of action points that need to be addressed. That’s why it’s always essential to audit, analyze and optimize what’s already on your site. In this case study, you’ll learn the exact steps that my team at The Search Initiative took to increase our client’s organic traffic by 90.97%. In this article, you’ll learn how to: Before that, let’s find out a bit more about the website’s goals and the main challenges faced during the campaign. The Challenge Before joining The Search Initiative, the site was struggling to break into the first page of the search results for many important keywords. Therefore, the main goal of this campaign was to grow the site’s organic traffic with a focus on optimizing the editorial content. The client is a real estate website targeting people who want to rent and/or buy properties in Southeast Asia. This site saw a spike in referring domains. This was an attempted negative SEO attack, which is when a competitor intentionally attempts to sabotage your SEO efforts by building many poor-quality backlinks. If you believe your site has been deliberately attacked in this way, it’s best to audit and tidy up your link profile – read on to learn how to do this. The website had a lot of content, with many articles that were 10k+ words long. However, there were lots of keywords that these pieces of content were struggling to rank for. In cases like this, you should carry out a content optimization strategy that focuses on improving these long-form pieces for low-hanging keywords that were ranking just outside of the first page. Finally, we identified two core technical drawbacks facing the website: hundreds of internal redirects and missing breadcrumb navigation. As a real estate website with hundreds of listings across multiple cities and locales, missing breadcrumb navigation resulted in unnecessarily poor user experience as it made it much more difficult for visitors to navigate the website. Find out how you can overcome these challenges for your website by following the steps below. Pruning Your Link Profile With A Backlink Audit Your backlink profile is like a tree. Now and then, you want to snip off and prune a few faulty branches (low-quality backlinks) to ensure that the rest of the tree (link profile) is healthy. I.e., There are no spammy backlinks. This is a procedure you should carry out periodically by only checking the most recent links pointing to your site. But sometimes, the number of backlinks may suddenly shoot up, which could signify foul play. Google is able to ignore these spammy links in “most cases” but that means that some might slip through. If you get 1000 spam links, how many of these weren’t ignored? 50? 100? It’s not worth the risk, you need to take action. You’ll find out how to analyze the quality of a backlink pointing to your website later, but first, let’s see how you can identify whether your site’s link profile has seen unnatural growth, as described above. Identifying A Negative SEO Attack What Is A Negative SEO Attack? Your backlink profile may be the victim of a hostile SEO attack where your competitors (or another entity) purposely build hundreds, if not thousands, of unnatural, poor-quality links towards your site. Such an attack aims to trigger a Google penalty (or manual action) so that you lose rankings. If this happens to you, you will want to conduct a backlink audit to identify and disavow (ask google to ignore) these malicious links. How To Identify A Potential Negative SEO Attack To manually identify a potential negative SEO attack on your website’s backlink profile, you can use the Ahrefs Site Explorer tool. If you see a sharp spike like the one above, your site’s likely had a damaging SEO attack. As mentioned above, Google’s algorithms are getting better at identifying and ignoring poor-quality backlinks – but they aren’t perfect, so you’ll still need to cover your bases to make sure that your tree doesn’t have any faulty branches. This unnatural link velocity isn’t ideal – so it’s still worth seeing which links you can preemptively tell Google to ignore by disavowing them. Top tip: you can set up alerts on Ahrefs to automatically monitor new (and lost) referring domains to your website. This will enable you to quickly spot any unnatural increases (or decreases) within your backlink profile and allow you to act sooner to prevent any potential SEO damage to your site’s performance. Head over to: Alerts > Backlinks > New alert > Enter domain > New backlinks > Set email interval > Add Once you’ve identified that your site’s seen an unnatural links spike, the next step is to identify the bad links. It’s also worth noting that the spike may actually be a good thing. For example, one of your articles may have gone viral, so you may have naturally received a bunch of links. Either way, here’s how to identify whether these links are good or bad for your SEO. Investigating A Potential Negative SEO Attack Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to investigate a potential negative SEO attack using Ahrefs Site Explorer: When filtering these results, you’ll likely see some patterns cropping up. Let’s go through some of the most common culprits regarding links-based negative SEO attacks and how to spot them. Patterns To Look Out For: The Usual Suspects When identifying faulty backlinks from a negative SEO attack, there are a few usual suspects that you can look out for as giveaways for potential foul play. Why? Because these types of links are extremely cheap and easy to get in large quantities – meaning they aren’t too sophisticated. Remember, most of these websites aren’t legitimate. They’re often built especially for these tactics and won’t have any SEO value. Blogspot Domains Blogspot domains are incredibly cheap and easy to build. This makes them perfect for webmasters to exploit and use to build spammy links to your domain. You can identify these quickly by clicking on “More filters” on the top right of the Backlinks report. Select Domain name and type in “blogspot”. Click Apply and Show results. You’ll now see all backlinks from Blogspot domains. In this example, there are 66 poor-quality Blogspot domains pointing to this website within the specified timeframe. Web Directories In most cases, adding a listing to a web directory is free. Again, this makes it easy for spammers to build hundreds, if not thousands, of links on irrelevant and/or suspicious-looking directories. They generally look something like this: Find potential spammy web directories by filtering the backlinks using the same method above, but instead, search for domains that contain “directory”. Comment Spam Comment spam usually results from automated software being used to place lots and lots of comments on blogs or forums towards a particular website. These links generally use exact match anchors, i.e. the clickable text of the links are keywords you are likely targeting. This can be problematic because a high number of keyword-rich anchor texts within your link profile will likely raise some flags in Google’s eyes as being unnatural, which could lead to your website being penalized via a manual links-based penalty. Here’s an example of a forum link taken directly from Google’s guide on Link Schemes. Scroll down to the Anchors report right at the bottom of the Site Explorer tool on Ahrefs – this shows you an overview of the most commonly used anchor texts to link to your website. If you spot lots of exact match (keyword-rich) anchor texts linking to you, it’s likely that these could be comment or forum spam links. In some cases, you may even find some extremely unnatural or even suspicious anchors used to link towards you. These are much easier to spot as they’ll likely have nothing to do with your website. Next, click on “View full report” to dig a little deeper. This is because the report only shows you the top 10 most common anchors (see screenshot below) – and there may be lots more! Here, you want to order by “/ dofollow” links because dofollow links are the kind that specifically instructs search engine bots to “follow” the link. Whereas sites that link to you using a nofollow link, are highly devalued by Google’s crawlers. Click on Details, then Referring domains, to explore further. In most cases, a website will only link to you once – so if you see that a site is linking to you a lot, it’s a strong indicator that something’s not quite 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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17 Best Amazon Affiliate Alternatives In 2024 (More Profits)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 08:45:24 +0000

The Amazon affiliate program is often the go-to for new affiliates, but this may not be wise. It potentially costs you thousands in lost income due to Amazon’s consistently reducing commission rates, making income growth challenging. As someone who’s faced the challenges and limitations of the Amazon affiliate program, I’ve explored various alternatives to unlock greater earning potential. I’m excited to share my tried-and-tested recommendations with you, helping you increase your revenue without the need for additional traffic. Let’s delve into the world of alternative affiliate programs that can truly elevate your earnings. Alternative Affiliate Networks Now, we’re going to take a look at some more affiliate networks out there that offer an alternative to Amazon’s affiliate program and a way to boost your affiliate income. The main reasons for considering non-Amazon affiliate networks as an alternative are higher commission rates, and you can speak to a dedicated affiliate manager in many cases. Not just some nameless customer service soul at the other end of an email form or phone call who knows less about affiliate marketing than you do. 1. Shareasale ShareASale is one of the best affiliate networks to work with. This affiliate network has been in business for over 20 years, has Awin as its parent company, and has thousands of merchants to choose from. But they also feature lots of advertisers you won’t find elsewhere, which means you can find emerging niches here. Finding offers to promote is straightforward, even if their dashboard looks a little bit dated. You can filter available programs using everything from EPC (Earnings per Click), to ShareASale’s in-house ‘Power Rank’ scoring system. So you won’t have to spend all day trawling through thousands of advertisers to find the handful you want to promote on your niche site. 2. CJ Affiliate By Conversant Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate by Conversant) is probably the biggest affiliate network in the world, both by reputation and the caliber of the merchants they have on their books. Their advertiser portfolio reads like a list of some of the world’s biggest brand names, e.g. Zappos, VistaPrint, Walgreens, Xfinity, Verizon, Trip Advisor, TK Maxx, etc. The signup process is relatively straightforward, as is applying to affiliate offers. But if you want to speed up the approval process: You’ll find that makes your approval for programs go a lot more smoothly. You also get all the usual creatives for programs and the ability to generate deep links to products. This affiliate network has been a favorite among affiliate enthusiats for a long time now and is one of the best alternatives to Amazon’s program. 3. Impact Impact Radius is one of the newer affiliate platforms in the world of affiliate marketing and was founded by some of the same people who set up Commission Junction. Their goal was to create a new type of network focused on high-quality relationships with partners rather than just high-volume relationships. But they’re still an affiliate platform with offers you can promote – a mixture of over five hundred CPA (Cost per Acquisition) and CPS (Cost per Sale). So there’s the potential here for you to earn a lot of affiliate revenue. The only downside for beginners is that it appears to be very easy to get declined when applying to their network. But you can still apply to programs on their network (Target, etc) separately and get approved. 4. Rakuten Advertising Rakuten Advertising is a Japanese company with a significant presence in the online retail market in Japan and Asia. They acquired Linkshare in 2005 and currently manage the affiliate programs of over one thousand advertisers. What makes this a great network to work with is that you can promote global brands such as Kodak, Macy’s, Lego, Microsoft, Dyson, Klarna, Telus, and hundreds of others. But you also get to work with smaller, more niche companies too. The signup process is relatively straightforward, and they tend to approve most new affiliate applications pretty quickly. The interface is a little dated but the sheer quality of their advertisers more than makes up for it. 5. Awin AWIN has over 16,000 advertisers on their books that generated a total of $10.8 billion in sales last year. This also means that Awin affiliates are also making a lot of money. Awin is also the only network that charges a $5 fee (refundable) to sign up with them. But it does seem to limit the number of time wasters signing up with this Amazon alternative. Something else to like about Awin is that while they do work with major brand names like Qatar Airways, AliExpress, Etsy, and HP, they’re also a great place to find smaller, emerging brands with a ton of potential. 6. OfferVault OfferVault is different from the other affiliate platforms featured in this guide because it’s neither a network nor a direct affiliate program. Instead, it’s a free-to-register-for search engine that allows you to find many other affiliate networks and offers with just a few clicks of your mouse. The programs and networks featured do lean more towards CPA and CPL offers. So you can expect to find networks like MaxBounty and TerraLeads popping up in their search results, but not Commission Junction or ShareASale. But if you are looking for affiliate programs that pay out anywhere up to $2,900 per lead, then OfferVault is an excellent place to start. Just be prepared to work with smaller advertisers in very competitive niches against other – probably very experienced – affiliate marketers. 7. ClickBank Next up on our list of alternative affiliate programs is ClickBank, a network with a difference because its advertisers sell a mixture of physical and digital products. The physical products are often health supplements, whereas the digital offerings span everything from gardening, politics, and herbal remedies to games, personal finance, and how to make money online. Selling digital products as an affiliate makes a lot of sense… Your customers get their order immediately, and you can earn a whole lot of money promoting the right products. The top-performing offers on ClickBank pay up to $200 – $400 for a single referral. The trick with ClickBank is finding a winning offer in a market that’s not completely saturated. But if you can do that, then it’s entirely possible to make 5-figures per month with this network. Our first stop is to look at Amazon’s direct competitors in the e-commerce space i.e. other companies that sell lots of different stuff and are happy to pay you a commission for hooking them up with new customers. Niche Solutions I’m a big fan of not going wide with a huge authority site when you first start out in the affiliate marketing game. My advice is to go narrow and deep using smaller networks and niche affiliate programs that focus on very specific audiences. They also tend to pay some of the best commission rates. There are lots of other great affiliate programs out there to choose from. Here are some of my favorites. 8. Fan Fuel I’m a big fan of the health and fitness vertical and have several profitable affiliate sites operating in that specific niche. And one of my favorite networks to work with is FanFuel. Unlike most other networks, they manufacture their own range of health supplements, including bodybuilding products, weight loss supplements, beauty treatments, overall wellness supplements, and nootropics. FanFuel markets its products using a number of active professional athletes and fitness influencers to build its brand presence. They have a very attractive commission structure, a good selection of payment options, and their landing pages also do a great job of converting qualified traffic. This is one of the best Amazon affiliate alternatives if you’re in the health, beauty, or fitness niches. 9. Market Health Market Health is both an affiliate program and network. The network is basically used to host their offers and manage their affiliate publishers and other assets. And it’s a winning combination. From an affiliate’s perspective, you get to work directly with a marketing-savvy manufacturer who’s willing to pay you a minimum commission of $40 for each sale you generate for them. Their health and beauty products cover everything from acne treatments to colon health and anti-aging creams and even pet products. So there’s enough variety in their offerings to span several niches. 10. Travel Payouts Travel Payouts started in 2011 as a site to help people find cheap flights, before developing its own affiliate program, and then finally becoming an affiliate network. And they’ve paid out over $28 million in affiliate commissions since those early days. International travel obviously experienced a serious downturn during the recent pandemic. But despite this, the travel industry is recovering and will reach pre-pandemic levels in the not-too-distant future. So now is a good time to position yourself ahead of that uptick with some solid travel affiliate programs. Travel Payouts is home to 100 such CPA offers from leading brand names for flights, hotels, car hire, and much more – their top affiliates 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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How To Increase Traffic By 96% (SEO Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 12:09:41 +0000

Regardless of your website’s size, the keys to a successful SEO campaign are (on-page), links (off-page), and technical factors. Your content acts like the body of a race car, and it’s referring backlinks like race fuel. The technical factors act like the nuts and bolts allowing everything else to perform at its best. If you miss either of these then your website will struggle to rank much like a race car struggling to get down the track. In this case study, you’ll learn the exact steps that my team at The Search Initiative took to increase our client’s organic traffic by 96%. You will get a crash course in the three pillars of SEO (on-page, off-page, and technical factors) through the lens of this case study. In this article, you’ll learn how to: Before getting into the details of the strategy, here’s some important information about the website’s goals and the main challenges that were faced. The Challenge The main objective for this campaign was to increase the amount of quality organic traffic on the site to grow the number of leads. The client is a US-based SaaS (Software as a Service) B2B company that builds and offers cloud software with web pages targeting a range of countries including English speaking countries such as the U.S.A., as well as Japan, China, Korea, and France. With this in mind, one of the main challenges was index bloat. There were over 30k crawlable URLs on the English version of the website alone – quite excessive for a SaaS website. Fixing these crawl budget issues and uploading the XML sitemap which was missing when the client joined TSI was a priority. More on that, below… The client’s hreflang (a way to tell Google about the language and target location of your content) setup had not been implemented correctly. This is a very important element of international SEO and needs to be addressed to avoid potential duplicate content issues. Although the core landing pages of the site were relatively well optimized, there was a lack of supporting content to drive traffic towards them. This is because the client’s blog was not active, with just a handful of articles published. This was tackled by researching and writing informational blog articles to target long-tail keywords. This helped build the client’s topical relevance within the niche as well as provide internal linking opportunities towards the main pages on the site. The final step was to build authority with a link-building strategy that focused on building page authority on the website’s most important pages: the homepage and service pages. Follow the steps below and find out how you can also overcome these challenges for your own websites. Crawl Budget Management What Is Crawl Budget & Why Is It Important? Google only has a limited amount of time and resources that it can allocate to crawling and indexing the World Wide Web. Therefore, Google sets a limit on how much time it spends crawling a given website – this is known as the crawl budget. The crawl budget is determined by two elements: If you have a large website with hundreds of thousands of pages, you’re going to want to make sure that only the most important pages are being crawled i.e. that you aren’t wasting your crawl budget on unimportant URLs. Crawl budget management is about making sure that you’re stopping Google from crawling irrelevant pages that cause index bloat. How To Fix Index Bloat Index bloat occurs when Googlebot crawls too many pages of poor quality. These pages may offer little to no value to the user, be duplicated, be thin in content, or may no longer exist. Too many unimportant and low-quality pages being crawled wastes precious crawl budget as Google spends time crawling those URLs instead of the important ones. Our client’s English site had over 30k legacy event pages indexed – these were pages that included very little content about industry events within the client’s niche i.e. a flier for the event along with essential information such as dates and times. Let’s look at some of the most common culprits that cause index bloat and how you can find them using a site search: You may also come across these kinds of pages: There are several ways to tell Google which pages you want crawled, and which ones you don’t: Here’s the robots.txt file for my site: You can generally find your robots.txt by accessing: yourdomain.com/robots.txt The basic format for blocking Google from crawling your page(s) is: User-agent: [user-agent name] Disallow: [URL string not to be crawled] Here’s an example: User-agent: * Disallow: /author/ The above rule prevents all robots from accessing any URL that contains /author/. Find out more about the best practices for your robots.txt file here. <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> If you have a WordPress website, you can do this easily via a plugin like Yoast SEO. On any page, scroll to the Advanced tab on the plugin and where it says “Allow search engines to show this Post in search results?” select No. An important thing to remember is that you need to ensure that these pages haven’t also been blocked on your robots.txt file. Otherwise, Googlebot will never see the “noindex” directive, and the page may still appear in the search results if, for example, other pages link to it. Find out more about how to manage your crawl budget here. XML Sitemaps While your robots.txt file is used to prevent search engine bots from accessing certain pages, there’s another important file that you need to guide Google in the right direction regarding which pages you do want it to find and index. That’s the XML sitemap – which our client happened to have missing from their website. What Is An XML Sitemap & Why Is It Important? The XML sitemap is a “map” of URLs using Extensible Markup Language. Its purpose is to provide information about the content on your website i.e. the pages, videos, and other files, along with the respective relationships between them. XML sitemaps are important because they allow you to specify your most important pages directly to Google. Here’s an example of what a sitemap looks like: https://diggitymarketing.com/sitemap.xml Providing this information makes it easier for crawlers like Google to improve crawl efficiency as well as understand the structure of your web pages. Think of it as a table of contents for your website. By doing this, you’re increasing your chances of your web pages getting indexed more quickly. Here’s an example of a basic XML sitemap: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url> <loc>https://domain.com/</loc> </url> <url> <loc>https://domain.com.com/blog/</loc> </url> </urlset> More often than not, your XML sitemap will likely look like this auto-generated one from Yoast: https://lakewoodrestorationpro.com/page-sitemap.xml Why? Because it’s much easier to use a plugin/tool to generate your sitemap than to hardcode it yourself manually. How To Create An XML Sitemap There are many ways to create an XML sitemap for your website depending on your CMS. Your sitemap should now be automatically generated and available at either com/sitemap.xml or yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml Name your file “sitemap” it will be saved in .xml format. There are also XML Sitemap generators like XML-Sitemaps.com where all you need to do is: One thing to note about the methods detailed above is that they may contain URLs or pages that you do not want to be included. For example, crawlers like Screaming Frog may include paginated pages or /tag/, /author/ pages – which as you learned above, cause index bloat. So, it’s always good practice to review the generated files and make sure that only the right pages are there. There’s also the option to code your XML sitemap manually, this is fine for small websites with very few pages but perhaps not the most efficient for massive sites. Regardless of which method you choose, remember to upload the sitemap.xml file to the public_html directory so that it will be accessible via domain.com/sitemap.xml. How To Submit Your XML Sitemap To Google To submit your XML Sitemap to Google, go to your Google Search Console and click Sitemaps > enter the location of your sitemap (i.e. “sitemap.xml”) > click Submit. That’s it! Remember to also add a link to your XML sitemap within your robots.txt file using the following directive: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml If you have multiple sitemaps, simply add another directive, so you have something like this: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap-1.xml Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap-2.xml Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap-3.xml This final step makes it that extra bit easier for Google (and other crawlers) to find your sitemap and crawl your important pages. Many plugins like Yoast automate this process for you, they’ll automatically add your sitemap into your robots.txt file. Implementing hreflang Attributes Correctly Implementing hreflang attributes correctly is an advanced technique that should only be done by experienced web developers, SEOs and those who understand the risks. However, if your website’s content is available in multiple languages, then the hreflang attribute is especially important for you. If you set this up correctly, you could essentially clone your 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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Silo Structure & Website Architecture: SEO Silos Made Easy

Matt Diggity — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 11:09:21 +0000

If you’ve been developing blog posts and content on your site without a plan, you may be undermining your goals. You may have already lost months of potential growth, and set your website up to grow sluggishly while brand new competitors easily zip ahead of you. As an experienced digital strategist, I can assure you that there is an effective way to structure your website to capture the attention of search engines like Google. One of those ways is by applying a silo structure. Different models of siloing can help you create an SEO-friendly site, and choosing the right one can unlock the potential for explosive growth. In this article, you’ll learn what siloing is and how it benefits your website’s search engine optimization. Then, I’ll take you through 5 silo structures for your site and show where they excel and fall short. I’ll close with some advice on choosing silos, and answer top questions. What Is A Silo Structure? A silo structure refers to a type of planned site architecture where internal linking will connect certain pages to each other based on a thoughtful, standardized pattern. It starts with a site that is organized into a hierarchy structure where parent pages serve as the general introduction for a topic. Under the main topic pages are supporting pages—blog posts, guides, and other website content that covers narrower branches of the topic covered in the parent page. The silo is created when the pages are internally linked together to create a navigation path that can pass link juice and topical relevance to other blog posts, landing pages or other content on your site. Link juice is the name given to the authority that is passed along whenever any page in this hierarchy receives a link from another site. It’s one of the most important SEO concepts that relates to links, and it’s one of the reasons siloing is so necessary for your website. A silo can be developed so that the link juice flows throughout the entire site, instead of stopping dead at the original page. This guide is going to focus on teaching you to establish several different configurations of silos through internal linking. When you build your silo solely by the internal linking of each page, it is known as a soft silo. What About Hard Silos? In addition to soft silos, there are also “hard silos” (or, physical silos). These are silos that are built into your website structure (your URL structures And directory structure). Near the end, I’ll tell you more about building a hard silo that can reinforce the soft siloing on your site. For now, let’s focus on what the soft silo can do for your SEO. Developing a link structure for your website takes work, and you deserve to know why you’re doing it. The fact is that having a silo structure for your links offers serious SEO advantages for your site that you can’t ignore. How Does Siloing Benefit SEO? A Silo structure benefits SEO by passing link juice throughout your website, and providing search engines like Google and search engine bots with a streamlined way to confirm the topical relevance of your content. Siloing Helps You Enhance the Topical Relevance of Your Site Search engines like Google look at different signals to determine if your website and its pages are relevant for different search queries. One way that you can demonstrate SEO relevance on your site is by linking related pages together in a structure. For example, imagine you have a blog post or commercial article on your website about the best protein powder. You can prove the relevance of that blog post to search engines by linking to related content on the site (such as “best protein powder for men”, or “protein powder supplements”) back to it. Applying an SEO silo architecture to your site also helps you more thoughtfully choose the pages and content that you want to enhance with more topical relevance. When your silo is fully developed, you can easily direct topical relevance like a current across your site. That can translate to more attention from Google search engines spiders—and that can mean higher keyword rankings and overall better SEO. Siloing Gives You a Lot More Mileage Out of Link Building Link building has an important relationship with your Google search engine rankings.. Securing an external link for one page can be great for its search performance. However, with the right siloing structure for your site, you can ensure that links spread their SEO power through your other blog posts and landing pages. When you have an effective silo architecture in place, the link structure allows the power to flow through to the other pages on your website far more effectively. This can directly improve the search rankings of each page—even the ones that don’t receive the link. In several of the siloing models that are covered later, you’ll learn how you can structure your internal linking so that the power of a link hits every page on your website. Siloing Lets You Rank Much More Easily for Long Tail Keywords Long-tail keywords on your website can benefit from having a silo in place. Developing links to each silo page at the bottom of the site hierarchy structure can be difficult because these pages often target the most specific and long-tail search terms. However, you don’t necessarily need links directly to these pages if you have a silo that can move the juice along from the most popular pages on your site. Silos that are set up properly will allow all of your smaller pages to receive the flow of link juice from each silo page above or below them, and the SEO benefits that come with it. Applying a silo can be so effective, in fact, that you may see pages in your website structure developing a better search engine rank even before they’ve received any backlinks of their own. How To Plan & Create a Silo Structure Implementing a silo structure is simple at the strategic level. I’ll illustrate with the website Dietmasters.com. As you can imagine, a site like this is aiming to be a great hub for all types of diet advice. In order to be competitive, it will need SEO-relevant content to cover all the possible pages within a topic like this. The best SEO keyword that a site like this could target is “best diets”. That’s a broad SEO-friendly term that could incorporate any number of landing pages, service pages or blog posts. To plan for an SEO-friendly silo structure, we have to be careful about how we set up the website and the first rounds of website content. Step 1. Start with good keyword research This first step will help us learn what intent people have when they’re looking for search terms like “best diets”. Follow your normal process for choosing keywords, and compile what you’ve learned into a research doc to help you develop content. We’ll need to know the right keywords so that we can break the topic down into narrow SEO keyword phrases that can be used to build blogs and other content. When we’re done, we can build content that matches the needs of search engine users and choose thoughtful anchor text. Imagine that you performed this research using a search engine or your favorite research tool, and learned that the search terms with the most keyword relevancy for a site like this were: These three SEO keyword phrases will make up the top-level category pages for our sample site. For the category structure, we’ll think of these pages as lateral to one another. They’ll have their own child pages, but they won’t necessarily link to one another. When developing content for each supporting page on the site, we want to choose keyword phrases that are even more specific. That way, we can target commercial intent. Step 2. Break the topic into supporting pages The next step would be to take those top-level site topics, and break them down into child pages/support pages so that we can create content that will speak to more intentional audiences. This use of keyword phrases reinforces the relevance of topics that are in the top level of the site hierarchy. Let’s use the “keto diet” search term as an example. Your research may show you that people who are using search engines to find information about the keto diet keyword terms are hungry for content about: These keyword terms will make up the next level of supporting content pages for our site, but we’re not quite done. Step 3. Break the sub-topics into long-tail keyword phrases We can keep going. Let’s use the meal plan page as an example, and look at the SEO-friendly search terms that could be developed from that. Your research may show you that people who use search engines to look keyword phrases like keto meal plans may also be looking for content about: This 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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SEO for Online Reputation Management: 2024’s Best Strategies

Matt Diggity — Mon, 09 May 2022 12:04:35 +0000

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how to take control of the SERP for brand searches, with super easy (and cheap!) techniques that my grandma could do in a spare Sunday afternoon. We’re talking about online reputation management (ORM): the process of pushing negative search results down off page 1. Imagine this scenario: You’re a politician that recently got smeared for a big mess up. You want that negative online reputation to go away. This is where a company’s online reputation management SEO comes into play. Over the years, my agency The Search Initiative, has performed dozens of Online Reputation Management campaigns for our clients. I’m about to share the key essentials from these campaigns. You’re about to learn: Quick Summary Why Is Online Reputation Management So Important? Online Reputation Management is so important because it controls the reputation of your personal brand via the page (or pages) that rank on your brand’s search terms, aka keywords. The easiest way for a user to decide if they want to trust a brand is with a Google search. If someone Google’s “Diggity Marketing” or “Matt Diggity”, I want good things coming up on page 1. Whether your client is an online retailer with a bad news story ranking high or you have a new info product that’s losing branded search traffic (and control) to affiliates; being able to control what shows up on page 1 is massively beneficial. ORM can also be a very attractive skill set to future clients and employers, or even have a dedicated Online Reputation Management service. In this post, I’ll be taking you through my sure-fire system to gain (or regain) control of any brand’s online reputation, using a mixture of real brand marketing and parasite Search Engine Optimization. Parasite SEO was a term created in the early 2000s by Eli, the founder of the now defunct Blue Hat SEO blog. Eli’s definition of parasite SEO still stands true to this day: Using large, authoritative websites to build pages that allow you to “hijack” the root domains ranking signals. It’s truer than ever that Google favors large, authoritative websites. In fact, Google gives them certain leeway in terms of techniques they can get away with using. As you have seen throughout the last 12 months of updates, Google’s algorithms are moving more and more towards authority and thus, authoritative websites. This means our job of doing Online Reputation Management is easier. Techniques for Powerful Reputation Management with SEO These are the core techniques that I use to boost my site’s own ranking signals as well as give users a clear idea about what my brand’s about. While there are other ways to do ORM within the SEO spectrum, these are by far the simplest and most effective techniques available to us. And I’ve tested a lot of them. Boost Your Existing Rankings The easiest and totally free way to start cleaning up your brand’s reputation is by boosting your site and its appeal within the SERPs – Having a knowledge graph, sitelinks and multiple additional positive pages, reviews or posts ranking sends huge trust signals to users. Optimizing Your Site’s Entity Google will associate keywords with your branding if you build a compelling enough case for it to do so. For example, DiggityMarketing.com’s brand is “Diggity Marketing”, not “Matt Diggity”. But Google will still give me a sitelink pack when you search for “Matt Diggity”. When you’re optimizing your brand’s SERP, you want to first create as strong an entity stack around your brand’s keyword/s on your own website as possible. There are a few ways you can do this: Your pillow links such as social profiles and citations also play a big role in authenticating your website and its surrounding details – This is especially true for local sites and local SEOs looking to optimize a site’s GMB rankings using NAP. Optimizing Your GMB One of the easiest ways to get instantaneous trust signals to a user is by (first creating and then) optimizing your GMB to automatically insert a knowledge graph that authenticates the business as real in the user’s eyes. Protip: I’ve been building GMB’s and sending citations even for affiliate sites as a trust factor. Consistent citations can also have a major role in optimizing your GMB, but that’s another guide for another time. GMB Reviews Google will always display their review stars the highest on the page for a business branded search query than any other site or that site’s schema element. This means Google’s reviews (Which can arguably impact your GMB rankings[1]) are the most important trust signal to be sent to a user, and thus the ones you want to be optimizing for the most. It’s against the GMB guidelines to offer anything in return for a review but having an active email list or social media marketing accounts with engaged customers can provide a handful of positive reviews in a very short amount of time if you catch my drift. As a side note, just because it’s against the guidelines doesn’t mean that you can’t buy them. You didn’t hear that from me though. How To Remove Negative Reviews Just because you (or your client) has gotten a negative review on Yelp or TripAdvisor, it doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. Every website has its own unique process and system and appeal process. The support staff of these sorts of websites tends to be more sympathetic if you give evidence of the reviewer leaving multiple negative reviews within a short timeframe. Identifying the Review & Asking For its Removal As I said, every website has its own unique process, but most of them will be some form of ticket or contact support form with or without an upload feature to give additional evidence. Once you have the way of how to report the review, you need to give the company hosting said review a good enough reason to remove it. Most of these won’t require you to do any further digging yourself, but if you do almost all sites will only ask you to do it both on their website and physically within your own books/receipts. Unfortunately, if the review doesn’t break any of these additional rules then it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to remove it. Thankfully, there is always another tactic you can employ to knock it out the SERPs. Blanket Page 1 And Push Down Negative Pages Unless you’re some sort of super hacker, you’re unlikely to find a member of staff that’ll willingly remove a negative review on a site unless you’re paying to be listed on there in the first place – And even then you’ll still run into a bunch of restrictions and headaches. The easiest way to get negative pages knocked out the SERP for your brand is by putting stronger pages that you have control over and above them. Luckily, there are a bunch of authoritative websites out there that allow you to create totally free pages that can rank well for our brand’s name. Social Profiles are the Easiest SERP Control Associating social media accounts with a brand’s entity is one of the easiest jobs an SEO has. The root authority of huge social media marketing websites like Facebook, Twitter & YouTube makes for easy rankings without having to utilize links in most cases, or at least not a huge number of them anyway. If you look at my own SERP, you’ll note that the raw authority of my social media presence outweighs any interview, podcast, or guest posts on much lower authority domains than my own – Even though most of these profiles don’t have any readable content for Google to understand they’re linked to my brand, the brand association and root authority of the domains are high enough to rank them above pieces with 1,000+ words of content. Just make sure you’re consistent with your branding used on each profile, and the URL you’ve created around them and if you’re consistently posting on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram then you can even start getting additional feed elements in the SERPs from those sites which take recent posts and put them in a SERP block. Getting A Video Carousel Google’s use of video carousels within the SERPs worries some brands[4]. Its prominence can take up multiple organic positions on desktop but it can also be used to great effect when you’re trying to knock content down for your own brand terms, by re-optimizing existing videos or creating new video content with the brand’s keyword featuring within the first 50 characters of the video’s title. You’ll want a minimum of 3 videos optimized around your branding or you won’t even be able to get a carousel. Ideally, I’d go for 5, and they don’t need to be anything special nor have a huge view count for this to work. Google will normally feature the channel trailer video (If you have set one) first in the carousel if 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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Doubling Organic Traffic (YMYL SEO Case Study)

Matt Diggity — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 05:01:57 +0000

Over the past few years, Google has focused on ranking pages based on the authority, relevance and trust conveyed by a website’s content and backlinks. That being said, increasing a website’s authority, relevance and trust has become more difficult than ever before. If you have concerns that your site is falling behind your competition when it comes to these three factors, you’ll want to follow the steps outlined in this case study. Below, you’ll find how my team at The Search Initiative more than doubled our client’s organic traffic. You’ll learn how to: But, before you implement the strategy used, it’s important you know the site’s background, goals, and the main challenges that you’ll need to overcome as well. The Challenge The primary goal for this campaign was to increase the traffic from non-branded search terms (i.e. keywords that don’t include your brand name in them). Considering that the client is an independent insurance broker targeting the UK market, one of the biggest challenges we faced was the fact that the search volumes for many keywords in this niche are extremely low. After all, most people tend to search for their life insurance only once in their life. However, what we quickly identified is that despite the low search volumes, the revenue potential for each visitor could be substantial. As a YMYL (Your Money Your Life) website, the client’s site was lacking in E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trust), which is extremely important if you want to rank. We focused on building more E-A-T by optimizing the content on the site with text that established the client as a trustworthy source of information. We also added informational content, specifically FAQs, to the client’s website to increase their chances of ranking for featured snippets. The final piece of the puzzle was to build the site’s authority with a competitor-based link-building strategy. While E-A-T is essential for YMYL niches, it’s also an important factor for all websites that are looking to stay ahead of the competition. Below, you’ll find out, step-by-step, how to achieve these results so you can replicate them on your own websites. Optimizing For E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness) If the content on your website could potentially impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety – then it qualifies for Your Money Your Life (YMYL). In August 2018, Google introduced a new set of guidelines for it’s third-party Quality Raters (QRs) (QRs are real humans who check the quality of web pages) to measure the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (aka E-A-T) of a site. The guidelines outline certain signals that the raters should look out for based on characteristics of the content along with other ranking signals like backlinks, performance etc. In the case of this client, we needed to establish E-A-T within the insurance market so that Google and readers could see that the information provided was written by a credible source, from a respected firm. What does E-A-T actually mean though? Let’s break it down: There are certain steps that you can take to earn the trust of both Google and your visitors. Take a look at some ways that you can optimize your website for E-A-T. Building Authorship Including information about who’s responsible for the content on your website is crucial for building authorship. Why? Because it’s something that Google specifically asks its QRs to find. Adding author information, like a short description and links to other online profiles, helps to raise your author’s (and your website’s) expert status. This helps Google (and your readers) see that the information that you’re providing is written by a credible, trustworthy source. For example, if an author is visible on other authoritative pages within your niche (or their own social media channels), where they post (high-quality) content, then mentions or direct links from those sources can be beneficial for improving your website’s E-A-T. Here are some tips to help build more authorship on your website: Here’s an example of the About page from What Hi-Fi: Following the above steps makes it easier for both your readers and Google to establish the content creator’s E-A-T. Adding Contact Information User experience and transparency are important factors that Google considers when looking at E-A-T. You should make it as easy as possible for your visitors to get in touch with you. Here are some tips on how to do this: This includes contact information such as your address (if you have one), email address, telephone number, etc on your website. Here’s an example from the TSI website, where we’ve included our contact information in the footer of each page. A Positive Reputation According to Google, a positive reputation is one of the characteristics of “high-quality content”. Google instructs its quality raters to conduct “reputation research”. In other words, what people say about your business or brand online, matters. Google is trying to calculate the overall public sentiment for your brand and website. The odd negative review of a product or service isn’t going to hurt you – Google acknowledges that no website will have a perfect set of purely positive reviews. But if, for example, a particular product is receiving mostly negative reviews, or your brand is being talked about negatively in the press – then this is likely going to affect Google’s assessment of the quality of your website. You can’t control what people say or write about you, but you can monitor it. For example, you can set up a Google Alert to notify you when there are new mentions of your brand (or individuals from your website) online. Learn more about how Google perceives reputation here and find out how to manage your online reputation in the video below. Building Topical Authority Topical Authority is all about a website’s perceived authority within a particular niche or subject. This signals to Google that you have a deeper understanding of your subject matter and therefore, can be trusted. Having strong Topical Authority is vital if you’re looking to improve your E-A-T and, as a result, rank in the SERPs. To build Topical Authority, you need to create content that showcases your knowledge across every aspect of your niche. In our client’s case, this was insurance. Look at how your website’s content compares to that of the competition – i.e. identify information that is missing from your website but is included in your competitor’s sites. It’s important to remember to cover all bases of the user’s journey. For example, a Law firm will have service pages that target specific commercial keywords like “personal injury lawyer london”. But to build Topical Authority, you’ll also want to target informational keywords that help support these pages e.g. “what is personal injury law”. You now have a list of relevant keywords that you can create content around to further expand your site’s Topical Authority. To find out more about Topical Authority, watch this interview with Koray Tugberk. Reviewing & Updating Old Content As “freshness” is one of the ways Google judges the quality of content, regularly updating older content is a good way to get back on the search radar. Doing so can give you a ranking boost and subsequently increase traffic. This is especially important for YMYL sites (it’s specifically mentioned in Google’s guidelines – see below), or for time-sensitive content where facts, regulations, etc may change over time. For example, if you have a website where you review the latest turntables, you should avoid having articles like “Top 10 Turntables Under $500 for ”, as Google and your readers will see that it’s out of date. For this example, one way to identify outdated pages is by using a site search like this: site:yourdomain.com intitle:2021 Note: you can replace ‘2021’ with any year In the example below, you can see that the site’s page title includes 2021 instead of 2022. You should also update the “post-last-modified” date to be as recent as possible. If your website primarily contains informational content, it’s important to make sure that you regularly review it to ensure that it’s as up-to-date as possible. Content Optimization: Dealing With FAQs Regardless of what kind of website you have, you’ll likely need to rank for informational keywords. For example: Many informational keywords tend to be posed as questions – which means that you can add valuable content to your website to answer queries that users may have about what you’re covering. Below, you’ll find out how to find FAQ keywords to target, how to optimize them to increase your chances of appearing as a featured snippet, and how to use structured data to markup your FAQs. How To Find FAQs Here are three simple ways to find FAQ related keywords to target on your website: People Also Ask To find potential FAQs using People Also Ask: Related Searches To find potential FAQs using Related Searches, scroll down to the bottom of the search results page to find Related Searches. Google presents these related searches to help searchers find more information that is related to their original 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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What’s The Best Info To Commercial Content Ratio For Affiliate SEO? [Data-Backed Study]

Matt Diggity — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 13:01:26 +0000

In December 2020, many affiliate websites completely lost their rankings due to Google’s Core Algorithm Update. If your site’s rankings were also wiped out by this update or if you just want to make sure your sites won’t be affected by it in the future, this post is for you. At the time, I had crawled over 600 affiliate websites to tease out what commonalities there were on sites that gained rankings vs sites that lost rankings following the update. You can watch that analysis here: One of the core findings was that the ratio between informational content to commercial content seemed to play a part. In particular, affiliate sites with high proportions of commercial content seemed to be hit the hardest. This post is a follow-up and presents an analysis of the ideal ratio of commercial content to informational content. I’ve uncovered some golden nuggets that I’m excited to share with you! How This Analysis Was Conducted With the help of one of my rockstar staff members, we collected data on a total of 1,517 affiliate websites across 32 different industries that are winning after the Dec 2020 core update. The criteria for selecting websites was simple: The goal of our study was to look for sites that either weren’t affected or that experienced a positive effect (even if this positive effect occurred down the track, per the websites that lost and then reclaimed their rankings). As a result, our data-driven study allowed us to reveal the general ratio between info to commercial content that worked for the affiliate sites that were clearly winning after the December 2020 core update. Average Informational To Commercial Content Ratio For our analysis, “informational content” is defined as anything that does not include affiliate links and does not target keywords with commercial intent. The sole purpose of info content is to answer questions or to educate the reader. On the other hand, commercial (or “money content”) typically has the following features: Of course, these parameters don’t cover every single commercial page out there. There are definitely outliers that we probably missed. But for the most part, these parameters will do the job and give a decent picture for us to work from. We ignored the small percentage of “other” pages that did not fit into either of these criteria. These include the home, about, contact, and category pages to name a few. Key Insights Average % of Information vs Commercial Content for the Full Set of Surviving Sites By analyzing the ratio of info to commercial content, we wanted to determine some industry guidelines for affiliate sites moving forward. Thanks to this data, we no longer need to rely on speculation and “gut feeling”, you can see the average ratio of the winning sites above. Naturally, there’s a big distribution and a handful of outliers compared to these averages. But, as you’ll see in the scatter plot below, the majority of sites that survived the December 2020 update have a heavy focus on informational content. We also looked at the data according to different industries. As you’ll see below, there’s a broad range of commercial to informational content ratios with the exception of “Coupons”, a clear outlier. However, all other industries had a higher percentage of informational content than commercial content on average. Note: The percentage of info to commercial content in this bar graph doesn’t total 100% due to that small percentage of “other” content we mentioned earlier. Affiliate sites in the “Automotive” industry have the lowest amount of commercial content sitting at 20% on average. On the other end of the scale, “Office Supply” and “Music” have 42% and 39% commercial content respectively. A 22% difference in the amount of commercial content only goes to show how, like everything else in SEO, the ratio of info to commercial content required for a website to thrive differs with each industry. Now let’s look at specific segments of the data and how different factors influence the info to commercial content ratio. Info To Commercial Content Ratio For Niche Vs Authority Sites We noticed a correlation between the ratio of commercial content and whether a site was classed as a niche or authority site. For our purposes, niche websites only focus on one specific topic or vertical within an industry. For instance, a website that only focuses on the best table saws is considered a niche site. By contrast, authority sites have content on multiple different topics. For example, a website like Best of Machinery, which reviews all types of garden and power tools, would be classed as an authority site. Within our dataset, on average, niche sites have 6.6% more commercial content than authority sites. Niche Sites We also noticed that industries dominated by niche sites correlated with higher amounts of commercial content. Note: The percentage of info to commercial content in this bar graph doesn’t total 100% due to that small percentage of “other” content we mentioned earlier. For instance, over 80% of total sites in the following industries were niche sites. They’re also at the top of the list for industries with the highest amounts of commercial content: Now let’s compare to authority sites. Authority Sites When we look at the distribution of authority sites in specific industries, it’s interesting to note that different industries rise to the top compared with niche sites. Note: The percentage of info to commercial content in this bar graph doesn’t total 100% due to that small percentage of “other” content we mentioned earlier. It’s also clear that with the exception of “Coupons” (a clear outlier in our study), the winning authority sites have a lower percentage of commercial content compared to niche sites, regardless of industry. Commercial To Info Ratio For Sites With High E-A-T Factors There is a subset of websites that require a large number of signals indicating expertise, authoritativeness, and trust (E-A-T). Typically, these sites fall into what’s known as “Your Money, Your Life” (YMYL) niches. If your site falls in this category, a high amount of commercial content could get in the way of your trust-building signals. In our study, we analyzed affiliate sites in four YMYL niches including: Typically, YMYL sites fall below the average benchmark of 29% for the percentage of commercial content. Key Takeaway Play it safe if your affiliate site is in a YMYL niche. Keep your commercial content to a maximum of 25% and aim for over 70% expert, informational content. Does Website Size Affect Commercial To Info Content Ratio? Given the above insights about niche sites, we also checked out whether there is any correlation between a website’s size and the ratio between commercial to info content. Smaller sites tended to have higher proportions of commercial content though our data did not suggest a different threshold for websites of different sizes. It could also be the case that larger websites that publish more content each month run out of commercial content they could publish. Key Takeaway When you’re starting out, you can tip the scales towards more commercial content, even if the ratio is higher than your industry’s average. There’s no shortage of small websites out there with more than 40% commercial content! However, as your website grows, you should aim to tip the balance towards more informational content. Ideally, you should be aiming for over 65% of informational content. Publishing Velocity & Info To Commercial Ratio Publishing velocity relates to the rate at which new articles are added to a website. Like most affiliate marketers, you probably don’t have the resources to compete with big-budget sites like NerdWallet or the Wirecutter as far as monthly content production is concerned. So we looked at publishing velocity to see whether you might be at a disadvantage due to publishing fewer articles a month. In our analysis, we looked at six patterns related to publishing velocity based on how many new articles went live over a 6 month period. These include: Regardless of how many articles a month are published, the data indicates a fairly narrow band of 24% – 33% commercial content compared with 62% – 72% informational content. Key Takeaway It doesn’t matter if you publish more or less content per month; it’s still best to stick to your industry’s average info to commercial ratio. If you’re not sure what that is, aim for a maximum of 30% commercial content and at least 65% informational content. So, What’s The Ideal Ratio Of Info To Commercial Content? No matter how you cut it, the ratio of commercial to info content that Google is rewarding fits into a fairly tight spread. Authority sites tend to skew towards more informational content, whereas niche sites typically have higher proportions of commercial content. This pattern holds true for most industries with a few exceptions, including: Is 60/40 A Safe Ratio For Info To Commercial Content? Some industries have loads of websites with over 40% commercial content. In fact, around 29% of all sites we looked at had more 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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How to Double Monthly Traffic Within Six Months – [eCommerce 2024 Case Study]

Matt Diggity — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 11:40:10 +0000

Do you have an eCommerce website with hundreds of category pages and thousands of product pages? Learn how to grow your organic Google traffic in this follow along case study. I’ll guide you step-by-step so you can learn the same tactics that my team at The Search Initiative used to double our client’s organic traffic on their eCommerce sneaker website within six months. You’ll learn how to achieve similar results by: Before jumping into the strategy, here’s a summary of the main challenges that the site was facing when the client joined our agency. And if you prefer to consume your content via video, you can watch the full break down here: The Challenge This eCommerce site operates in one of the most saturated and competitive markets – fashion. More specifically, the site sells sneakers from the biggest brands across the globe, which means that it has thousands of product pages and hundreds of category pages. The main objective of this campaign, which commenced in April 2021, was to increase the site’s keyword visibility and search traffic to the website in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2021. To achieve this, we focused on optimizing the content and technical aspects of the site to provide the best experience for customers. The product and category descriptions on many of the client’s pages were poorly optimized with standardized text that didn’t convert. We therefore had to focus on making sure that these descriptions were well optimized so as to engage and inform the user. In addition, the site had hundreds of product pages that were not categorized properly which meant that navigating the site was difficult for customers. After optimizing the product pages with better descriptions, we build backlinks towards them in order to improve the site and page’s authority. Below, you’ll find out, step-by-step, how to achieve these incredible results so you can replicate them on your own website(s). Category & Product Page Optimization The category and product pages are probably the most important pages on your eCommerce site. These are the pages where you’re convincing users to buy what you’re selling. So it’s crucial that the content on these pages is optimized for both search engines (keywords) and users (content). In this section, you’ll learn how to optimize the content on your category (or collection) pages, as well as how to write descriptions for your products. Optimizing Category Pages The main purpose of category (or collection) pages is to organize the products you sell into logical groups, making it easier for visitors to “browse” and find what they’re looking for. Optimizing isn’t just about ensuring that your content includes the keyword(s) you want to target. You want to make sure that the content on your category pages is optimized to address the user’s search intent for the primary terms you want it to rank for. If the answer to both of these questions is no, here’s what you need to do: You may come across some keywords with mixed intent, i.e. the results displayed may address more than one type of intent. This is usually the case for broader search terms with a higher search volume like “cheese”. The top result from the above example is informational. If you scroll down a little further, you can see that Google ranks pages that satisfy an informational intent. Scrolling down even further, you can see that the results have changed and now address a transactional intent instead. In cases like this, you want to optimize your content to match the pages closest in intent to yours. For example, if you are selling cheese on your website, you should align your content with similar eCommerce pages that are ranking in the top positions. For instance, for an eCommerce website selling sweatshirts and looking to rank for “mens sweatshirts”, you may find that the competing pages have a lot less content than you on their collections pages. The above top-ranking page only has a couple of sentences at the top explaining the kind of products that the user can find, but yours (like our client’s) may have lots of content at the bottom of the page. Therefore, to align your page with this competing page, you would look to move your content “above the fold” (i.e. above the products) and add a “Read more” functionality. Why? Because it’s clear that having lots of text at the bottom of the page offers little value to the user as they may never reach the bottom. Adding the “Read more” functionality allows you to include your most important keywords within the first paragraph, which is displayed to all users. It also provides a better user experience because visitors who want to learn more about the products you offer have the choice to click through to read more without impeding the experience of those who don’t. For more insights into how to audit and optimize your content (for any page), check out this article. How To Write Product Descriptions Your product descriptions are a deciding factor on whether a visitor purchases on your site or not. The best product descriptions convey the product’s value to the visitor and convince them to buy it. Here are the top tips on how to write well-optimized product descriptions for your eCommerce website: 1. Write For Your Target Customer Write descriptions with your target customer in mind, not search engines. Remember that different products may be suitable for different types of customers. Factors like budget and experience will determine which products your customers look at. For example, using language like “great for beginners” or “perfect for beginners” can help make the user’s decision much easier as they’ll be able to quickly decide whether the product is right for them or not. The length of your product descriptions should also be based on your target customer’s needs i.e. the buyer’s awareness. High Buyer Awareness Customers who have a high buyer awareness will already have a good understanding of the product and why they need to purchase it. Here’s an example of a product description from Asos for men’s plain t-shirts that targets a customer with high buyer awareness. There’s no need to include hundreds of words of content to describe a product that everyone knows. Instead, the user’s likely going to skim the key pieces of information about the product such as the color, sizing, fit etc. Low Buyer Awareness Users with a low buyer awareness will need a lot more information about the product in order to convince them to buy. Here’s an example of a product description for a TV on John Lewis’ site that targets a customer with low buyer awareness. This product description contains considerably more information about the product than the t-shirt example. The site also includes drop down sections detailing the product specifications and delivery information. This is because choosing a television is more of an investment than a t-shirt, so the description needs to be thorough enough to convince the customer to click through and make a purchase. High And Low Buyer Awareness There’s nothing stopping you from writing descriptions that cater to both types of customers. You can have a shorter description with the most important facts/features about the product to cater a customer with high buyer awareness followed by more detailed information about the product. Here’s an example of a camera from Jessops, which caters to both types of users… There are short bullet points summarizing the key features and specs for the camera for high buyer awareness… … and more detailed information underneath for those with low buyer awareness. 2. Be Informative Users want to know everything they can about the product before deciding on whether to buy or not, so ensure that you include as much information about the product as you can. Apart from the basics like the product name, company name, and manufacturer name, here’s a list of all of the kinds of things that you should consider including (if applicable): 3. Make Your Descriptions Unique It’s no secret that having duplicate content on your site will affect your chances of ranking in the search results. Therefore, the biggest mistake you can make with product descriptions is copying and pasting the manufacturers’ descriptions on your site. Here’s a description taken directly from Dyson’s page for its hairdryer: Here’s an eCommerce site that’s copied and pasted the description word for word. Now, how many web pages have the exact same copy? 731 to be precise… Unsurprisingly, the above page doesn’t rank for any keywords that are related to “dyson hair dryer”. In fact, the page only ranks for 1 keyword (“hair dryer david jones”). This goes to show that Google doesn’t want to display multiple versions of the same content to its users and that it’s crucial that you ensure every product has its own unique description. 4. Think About The Layout How you structure and format your product descriptions is just as important as the copy itself. Make use 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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How To Do a Backlink Audit (And Link Building Plan) In 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 12:51:08 +0000

If you want to know whether your website is in good SEO shape or not, you need to check your backlinks. I’ve been doing SEO since 2009. I have played around with both white hat and black hat SEO techniques, and I can tell you from my own experience that your backlink profile health can make or break your SEO efforts.. That’s why a backlink audit is crucial for your website’s search engine ranking. In this article, I’ll show you exactly how to do a backlink audit using Ahrefs backlink audit tool. I personally found this tool to be the most helpful. You’ll also learn how to analyze such links on your backlink profile so that you can identify any bad backlinks to your site that may prevent it from ranking to its potential. Once you’ve done a complete link audit, the next step is to continue to build websites link acquisition authority. Therefore, in the final chapter, you’ll find out how to create a Link Requirement Estimate Plan for your site – it’s a report that looks at how many backlinks/referring domains you’ll need to outrank your competitors. Quick Summary What is a Backlink Audit? A backlink audit is all about analyzing the quality of links towards your website from other domains with the aim to make sure that there aren’t any unnatural or spammy backlinks that could potentially hinder your site’s SEO performance or result in a Google Manual Penalty. Why is a Backlink Audit Important? A backlink audit is important because links are one of the most powerful and important ranking factors in Google’s Search algorithms. There’s no denying the importance of links and, by extension, the art of link building has on your website’s ability to rank. A Backlinko study of one million search results found that backlinks correlated with search engine rankings more than any other ranking factor. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that links can also be one of the most problematic components of your site’s SEO health. When you buy a car, you have to put the right fuel in it to make it run. In the same way, backlinks are like a website’s fuel where the right links provide the boost it needs to move forwards (rank). Apart from helping you find the potentially dangerous links, performing a link audit also helps provide an insight into your backlink profile and how you may want to strategize for a future link-building campaign. This is something that ties into the Link Requirement Plan section of this article. Backlink Audit Checklist Before we begin, here’s a breakdown of every backlink audit tool you’ll need to identify potentially dangerous backlinks to your site. Get An Overview of Your Link Profile (And Your Competitors) The first step in this link profile audit process is all about getting to know the state of your site’s link profile before digging deep into the links themselves. The simplest way to do this is via Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool. Site Explorer > Enter your domain > Choose the “*.domain/*” mode Scroll a little further down, and you’ll see two graphs which show the number of referring domains (i.e. domains linking) and referring pages your website has seen over time. This graph is useful because it shows any sharp increases (which may be a result of a negative SEO attack), or decreases (which may represent a sudden loss of links) that may be of importance. You can compare both the referring domains and the link velocity graph with your competitors. To find out more about link velocity, check out the video below. Scroll further down, and you’ll find a table that shows the most common anchor texts used to link to your website. With this table, you can quickly identify whether the anchor text distribution of your link profile is natural or not. If you see mostly branded, URL based anchor texts, you have little to worry about. If you spot any anchors that are spammy (i.e. they have nothing to do with your website), or over-optimized (i.e. they are mostly keyword-rich), then this indicated that you will likely need to dig a little deeper by scrutinizing the full anchor text report that Ahrefs provides. You can do this by clicking on “view full report”. This information will come in handy later on! Follow the above steps to get an overview of your competitor’s backlink profile too – this will help you see where your website stands in comparison. Find & Pool Your Backlinks To perform your backlink audit, you need to gather data first! To get the most comprehensive data on your link profile, we recommend using as many sources as possible, but the main source we will use here is Ahrefs. To grab your backlink data head over to: Overview > Backlinks > One link per domain > Export > Quick/Full Export > Start Export From the export, delete all columns except: Now that you’ve collected all the information you need about your backlink profile, it’s time to analyze the actual backlinks! Analyze Your Backlinks Below we have listed a few metrics that you should look to speed up the process of analyzing all your backlinks. Each of these will help you answer the question, is this a spammy backlink? Domain Authority Your website’s Domain Authority is the perceived amount of authority your site has based on the quality and quantity of your backlinks. A link from a website with a high authority indicates that the link is of higher “quality”. Ahrefs has a logarithmic scale for Domain Authority called Domain Rating, in general: It’s worth noting that not all domains with a low DR score are spam sites. In these cases, other factors such as the language, number of keywords, link relevance should be considered. Page Authority Page Authority (or Ahrefs’ URL Rating) indicates the strength and authority of the linking page as opposed to the domain. A higher URL Rating suggests a higher quality page in terms of its ability to rank in the search results. Anchor Text We’ve already seen the importance of what types of anchors are used to link to your website. Referring Domains Websites that have a higher amount of referring domains indicate higher authority and ranking power. Use this metric in conjunction with Domain Authority. Organic Keywords The most valuable links are those whose domains rank for lots of keywords. Organic Traffic This metric tells you how much organic traffic the linked pages get. Getting links from websites (and pages) that are bringing in organic search traffic themselves offers more value to your website. Ahrefs’ metric isn’t quite as accurate as Google Analytics, but since you aren’t the site owner of the domains linking you, this is the best way to know how much traffic the backlinks pointing to you are getting. Total Backlinks More often than not, a website will only link to you once. A quick way to find potentially harmful or spammy referring domains is to identify any websites that have multiple links to your website. Two or three links is fine, but if these domains have 100s or maybe even 1000 backlinks linking to you, then it’s worth taking a closer look. Link Relevance Ideally, you want your inbound links to come from websites within your niche. If you have an eCommerce or niche website that sells vegan products, then a link from a health magazine is much more valuable to you than a link from a website about interior design. However, this doesn’t mean that you should disavow any domains that aren’t related to your website – because they may still be authoritative, bring in lots of search traffic, rank for lots of keywords etc. Language Use the “Language” filter on ahrefs to identify potentially harmful links from websites in different languages. If your website is in English and you see an unnatural amount of links coming from sites in various other languages, then it’s likely that these sites will offer little SEO value. Dofollow vs Nofollow There are two main types of backlinks: Dofollow links and Nofollow links. Dofollow links pass authority, Nofollow links don’t. Use the “Link type” filter on Ahrefs to identify any dofollow backlinks that are harmful to your site. Pattern Matching As you’ve probably noticed, it’s almost impossible to do a backlink audit manually, so it’s worth having a few tricks up your sleeve to quickly and efficiently spot those toxic links and reduce your toxicity score… … using pattern matching! Check For Manual Links Penalties An SEO’s worst nightmare (when it comes to link building) is finding out that Google has penalized their site. Link building has always been, is, and always will be one of the most lucrative of SEO components. It’s crucial that you follow Google’s guidelines and do not use any link schemes that manipulate Google’s PageRank algorithm. To check for manual penalties from Google: head over to Google Search Console > Security & Manual Actions 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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How To Do Keyword Research for SEO in 2024: Strategy & Tools

Matt Diggity — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 06:56:00 +0000

As an experienced digital marketer and SEO expert, I know that no search engine optimization strategy can be truly effective without first performing thorough keyword research. Regardless of how much or how good your content is or how many backlinks your website has, you’re going to struggle to rank if nobody is searching for what you’re writing about. That’s why I’ve put together a guide on how to carry out keyword research, along with a helpful checklist and template for you to follow. Quick Summary Keyword Research Basics Before showing you how to go about picking the most important and fruitful keyword ideas for your online business or site, let’s define what Keyword Research is and why it’s important for SEO. What is Keyword Research? Keyword Research for SEO is the process of finding and analyzing keywords that are most relevant to a particular niche and which can bring the most organic traffic to your site. This way, you can use those keywords to improve a website’s position in the SERPs. However, it’s not only about finding terms that will drive the most traffic but also about finding the right search phrases that will help turn organic visits into conversions. Why Is Keyword Research Important? Keyword research is important for a number of reasons. Before you create an SEO strategy, you should conduct Keyword Research first. Otherwise, you won’t know which search phrases present an opportunity to improve your website’s position in the SERPs. There are several reasons why Keyword Research is essential to your website’s growth… Keyword Research allows you to identify a list of keywords with decent search volume that are the most relevant and valuable to your business or website. Even if you have an idea of what internet users are searching for, guessing can only get you so far. By including the most popular keywords, you’ll be able to increase your website’s organic traffic. Thanks to Keyword Research, you’ll also understand which queries your competitors are ranking for and create a strategy to eliminate this keyword gap and overtake them in the SERPs. At the same time, Keyword Research can help you achieve the most results with the least effort. How? You might find keywords relevant to your niche that your competitors aren’t ranking for, in which case reaching the top spots in the search results pages and driving more traffic becomes even easier. Here are some more ideas to find easy keywords: Lastly, analyzing your keyword ideas will help you answer some important questions like: Keyword Research Checklist Without understanding what keywords your audience is searching for, your site won’t rank anywhere near its potential. For those who want to know how to research keywords, we’ve put together a checklist outlining the core steps you should follow when carrying out Keyword Research for SEO. To complete this Keyword Research process, you will need: We’ll go through the template below using thesoundjunky.com as an example. Get An Overview of Your Website’s Keyword Visibility The first step in this Keyword Research process is all about getting an overview of your website’s current keyword visibility – i.e., identifying which keywords your website is already ranking for. If you have a brand new website that isn’t ranking for any queries, you can either skip these steps or do them for your most important competitors to give you an idea of what keywords you should target. Raw Data Enter your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tool, click Organic Keywords in the left sidebar. Ensure that you see the keyword ideas for your target location (in this example, it’s the USA), click Export. Then, click Full Export (if you’re ranking for more than 1000 keyword ideas) > Start Export. Once exported, remove all columns from the spreadsheet apart from those that I have kept in the Raw Data tab of the Keyword Research template. Copy these keywords into the tab and sort the keywords by Volume. You now have a full list of keyword ideas that your website is currently ranking for based on search volume. Keyword Map The next step is to create a keyword map to see which URLs are ranking for which terms. Create a copy of your Raw Data tab. This time, order the columns so that you have the following: Now, sort the data by URL. So that your sheet now looks something like this: You’re now going to create a Pivot Table so that the keyword data looks more presentable. Highlight all of the data by clicking on the blank cell in the top-left corner. Click the Filter icon, Data > Pivot Table. Select New sheet, click Create. In the Pivot Editor, add in the rows in the same order listed above. Be sure to deselect Show totals. Call this Pivot Table, “Keyword Map” and hide your copy of the Raw Data tab by right-clicking on the tab and selecting Hide sheet. You can stretch the URL column to show more text. And that’s your Keyword Map complete – this is a more visually appealing and informative representation of the site’s keyword visibility. For example, you can perform useful calculations to see: Low Hanging Keywords More often than not, you’ll have lots of keywords ranking just outside of the first page (i.e. positions 11 – 30 in the search results). These are potential quick wins that you can target as a priority. To find your Low Hanging Keywords, go back to Ahrefs and this time, filter your keywords by Position, After clicking Apply, you can export, copy and paste the terms into the Low Hanging Keywords tab. Alternatively, you can create a copy of your Raw Data tab again and filter the terms by Position using the Filter icon. You now have a list of search terms that you can optimize to climb into the first page of the search engines. Long Tail Keywords The next step is to identify long-tail search terms. These keyword ideas often have a lower SEO difficulty and present traffic with good conversion potential. Long-tail keywords might have lower search volume than general keywords, but they usually have low competition and are more likely to interest the target readers and generate conversions. Essentially, you want to look for terms that contain words like: To do this, head over to the Ahrefs keyword analysis tool and type in the above phrases (separated by commas) into the Include text box. In the Exclude text box, click Any target, deselect URLs and click Apply. This will now show you the keywords that contain the above words/phrases. Export, copy and paste these terms into the Long Tail Keywords tab. Sort by Keyword from A to Z. You now have a filtered list of long-tail terms that your website is currently ranking for. These are great for answering questions that your target audience may have about your niche, business, or site. Potential Keyword Cannibalization A common problem websites face is when multiple URLs with similar or the same content compete for the same keyword – this is known as keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization can really hurt a site’s SEO performance, so it’s important to ensure that there isn’t any internal competition between your landing pages. Here’s a quick way to spot potential keyword cannibalization using Ahrefs. Create another copy of your Raw Data tab and call it Potential Keyword Cannibalization. This time, you want your columns to be ordered with: Sort your keyword ideas from A to Z – this is a super important step! In the Cannibalized column, add the following Excel formula: =if(A1=A2,"Yes",if(A2=A3,"Yes","No")) This formula is checking whether there are multiple instances of the same keyword in the spreadsheet. Copy this formula across all of the rows in your spreadsheet so that it looks like this: Next, filter out the keywords that aren’t cannibalized. Click the Filter icon, click the icon under the Cannibalized? column, deselect Yes, then click OK. This will show you all keywords that aren’t cannibalized. Highlight them all and delete the rows by right clicking, Delete selected rows to leave you with just the terms that are cannibalized. Hopefully, your sheet will be empty at this stage (as you don’t want any cannibalization), but if not, it’ll look something like this… Remove the Cannibalized? Column and sort by Volume to identify the most important keywords that have been cannibalized. You now have a list of cannibalized keywords. To learn more about analyzing and fixing keyword cannibalization, check out this article. Finding New Keyword Suggestions & Ideas Up until this stage of this SEO Keyword Research process, we’ve only focused on the keywords that your website is already ranking for in Google’s SERP. In this chapter, I’ll show you how to find new keyword ideas to target by using the same keyword research tool (Ahrefs) and other methods. Identify Seed Keywords by Topic A great way to build a foundation of new keyword ideas is to brainstorm the key topics that define your website’s niche with seed keywords. Seed 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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What a Data Dump From Empire Flippers Told Us About the Best Niches for Affiliate Marketing

Matt Diggity — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 04:28:47 +0000

As a seasoned affiliate marketer and founder of several successful niche websites, I understand the challenges that come with choosing the right niche for your affiliate marketing business. That’s why I was excited to partner with Empire Flippers to conduct a comprehensive data study on more than 300 affiliates, display advertising, and Amazon associate sites sold since 2019. We’ve broken down this data to give you some niche ideas and help you choose the most lucrative affiliate marketing niches for your 1st or 50th site. We’ll start by using the data to highlight the most important findings. Then we’ll take an eagle-eyed view of how all the sites in our study handle content, links, and time spent. Finally, we’ll reveal and analyze our favorite niches for affiliate marketing (in our opinion). If you’d prefer to watch rather than read, I cover some of the key insights in this video. Quick Summary What We Learned—Insights and Revelations We took the 300+ sites we received as part of the data dump and organized them by affiliate marketing niches, assets, and monetization model. From there, we compared the groups against each other to get some answers that can be carried into your next affiliate marketing campaigns. Which niche brings in the most affiliate revenue? Which niche benefits most from a content-heavy or link-heavy affiliate marketing strategy? Here are some of the things we’ve learned. We’ll tell you more about the context of each of these insights in the sections below. Tables have been included to help you understand more about how these sites stand up to other niches. You may have questions about how some affiliate marketing niches performed. We’ll cover our list of some of the best niches for affiliate marketing in more detail right after these insights. The News & Education Niche Reported the Highest Average Adjusted Monthly Revenue at $8439 Per Month News & Education held the lead for revenue after we tidied up the data a little. That tidying was necessary. You can find affiliate programs in the education niche that pay over $80 to $120 for each sale. At first, the Religion & Spirituality niche appeared to be one of the most profitable niches by a long shot, with a commanding lead at $24,842. Sure, this is an interesting niche (and probably an evergreen niche if the last 5000 years of history are any indication), but we just didn’t have the faith to place it among the most profitable affiliate marketing niches without some digging. Before we simply took that number as proof of a trend, the team dove a little deeper into the data. What we found was that only two sites sold in that niche for the life of the data. One was making well over $20k, and the other was barely clearing $1000 a month. Unfortunately, our view of the Religion & Spirituality affiliate niche was badly contorted by the high-earning whale of a site. However, there are multiple metaphysical affiliate programs out there with lucrative commissions. We found a few other niches that had the same problem. We didn’t get enough data points to assess the following affiliate niches: Because of this, we removed the above niches from the list and came up with the “Adjusted” list below. So, beyond news, which niches have the best revenue when you adjust for measurable niches? Our data gave us this top 10 list of the highest revenue-earning niches for affiliate marketing. The Adjusted top 10 Revenue-Earners These sites report the most revenue, but that doesn’t solve our whole ROI equation. The most profitable affiliate marketing niches are the ones that also have low costs. We’ll be looking deeper into the best affiliate marketing niches later. Let’s look at the data about the baking hobby niche and whether low revenue means it’s not the best profitable niche. The Baking Niche Reports Some of the Lowest Monthly Revenues at $773 Per Month The baking niche had some of the lowest reported revenue among the affiliate marketing niches that could be examined. Don’t hold that against it, though. Remember, our data only includes sites that sell. The decent number of baking sites that made it into our analysis suggests that these sites don’t need much revenue to make it to market. That could make baking a safe (if possibly a little saturated) niche market for your first successful affiliate marketing business. These sites mostly host recipes and often monetize through affiliate offers for the ingredients or kitchen accessories you need to complete the recipe. Sub-niches and micro-niches may focus on a single type of recipe, such as cocktails. You may be interested to know who the baking niche is sharing the bottom of the ladder with. The table below covers the five lowest-earning niches and the average monthly income reported at the time of sale. The Bottom 5 Revenue-Earners Again, remember that this table only assesses the revenue. Low revenue niches can still be profitable niches. If you need niche ideas, a less competitive niche with lower revenue can be a great place to start your affiliate marketing business. The Medical Niche Reports the Best ROI on Content With a Revenue/Content Ratio of $33.14 Per Published Page The Medical niche was a standout winner of the revenue/content ROI among all the other lucrative affiliate marketing niches. Affiliate marketers reported approximately $33 a month for each published page on their site. A lot of factors may go on to explain why medical niche content performs so well compared to content on other affiliate business sites. For one, you don’t need that many pages of content to target some narrow medical issues (for example, snoring). If you’re looking for some alternatives for your next investment, the image below shows the rest of the niches that get great ROI for content. The Top 10 Niches for Content ROI For several other reasons, we believe that the medical niche is one of the most profitable affiliate marketing niches, and the best overall. After a few more insights, we’ll take a deeper dive into what this lucrative niche is doing right. The Office Niche Reports the Best ROI on Link Building With a Revenue/Backlink Ratio of $5.61 Per Backlink The office supply niche significantly beat out some of the nearest competition to establish itself as a profitable affiliate marketing niche that gives the best revenue return for backlinks built. Bear in mind, we’re talking about overall backlinks to a site, not individual referring domains. This niche is a bigger player than the name may suggest. It’s less about staplers and paper and more about high-end PCs, standing desks, and custom ergonomic chairs. Many of these items have great commission rates. Office supply was already a healthy niche in the past. Now that more people are working from home, it is growing significantly faster than before. This could be a profitable niche for you with a little market research. For comparison, we’ve included our list of the top 10 niches that deliver revenue for backlinks. The Top 10 Niches for Backlink ROI You may notice there is some crossover with the particular niches featured here. The medical, bed & bath, apparel, and music niches all found their way into both the top content ROI and top affiliate link ROI lists. That’s a good indication that these could be some of the most profitable niches for new affiliate marketers or affiliate program veterans who want to boost their margins. The Survival & Security Niche Reports the Best ROI on Time With a Revenue/Hour Ratio of $2860.25 Per Hour Wow! Quit your job today because survival is quite possibly one of the most profitable affiliate marketing niches offering $100,000 for a solid 40-hour workweek. Right? Unfortunately, probably not. And I talk about more below, you should be careful about trusting hours worked numbers. They aren’t based on anything except self-reports, and even if they weren’t, we have a problem… Once again, this is one of those particular niches where a whale undermines our data. In this case, it’s a giant affiliate business site that was earning tens of thousands. In the same period, only a few other (much smaller sites) sold in that specific niche. For your interest, we’ve included the rest of the top 5 niches for this measurement. The 5 Best Niches for Revenue/Hour ROI Non-Amazon Sites Earn the Most Compared to Other Monetization Models, With a Monthly Average of $5540 Among the monetization models of the studied sites (affiliate marketing, display advertising, and amazon associates), affiliate marketing was a clear winner. The affiliate marketing sites in this study brought in more than $5000/week in average revenue. I would argue that it’s no surprise to see this model do this well. Affiliate marketing has long offered better commission rates than other monetization models. With Amazon associates, there’s one game in town. They set the commission rates, and you can like it or take a hike. With affiliate marketing, there are a million offers out there, and big Read More Read More

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How To Do a SEO Content Audit For Your Website in 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 05:19:41 +0000

You’ve probably heard the saying, “content is king.” While having a technically sound website and strong link profile are great accelerators for SEO dominance, these days, they’ll hardly move the needle if you don’t have a solid content strategy. As an experienced digital marketer who has built multiple successful affiliate websites, I understand the importance of content in driving results. Making sure that things like your page titles (aka title tags), headings, and meta description are optimized for your primary keyword is important too, but thorough content audits will help seal the deal. In this article, you’ll learn how to perform a website content audit in detail and highlight why you should make it a part of your SEO and content marketing strategy. You’ll find out the importance of writing content that is easy to read and is written with the intent of the core keyword you want to target in mind. I’ll also show you how to ensure that you don’t have landing pages with thin content, duplicate content, and keyword cannibalization. Lastly, we’ll look at how to audit your content for E-A-T signals which will help build your site’s authority. This content audit spreadsheet checklist will help maximize your content marketing efforts and reach your SEO content goals, as we’ll make sure that no stone is left unturned. Quick Summary What is a Content Audit? A content audit is the process of analyzing the main text of your web pages to ensure that it is helpful to your users and bots like Google. This process can help find and fix issues such as low readability, duplicate content, or keyword cannibalization, all of which could hurt the hard work you’ve put in with your SEO efforts. Remember, content audits aren’t about optimizing page titles, headings, and meta descriptions. If you want to audit these, you should use Screaming Frog (or any other crawler of your choice). A content audit spreadsheet ensures that your site’s content assets (i.e., landing pages, blog posts, etc) are created with both Google and the end-user in mind. Why Do You Need a Content Audit? You need a content audit because it will help you identify and take stock of which pages on your site work well and which don’t. Content audits are primarily about improving content metrics such as readability so that users will be more likely to spend more time on your website. For example, if you are running an eCommerce business, the amount of time your users spend browsing your website directly impacts your sales. Conducting a content audit also ensures that you’re providing your audience with the best possible experience while making sure that the text is optimized for Google. To put it straight, content audits will help refine your site’s content assets as well as increase conversion rates and social shares. Content Audit Template & Checklist I’ve compiled a list of key Google analytics tools, a content audit data template, and a checklist to make this process as smooth as possible for you. Content Audit Tools Search Intent What is Search Intent? The search intent of a keyword is the underlying reason for the user’s query – i.e., it’s about understanding why and what the user is looking for. There are four main types of intent: Important: not all informational keywords are questions. For example, users searching “Elon Musk” are likely looking to find out more about Elon Musk. Why is Search Intent Important? Search intent is important because the primary goal for Google is and always has been to provide users with the best and most relevant results for their queries. While you could pretty much get away with ranking in the top 5 positions with links and mediocre content before, this content strategy doesn’t work in today’s SEO climate. Google’s understanding of a piece of content and its ability to provide relevant results is continually improving through machine learning techniques like Natural Language Processing and its BERT algorithm. If your content marketing strategy doesn’t account for what the end user is looking for, how can you expect your SEO goals to be met? As a result, it’s one of the most important steps in this content audit process. Search Intent Audit Checklist The best way to “audit” intent is to compare your content to the sites that are ranking in the top positions for your core keywords. Then, you want to check whether your content aligns with what Google is rewarding. It’s likely impossible to audit every single page on your site, especially if you have an online store with 100s or maybe even 1000s of products. Therefore, you should start by making a list of the most important content pieces you want to audit first. Kind of like a content inventory! A quick Google search for your core terms will show you what kinds of results Google (and in turn users) is looking for. For example, below, you can see that for a transactional query like “Samsung phone cases”, Google leads with paid ads/shopping results. During your audit, you should: For example, a user searching for “how tall is the Eiffel Tower” is probably looking for a short, numerical answer. Whereas someone searching “why do we yawn” may be looking for a more in-depth answer. Answering these questions as part of your website content audit will allow you to pinpoint exactly what your target audience is looking for from their query. It will also help identify where you should place certain pieces of content. For example, if you target a keyword like “how to do a cartwheel,” you may find that the top ranking results include a video right at the top of the page. Therefore, to match the intent, you would do the same. Readability What is Readability? Readability refers to how easy it is for users (and search engines) to understand and read the content on a web page. Why is Readability Important? Making readability a part of your content audit process is important because reading a big block of text isn’t great for user experience. This may lead to an increase in the bounce rate (which you can track on Google Analytics) as users may simply lose interest and leave because they felt overwhelmed with information. Therefore, you should ensure that your website’s content is easy to read so that visitors don’t leave. Readability Audit Checklist A great (and free) tool for auditing the readability of a piece of content is Hemingway. It’ll give you a readability score and provide suggestions on how to simplify the text. Thin Content What is Thin Content? More often than not, “thin content” is referred to as content that is too short. However, there’s more to it than just length. A more accurate definition is content that offers little to no value to the target audience. It just so happens that most landing pages that are considered thin content by SEOs tend to be short in length. A quick way to spot these is via the tool Screaming Frog, which will allow you to order your site based on the number of words. The page below has lots of text, but is it actually valuable to the user? Not really. The most common types of pages that are considered as thin content contain: Why Should You Carry Out A Thin Content Audit? Let’s take a look at why your auditing content strategy should include checks for thin content by looking at it from both the user and search engine’s perspective. For Users As mentioned above, thin content pages offer little value to the searcher. As a result, they hinder the user experience and will likely lead to a higher bounce rate. You want to create pages with rich content that satisfies what the searcher is looking for. Otherwise, users will simply leave and visit a competitor. Because of this, other engagement metrics like the average time on page and conversion rates will also be impacted. For Search Engines Google evaluates content on both a page and domain level; and bases the frequency at which it crawls your site on the quality of your site’s content. This means that: If you’re still not convinced, a site with too many thin content pages can be penalized by Google with a manual penalty. Check out the video below, where Google’s Matt Cutts explains what it means if your site has been penalized with a thin content manual penalty. Thin Content Audit Checklist When going through your content inventory for thin content, look out for the following: Duplicate Content What is Duplicate Content? Duplicate content refers to content that is identical or very similar to existing content on the Web. So, this… And this… …would both be considered as duplicate content. It’s important to note that Google acknowledges that content that is the same or identical in most cases are “not deceptive in origin”. In other words, duplicate content is primarily an issue when content is “deliberately duplicated across domains in 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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Marketing Services SEO: Growing Monthly Website Traffic By 3012% – Case Study

Matt Diggity — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 11:59:54 +0000

Starting a new website from scratch? I’m going to share with you the steps my team at The Search Initiative took to grow a relatively new marketing service website’s monthly organic traffic by a whopping 3012%. From this case study, you will learn how to achieve these results by: The Challenge This client operates in the marketing industry within certain states within the US, specializing in several different marketing services. The client came to The Search Initiative with the aim of becoming an authoritative voice within their niche. This meant making sure that the content on the site, in particular, expressed topical authority or E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trust). Although keyword difficulty wasn’t going to be too high for the areas that the client covered, we knew that since we were pretty much starting from scratch, there was still some catching up to do in all aspects of SEO. The following is a step-by-step guide on how you can achieve incredible results with your SEO campaign. Focus On Content If you’ve ever had trouble ranking for a website focusing on a specific niche, or couldn’t rank a new product/review/location page on an authority site, it’s very likely that the root cause for this is a lack of topical authority (which is also sometimes referred to as topical relevance). This video goes into detail about how to build topical relevance with interlinking: What do I mean by “topical authority”? For that, you need to understand that these days, Google ranks domains that have several pages targeting a specific topic. Whereas before, you could rank with just a single landing page. This means that if you’re trying to rank a page on a topic, Google wants to see additional supporting content on your site that links to it. By building a cluster of pages to support the main page you want to rank, you’re essentially establishing topical relevance in Google’s eyes. Topical authority is currently one of the hottest topics (for lack of a better word) in Search – and rightfully so. Working toward topical authority can help you expand your site’s keyword visibility by ranking for a broader net of search terms. Let me show you how… Building Topical Authority With Supporting Content In order to establish and build topical authority, you need to make sure that you’re answering as many questions as you can about your topic, new product, or if you have a local SEO site, a new location that you want to target. So, instead of purely focusing on the core landing pages of your website, you can build topical relevance by creating supplemental content. To find out more about Topical Authority, watch this interview with Koray Tugberk. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of what you’ll need to do: Step 1: Identify The Core Topic It’s likely that you’ll already have a topic in mind. For example, you may be launching a new product/service for your online business, or you may be branching out your local business to operate in a new city or region. Alternatively, like us, you may have a new site that targets a micro-niche. For example, you may have something like the following: If you already have a topic in mind, you can skip on to Step 2. But what if you don’t fall into either of the above scenarios and don’t know where to start? Let’s say you have a site that reviews turntables, and are looking for a new topic to cover. Here’s how you can find new topics and keywords to cover using ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer tool: 1. Search For Broad Keywords 2. Review The Parent Topics Looking at the parent topics, you may identify that you don’t have any articles about “pioneer turntables”. Step 2: Create Supporting Articles For The Chosen Topic Now that you have your chosen topic, you’ll want to create some supporting articles for it – I recommend around 4 articles to support your main landing page on the topic. To find relevant keywords for these supporting articles, use Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer to: 1. Find Competitors for the Topic 2. Reverse Engineer Your Competitor’s Keywords Pick a primary keyword for your main landing page along with primary keywords for the supplemental articles too. Step 3: Add Contextual Links From Supplementary Articles to the Main Page This step is really important. Google follows links to discover new content to rank. Therefore, you need to add contextual links from all of your supplementary articles to your main article within the topic. Add your contextual links in the middle of the body of an article. Doing this will help Google see that your supporting article is being reinforced by your main article on that topic. When it comes to deciding what anchors to use for onsite links like this, you don’t have to be as careful as you would for off site link building. For example, here’s one way you may want to link to your main page from the four supporting articles: With this method, you’re essentially creating clusters of content that are topically related. This allows you to pass value from the smaller articles to the main content piece and, as a result, have a better chance of ranking that core page. User Intent A significant element of your content strategy should be focused on nailing the user intent (or search intent) of your pages. For example, if you search for “buy nintendo switch”, Google displays results that allow you to purchase the games console – which is what you’d expect. User intent is about making sure that your pages reflect what the searcher is looking for. Unsure about how to identify what kind of content you should include on your pages to address the search intent for the keyword you want to target? A simple search for your core keywords will tell you exactly what kind of content Google is rewarding for that term. For example, you can see below that for “best turntables”, all 10 of the top ranking pages are review/opinion-based articles. Doing this will help refine your content so that it satisfies the search intent of the keyword you want to target. On-Page Inventory After you create a content plan and start executing it, don’t forget about the existing content you already have on the site. Every word matters, and your old content needs to be held to the same standard. Therefore, you should also perform an on-page inventory on the core landing pages of your site. Page Titles Your page titles should be engaging, descriptive, not too long (max 65 characters) and include your primary keyword as close to the beginning as possible. Avoid page titles like this: Long Sleeve Sweatshirts For Men & Short Sleeve Sweatshirts For Men | SweatShirts.com It’s too long and repetitive. Aim for page titles like this: Buy Long & Short Sleeve Sweatshirts For Men | All Sizes On Sale Headings Headings help users quickly find what they’re looking for, as well as help search engines understand the layout and structure of your content. Here are some actionable steps you should take when optimizing your headings: Meta Descriptions Meta descriptions won’t help your website rank but should still be optimized as they are displayed within the search results. A well written meta description can be the deciding factor on whether a user clicks through to your site or not. URLs One of the first things that Google mentions in its SEO Starter Kit is URLs. Establishing E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trust) Google measures the perceived expertise, authority and trustworthiness of a site by looking at certain signals such as the characteristics of the content in addition to other ranking signals like links. Establishing E-A-T becomes increasingly important for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) websites where the information or services provided on a site may have a direct impact on a visitor’s wellbeing. For example, in our case, the client wanted to establish E-A-T within the marketing landscape. This means that the client’s potential customers (and Google for that matter) would expect the content on the website to be written by a marketing expert from a well-established and respected agency. Let’s break this down a little further. Expertise is achieved by the writer or creator of the content expressing a higher level of knowledge about the subject at hand. Authority is achieved if the content is created by an established or well-respected agency as opposed to a student or a lesser-known/experienced organization. Trust is achieved through ensuring that the content is factually correct or can be backed up by other sources to prove its credibility. Let’s take a look at how you can demonstrate E-A-T on your site: In fact, it’s specifically mentioned in Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines. For example, if you have a website that reviews turntables, you’re going to want to ensure that you’re reviewing and talking about the latest models. Therefore, you want to avoid having articles like “Top 10 Turntables Under $500 for 2020”, as Google and your readers will 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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The Definitive Technical SEO Audit Guide For 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 10 May 2021 06:28:17 +0000

To put it simply, if your website’s technical SEO isn’t on point – you’re not going to rank well on Google. As a professional digital marketer with over 10 years of experience in conducting technical SEO audits, I understand this very well. Having great content and backlinks isn’t enough when it comes to ranking in the top positions of Google search. If you really want to dominate the search engine results pages, you want to make sure that your website’s Technical SEO is perfect. Conducting a full technical Search engine optimization audit can be a pretty daunting task. Lucky for you, I’ve broken down each of these SEO elements and have provided a helpful SEO audit checklist with ready-to-use templates for you to follow. From the most basic level of ensuring that Google can crawl and index your content to more advanced techniques that look into site speed, mobile SEO, JavaScript SEO, and more, I’ll be with you every step of the way. Quick Summary What is a Technical SEO Audit? A Technical SEO audit is a process that is meant to identify and fix the technical issues that could make it harder for Google to crawl, index and rank your site. And to put it simply, make life easy for Google, and they make life easy for you. Common issues often discovered during a Technical search engine optimization audit include poor site architecture, broken links, slow page load speed, or display issues on mobile devices. The technical SEO audit is an important part of a website’s SEO strategy and should be one of the first things that you look into to improve your visibility in the Google search results. Why Are Technical SEO Audits Important? Technical SEO Audits are important because even if you’ve spent a long time creating excellent content, your users may not even see it if there are issues with your website’s crawlability and indexability. However, even if your site can be found by internet users, its rankings could be hurt by performance-related technical factors. Page load time is a ranking factor, which means that a slow website is unlikely to reach top spots in SERPs (search engine results page). Internet users are even less patient than Google crawlers and will leave your website if it takes ages to load. Likewise, a poorly structured website can also lead to confusion among your users. A site that is easy to navigate leads to a better user experience, and consequently, generates more leads. During a technical search engine optimization audit, you could also find out that mobile users face numerous problems while browsing your website. Given the fact that mobile devices generate more than half of worldwide web traffic, such issues could lead to a terrible loss of revenue. Let’s also not forget that mobile-friendliness is a ranking factor. Technical SEO Audit Checklist Here’s what tools we recommend in order to complete your Technical site Audit: Crawlability & Indexability As we’ve already mentioned, making sure that your site content can be crawled and indexed is a critical aspect of technical SEO. Google “crawls” the internet through links in order to find content. If they can’t find it, then it doesn’t exist in their eyes. In this section of our technical SEO audit guide, we’ll walk you through the various in which you can audit your website for technical SEO issues related to crawling and indexing. Robots.txt What is the Robots.txt file and Why Is It Important? A robots.txt file is a file that instructs search engine crawlers which pages or files they can and can’t access on your website. For example, if you have an eCommerce site , then you don’t want search engines to access sensitive pages like the cart or checkout page. It’s worth noting that… The robots.txt should not be used to hide pages from Google (or other search engines). Why? Because your web page may still be indexed by Google if other sites have linked to it with descriptive text. Robots.txt Audit Checklist Here’s what ours looks like: https://thesearchinitiative.com/robots.txt And here’s the robots.txt for: https://searchengineland.com/robots.txt Below are examples of search engines and their respective user-agents (i.e. what the search engine identifies as): Helpful tip: use the asterisk (*) wildcard. This is a special character that allows you to assign rules to all user-agents. # this directive blocks all crawlers User-agent: * Disallow: / # this directive grants access to all crawlers User-agent: * Allow: / Below are some examples of wildcards you can use: For example, the below set of rules prevents all user agents from accessing URLs in the /product/ subfolder that may contain a question mark. # this directive grants access to all crawlers User-agent: * Disallow: /products/*? # this directive grants access to all crawlers # This directive blocks all user-agents from accessing PDF files. User-agent: * Disallow: /*.pdf$ For example, if your robots.txt had the following set of rules: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /subfolder-a/ User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /subfolder-b/ Google would still follow both directives. But, it could quickly get pretty confusing if your robots.txt has many rules. Therefore, something like the following is much better and cleaner: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /subfolder-a/ Disallow: /subfolder-b/ Technical SEO Fact: the robots.txt file was originally introduced to prevent search engine bots from overloading websites with multiple requests. XML Sitemaps What is an XML Sitemap? An XML sitemap (or sitemap) is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file used to tell search engines where to find the most important content on websites. XML Sitemap Audit Checklist Below, we’ve outlined some simple checks that you should follow when auditing your XML sitemap as part of your technical site audit. Here’s an example of how this might look like: If you want a full list of possible on-page optimizations, I’ve put together a guide on how to audit the On-Page elements of your web pages. Here’s the XML sitemap for The Search Initiative: https://thesearchinitiative.com/sitemap.xml If you do not currently have a sitemap, you can create one manually or by using a tool like this XML Sitemap Generator from Screaming Frog. If your website is on WordPress, your life is about to get much easier as there are many SEO plugins such as Google XML Sitemaps and Yoast that will automatically generate your sitemap(s) for you. Index Bloating A very common technical SEO issue that most websites tend to face, is index bloating. Sometimes, Googlebot (Google’s web crawler) will crawl and index pages that simply offer no value to the end-user. These pages “bloat” your index and use up precious crawl budget as Google spends time unnecessarily crawling and indexing them. Below are some simple checks you can make in order to identify the types of pages that cause index bloating. Once you’ve carried out these checks, follow this awesome guide from Ahrefs on how to go about removing them from Google’s index. Pagination Paginated pages being indexed by Google can cause serious duplicate content issues. This is a common problem for eCommerce websites that may have thousands of products and hundreds of categories. To quickly check whether your paginated pages being indexed, use the following site searches: In the below example, we can see that the Zara website has over 14,000 paginated pages that have been indexed. Tags Adding tags to your WordPress or eCommerce sites is useful in organizing the content on your website, but it can also create SEO issues such as duplicate content. To quickly check whether you have any tagged pages indexed in the SERPs (search engine results page), use the following site searches: Don’t believe this is important? Here are the before-and-after results of a client we had in the eCommerce space where one of the things we did was remove /tag/ pages from the index. Check out the full case study here. HTTP Pages If your website isn’t on HTTPS (you really should move over to HTTPS!), then it’s a given that all of your HTTP pages will be indexed. However, if you’ve made the move to HTTPS, there’s still a chance that some of the HTTP versions of your pages are indexed. To check this, use the following site searches: We can see below, that the Zara website also currently has over 2k HTTP pages indexed by Google – these are unnecessarily wasting crawl budget and creating duplicate content issues. Serving Both www. and non-www. Pages If your website serves pages with www., then it’s important that there aren’t any non-www. pages being indexed by Google as this causes further duplication. To check this, use the following site searches: If we look at the River Island website, we can see that by default, it serves www. pages: https://www.riverisland.com/. However, there are still almost 56k pages without www. indexed by Google. Having this many duplicate pages can be incredibly problematic and impact a website’s performance in the search engine rankings. eCommerce Empty Category Pages As a customer, one of the worst feelings is landing on a page to find that the website whose 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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Site Speed Optimization in 2024: The Definitive Guide

Matt Diggity — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 06:31:17 +0000

Want to improve your website speed and boost your site rankings? Looking to improve your sites Core Web Vitals? Are you confused by all the conflicting information out there on website speed testing and how to speed up your wordpress site? This is why I’ve put together this in-depth guide on Website Speed Optimization… My team and I have optimized over 4000 sites since we started offering website speed as a separate service under our WPSpeedFix.com brand. That’s a pretty decent sample size. In this post, you will learn in detail the state of website speed optimization and where things stand today. You will find out how to speed up a website performance and, by the end, I’m hoping that you have some new insights you won’t find anywhere else on the web. Read on, to find out more… Quick Summary Where To Start You’ll see action steps throughout this post and I’ll link to various resources on website development around the web. I’ve written this with as little fluff as possible and a way that each section can be digested and you can run through the action items quickly and easily for that section. I’ve also included audio in various sections as an easier way to digest this info as it can be somewhat technical at times. As a starting point, run your site through our free speed test at https://sitespeedbot.com It’ll take 60 seconds and will give you an initial baseline to start with plus will provide you with insights you probably won’t have seen before. Run it a few times and also from multiple server locations so you get a good baseline average to start you off. You can track the history at https://app.sitespeedbot.com/domain/YOURDOMAIN.COM What Is Page Speed or Site Speed? Page Speed or site Speed are essentially the same thing and refer to how fast pages load. Now, this is not to be confused with Google Pagespeed Insights or Pagespeed Score which is Google’s speed test and it’s own scoring system for the speed at which a site loads. Site speed is one of the big things in SEO right now, even more so with Google rolling out the Core Web Vitals metrics which has made speed metrics more visible in Google Search engines Console. This video outlines everything you need to know about Core Web Vitals: There’s lots of different tools for measuring website performance and several different timings that measure speed. We’ll get into the specifics of what the different metrics mean and which are actually important further down in this article… Also, regardless of what terminology you use, one key thing most people miss when looking at the speed of their site is that the speed of all pages matter, not just the homepage! How Site Speed ACTUALLY Impacts SEO This is probably the real reason why you’re here and reading this, right? You want better Google rankings and more organic traffic. But first, let me address a myth… Anywhere you see SEO advice dispensed these days, you’ll see it’s just a given fact that faster websites rank better. About half the inquiries we get at WPSpeedFix look something like the screenshots below. Someone will ask us for help with website speed testing because they want “better SEO.” The frustrating thing with a lot of these inquiries is that most of them have crappy on-page SEO: missing title tags, meta descriptions, and so forth with even crappier content delivery network cdn with next to no keyword-content matching. Speed probably won’t make a dent overall if your SEO sucks! You will learn about why this is and how the theory of constraints can help you make more money in a few sections below… But first, before putting massive amounts of load times and effort into improving site speed, ask yourself: Below, I address the real reason why faster websites rank better and how you can improve your speed and rankings. Here are the three ways “site speed” will help your SEO. I put site speed in quotes because technically, two of these problems aren’t site-speed factors and more a case of poor website speed being a symptom of these problems. 1. Uptime and reliability Uptime of your website development and reliability is probably the most important one of the three here and often the most overlooked. People go wrong on this one all the time inspeed land. The uptime and reliability of your site and hosting provider REALLY matters. This makes logical sense when you think about it for a minute – downtime is essentially zero speed; therefore, we should probably start our website speed optimization process by making sure we have as little downtime as possible. When I see people talking about speed improving rankings, it’s most often when they move from a bad host to a good host. They then see their speed improve, see their rankings, organic internet traffic and conversions improve and determine that speed is clearly better for SEO. What’s actually happened is they’ve improved their site’s reliability, and Google can now crawl it without getting frequent DNS errors or intermittent downtime in the form of 502 and 504 errors. Most of the cases where there’s a clear organic internet traffic and rankings improvement after website speed optimization work, it’s due to the site’s reliability being improved in some meaningful way, not because the site is faster. Secondary to that, the other most common reason is that canonical issues with the number of http requests and https versions of the site or www and non-www were fixed as part of their WordPress speed optimization work which arguably should have been fixed if technical or onpage SEO work was done on the site. So based on this insight here’s some simple action items we can take to improve website performance: Get uptime monitoring setup for your site …And if you’re highly monetized, monitor the top 5-10 pages. Uptimerobot.com has a free plan that checks on 5-minute intervals, so there are zero excuses not to get this setup. We use the paid plan, which checks at 1-minute intervals, and it’s still dirt cheap. If you want to take this up a notch, services like Littlewarden.com and Domaincomet.com are useful for monitoring things that also impact uptime. eg SSL certificates and domain expiries. If you want to really throw cash at this, Uptrends.com would be the next level again. Use good hosting close to your primary target market. Every day we see people using Bluehost, Hostgator, Godaddy, and other garbage low-quality web hosts and often in the US when the target market is in Europe or Australia. A high quality host is the absolute minimum bar to entry here – WPX hosting is good quality, dirt cheap, and one of the best hosting for affiliate marketing. If you’re running a site that needs more processing power, eg Woocommerce, then Cloudways is typically the hosting we recommend. If you want to get super technical, Gridpane, Runcloud, or Wordops coupled with a VPS from Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google will allow you even more granular control over your hosting. These combos will enable you to squeeze every last drop of website performance. That said, you should probably work on your SEO instead of messing around with dedicated servers – refer to the theory of constraints section further below. DNS hosting speed and quality really matters. It’s possible to have good quality web hosting but still be using shitty DNS hosting. This will have a massive impact on your site’s overall reliability. DNS hosting turns your www.domain.com into an IP address so the browser can find your web server and connect to it. The first thing the browser does when you type in an address is to do a DNS lookup. The speed of this lookup is critical and hugely overlooked. Slow DNS hosting can take 0.5-2 seconds to answer a query, which means your site takes 0.5-2 seconds to load regardless of how good your hosting is. We use Cloudflare for DNS hosting (it can be used with all other features off) as it’s consistently the fastest DNS worldwide as tested by DNSPerf. Because DNS website performance is so overlooked, our speed test tool SiteSpeedBot checks DNS hosting speed as one of it’s metrics. A common mistake we see all the time is using the default DNS hosting provided by your domain registrar. Don’t make this mistake! The worst performing DNS hosting we see is typically run by IT support companies trying to squeeze a few bucks out of their clients and charging for this service. If you do client work you’ll probably see this more often than not. Backup your site and ideally use two backup systems. Over the lifetime of a site, data loss is almost inevitable, and often that means downtime. You can minimize downtime by having a quality backup solution in place you can quickly restore from. For WordPress, you always use two backups, one provided by the host and then 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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SEO Testing: The Secret To Maximize Your Website Traffic and Profits

Matt Diggity — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 13:25:57 +0000

Search engine optimization (SEO) requires constant testing to be effective. If you don’t understand what changes drive growth (or why visitors respond the way they do), you’ll waste your time guessing at solutions while your competitors leave you in the dust. In this article, as someone with significant SEO expertise, I will provide a comprehensive understanding of SEO testing, the challenges of acquiring actionable data from Google Analytics, and how to conduct SEO tests that effectively improve your crucial performance indicators. Upon concluding this article, you will not only recognize the transformative potential of SEO testing but also benefit from three of my recent test results that defy traditional SEO principles. To begin, let’s briefly define SEO testing and examine its different manifestations. What is SEO Testing? SEO testing refers to the experiments you perform to measure how search engines and users react to your site. There are many tools you can use to get data about each web page (such as Surfer, Ahrefs, and other free tools), but no Google Analytics tool or SEO checker can tell you what effect changes will have. The purpose of SEO testing is to manipulate different search traffic factors to determine if the changes result in an increase or decrease in organic traffic or your position in search results. There are many ways you can run SEO tests, including: Like your high school science classes, SEO testing relies chiefly on utilizing experimental and control groups’ concepts. The experimental groups are the cases (pages or entire sites) that experience your test variable (such as trying a new link strategy). The cases in the control groups are untouched. Their rankings and organic traffic will give you the reference point to determine whether or not the experiment worked (or not). Great testing depends on well-built tests. Instructions on how to create great SEO tests will be covered a little later… But first, it may help you precisely understand what kind of benefits you can enjoy if you do the work to develop reliable SEO tests. What Impact Does an SEO Testing Have on SEO? The impact that testing has on your SEO strategy is immeasurable—no pun intended. It provides all of the following concrete benefits: Testing Gives You the Power to Be First Whenever you run an SEO test, you put yourself in a limited category of people on the industry’s cutting edge. Some of the most effective SEO tactics ever discovered have been neutered by Google search console shortly after they reached the wider community. If you’re a tester, you get to be in the rare company of people who use the latest techniques while still being powerful. That enables you to operate in the most profitable niches. Testing Helps You Develop a Ranking System That Works Repeated testing gives you the power to separate what you can and can’t know about SEO, based on experience. This allows you to skip time-wasting techniques and move directly to those with the most significant, most reliable SEO performance impact. That makes you a far more efficient SEO. This ability is one of the critical differences between amateur SEOs, and the kind who can successfully dominate even the most competitive niches. Testing Can Make You Algorithm-Proof If you test SEO changes often enough, you can develop a second sight for the trends that are guiding search engine updates. You’ll spot trends before they’re officially announced, and adjust your practices to avoid penalties. What are the Challenges of Performing Accurate SEO Tests? The biggest challenge with SEO testing is collecting untainted data. Your results become tainted when they become affected by outside factors or wrong assumptions. These obstacles make it impossible for you to say which results are a product of your experiments. Challenge #1: You Must Make Sure Your Variables Are Stable To understand what’s happening on each web page in the experiment, you need to isolate what changes affect your data. Stabilizing your variables means working to prevent changes from happening that are outside of your test. For example, if you are trying to measure the effect of content upgrades, you need to prevent your link profile from changing during the testing phase. If a lousy link gets disavowed or a useful link gets added, your site’s changes could easily mask any result of the content upgrades. Challenge #2: You Need to Make Test Cases as Similar as Possible The first thing you need to do is make each experimental and control group nearly identical. This will allow you to start measuring the changes once you start altering the test site. When you come back to check website changes, you’ll have a better idea of how they happened. Here are just a few examples of why you’ll have trouble with that: Challenge #3: You Need to Expect the “Random Ranking Factor” The random ranking factor is a phenomenon coined by SEO Terry Kyle (founder of WPX hosting). It is best illustrated with an example… Imagine that you launch five identical sites or landing pages on the same day. They are in the same niche, use corresponding keywords, and employ the same design style. You will likely notice the following: This is not a precise rule, but many SEOs have recorded the effect over the years. For reasons that are nearly impossible to measure efficiently, some sites simply behave as if they are blessed while others act as if they are cursed. What’s the Solution? There is one primary solution to the challenges that SEO testing poses. You need to increase the number of test cases. The solution is to simply increase the number of test cases. One control page is never going to be enough, and neither is one SEO test page. Adapt to this challenge by creating larger groups for each test group and control group. Have 10 URLs in the control group, and 10 in the experimental group…or better yet, 50. Then, you’re going to measure the results by taking the average of the changes in both groups. Maximizing the number of test cases helps to resolve our three biggest challenges in the following ways: For example, if we have 50 test cases, then we know that a single random backlink hitting one of them isn’t going to throw off our test. For example, it helps you control all the minor differences caused by URLs, age, and other factors that play a role in SEO. We now have enough information to identify sites that behave differently. This will help prevent us from either getting overconfident or giving up on a great technique just because it failed randomly. Let’s look at all this through an example. Example Test Pretend you have a blog in the wellness niche, and you want to test the effect of double-counting keywords in the title tag. If you have 30 posts with organic traffic, a simple experiment might involve creating two groups: If you’re curious about how a test like this might play out, don’t miss the ‘clickbait title’ test that will be revealed near the end. For now, let’s focus on what roles these groups play: Naturally, testing like this is going to depend on the funding you have. If you can afford it, testing ten sites instead of 5 (or 20 instead of 10) will allow you to create a more accurate average. If your budget is very limited, you can test across multiple pages with only 1 or 2 sites. However, there will be more room for error with those numbers than most experienced testers will tolerate. The more web pages you can create for a test, the more effectively you can cancel out noise. Sometimes, the most effective way to cancel out noise is to remove important factors altogether. Best Practices for SEO Testing Follow these rules to draw some better data from each SEO test: Set Aside Enough Time Beyond your money budget, you need to put a significant time budget in place. Once again, the more time that you can give your experiment, the more sure of the accuracy of any data that you collect. Some results (especially offsite related) may take months to yield a difference. Exercise Attention to Detail If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The more information you’re tracking, the more awareness you’ll have of how sites are different, so you must be tracking even when you’re not testing. I can illustrate this with a real-life example. At one point, I had a great site in the Brazilian testosterone niche. One week, we suddenly jumped from page two to page one. I was only able to figure out why, because of my tracking. It turns out, some links I snagged from a local citation package were worth a lot more than I imagined it would be. Thanks to my research, I caught the factor. Thanks to that insight, I now had a new strategy to use for many other sites. Recent Findings in SEO Nothing illustrates the impact 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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Matt Diggity’s Favorite Purchases of 2020

Matt Diggity — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 02:46:49 +0000

2020 has been quite the year, hasn’t it? I know I personally have found solace through these troubling times by doing what always makes me feel better when I’m down: buying massive amounts of material things! Jokes aside. I have stumbled upon some impactful products and services throughout the year that I’d like to share with you, just like I do every year, with no affiliate links. Here’s a list of my favorite purchases of 2020. Productivity Kindle + Audible Combination I’ve always had a Kindle for reading e-books. I’ve always had Audible for listing to audiobooks on my iPhone. But this year I finally discovered using them at the same fucking time!! Read the book visually on your Kindle while the audiobook is being read to you at 1.5x – 2x speed. You’ll devour books at lightspeed, but the absorption level remains high, as if you were reading. You can even have the Kindle app on iPad manage both services for an even better experience (it highlights the text as it reads to you). Note: you have to buy both the eBook and the audio versions of a book, but I tell you, this is a gamechanger. Samsung 34″ Ultra-Wide Monitor I was in the dual-screen camp for a long time. I don’t know why it took me so long to try an ultra-wide. I guess I thought things would look goofy all stretched out over a huge screen. Now, I can’t go back. Work is more efficient, gaming is significantly better, and my overall enjoyment of my 2nd wife (my PC) is higher. The only downside is that if you do any type of screen capture using PowerPoint, you’ll have to keep a 16:9 resolution monitor on hand, otherwise your video is going to get stretched out. Personal Finance WealthFront I’ve stayed away from stock investing for the past 6 years. Namely because of a bad experience with a financial advisor, combined with not knowing what the hell I’m doing. We’ll talk about this later. Now, let’s get this straight, I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and you should assume that any personal finance information you get from a guy who ranks weight loss pills on the internet is suspect. But I’m a fan of the whole robo-investment strategy that helps laymen like me create a balanced portfolio, does tax-loss harvesting, re-invests, and rebalances automatically. Play at your own risk, and all that, yadda yadda… Health Strategene A few years ago I mentioned 23 and Me DNA sequencing as a favorite purchase of that year. What Strategene does is it runs a similar DNA saliva-type test through a gene-sequencing software and creates a report of all your gene variations. Ok, great, so what does that mean? Well, I’m big-time into biohacking and I know that I should be sleeping well, getting enough vitamins, etc… but that’s advice for everybody, isn’t it? Knowing your gene map tells you what your own body is deficient in and what you can do to supplement and improve. And I can tell you, I feel and look a lot different than I did last year. Bear in mind, Strategene spits out a decent report, but you’ll 10x the value from it by talking to an educated physician who specializes in this kind of stuff. I can provide a reference if you’re interested. Yoga Tune Up Balls If you like a little bit of self-inflicted S&M, these little balls (not the red gag balls that go in your mouth) do wonders for releasing tight muscles – especially in your feet, glutes, and I.T. bands. Step on them and roll them around at your standing or sitting desk. It hurts while you’re doing it, but feels amazing after. Philips goLITE BLU I position this light about 45 degrees to the side of my face and turn it on in the morning for 20 minutes. What it does is tells your body, “Hey, it’s day time. Wake up and give this man some energy and produce from vitamin D.” It’s a great replacement for caffeine and a complete hack when it comes to resetting your clock when you’re jet-lagged. Rescue Sleep Liquid Melts Of course, we can’t have a product recommendation list from me that doesn’t involve sleep hacking. I feel like I’ve got my sleep pretty dialed in. But, like many of you, sometimes I get up in the middle of the night (usually to drain the lizard) and just can’t fall back to sleep. Pop one of these under your tongue and the magical oils just give me enough of a push to calm down my monkey mind and get back to sleep, when in a pinch. Entertainment Steezy – Online Dance Studio This thing saved my life during lockdowns in March and April. You may not know this, but I’ve been involved in a street dance called “Popping” since I was 19 years old. You could say I’m retired from it these days, but from time-to-time, I still like to cut it up. My wife and I got into Steezy during the lockdown and it was a blast. You can learn from literally the best dancers in any street dance genre from their incredible platform. Books Shoe Dog – Phil Knight Written by the founder of Nike, he takes you through the conception and growth of the world-famous Nike brand. It’s a treat to read (99% sure its ghostwritten) and you’ll love every moment of it. What I love best about this book is that it really humanizes this idea we have of mega-successful founders. Just like many of you who are figuring things out along the way, Knight was the same. Money Master the Game – Tony Robbins This was my first Tony Robbins book. Not sure why. I guess I had a subconscious blockage because my first encounter with him was from “Shallow Hal”. I read this book at the right time. After telling myself for 6-years that “stocks are too high” and “I’ll take a look whenever we see a dip”… well, the dip happened, so I dug in. I like the investing philosophy of this book: low fee index funds + diversity + long hold time = winning. And since reading Money Master the Game, of course, most personal finance books say the same thing – because it’s the most successful strategy (for the masses) to date. But as you can expect from someone like Tony, he puts a passion into it which, I gotta say, gets you pumped up. Angel – Jason Calacanis Angel investing is like playing the lottery, but with better odds, if you know what you’re doing. I want to know what I’m doing when I’m placing big bets, so I took my buddy Travis Jamison’s advice and picked up this book. Angel is a no-bullshit playbook for angel investment from one of the best angels in the Silicon Valley. Highly recommended. Die with Zero – Bill Perkins Despite my last two books being recommendations on how to masse enough money to rule the universe, this one is about spending it. Not on “stuff”, but the experiences that really enrich your life. The main thesis is that money has more value to you when you’re young. For example, $10k can create a first-class dream holiday for my family skiing and snowboarding in the French Alps. But when I’m 80, that $10k is going to diapers. Better to spend it now when its going to create the most joy in your life, rather than horde it all for a day that may never even come. Thanks for reading. For more inspiration, check back on the previous years. 2017 2018 2019 Got Questions or Comments? Join the discussion here on Facebook. 2020 has been quite the year, hasn’t it? I know I personally have found solace through these troubling times by doing what always makes me feel better when I’m down: buying massive amounts of material things! Jokes aside. I have stumbled upon some impactful products and services throughout the year that I’d like to share with you, just like I do every year, with no affiliate links. Here’s a list of my favorite purchases of 2020. Productivity Kindle + Audible Combination I’ve always had a Kindle for reading e-books. I’ve always had Audible for listing to audiobooks on my iPhone. But this year I finally discovered using them at the same fucking time!! Read the book visually on your Kindle while the audiobook is being read to you at 1.5x – 2x speed. You’ll devour books at lightspeed, but the absorption level remains high, as if you were reading. You can even have the Kindle app on iPad manage both services for an even better experience (it highlights the text as it reads to you). Note: you have to buy both the eBook and the audio versions of Read More Read More

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E-Commerce SEO Case Study – How to Increase Traffic, Transactions, and Revenue

Matt Diggity — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 09:11:47 +0000

Throughout this case study, you will learn the techniques that were used to increase transactions on an e-commerce website by over 90%. This was done by building a custom, but replicable, strategy for a long-standing client of 2 years. You will soon learn the technical, onsite, and backlinks approach that allowed this e-commerce client to grow their traffic by 48% year on year. This traffic growth saw transactions increase by 93.20%, which generated an additional $49k for the year for the client or a 39.45% increase in overall revenue (from $123.6k up to $174.5k). The Challenge The client is a niche-specialist in the confectionery industry, offering high-end chocolates to customers in the USA and around the world. The kind of chocolate you eat until you explode. They specialize in both wholesale and retail chocolate sales and want to attract professional clients from the food industry as well as “off the street” buyers. Building relationships, authority, and a brand following are very important in this business. The client approached The Search Initiative two years ago and was looking to increase conversions, develop a solid link building strategy, and have an in-depth, on-site SEO audit to improve their traffic metrics. The following is a walk-through of the steps you can take as an e-commerce site manager to achieve similar gains to our favorite chocolate client. Perform a Technical SEO Audit Crawl Management One of the more common issues faced by e-commerce sites is crawl management. If Google crawls areas of the site that have no use to the bot or users, it can be the result of faceted navigation, query strings, or sometimes, Google’s temperamental flux. Crawling such pages is a waste of Google’s time, as these pages generally have no use for Google due to them being very similar / duplicates of an original page. Since Google only has a finite amount of time on a website before it bounces off, you want to be able to control that as much as possible. You need to make Google only spend time on pages that have value. This means value pages are more likely to be crawled more often and new changes on the site are more likely to be picked up quicker. What’s even better is: Google tells you what its algorithm “thinks” of your pages! How? In Search Console -> Coverage report! One of the areas that are especially worth inspecting with the greatest care is Coverage report > Excluded > Crawled but not indexed. When reviewing Search Console, you should be looking for URL patterns. In the “Crawled but not Indexed” section of Google Search on our client’s site, we found many random query strings URLs Google recognized, but wasn’t indexing. These URLs “in Google’s eyes” had no value. After manually reviewing them, we discovered that Google was right. To prevent the search engine spending more time on these URLs and wasting its crawl budget, the easiest approach is to use robots.txt The following directives were included in the robots.txt file: User-agent: * Disallow: /rss.php* Disallow: /*?_bc_fsnf=1* Disallow: /*&_bc_fsnf=1* This was enough to take care of it! Please bear in mind that when you are cleaning the index with the use of robots.txt, there will be a part of Search Console > Coverage report which will start going up: Blocked by robots.txt This is normal. Just make sure to review the URLs reported there every now and again, ensuring that only the pages you meant to block are coming up. If you suddenly see a big spike or URLs you did not want blocked, it means either you made a mistake or Googlebot crawled itself somewhere you did not know about. Index Management Index management involves removing pages that contribute no value to the user in Google’s Index of your site. Google’s Index of a site is a list of all the pages it could return to the user of a given website in the Google SERPs. Unlike crawl management, pages that should not be in the index are not always cases where they present no value to Google. For example, “tag” pages are useful for internally linking articles or products and therefore have value in that they can help Google understand the relationship between pages. However, at the same time, these pages are not the type of pages you want to see in the SERPs, and by having them indexed, Google will crawl them more regularly Consequently, ‘bloating’ the index in this way holds your site back, as the search engines use their limited resources – or crawl budget – to assess pages that did not convert or are naturally thin in content. The client had the site set up in such a way that internal search results and tag pages were also being indexed. These provided no value to a user whatsoever, nor would they effectively contribute to better rankings from the search engine’s perspective. The most common pages that usually mess up index management include: The tricky part is, you have to identify all URL parameters/types of pages that have no value to the SERPs, and then you can noindex these pages. As a quick note, it is important to understand that there are cases where index management and crawl management are both under the same umbrella. For example, Google may be crawling non-value query strings and indexing them at the same time. As a result, this is both an indexation issue and a crawling issue. Double the fun. Broken Links Broken links are a troublesome issue that needs to be resolved if you want a well-oiled website with free-flowing authority across your important pages through PageRank. Having broken links prevents users from navigating the site easily and effectively. It can also result in users missing the opportunity to navigate their way to valued e-commerce pages! A broken page or a 404 page is, in essence, a page that returns an error due to the URL not existing or no longer existing. It’s commonly caused through old pages being deleted that still have internal links pointing at them from within your site. The client had 404 errors in abundance, and many internal links were broken; the result of changing their site in the past and not updating the link structure (or doing a proper URL mapping). To find and resolve these, you need to crawl the website. Any popular crawler like Sitebulb, Ahrefs or Screaming Frog will do the trick. Here’s how you can do it using Sitebulb. Under Link Explorer > Internal Links > Not Found you can identify where the internal links to these 404 URLs are. After this, you should go through these URLs one by one and remove the broken links manually. Where possible, replace the links pointing at non-existent pages, with a link to a relevant, working page. This is particularly beneficial if you are replacing a link from an old, no longer existing, product page, to a new, functioning product page You may need to fix hundreds of these broken links using this manual technique. All this effort is to ensure no link equity gets lost between the pages you want to rank, especially the money-making pages. Yes, it’s mundane. Yes, it’s necessary. Yes, in most cases, it’s worth it. Internal 301 Redirects In addition to finding broken links, crawler tools are also great at picking internal redirects. This causes hops between intermediate URLs instead of going directly to the linking page, which is the optimal route. It looks quite something like this: If you follow the Red Arrows: The link points from the source to a page which is redirected using a 301 HTTP response code, to only then, finally, land on the correct page (returning 200 OK code). In short: Not Good! Now, follow Green Arrow: The link is pointing from the source, directly, to the correct page (200 OK). There is no interim “hop” in a way of the redirected page (301). In short: Good! With this, don’t get me wrong. One internal redirect is normally not an issue in itself. Sites change, things get moved somewhere else. It’s natural. It becomes a problem when a site has many internal redirects – this then starts to impact the crawl budget of the site, because Google is spending less time on core content pages that actually exist (200) and more time trying to navigate a site through a thicket redirected pages (301). Similar to solving broken links, you have to run a crawl and go through the links identified manually to replace them with the correct, final page URL. Page Speed and Content Delivery Optimization I cannot stress enough how important speed optimization is. In this day and age, it’s a no-negotiation must for a site to be responsive to users. A slow site that takes time to load, in most cases, results in users bouncing off the site, which is not only a loss in traffic but also a loss in potential sales. And guess what 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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SEO Agency to Affiliate: How Julie Adams 12x’d Her Income

Matt Diggity — Mon, 09 Nov 2020 04:59:31 +0000

I’m about to interview one of my favorite SEOs in the world, Julie Adams. I first learned about Julie’s story in The Affiliate Lab, where she shared her experience of quitting the digital marketing agency that she worked at and switching over to affiliate SEO. Now, she’s making more money in one month than she did in an entire year at the agency! Stick around for this interview because we’re going to get into not only her story but her entire process on how she ranks websites — from backlinks to on-site SEO. Basically, everything she does to get her affiliate portfolio ranked today. If you prefer video content, check this interview with Julie Adams. Transitioning from Client to Affiliate SEO Matt: Hi Julie. Before we get started, why don’t you give everyone a little heads up on who you are and what you do in this world of SEO? Julie: Sure, thanks for having me, Matt. I’ve been in SEO for about seven or eight years. I started at the bottom, not knowing much, and worked in an agency. I began working with content and quickly fell in love with everything that goes into SEO — including the technical aspects, then seeing results and making money. So, I worked at the agency during the day, then I would go home and do affiliate SEO at night. So I just kind of stumbled my way into SEO, and I’ve had pretty good success. Matt: Awesome, we’re very excited to hear more about your SEO story — but why don’t we start at the beginning. First off, how old are you? Where are you from? Where are you living? What’s the full story there? Julie: I’m 27, out of Orlando, Florida. I’ve been here my whole life. I love it. I’m big into the outdoors and all that — when I’m not doing the techie stuff. Matt: Born and raised in the South? Julie: I grew up in the Sarasota/Venice area, so always around the beach. I moved here when I was in fourth or fifth grade, so I was big into Disney, big into everything that Floridians are into — all that good stuff! Matt: Awesome! And what kind of education do you have? Did you go to high school, college? Julie: I’m a college dropout. I was actually a business finance major. I went to Valencia Community College, got my associate’s degree in business administration, and started my bachelor’s degree. Then I almost failed one class — and I’m the type of person that gets really demotivated if I don’t absolutely excel at something. An opportunity came up to work at an SEO agency just as I was about to fail out of that class. I decided to just drop out of school and pursue digital marketing full time. So my bachelor’s degree is still on hold! Matt: Interesting, I have a similar personality type. If I can’t be really good at something, there’s no point in it for me — I’ve quit a million things because of that, so I get that… How did you get into SEO? How did the whole thing start? Julie: I honestly stumbled into it. When I started the agency job, I was working at a movie theater, so I was basically scooping popcorn. That was my first job. I also did some babysitting on the side, which is actually how I met my boss at the agency. He recognized that I was pretty smart, needed an opportunity and just kind of scooped me up like popcorn! I started working at the agency without even knowing what the term SEO stood for. It was a total mystery to me. I thought it was just these three letters. I started as an 18 or 19-year old going into this office setting, and my boss basically just said, “You’re in charge of content. You’re in charge of links.” Initially, I was like, “Great, what does that mean?” And then I just kind of learned on the job from there, in all honesty. I didn’t get any formal training or anything like that. Matt: Interesting, so did they just give you in-house training? Was it mostly based on their SOPs and internal knowledge? Or did you take any courses or learn SEO from any other source? Julie: This was when SEO just stopped being sketchy. People were using spun content and SAPE links and tactics like that. That was my initial idea of what SEO meant. So, when I first started, I was managing spun content, editing it, writing some content myself and managing link orders. When I got there, we had no standard operating procedures — it was just, “Do X, Y, and Z, and don’t lose a client!” Matt: Makes sense… I mean, that’s the basic plan! Let’s talk a little bit more about the agency. First off, I’m curious to know why you decided to leave it? Julie: Money and time. I’m fiercely independent. I love SEO. I stumbled into something that I really enjoy. I felt really lucky because of all that, but I was working 40 some odd hours a week. And as you can probably tell by how I’m describing this agency, it’s small. I was one of three core employees at the time, and I basically hit the ceiling. There was no room to grow, there was no opportunity to make more money, there was no really no room to learn anything else — Every day you go in, you do your work, and you go home… Then I discovered affiliate SEO, probably how everybody else discovers it. I was just hoping to make a little passive income. I was good at SEO, and I wanted the free time and the money! Matt: I get that 100%. And you can throw this question right back at me if you don’t feel comfortable with it, but what was your monthly or annual salary at that agency? Julie: I don’t remember what I started at. It was definitely around minimum wage because I had no experience — so it was probably eight or nine bucks an hour, whatever minimum wage was at the time. And I maxed out at about $40k a year. Matt: And how many clients did you manage for $40k a year? Julie: The most that I managed at one time was somewhere around 70 or 80. I personally worked with hundreds of accounts when I worked there, but at the peak, I was managing upwards of 80 accounts at once. Matt: That’s insane! I mean, that’s an awesome ROI for the agency, but how about your stress levels? How were you able to handle 80 clients at a time? Julie: It was really stressful! I wasn’t always honest about what I could handle, so I would just do whatever I could. I was basically the brains of the operation. I had people to write content. I had people that would help me put all the pieces into place. So, you could kind of think of me as more of a conductor… I built out the plans, and then somebody else would implement them. That’s the only way it was possible… But it was definitely stressful to be expected to answer questions for 80 different accounts. Like, “Why aren’t they ranking?” You can’t pull up a report in a meeting. You were expected to know the answers off the top of your head. So, that was probably the most stressful part. Matt: Wow, that’s what they call a trial by fire! Julie: I’m grateful for that, though, because the number of websites I manage now is just chump change in comparison. Matt: That brings me to my next question. I’m sure you learned quite a few skills on the job that carried over to your affiliate career. Can you touch upon that a little bit? Julie: I mean, SEO, for sure. I had 80 clients to play with. In the beginning, it wasn’t that many, but I did have clients to play with, and it wasn’t like they were my clients. If I lost them, honestly, I still had a job. So in that sense, I had room to experiment —it was that kind of environment. Matt: Got it. When you were considering making the jump from agency to affiliate SEO, what fears or thought processes were going on in your mind? Julie: Everything that you can think of! I have generalized anxiety — I overthink everything. And jumping ship from a comfortable position in an industry that I love was really scary. Now, I always knew that I would have a job there because, as I said, it was a small company. I actually had to give them six months notice to leave! So I wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t be able to return to the agency… I was just afraid that I’d have to go back with my tail between my legs — having to 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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The Influencer Pitch – How to Build E-A-T for your Content Website

Matt Diggity — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 04:26:10 +0000

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, and it’s a key factor that search engines like Google use to evaluate the quality of your website’s content. It’s crucial for establishing your website as a reliable source of information for your audience. Drawing from my own experience in the field, I’ll show you how to enhance E-A-T by leveraging real influencers who possess expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to vouch for your content. This approach will help you build immense trust while creating online platforms that are primed for E-A-T implementation. Let’s start by exploring the E-A-T standards we’re aiming to meet, their relationship with search engine algorithms, and why you should care about them—even if they’re still evolving. Video Version For those who like video content, here’s a TLDR version of the article: What is E-A-T? E-A-T stands for expertise authoritativeness and trustworthiness and it is extremely important in the SEO industry. It comes from this larger set of guidelines that Google publishes for its search quality rater guidelines. Google refers you to the best way to build your website’s E-A-T. They’re a legion of Google e a t contractors from all around the world who perform manual (human) reviews of Google results. While they’re using Google’s algorithm to dig through results, they use search quality rater guidelines like those you see in the image above to make judgments about the pages they review. These busy clickers then create reports that Google E-A-T uses (along with other methods) to evaluate what a live user sees and experiences when browsing for organic results. Manual review plays an important role in the rollout of each new search algorithm changes. After the update lands, Google E-A-T guidelines deploy them to scour the results for unintended changes, such as bizarre returns for common searches or unintended hits to websites. It may seem like I’m saying that sticking to rating guidelines translates directly to an improved ranking factor. Sorry, but that isn’t the case. Let’s look at the relationship between rater guidelines and the algorithm. What relationship do rater guidelines have with the algorithm? They’re related, but you probably shouldn’t assume you can judge Google’s intent for the algorithm just by looking at what they’re telling their human search raters. The rater guidelines exist to help humans judge algorithm results. As an example, the Google search results algorithm is a long way from being sophisticated enough to do most background research. If someone provides comprehensive—but entirely fraudulent—authorship information—the algorithm can’t independently verify: • The authenticity of an identity • Affiliations with organizations and institutions like universities • Credentials and certifications A lot of raters reporting the same issue may eventually result in tweaks to the algorithm. But you still won’t find authoritative websites on the first page for every search. Making sure your content obeys E-A-T standards isn’t likely to result in immediate, measurable improvements. So, why should you care about the SEO strategy process coming right up? Why do I care? I’ll tell you why we cared, at least: because we’re preparing for the next few years ahead. Just because Google seo strategy hasn’t figured out how to automate these verifications doesn’t mean they aren’t giving E-A-T guidelines the best try. They’ve already begun to strike in a related area. Websites that make it difficult to find any ownership or authorship information are taking hits. Sure, E-A-T strategies can change over time, but they aren’t likely to slow down or back down on this one. It’s just a good ymyl websites idea. Google has every motivation to keep information that might provide bad medical/financial stability away from the top of the page. With Google E-A-T, users can quickly and easily find the answers they need, whether it’s a definition of a word, a medical fact, an image, or even a Wikipedia page. And why fight it? Your high-quality content isn’t going to suffer from having more subject matter experts involved. At the same time, as much as we love trying new things, it’s hard to justify a budget for the best E-A-T practice that doesn’t even work yet. We wanted to get ready, but we wanted the process to be: Cheap Easy to implement A no-brainer win-win If there was no way to meet those E-A-T qualifications, this experiment was getting placed on the back burner until it was more relevant. You’re reading this now, so you know we succeeded. We’ve developed a process that isn’t just future-proof—It’s already paying off. Introducing: the Influencer Pitch Alright, so far, you understand that authors who demonstrate E-A-T may matter a lot in the future. Do you know any in your niche? Have you built long-term relationships with people who have degrees, certifications, or influential positions in notable organizations? Don’t worry if you haven’t because that what the process coming right up is going to help you do. You can start with just one professional who demonstrates E-A-T, and work your way up. In the following sections, you’re going to learn how to find influencers, how to pitch them (with an example email), and how to make the relationship profitable for both of you. Finding influencers Nearly every niche has influencers, and by their nature, they are not very hard to find. Search results of niche-related keywords should bring up people talking about your niche, reviewing products in it, or fighting to be the first to drop news about it. YouTube and Instagram are the best hunting ground for my niches, but certain audiences tend to gravitate to certain platforms. Use your E-A-T judgment and your background in your niche to determine the best platform. No matter which one you choose, you want to focus on what you could call “budding” influencers. These are the troopers in the trenches who are starting to develop an audience but are still working their way off the ground. I’m talking about people who post regularly, seem to put their hearts into it and care about improving, but just haven’t managed to break a couple of thousand followers, yet. Let me show you. First, I would search for phrases specific to my niche and expect results that match and answer my question. For examples sake, let’s call that “protein powder reviews”. I’m going to plug that in and browse the results until I find someone who matches my criteria. With that search, I didn’t get far down the page until I found a video I liked. I clicked the account under the video and was taken to the profile page of this guy: He has just over 1.6k subscribers, and many of his videos focus on our example phrase. That’s only the first E-A-T criteria, though. You’ll want to make a few more search quality guidelines research based on what you see around the profile page. Are videos updated frequently? (In this example, yes) Do the last 10-20 videos tend to stick to the brand/niche? (again, yes) Does this author bring any of their own credibility problems to a relationship? (not at first glance, but naturally I’d do more homework outside this example) Overall, this influencer looks like a good place to start. After you find a good candidate, find out how to contact them. In most cases, you can just use the platform’s standard messaging service or hunt around the profile page for E-A-T information. In this case, you can see I easily just clicked over to the about tab and found a button for “business inquiries”. When you do finally reach out, you’re going to want to make them an E-A-T offer they cannot refuse. Here are some ideas and an example pitch. Pitching influencers The name of our game here is win-win. We’re controlling our costs by being able to offer E-A-T influencers enough that they get value out of a mutual relationship. The best way to explain how we do that is by showing you how we present the first offer when we email them. Here’s a pitch email I’ve written for a fictitious name and website. If I were in this niche, this is how I’d approach my first contact. Disclaimer: Subject Line: Looking for Partnership Got the gist? Alright, let me just add a few notes. For one, I think it’s really important that you identify your E-A-T value in the first couple of lines, as I did. Notice I covered each ranking factor in the first few lines of the email. Second, note that we’re not asking him to make a big E-A-T investment. We only asked this guy to create videos because that’s already his thing. If he were to leverage user generated content, we’d want more of that. Finally, don’t underestimate the value of your online stores or blogs being published on a major ymyl website by a fresh influencer. Authorship opportunities are just as important to ambitious influencers. I know for sure that they’re enthusiastic, now. After all… Leveraging authored content OK, you’ve made some connections now, but you need to 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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A List of SEOs Favorite Books: What The Pros Are Reading…

Matt Diggity — Mon, 24 Aug 2020 07:23:14 +0000

This isn’t your typical blog post about SEO, but perhaps the knowledge behind what motivates and guides SEOs. I put out a question on social media “What is your all-time favorite book?” The thread got a lot of traction so I thought it would be great to compile them together here in this post. Biography From the life stories of legendary entrepreneurs and investors like Ray Dalio, Richard Branson, and Phil Knight to the inspirational journey of Nelson Mandela, one of the 20th century’s greatest freedom fighters and political leaders, these biographies hold pride of place on the bookshelves of many an SEO. Books like Ray Dalio’s Principles and Ben Carson’s The Big Picture draw on the author’s experiences to suggest powerful new ways of looking at the world. Each of these unique biographies and memoirs have much to teach their readers. Business Not surprisingly, books about business are among many SEO’s favorites. Classics like the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett’s collected essays sit next to decidedly more contemporary tomes like “How to Be F*cking Awesome” and Gino Wickman’s “Traction” which introduced the Entrepreneurial Operating System — a must-read for anyone looking to scale their business. Fiction All work and no play makes for dull SEOs… And while some may argue that time spent reading fiction could be better spent, sages as diverse as Tim Ferriss and former President Barack Obama strongly disagree. Even when he was in office, Obama put aside an hour each night to read, and told the New York Times that reading fiction left him “better able to imagine what’s going on in the lives of people throughout my presidency.” As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Fantasy and sci-fi are well represented in our SEO’s favorite fiction selections. Classics like Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye, War and Peace, and The Picture of Dorian Grey remain as timeless as ever… But there’s also plenty of room for pop culture staples like 50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. Non-Fiction There’s no shortage of classics in the Non-Fiction category either, with some of the greatest thinkers humanity has ever produced represented here. From Sun Tzu’s Art of War, to the Bhagavad Gita, and the King James version of The Holy Bible, thousands of years of human knowledge and philosophy is included in this list. But it’s not all ancient texts. Runaway bestsellers that have changed how many of us view the world like Freakanomics, Antifragile, and Sapiens also make the cut. If you’re looking to build a respectable bookshelf that covers both age-old and cutting edge thought, you could do a lot worse than using this list as a starting point. Self-Help / Self-Improvement I can say without hesitation that if I hadn’t discovered two of the books in this section — The 4-Hour Workweek and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — my life today would look very different. I’m sure many of the other books listed below had a similarly seismic impact on the lives of the SEOs who recommended them. One of the benefits of being an SEO is the freedom it can give you to live life on your own terms. These self-improvement books can truly help you optimize your life… What titles on this list are you itching to tackle? Any must-rereads it reminded you of? Most importantly, what books are missing that you think other SEOs would enjoy? (Or could even change their life?) This list is a living document… It’s not too late for you to contribute… Join the discussion here on Facebook. This isn’t your typical blog post about SEO, but perhaps the knowledge behind what motivates and guides SEOs. I put out a question on social media “What is your all-time favorite book?” The thread got a lot of traction so I thought it would be great to compile them together here in this post. Biography From the life stories of legendary entrepreneurs and investors like Ray Dalio, Richard Branson, and Phil Knight to the inspirational journey of Nelson Mandela, one of the 20th century’s greatest freedom fighters and political leaders, these biographies hold pride of place on the bookshelves of many an SEO. Books like Ray Dalio’s Principles and Ben Carson’s The Big Picture draw on the author’s experiences to suggest powerful new ways of looking at the world. Each of these unique biographies and memoirs have much to teach their readers. Business Not surprisingly, books about business are among many SEO’s favorites. Classics like the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett’s collected essays sit next to decidedly more contemporary tomes like “How to Be F*cking Awesome” and Gino Wickman’s “Traction” which introduced the Entrepreneurial Operating System — a must-read for anyone looking to scale their business. Fiction All work and no play makes for dull SEOs… And while some may argue that time spent reading fiction could be better spent, sages as diverse as Tim Ferriss and former President Barack Obama strongly disagree. Even when he was in office, Obama put aside an hour each night to read, and told the New York Times that reading fiction left him “better able to imagine what’s going on in the lives of people throughout my presidency.” As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Fantasy and sci-fi are well represented in our SEO’s favorite fiction selections. Classics like Brave New World, Catcher in the Rye, War and Peace, and The Picture of Dorian Grey remain as timeless as ever… But there’s also plenty of room for pop culture staples like 50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones. Non-Fiction There’s no shortage of classics in the Non-Fiction category either, with some of the greatest thinkers humanity has ever produced represented here. From Sun Tzu’s Art of War, to the Bhagavad Gita, and the King James version of The Holy Bible, thousands of years of human knowledge and philosophy is included in this list. But it’s not all ancient texts. Runaway bestsellers that have changed how many of us view the world like Freakanomics, Antifragile, and Sapiens also make the cut. If you’re looking to build a respectable bookshelf that covers both age-old and cutting edge thought, you could do a lot worse than using this list as a starting point. Self-Help / Self-Improvement I can say without hesitation that if I hadn’t discovered two of the books in this section — The 4-Hour Workweek and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — my life today would look very different. I’m sure many of the other books listed below had a similarly seismic impact on the lives of the SEOs who recommended them. One of the benefits of being an SEO is the freedom it can give you to live life on your own terms. These self-improvement books can truly help you optimize your life… What titles on this list are you itching to tackle? Any must-rereads it reminded you of? Most importantly, what books are missing that you think other SEOs would enjoy? (Or could even change their life?) This list is a living document… It’s not too late for you to contribute… Join the discussion here on Facebook. 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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10 Most Profitable Niches (2024) List of Top Selling Markets

Matt Diggity — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 08:30:14 +0000

If you’re pouring your energy into marketing niches with awful growth potential, you’re losing money. You may be losing more than you think. The difference between niches that make money and those that don’t can be millions of dollars per month. If you need help and want to improve your personal finance by building profitable online businesses, this guide will point you to the next step. Whether you’re an affiliate marketing beginner (or just looking for a new angle), you owe it to yourself to focus on the opportunities that will pay off in a big way. In this comprehensive guide, you’re going to get an introduction to the year’s most profitable niches. With our expert guidance and insights, you can maximize your earning potential and build a successful affiliate marketing business in no time. So, let’s dive in and explore the most profitable blog niches of the year. And if you’d like to learn the method to find fail-proof niche right for yourself, check this video. The Most Profitable Blog Niches 1. Weight loss Losing weight is a goal for nearly all people at some point in their lives. That makes weight loss a market hardy and profitable to the tune of billions [1]. Marketers in this top-selling niche make money by serving up everything from diet guides to supplements. In addition to this, the weight loss niche is a broad niche that offers a wealth of content possibilities. It encompasses a broad spectrum of sub-niches like fitness regimes, nutrition advice, mental well-being, and even fashion tips for weight loss. This diversity allows marketers to hit specific target audience segments, thereby enhancing customer engagement and maximizing revenue potential. Sub niches and products Expected commissions There are many ways to make money in this profitable and broad niche. What each conversion is worth to you depends wildly on your selling products. Examples of profitable sites in the niche Diet Doctor is a well-designed site in the weight loss industry. It focuses on the low-carb diet sub-niche. Low carb is just one type of diet, but this site shows you how to make the most of that. The content connects to the needs of different people. Podcasts, meal plans, meal delivery services, and other partners help this online business make money. 2. Hosting/VPN Web services like hosting and VPNs are not only popular; they can also be very high-dollar. Those who can establish themselves can make money from this online business by scrapping with others for big commissions from enterprise businesses. The hosting and VPN market is continuously growing, propelled by the increasing importance of internet privacy and the burgeoning digital landscape. This niche also opens up opportunities for affiliate marketing, where substantial commissions can be earned from referrals. With the right expertise and knowledge about these services, one can create an amazing online business and valuable content that appeals to both individual and corporate users. Hosting is definitely one of the most profitable niches nowadays. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions Many products and services in this niche are subscriptions. If you manage to get a sale, you can claim recurring commissions for years to come. Examples of profitable sites in the niche VPN Mentor is a successful blog site in this profitable niche that carved out its place set with authoritative content. Named (and qualified) authors and richly-detailed reviews have helped this site establish credibility among savvy web service buyers. 3. Muscle/Bodybuilding Bodybuilding has a dedicated fan base that isn’t afraid of dropping money to get those gains. When you enter this market, you can direct their dedication toward a range of different solutions that have (generally) high commissions. The muscle and bodybuilding niche extends beyond just physical products and it is one of the most profitable niches out there nowadays. It encompasses lifestyle guidance, training methodologies, dietary plans, and personal coaching. A personal development niche like this one will always be profitable. There’s also a significant interest in content around bodybuilding competitions, athlete profiles, and trending fitness routines. By offering comprehensive solutions and engaging content, you can tap into this niche’s potential, creating a great online business model with a loyal target audience ready to invest in their fitness goals. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions There are a wide variety of offers in this top-selling niche, including subscription services that can earn you recurring commissions. Examples of profitable sites in the niche Healthline is massive and massively-successful across many profit-making niche sites, including the fitness niche. To legally work in the space, they took on the expense of having every article reviewed by doctors, nurses, or other specialists. 4. Finance They say you’ve got to spend money to make money. That may be why people in this profitable niche market are ready to snap up guides in the personal finance niche, books, personalized advice, and marketing tips. The finance niche is vast and one of the most profitable niches out there, covering areas like investing, retirement planning, real estate, tax advice, and budgeting. Each sub-niche offers opportunities for monetization through courses, consulting, eBooks, or software tools. With the rise of fintech and digital currencies, the demand for reliable and up-to-date financial advice is higher than ever, making this an ideal niche for a profitable blog or online business. The dynamic nature of the finance sector offers endless opportunities for content creation. It’s not only about sharing knowledge but also providing analysis and opinion on market trends, policy changes, and emerging investment avenues like cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the inclusion of trade finance, with its focus on international transactions and financial instruments, enriches the content palette, catering to a more diverse and globally-oriented audience. This aspect of finance, crucial for businesses engaging in cross-border trade, adds a layer of complexity and relevance to the already rich tapestry of financial topics. You can establish trust with your audience by offering insightful, well-researched content, and later monetize through memberships, premium content, sponsored posts, or partnerships with financial institutions. Leveraging this niche effectively could lead to a prosperous online venture. Sub niches and products Check out our list of the best finance affiliate programs for even more ideas and opportunities. Expected Commissions Offers in this market can deliver great commissions, though success may depend on how well you define your audience. Trust can be hard to come by unless you’re speaking directly to a need. Examples of profitable sites in the niche Nerdwallet is a great example of a finance niche site targeting all the signs of financial health. You can learn from their obsessively clean design and emphasis on providing answers before pushing merchandise. People want to learn, and this website delivers. 5. Male Enhancement This niche has a lot of crossover with other men’s health markets, including other appearance-focused goods. For that reason, it’s a relatively easy topic to slide into existing sites that are serving those niches. This niche is emerging as one of the more profitable niches for a reason. It’s becoming increasingly popular each day. On another note, this niche holds vast potential due to its wide array of sub-categories, ranging from fitness and nutritional supplements to skincare and grooming products. This crossover with various men’s health aspects allows for comprehensive content creation that can appeal to a broader audience. By incorporating expert reviews, testimonials, and scientific evidence, trust, and credibility can be established, thereby attracting a dedicated audience willing to invest in their wellness and appearance and you’ll make lots of money online. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions There’s a great variety of compensation schemes in this niche. Pills can be a reliable moneymaker, but generating leads for advanced hair loss or ED procedures is another profitable way to go. Examples of profitable sites in the niche GoodRx is a pharma-focused site connecting users to many popular medicines. It has a loyal base of visitors that come back for the site’s focus on money-saving coupons and offers. 6. Survival This is another one of the more profitable niches that has exploded over the last few years. Flip open any newspaper, and you can find out why it’s not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon. Whether it’s tools, food, or field guides, there are endless opportunities for an online business. This niche isn’t limited to physical products. There’s a rising interest in survival skills training, emergency preparedness courses, and wilderness adventure experiences. From blogging about survival tips to selling eBooks or hosting webinars on self-sufficiency, there’s substantial potential for growth. Creating a community around these profitable niches can foster engagement, loyalty, and ultimately, monetization through various channels. Sub niches and products Expected Commissions This niche doesn’t have the highest commissions, but many of the most popular goods in this niche cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Examples of profitable sites in the niche SkilledSurvival takes its dramatic niche very seriously, and it’s a great example of just how many offers can live side-by-side in the same 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

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45.99% Earnings Increase in 5 Months for a Digital Infoproduct [SEO Case Study]

Matt Diggity — Mon, 11 May 2020 04:19:23 +0000

You’re about to get the strategy behind one of the most challenging SEO campaigns my SEO agency has ever run. Why was it so challenging? 3 reasons: First, the niche is massively competitive: A make-money-online infoproduct in the financial niche. Nuff said. Second, we only had 5-months to pull this off. Third, just like any other client, they were extremely hungry for results and demanded quality work. In the case study below, you’re going to learn the technical playbook, the onsite content strategy, and the link building techniques we carried out to get this 45.99% revenue growth win for this infoproduct business. The Case Study Our client takes advantage of the wide reach of the interwebs to teach his students how to earn money trading online. We’re talking currencies, forex, stock markets, crypto, etc. The business’ revenue is generated solely through the sale of digital download products – in this case, trading guides in an ebook format and video trading courses. When the owner of this profitable business (which already built some authority in the niche) approached The Search Initiative (TSI) about helping to grow their organic reach and find new students, we were excited to take on the challenge in one of the most competitive spaces there is. To accomplish this, the game plan was to focus hard on a quick-win strategy, while setting the stage for long term gains post-campaign. Our strategists were certain that the value we could provide would have a considerable impact on his business’ bottom line. How? Because… Over the course of the campaign, our technically-focused SEO strategies were able to grow organic traffic by 23.46%. But what did the best job for the client’s business was the 45.99% increase in the number of conversions comparing 1st vs last month of the campaign. Sales went up from just over 2,100 a month to 3,095 – this really bumped their monetization. And we did it in time. These gains were achieved within only 5 months of the client signing with TSI and our team starting the campaign. Here’s how we did it… The SEO Playbook for Infoproduct Websites Phase 1: A Comprehensive Technical Audit I’ve said this in every TSI case study we’ve published so far… and I simply cannot emphasize enough: So before you begin any campaign, always start with a full technical audit. Starting with… Page Speed First, our technical SEO strategists started at the bottom of the client’s tech stack… and you should too. This starts with you digging into the web server’s configuration, and running a series of tests to measure the site’s speed. This enables you to ensure that the performance of the web server itself wasn’t causing a penalty or disadvantage on either desktop or mobile connections. So, what tests we run? PageSpeed Insights (PSI) – this should be everyone’s go-to tool and shouldn’t need an explanation. GTmetrix – it’s good to cross-check PSI’s results, therefore we use at least one other tool. In reality, we use GTmetrix together with Dareboost, Uptrends, and Webpagetest. HTTP/2 Test – this one is becoming a standard that can greatly improve your page speed, hence, it’s definitely worth looking into. If you’re not HTTP/2 enabled, you might want to think about changing your server or using an enabled CDN.You want to see this: Performance Test – I know it might sound like overkill, but we included this in our test suite earlier this year and use it for the sites that can expect higher concurrent traffic.We’re not even talking Amazon-level traffic, but say you might get a thousand users on your site at once. What will happen? Will the server handle it or go apeshit? If this test shows you a steady response time of under 80ms – you’re good. But remember – the lower the response rate, the better! In cases where transfer speeds or latency are too high, we advise you (and our clients) to consider migrating to faster servers, upgrading to better hosting or better yet, re-platforming to a CDN. Luckily, most of the time, you can achieve most of the gains through WPRocket optimization, as was the case with this case study. Your Golden WPRocket Settings Cache → Enable caching for mobile devices This option should always be on. It ensures that your mobile users are also having your site served cached. Cache → Cache Lifespan Set it depending on how often you update your site, but we find a sweet spot at around 2-7 days. File Optimization → Basic Settings Be careful with the first one – it may break things! File Optimization → CSS Files Again, this section is quite tricky and it may break things. My guys switch them on one-by-one and test if the site works fine after enabling each option. Under Fallback critical CSS you should paste your Critical Path CSS which you can generate using CriticalCSS site. File Optimization → Javascript This section is the most likely to break things, so take extreme care enabling these options!! Depending on your theme, you might be able to defer Javascript with the below: Note that we had to use a Safe Mode for jQuery as, without this, our theme stopped working. After playing with Javascript options, make sure you test your site thoroughly, including all contact forms, sliders, checkout, and user-related functionalities. Media → LazyLoad Preload → Preload Preload → Prefetch DNS Requests The URLs here hugely depend on your theme. Here, you should paste the domains of the external resources that your site is using. Also, when you’re using Cloudflare – make sure to enable the Cloudflare Add-on in WPRocket. Speaking of Cloudflare – the final push for our site’s performance we managed to get by using Cloudflare as the CDN provider (the client sells products worldwide). GTMetrix If you don’t want to use additional plugins (which I highly recommend), below is a .htaccess code I got from our resident genius and Director of SEO, Rad Paluszak – it’ll do the basic stuff like: GZip compression Deflate compression Expires headers Some cache control So without any WordPress optimization plugins, this code added at the top of your .htaccess file, will slightly improve your PageSpeed Insights results: Internal Redirects You know how it goes – Google says that redirects don’t lose any link juice, but PageRank formula and tests state something different (there’s a scientific test run on 41 million .it websites that shows PageRank’s damping factor may vary). Whichever it is, let’s take all necessary precautions in case there is a damping factor and redirects drop a % of their link juice. As we investigated the configuration of the server, we discovered some misapplied internal redirects, which were very easily fixed but would have a considerable effect on SEO performance – a quick win. You can test them with a simple tool httpstatus.io and see results for individual URLs: But this would be a long way, right? So your best bet is to run a Sitebulb crawl and head over to the Redirects section of the crawl and look at Internal Redirected URLs: There you will find a list of all internally redirected URLs that you should update and make to point at the last address in the redirect chain. You might need to re-run the crawl multiple times to find all of them. Be relentless! Google Index Management Everyone knows that Google crawls and indexes websites. This is the bare foundation of how the search engine works. It visits the sites, crawling from one link to the other. Does it repetitively to keep the index up-to-date, as well as incrementally, discovering new sites, content, and information. Over time, crawling your site, Google sees its changes, learns structure and gets to deeper and deeper parts of it. Google stores in their index everything it finds applicable to keep; everything considered useful enough for the users and Google itself. However, sometimes it gets to the pages that you’d not want it to keep indexed. For example, pages that accidentally create issues like duplicate or thin content, stuff kept only for logged-in visitors, etc. Google does its best to distinguish what it should and shouldn’t index, but it may sometimes get it wrong. Now, this is where SEOs should come into play. We want to serve Google all the content on a silver platter, so it doesn’t need to algorithmically decide what to index. We clean up what’s already indexed, but was not supposed to be. We also prevent pages from being indexed, as well as making sure that important pages are within reach of the crawlers. I don’t see many sites that get this one right. Why? Most probably because it’s an ongoing job and site owners and SEOs just forget to perform it every month or so. On the other hand, it’s also not so easy to identify index bloat. With this campaign, to ensure that Google’s indexation of the site was optimal, we looked at these: Site: Search Google Search Console In our Read More Read More

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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 Income Report: March 2020

Matt Diggity — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 06:54:42 +0000

Aside from the shit hitting the fan, the first 3 months of 2020 have been absolute beast mode for business. I’ve been working closely with a life coach to help optimize my business processes and routine for absolute effectiveness. As a result of ongoing sessions, I’m happy to announce that March 2020 has been the most profitable month I’ve ever had. One of the major techniques Barbara has been teaching me is the secret of transparency… According to her, the secret to business success is complete openness and honesty in all things, including releasing detailed financial information on the profitability of my business. So in an effort to be more authentic with you all, I’ve decided to begin releasing detailed monthly income reports with regular breakdowns of my revenue streams. I’m confident that by showing these figures, it will motivate and inspire you to live your best life in 2020. IMPORTANT NOTE: This income report is NOT intended to flex on anyone… These figures are for motivational purposes ONLY. 2020: Implementation Of New Revenue Streams Barbara has also been coaching me to remove my bias and to try out different platforms. This includes both Fiverr and ClickFunnels. I did some DMT recently, and now I feel like I can truly see the value of these platforms. ClickFunnels Course Sales My biggest income earner by far was ClickFunnels course sales, hitting the 6-figure ClickFunnels club for the first time ever. They say, “those can’t do, teach”. And I say, “make it rain motherfuckers!” CMSEO 2019 As many of you know, the CMSEO 2019 Chang Mai event was a huge success. We had 800 people attend the event with speakers flying in from all over the world. It took a few (about 12) months of planning. My accountant just finished tallying up the figures, and the $763 USD I profited made it all worth it. Fiverr I’ve also started a new income revenue stream on Fiverr selling links, pocketing me a cool $421 in March. At about $7 an order average with a 20% Fiverr fee, I’d say this isn’t a bad little side hustle. Agency & Affiliate Work Agency client work and affiliate website were a little lower than usual totaling to a whopping $38 USD profit together in March, though I’ve been focusing more on automated revenue streams such as Fiverr and ClickFunnels so I have neglected this a little. I did, however, sell a whopping total of 128,930 toilet paper rolls on Amazon Associates, which counts for that $38. Can you say, “makin’ paper”? A New Hope Due to my massive business success this year my ex-wife has finally decided to let me see my kids. It’s been a long arduous journey but I feel like she might finally be coming around to the idea of reconciliation, ongoing support, and I’M JUST FUCKING WITH YOU! APRIL FOOLS GUYS! I hope you guys have a killer April Fools with some good pranks lined up. Keep your heads up. This corona shit-show will end some day. Aside from the shit hitting the fan, the first 3 months of 2020 have been absolute beast mode for business. I’ve been working closely with a life coach to help optimize my business processes and routine for absolute effectiveness. As a result of ongoing sessions, I’m happy to announce that March 2020 has been the most profitable month I’ve ever had. One of the major techniques Barbara has been teaching me is the secret of transparency… According to her, the secret to business success is complete openness and honesty in all things, including releasing detailed financial information on the profitability of my business. So in an effort to be more authentic with you all, I’ve decided to begin releasing detailed monthly income reports with regular breakdowns of my revenue streams. I’m confident that by showing these figures, it will motivate and inspire you to live your best life in 2020. IMPORTANT NOTE: This income report is NOT intended to flex on anyone… These figures are for motivational purposes ONLY. 2020: Implementation Of New Revenue Streams Barbara has also been coaching me to remove my bias and to try out different platforms. This includes both Fiverr and ClickFunnels. I did some DMT recently, and now I feel like I can truly see the value of these platforms. ClickFunnels Course Sales My biggest income earner by far was ClickFunnels course sales, hitting the 6-figure ClickFunnels club for the first time ever. They say, “those can’t do, teach”. And I say, “make it rain motherfuckers!” CMSEO 2019 As many of you know, the CMSEO 2019 Chang Mai event was a huge success. We had 800 people attend the event with speakers flying in from all over the world. It took a few (about 12) months of planning. My accountant just finished tallying up the figures, and the $763 USD I profited made it all worth it. Fiverr I’ve also started a new income revenue stream on Fiverr selling links, pocketing me a cool $421 in March. At about $7 an order average with a 20% Fiverr fee, I’d say this isn’t a bad little side hustle. Agency & Affiliate Work Agency client work and affiliate website were a little lower than usual totaling to a whopping $38 USD profit together in March, though I’ve been focusing more on automated revenue streams such as Fiverr and ClickFunnels so I have neglected this a little. I did, however, sell a whopping total of 128,930 toilet paper rolls on Amazon Associates, which counts for that $38. Can you say, “makin’ paper”? A New Hope Due to my massive business success this year my ex-wife has finally decided to let me see my kids. It’s been a long arduous journey but I feel like she might finally be coming around to the idea of reconciliation, ongoing support, and I’M JUST FUCKING WITH YOU! APRIL FOOLS GUYS! I hope you guys have a killer April Fools with some good pranks lined up. Keep your heads up. This corona shit-show will end some day. 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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Ultimate Guide to Surfer Onsite Optimization in 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 07:45:14 +0000

Do you know the best thing about on-page SEO? Control. As an experienced SEO professional with more than 10 years of experience in the filed and founder of multiple 7 figure digital marketing businesses, I know firsthand the importance of on-page optimization in achieving higher search engine rankings. Even with a small budget, you can see real results with on-page optimization. You won’t get the #1 spot overnight, but you can still rise in the ranks with fewer backlinks than your competitors. There are two ways to deal with on-page optimization: you can do it on your own and build great content from scratch, or you can use tools that speed up your optimization work. Like we do. In this guide, you’ll learn more about Surfer, an SEO tool that specializes in on-page optimization. You’ll also get a step-by-step guide on how to use the tool to create better content, fill content gaps, and rank higher for your chosen keywords. Quick Summary What Is Surfer? Surfer is an SEO tool that analyzes why top pages are ranking well for your keyword. Based on that information, you’ll be able to figure out what you need to do to create content that will help you outrank your competitors. Surfer helps in two ways: Creating/outsourcing new optimized content Optimizing existing pages The Surfer Content Editor analyzes your content structure, keyword usage/density, phrasing, and more, comparing them to high-ranking results for the same keywords. Then, it provides you with guidelines on how to build content that has the right structure and wording to show up on page 1. There’s also the Keyword Analyzer, with Audit and Terms to Use features that help you optimize existing pages. Rounding out the Surfer SEO tool kit are the Keyword Research and Common Backlinks features—I’ll discuss all these in full detail later. Surfer Recommendations In Action How does this tool help you optimize your content? And what can you expect from Surfer? Let’s take one of my own pages as an example. I have an SEO coaching landing page that was ranked at #1 forever. All of a sudden, it had dropped to #2. After plugging it into Surfer, I found out that my landing page content was too long…and thus I cut it in half. The Terms to Use feature also let me know that my word usage was off. Tweaking the landing page boosted the page back to #1, and now it’s at a similar length to other high-performing pages. Here’s another example: in November, I turned my Affiliate Networks page into a blog post and adjusted the densities of relevant phrases based on Surfer’s recommendations. The next day, I checked my keywords and saw this: My page jumped to the top three after my tweaks. Similarly, Matthew Woodward had an extremely comprehensive review of SEMRush that clocked in at a whopping 26,000 words and was ranked #7. Surfer told him to remove 22,000 words…or almost 85% of his content. While it sounds counterintuitive to reduce your long-form blog post to a “regular-sized” one, his review jumped to the #1 spot…the next day. These are three examples of Surfer giving you insights on pages that are currently doing well with their content so that you can use the same rewarding practices. Correlation SEO In On-Page Optimization Now that you know what Surfer can do, you’re most probably thinking, “How does Surfer know which ranking factors are the most crucial for SEO?” Unfortunately, Google and other search engines aren’t transparent about their algorithm. Enter correlational SEO. Correlation SEO analyzes various ranking factors in order to determine which ones have the biggest impact on ranking. Surfer’s data comes from reverse engineering the search engine results page (SERP)—it looks at what top-performing pages are doing that you aren’t. Instead of giving you vague advice (“long content is better than short content”) or ballpark figures (“aim for 1,000-2,000 words per blog post), Surfer provides recommendations that are based on pages that already rank for your target keywords. And this extends to more than just word count. Surfer also looks at what kinds of pages rank best (e.g. long-form vs. quick answers), what kind of media they contain (e.g. graphics, lists, etc.), what topics they cover, and what words and phrases are most commonly used. Surfer wasn’t the first correlational SEO tool to hit the market. Cora and Page Optimizer Pro came earlier and are both exceptional tools as well. One of the major criticisms of correlation SEO is that correlation doesn’t mean causation—just because a competitor is ranking while using certain practices, it doesn’t mean that those practices are the reason they’re ranking. But by optimizing your content so that it’s similar (but higher-quality) than the content that Google ranks at the top, you are more likely to take the top spot. Check this video to learn more about Google SEO ranking factors. The trick is to know which pages to compare yourself to, so that you aren’t introducing the wrong kind of change. Choosing The Proper Competitors For Your Work With Surfer Although it sounds sensible to look at the top ten results for your analysis, you’ll end up getting a lot of imprecise data and ineffective recommendations. John from Freedom Bound Business found that out the hard way. When he didn’t pay much attention to picking the right competitors, his page dropped from rank 25 to rank 41. When he qualified competitors correctly, his affiliate review got bumped up from the second results page to the first. Source: https://www.freedomboundbusiness.com/surfer-seo-review/ What does this tell you? There is no point in comparing oranges to apples, and the same rule applies to competitor analysis. To get the most out of Surfer’s correlational SEO tools, look into pages that are similar to yours, and don’t compare yourself to websites that are not. Here’s a quick guide to choosing the right competitors: Don’t compare yourself to high-authority sites like Wikipedia or Amazon (unless you are a site of this level, of course). Find websites, pages, or competitors that are within the same niche or have the same format (e.g. review sites, blogs, etc.). Avoid listings and directories while optimizing for local SEO. Look at the word count of top pages and exclude outliers. Once you do the above, your data will be much more accurate. Use Case No. 1: Building High-Quality Content From Scratch Now that you know more about correlational SEO and Surfer, it’s time to put your knowledge to the test. Create a new page for your target keyword using Surfer’s Content Editor tool. Automate Your Content Brief Content Editor lets you create guidelines for your copywriter that includes all your requirements like keywords, topics, and optimum word count. I’ll show you how to create comprehensive briefs that outline your requirements and make it easy for your writers to understand. Preparing a good brief the traditional way is a lot of work. You have to manually research your competitors, extract some basic data about keywords, and follow good SEO practices—things that can take a lot of time. Here’s an alternative way: 1. Type Your Keyword And Location When working with Surfer, you always start with a keyword and location. In this case, our target keyword is “cordless circular saw” and our location is the United States. You can also choose to turn on NLP Analysis for more phrases and words suggestions from Google API (more on this later). Once the analysis is done, you can find your query in the history log below the input. Open it to access a customization panel. 2. Choose Pages To Compare Against The customization panel has five sections: pages to include, content structure, terms to use, topic and questions to answer, and notes. Let’s start with the “Pages to include” section. By default, Surfer checked the top five pages. These top five pages are your benchmarks. Pick URLs that are organic competition for your page. Exclude pages that rank high because of their extremely high authority, pages for different business models, and pages that target a different search intent. Also exclude word count outliers or pages that have word counts that are way shorter or longer than the others. Basically, everything I already told you about selecting comparisons. Here. Check out this example for an affiliate review: 3. Let Surfer Determine The Word Count Surfer automatically recommends a word count based on your chosen competitors, but you can also customize it if you prefer. However, if you chose your competitors wisely, there shouldn’t be much reason to adjust the number. Content length is critical—Surfer calculates phrase and keyword density based on it, so be cautious when modifying it! After you save your changes, the average length will appear in the requirements section. 4. Incorporate The Suggested Words And Phrases In addition to word count, Surfer also checks the top-performing pages for words and phrases relevant to your page. Surfer uses its own algorithms to reverse-engineer the top words and phrases that you should include in 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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Case Study: Should you Put Display Ads on Affiliate Websites?

Matt Diggity — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 05:35:29 +0000

You like money, right? Do you like cashing in a second time on websites and content you’ve already developed? I sure do, that’s why I designed a case study to determine whether it’s possible to turn a healthy affiliate site into a better earner by monetizing it through display ads. I get it, you’re immediately skeptical, right? Of course, you are. Multiple income streams are always awesome, but why would you ever monetize a site in a way that might get in the way of how it pays you now? Most affiliate marketers shun ads because their sites make money by drawing people directly to affiliate links, not ads. People on the affiliate side rightfully ask: Won’t ads distract people away from the links to my affiliate products? Won’t I lose the precious trust of my readers? Will my site load slower? Those concerns are exactly what I set out to test in this latest case study. In the following article, you’re going to learn what effect the introduction of ads had on load time, traffic, earnings, and other site growth factors. Finally, you’ll walk away with a definitive answer on if display ads are a valuable addition to your affiliate content sites. For those who prefer video content, here’s a video summary of what you’re about to read below. For those that like the details, the numbers, and more, carry on… First, a quick overview of what display ads are and how they fit into the affiliate model. What are Display Ads? Though you likely filter out a lot of display ads you see every day, they are far too common to ignore completely. Google Ads remains the largest ad platform serving the internet and has only gotten better at delivering targeted ads wherever you go. You’ll see them on most sites. As an off-hand example, here’s one that’s been following me around. Unless you aggressively block scripts with a tool like Adblock, you’ve seen them, and you may have even been tempted to click. If you haven’t used display ads on your site before, the setup is pretty simple. You apply to an ad network, meet the qualifications, and then follow their custom instructions on how to set up your website to display their ads. It’s hard to be more specific because the qualifications will vary from website to website. Most will require a minimum level of traffic. AdThrive requires a minimum of 100,000 monthly page views. Smaller networks like Mediavine require 25,000 sessions a month. They are likely to have content restrictions when it comes to adult topics and imagery. As you’d expect, the best networks have demanding standards. If you still need more background on display ads, this short guide can fill in some of the blanks. Now that we’re all caught up, here’s how my case study rolled out. The Case Study The study involved a single affiliate website. After some consideration, I chose a website that was already moderately successful with affiliate offers (earning roughly $8,000 per month). I had less-valuable sites to choose from, but I chose this one because I wanted a site that had a decent amount of traffic. Good traffic means sudden trends will stand out from the static. I wanted to have statistically significant behavior to analyze when the ads appeared. My plan was to place the ads across 37 informational content pieces on the site. I monetized the informational content pieces with email opt-ins to rewards like ebooks. The ROI for an email address is nowhere near as valuable as links to affiliate products that I placed on other pages. So even if the worst happened. Even if the ads that ate all the clicks, turned away the readers, or destroyed my site speed… it still would only affect these low ROI informational pages. The idea that ads only be served to certain pages generated some major resistance from ad networks (more on that in just a bit), but I was able to limit ads to those pages in the end by finding the right ad partner. Choosing the ad network for the experiment Two networks came more highly recommended than the others: Ezoic and Media Vine. However, neither one was able to help with the experiment. Both demanded that I allow ads on all pages or none of them. That wasn’t something I was willing to do, given the risks stated above. I’ve had people come to me and say that both these networks allow pick-and-choose options, but that’s not my experience. Actual conversation with Mediavine’s rep: I really wasn’t enthusiastic about installing the sitewide code updates both platforms require. Once again, I’m trying to protect the site overall, and some ad platforms are known to slow down websites. Ultimately, I went with a smaller and more flexible network called Newor Media (invitation link). This one came highly recommended by some friends who had longtime ad experience. Newor claimed that their platform does not impact speed (we will cover how that went in the data). They let me pick and choose the pages that were served by ads. Newor worked with me to determine how the ads would appear on the pages. That resulted in the page layout changes you can see in the next section. How page layout changed Layout 1: The Original This is how the page looks without ads. It’s a layout designed to serve informational content. Just past the first section, my email inline opt-ins are distributed discreetly throughout the page. One was placed just past the introduction, and another every few hundred words. There’s also an email opt-in on the sidebar, a little further down the page. The inline opt-ins are just written calls-to-action, while the sidebar features a full cover image of the ebook that signups receive. The page is built to serve email opt-ins. Before Newor placed the ads, there’s nothing that distracted from that purpose. Layout 2: After the Ads This is the new template based on the best practices I got from Newor. I know what you’re thinking: An ad before the title? Yeah, I know. Newor insisted that people wouldn’t be annoyed and that an early ad would set the tone for further ads down the page. I wanted to keep things simple for the sake of the experiment. So, I followed suit. Also, I should say that the page layout isn’t as busy as it looks. We spaced out the opt-ins and ads so that you never saw more than one per full page scroll. In addition to some small horizontal banners spaced through the content, I also approved and set up two larger banners in the sidebar. Now, the ads were ready to go, and the study was about to begin. To make sure it meant something, I tracked as much data as I could. What was measured? I collected data on several website factors that I considered essential to my affiliate site’s revenue and performance. To understand how deep the impact was when ads showed up, I needed to know… Email Subscriber rate impact (would my conversions suffer?) Speed performance (did the website slow down?) Rankings (Did our pages start dropping?) Traffic (Are fewer people coming through) Time-on-page (Are they spending less time on the page?) Earnings from ads (Was it all worth it?) Some of these factors have less priority than others. Speed is one of the highest priorities. The Results Speed To determine this, we performed a cascade of requests for each of the 37 test pages using Pingdom. That allowed us to reach out from both a San Francisco and Washington D.C. server and see how the load time changed. Full Data for Showing Off Actually Useful Summary: As you can see, there isn’t much evidence of a problem here. Sure, there’s a dip, but it’s matched by a dramatic improvement from the other coast. If I saw a deviation of say, 3 seconds, I would be panicking. But it’s nothing close to that. These results are firmly in the “who cares” territory. Next, I needed to track how search engines were responding to the changes. Rankings CORRUPTED Well, this is awkward. It turns out, I forgot to tell Google that I was running an experiment, and they decided to drop the BERT algorithm update right in the middle of it. This event colored all of my tracking data, but it isn’t all bad news. BERT loved this site. It gave my site such a big hug that I can’t separate what benefits came from the update and what came from our experiment. In all honesty, I didn’t think that adding ads would affect ranking much unless combined with a lot of other downward trends. I saw my first downward trend while tracking time visitors spent on-page. Results: Time on Page The results I was tracking were measured 7 and 14 days after I introduced ads to the site. Well, this doesn’t seem good. People are spending 20% Read More Read More

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Matt Diggity’s Favorite Purchases of 2019

Matt Diggity — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 10:55:17 +0000

Another year comes to a close and it’s about that time to start thinking about the rewards you’d like to give others, or even yourself for your hard work. Continuing with tradition, I’d like to share a list of the best products and services I’ve purchased in 2019. These will cover the categories of business, personal, and books that have significantly made an impact on my year. Business Purchases Surfer Surfer started making big waves (see what I did there?) in 2019 for its emergence into the market as a powerful onsite optimization tool. It allows you to make data-driven optimizations to your website that are based on what the top-rankers in the niche are already doing. It looks at word count, keyword density, backlinks, subheadings, and nearly everything else to give you a playbook on what you need to change in order to compete on page 1. It also has a content editor that allows your writers to be guided by data when writing their content. It’s a game-changer. WPX Hosting For the longest time, I was stuck on a terrible “premium” host, simply because of the inconvenience of migrating 20 sites. I’d never out a business, but you know what? They’ve ripped me off multiple times so here it goes: WPEngine, you suck. After 100’s of recommendations and knowing that Terry Kyle was running WPX Hosting, I took the plunge and switched over. … and never regretted it. WPX has solid pricing, a built-in CDN that kicks ass, and next-level support. I even ranked them #1 on my top hosts for SEOs post. Use coupon code “DIGGITY90” for 90% off your first month. Accuranker We switched over to Accuranker earlier this year. It’s got a nice interface, and has all of the typical features you find in a solid rank tracker. But what I really like most about it is their “Share of Voice” feature. “Share of Voice is an indicator of how your most important keywords are performing. All keywords that rank between positions 1 to 20 are used for the calculation. The average CTR for the position is multiplied by the search volume of each keyword, allowing you to see if a high traffic keyword is losing rank.” Rankings go up and down every day. But most of the time, it doesn’t matter. Share of Voice gives you a quick way to assess whether or not you should actually care about these fluctuations. Personal Purchases Oura Ring Hands-down, the best thing I’ve done for my life in 2019 is optimize my sleep. Sleep affects everything: your energy levels, mood, hormone production, immune system, etc. If sleep were irrelevant, why didn’t we evolve out of it millions of years ago? Peter Drucker said “What gets measured gets managed.” How much deep sleep do you get? How many times do you truly wake up? And so forth. Once you understand the data, the Oura ring gives you suggestions on how to optimize your weak spots. Waking Up – Meditation App by Sam Harris If you know me at all, you’d know that I’m huge on meditation. I couldn’t imagine my life without it. Meditation allows you to have control over your reactions… to actually choose which thoughts you give your attention to. This app gives you a 50 day course in meditation, building up your skills one day at a time. Unlike other apps, Sam’s “Waking Up” is very practical and straightforward. It skips a lot of the fluff found in typical meditation apps and gets straight to the foundations, which allows you to see quick benefits. I still use this app nearly every day. Muse Meditation Headband Keeping on the theme of meditation, the Muse headband is a wearable device that guides your meditation. While using Muse, you hear the sound of the ocean. The headband senses your brain waves and notices when you mind isn’t calm. It then feeds that back to the audio, making the waves crash harder. When you hear the change, you know you’ve lost focus and you know it’s now time to refocus on the breath. I’ve always shied away from long meditation sessions of 20min or longer, but because of this gamified system, I’m easily hitting 45min+ meditations with no issue at all. Google Home Hub I always brushed aside voice search. But last time I went back home to Cali, I decided to pick one of these things up and give it a try. Oh man, it’s addicting. Once you experience the convenience of simply speaking commands to your search and home devices, it’s easy to get used to. Get one of these things if you want to really understand where we’re going with voice. Just don’t set it up in your office. :p Niacin This is where I come in and say that I’m not a medical professional and to always consult with your doctor and all that stuff. Niacin is vitamin B3 – and its amazing for detox. You pop the recommended dose of Niacin, then spend half an hour doing some light cardio. This brings your blood and toxins to the skin surface. Then you jump in the sauna for some major detox action. Fair warning, you’re going to sweat a lot. But that’s a good thing. Read up on the process here. Standing/Sitting Desk I spend a lot of time in my office. And they say “sitting is the new smoking”. Sitting down for extended periods of time is extremely harsh on your back, posture, circulation, and general health. I got this automatic standing/sitting desk to help me switch-things-up during the day. The benefits have been outstanding (see what I did there, again?!). Varier Kneeling Chair When people come into my office, they almost always say “what in the hell is that thing?” This chair forces you to have good posture. If you don’t sit straight on a kneeling chair, you’re simply going to fall off. It also takes pressure off your spine and spinal discs by distributing weight into your shins. It’s surprisingly comfortable as well. When I’m not standing at my desk, I’m using this weird ass thing. Books End of Jobs – Taylor Pearson Oh man, I wish I had read this book 10 years ago. I got this book on recommendation from at least a dozen friends. It goes through the evolution of the primary skills that have been needed in the workforce throughout the ages. Spoiler alert… If you haven’t quite decided to jump ship and become an entrepreneur, this book will help you make that decision with statistics and qualitative argument. If you’ve already taken the leap, it will give you a valuable justification for what you’re doing and will help strengthen your resolve in the inevitable bumpy times. Who: The A-method for Hiring – Geoff Smart Ever feel like hiring is a trial-and-error process? That’s because you’re not shooting for A-players. A-players don’t drop the ball. They don’t quit when things get challenging. A-players are the ones that will change your business for the better and help take things to another level. This book helps you identify the right candidates for each position, filter out the bad ones, and conduct interviews through a well-designed process created by experts. Since I read this book, I refuse to hire outside this system. Thanks for reading this article. For more inspiration, check back on the previous years. 2017 2018 Have a great holiday season, and I’ll be back with you in 2020 with a huge post that could potentially change the way you look at affiliate SEO. Another year comes to a close and it’s about that time to start thinking about the rewards you’d like to give others, or even yourself for your hard work. Continuing with tradition, I’d like to share a list of the best products and services I’ve purchased in 2019. These will cover the categories of business, personal, and books that have significantly made an impact on my year. Business Purchases Surfer Surfer started making big waves (see what I did there?) in 2019 for its emergence into the market as a powerful onsite optimization tool. It allows you to make data-driven optimizations to your website that are based on what the top-rankers in the niche are already doing. It looks at word count, keyword density, backlinks, subheadings, and nearly everything else to give you a playbook on what you need to change in order to compete on page 1. It also has a content editor that allows your writers to be guided by data when writing their content. It’s a game-changer. WPX Hosting For the longest time, I was stuck on a terrible “premium” host, simply because of the inconvenience of migrating 20 sites. I’d never out a business, but you know what? They’ve ripped me off multiple times so here it goes: WPEngine, you suck. After 100’s of recommendations and knowing that Terry Kyle was running WPX Hosting, I took the plunge and switched Read More Read More

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15 Best Affiliate Networks of 2024: The Year’s Top Platforms

Matt Diggity — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 04:39:23 +0000

Choosing a solid affiliate network is a crucial part of being a successful affiliate marketer, whether you’re starting as a new affiliate or just diving into a new niche. There are thousands of affiliate programs offered by merchants to market their services or products. I’ve tried most of them. No matter which type of affiliate programs you like or what types of affiliate products or services you promote, you can find a variety of reliable affiliate networks to suit your needs. According to multiple surveys in our Affiliate Lab community (and my own affiliate network experience) here are the best affiliate marketing platforms to catapult your success. The Best Affiliate Network in Below is a list of my list of top affiliate networks for . These cater to various products, services, and industries. All of them are worth a look. And after that, I’ll discuss how you can find the perfect one for you and your affiliate marketing goals. 1. ShareASale ShareASale is close to the largest U.S. affiliate network. Doing a quick search, it currently boasts over 3900 merchant programs on its affiliate platform and over 1.2M registered publishers participating. This affiliate network is based out of Chicago, IL, and has been operating since 2000 with an outstanding reputation as a fair and honest business. In January 2017, global affiliate network Awin acquired ShareASale to provide further international affiliate opportunities to domestic advertisers and publishers. ShareASale is a great affiliate network for people getting into affiliate marketing to promote physical products and looking for an Amazon Associates alternative. I’ve earned a lot of income with the ShareASale affiliate marketing network. 2. FlexOffers FlexOffers is a massive affiliate network with a large variety of advertisers and offers to explore. Those who sign up to this affiliate platform can choose from over 10,000 of them covering products ranging from seasonal items to consumer electronics. Due to the large number of offers in the affiliate network, most kinds of programs (CPA, CPI) are represented. Major featured brands on the site have included SKECHERS, Kohls, Macy’s, and Barnes & Noble. Most of those who have tried it out say good things about the dashboard, the customer support, and the quality and variety of offers. We can’t say anything bad either. There’s a tier 2 program where you can earn even by sharing affiliate links with other advertisers. 3. MaxBounty This is a CPA affiliate network, which means each advertiser pays for a specific action. It is one of the top affiliate marketing networks out there, in our opinion. This affiliate network offers lots of models, including CPA, CPL, and mobile. They work with advertisers involved in market research, diet, dating, and real estate. That action could be a sale, form submission, download, or any other action performed by the visitor. All of them can be tracked and then paid for by the advertiser. There are certain web services (such as software downloads or file sharing) that generate much more affiliate income for a dedicated account manager when using a CPA program—as opposed to premium affiliate networks such as CJ or ShareASale. If you’re an ace at conversion rate optimization this is where you want to be. MaxBounty has been around for over a decade and is consistently considered one of the best and most reliable CPA affiliate networks. And we can confirm that. 4. MoreNiche MoreNiche is a reliable affiliate network that was established in 2002. While they don’t have many affiliate marketing programs to choose from, the products are quite good, with most of them offering high commissions (30%-40%). One of the key aspects that sets them apart from other top affiliate networks is how they treat their people. Their dedicated affiliate manager personnel provide proactive support, giving up-to-date SEO advice, website audits, and CRO suggestions. They also hold affiliate marketing mastermind events, which I’ve attended and spoken at. They’re great. Affiliates are not just income generators – each dedicated account manager wants to generally get to know their customers and build long-lasting relationships. This is the best approach you could ask for from your affiliate network. 5. Affiliaxe Affiliaxe is an affiliate platform that rates itself as the best option for experienced affiliate enthusiasts. In keeping with that drive for exclusivity, it has an invitation-only approval process that some reviewers have found frustrating. Those that get in do enjoy great benefits and high commissions. Those benefits include 700+ offers in profitable niches to choose from, including wellness, entertainment, dieting, and mobile content. Their dedicated affiliate manager personnel (shout out to Pavel) are reported to offer a lot of guidance on the creation and improvement of digital marketing campaigns. I’ve found them to be reasonable when it comes to negotiating commission bumps (try that with Amazon Associates). Pavel and I worked together to get a single product to $60k/month at its peak, resulting in my best single-product money-maker of the year. When I asked Pavel, “What makes Affiliaxe special?”, he replied… “All our offers are whitehat and we work with big brands such as Norton, Mcafee, Marley Spoon, Omega XL (presented by Larry King), TruthFinder, etc. We work hard on making our landing pages compliant while getting campaigns approved as fast as possible.” Pavel Maister Sr. Affiliate Manager Finally, the platform is pretty solid. It has a good collection of features and is intuitive to figure out. If you are experienced and have a lot of weight to throw around, this may be the top affiliate network for you, but first, you’ll have to get through their qualification process. 6. Rakuten Formerly Buy.com, this is another popular affiliate network for e-commerce focusing mostly on physical goods. It’s another decent alternative to Amazon. Rakuten represents a variety of different industry-standard brands, including Walmart, Sephora, New Balance, etc. While their platform is smaller than some other top affiliate networks with around 1,000 partners, they are one of the oldest affiliate networks, and dedicated to premium technology. These guys offer a ton of creatives to choose from. Optimizing sales is made easier through the use of technology such as rotating ads and flexible linking options. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) junkies like myself will get the most out of Rakuten’s slick optimization features that this program provides. Fun fact: Rakuten helped me get my greatest affiliate month ever in December. 7. Clickbank This large and longstanding affiliate network breaks away from the pack by focusing on digital information products, product launches, and other internet marketing products. They market over 6 million unique lifestyle products created by digital entrepreneurs. In short, they specialize in digital products and currently reach over 200 million customers. ClickBank is likely the first program you’d be recommended when you’re first getting into digital products, email marketing, or other “making money online” endeavors. Are they the top affiliate program in the entire industry for digital products? That’s up to the individual, but I’ve got no complaints. There are plenty of ClickBank alternatives to choose from. I’ve never offered any digital products to publishers through an affiliate network, but this is likely where I’d go if I did. 8. Px.com If rank and rent lead generation is your game, then this affiliate network is not one to be overlooked. PX specializes in the industries of insurance, home services, and financial verticals in global markets. They offer a full-service platform that focuses on using superior technology to fully automate lead generation. Customizers will have a great time with this affiliate network because, with lead scoring and verification technology, they enable you to maximize your revenue and earn higher lead conversions. 9. CJ Affiliate Formerly Commission Junction, the CJ affiliate marketing network specializes in pay-for-performance affiliate programs. CJ affiliate is considered to be one of the largest affiliate networks online. A simple search can send you down a rabbit hole of different offers. They operate globally and have programs for some of the world’s most recognized and specialized retailers. CJ Affiliate has attracted a “who’s who” of premium partners including Home Depot, Apple, TurboTax, and Zappos. I like CJ Affiliate for its high-end, powerful reporting tools as well as reliable and timely payments. That said, they do like to cancel accounts with little to no explanation—similar to Amazon Associates —which we’ll discuss in an upcoming section. 10. 2checkout 2checkout specializes in global eCommerce of software, digital products, and SaaS solutions. Their partners include over 4,000 digital businesses in over 180 countries. Strong support from their publisher community has given this partner network a big boost in rankings. 11. Market Health This is amongst the top affiliate networks that specialize in health and beauty products, including more than 200 they manufacture themselves. This is a friendly affiliate network if you’re marketing health and wellness products and operating outside the US. It’s also got the best makeup affiliate program for those in the beauty niche. I’ve done at least $200,000 with Market Health affiliate programs, and a share of that has to do with their eagerness to reward Read More Read More

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E-Commerce SEO Case Study: How we 4x’d Traffic and Doubled Revenue

Matt Diggity — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 08:41:18 +0000

Whether you’re an e-commerce manager or an SEO specialist, you’ve invested a considerable amount of time and energy into working out the best practice approach for tackling organic search for online stores. An E-Commerce SEO Strategy Walk-Through In this case study, I’ll be showing you my agency The Search Initiative was able to double revenue by building a custom strategy for one of our e-commerce clients who operates within a small b2b furniture niche. My goal with this case study is to introduce you to a wide range of new ideas that will help you to expand and improve your e-commerce SEO game and better serve your customers. You’ll learn the strategies we used to improve UX, technical stability, onsite optimization, content, and of course backlinks. The approach that I will detail saw our e-commerce client grow their traffic by a massive 417% in 8 months. It also earned them $48k in consistent additional monthly revenue. This took them from generating $43k a month to $91k a month, or a 112% increase in overall revenue. The Challenge Our client is in the b2b furniture and equipment business and they offer their products only within specific locations in the UK. As well as offering their products for sale to clients, they also offer their products for hire. The client came to us with a solid foundation. They had an existing e-commerce business, a solid website, and a great brand. However, when setting up their company, SEO hadn’t been a top priority. Establishing E-commerce E-A-T (Expertise-Authority-Trust) & Earning Backlinks If you have a high-quality site and with a keen desire to establish your brand (like our client does), your approach needs to be particularly focused on sustainable, long-term growth. You need to create quality content that represents the brand well and earn backlinks naturally. In addition, focus on signalling trust in the online store and the brand by demonstrating transparency and authority. We’ll get to this later. Here’s how we did it… Step 1 – E-commerce User Experience To enjoy the benefits of some quick wins, first focus on the low-hanging fruit. User Experience The client came to us with robust branding already established and a professional-looking website, but we were able to identify a few small tweaks that created a significantly better experience for potential customers. Visual Changes Optimize visitor experience by adjusting color contrast (here’s a couple of great tools for choosing brand colors and color contrast), adjust placement and selection of images, and add zooming and scaling images to product pages to further improve user experience and increase the likelihood of generating a conversion. Mobile Optimization The majority of Internet traffic now originates from mobile devices, so local and mobile optimization are now crucial for small businesses. Make these small changes to your site that make a big difference to those viewing on mobile: Making phone numbers clickable Making emails addresses clickable. Increasing the font-size to a minimum of 16px for mobile users, as you can see in the screenshot below. These small tweaks contributed towards significantly increased conversions on mobile. Step 2 – Technical Auditing The foundation of any SEO strategy is technical optimization of the website, and since we were dealing with an e-commerce site with many functions and pages, there were plenty of opportunities to identify and resolve technical problems. They are as follows… Google Index Management This included removing all traces of their old website from the Google index, removing duplication in their category pages, managing index bloat, adding their XML sitemap to the robots.txt, and removing now-defunct meta keywords from their site. For example, the client’s login pages were indexed. In some cases, this type of unnecessary indexing can cause more valuable pages to be pushed out of the search results, or skipped over in a routine crawl, thus diluting your message. HTTP Pages and URL Parameters We also found HTTP pages and URL parameters in the index. URL parameters are parameters whose value is set dynamically in a page’s URL. For example, you may have a search bar on your website where customers can search your catalog. Whenever customers do an internal search, new URL parameters will be created, which ends up bloating the index with a bunch of URLs like: website.com/category/search?pink+scarf In order to make it clear to Google’s Search algorithm what the different URL parameters do, specify them in Google Search Console. Cleaning Up Legacy Strategies Next, we looked at any technical issues caused by legacy strategies and began to clean them up. One example of an issue was that the site included meta keywords on the pages, which have been considered defunct since Google confirmed that these self-defined keywords hold no weight in their algorithm. Worse, competitors could look at your meta keywords and find a perfect list of keywords and niches that you’re targeting. We then looked at how the client’s CMS might be causing issues without them even knowing it. Managing Magento 2 Our client’s site is built on the popular Magento 2 ecommerce website builder, which is notorious for not having a robots.txt and sitemap.xml configured out-of-the-box. We created the sitemap ourselves using Screaming Frog web crawler, added it to robots.txt, submitted to Google Search Console, thus helping Google’s search algorithm to better understand the layout of our client’s site. Finally, we dealt with a considerable site-wide issue. The site used canonical tags that were meant to be self-referencing, but were actually canonicalized different pages. This is suboptimal because it confuses Google’s web crawler bots, making it a mess when trying to rank. We cleaned it all up, so that Google knew exactly which pages should rank. Step 3 – Internal Link Building Once you have done a technical audit, earned some quick wins and solved some user experience issues, start to think about improving the internal link structure. Adding Internal Links To Existing Content Quickly, we noticed that while the client did have a blog on their domain, there was very little content on it and much of it was out of date. Also, there weren’t many links between their blog and their category and product pages… a huge opportunity for spreading link juice and establishing topical relevance. Our plan was to create more high-quality blog content and expand its scope, allowing us to build more internal links to relevant product and category pages. We drew up a content strategy that involved producing a consistent number of new content pieces each month and went back through each old blog post, updating them with relevant links to product and category pages. We’ll get to the content plan in more detail later, but for now, let’s really dig into internal linking. E-commerce Topical Clustering Create “topical clusters”, which can be thought of as groups of pages that talk about different elements of the same key topic. For example, “protein powder” might be the topical cluster. It would be made up of a cornerstone article that you hope to rank for the keyword “protein powder”, as well as several other articles talking about sub-topics of “protein powder”. Some examples could be “How to Make Pancakes from Protein Powder”, or “Can Protein Powder Help you Lose Weight?” or “10 Side Effects of Synthetic Protein”. You would then create a content piece for each of these sub-topics and have each linking to the cornerstone article using a close anchor text to “protein powder”. Using this technique, you’re able to pass value from the smaller articles to the main piece and have a better chance of ranking the main piece for “protein powder” in Google Search. From these cornerstone articles, we were then able to link back to category and product pages, increasing their perceived authority too. Step 4 – Content Strategy Before you can implement a solid external backlink building strategy, you need to create a bedrock of content to be used to support your outreach. I suggest giving your writers the following guidelines for creating content. Evergreen, Algorithmically Optimized Content Focus on evergreen content, preferably creating linkable assets such as infographics, slideshows or documents containing industry insights. An example of an evergreen topic would be “why ergonomic chairs are good for your back”. Conversely, “the best chairs in ” would not be evergreen, as it will obviously lose its relevance at the end of the year. In the same line of thought, avoid using dates in the page title, headings or URL. Look at the people ranking on page 1. Ask yourself: How many words did they write? Find the average and add 20% more. What sub-topics did they cover? When discussing “How to lose belly fat”, you’ll see that it’s necessary to talk about “avoiding trans fats”. Do the same. What kind of layout are they going for? Are they presenting in tables? Do the same. And don’t forget, write in an easy-to-read manner, and without any grammar mistakes. E-A-T and E-commerce Content Create content that referenced your products and services so that you can funnel users to your Read More Read More

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What Does it Take to Rank in the Most Difficult Affiliate SEO Niches?

Matt Diggity — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 08:47:21 +0000

Ever wonder what it’s like to compete in some of the most difficult affiliate SEO niches? As someone who has built and sold multiple affiliate websites for a healthy profit, I understand the ins and outs of this competitive space. To give you an inside look, I sat down with 6 of the world’s top affiliate SEO experts to discuss what it takes to rank in various competitive affiliate marketing niches, from CBD to Pharma. You’re about to learn about the potential earnings of affiliate marketers, the necessary budget, team requirements, content, and backlink plans involved in each of them. And if you’d like to learn which SEO niches are perfect for AI watch this video. Quick Summary Pharma – James Upjohn, Serpify How much monthly recurring revenue can someone expect to make, ranking in the top Google spots in this lucrative niche? This really depends on the number of products and route to market. Affiliate marketers will earn smaller commissions, and drop shippers significantly more. We’ve done SEO rankings for a pharma client that was having their own pills produced in India and the profit was huge. Their revenue x4 within 3 months. What kind of budget does it take to compete in this niche? Surprisingly not a huge one! So many SEOs that use PBNs are tackling local SEO keywords! There’s probably 10 SEOs trying to rank and rent lead gen / local SEO for Plumbing Miami but hardly any PBN specialists ranking for terms like Viagra! How big of a team (if any) do you need, as an affiliate marketer, to tackle this niche? When we were ranking in this niche market we were a team of two. We did the SEO to make the pharma affiliate sites look like legit local businesses. Address, phone, map, schema etc and just a few pbns were needed. Is there a specific content plan you’d recommend? We didn’t focus too much on supporting content. We probably had 2-3 blog posts with internal links to our product pages. What kind of backlinks would you recommend for this niche? PBNs 100%. I had this exact conversation with a UK SEO living in Australia. I told them to charge $250 per month per keyword and ONLY send pbn links. They came back to me a month later and said they could not believe how much PBNs moved the needle in pharma. Is negative SEO prevalent in this niche? What kinds? How do you deal with it? Not so much negative SEO but a LOT of hacked sites ranking and expect to go up against SEOs with 100s of sites interlinking and tier 2/3 with Xrumer type links. You are competing against the blackest of black hat SEOs in this niche but just do what you know works in local SEO (like these 9 local SEO solutions) and you’ll do perfectly fine. Any parting words for those considering getting into this niche? Be mindful of the laws. My client got shut down by the FTC and lost the whole business overnight. Some of the pharma products were banned and he shouldn’t have been making them sell into the USA. Stick to legit products, maybe partner with a reputable pharma company on search on well-known pharma offers. This is one of the best affiliate marketing niche to get into that still seems wide open. CBD – Vithurs (V for short), Rankfluence How much monthly recurring revenue can someone expect to make, ranking in the top Google spots in this niche? There are a handful of affiliate business sites in the CBD niche that is absolutely crushing it right now. CBD is definitely a very profitable affiliate marketing niche and search volume continue to climb. Let’s talk numbers. If you were ranking in the #1 position for all main search terms - especially the keywords with high buyer-intent (“product + review” keywords for ALL major brands, “best” keywords, “where to buy” keywords, etc), there is no reason why you can’t do at least $1million/month in commissions. The lack of current regulation makes it an enticing opportunity for those who want to explore the affiliate marketing program (whether as an affiliate marketer or as a direct supplier of CBD products). Although there is currently somewhat of a monopoly in this industry (more on this later), there is still a viable opportunity for newer, smaller sites. If they do some solid keyword research and rank for those low-competition long-tail keywords, they will be able to grab a fair share of search traffic. It’s one of those best affiliate marketing niches where there is plenty of money to be made, even if you’re not ranking at #1. What kind of budget does it take to compete in this niche? Your biggest expense in this investment niche will be link building (followed by content). Taking into account the average link velocity (number of new links being built on a weekly/monthly basis) of the top sites in the lucrative affiliate marketing niche and the type of links being built (regular link placements? guest posts? editorials? hacked links?) you should be able to roughly calculate how much a custom-fit link building campaign will cost you. As a general guideline, you’d probably need several thousand ($x,xxx) per month (with at least a 9-month commitment) at the VERY minimum to compete in the CBD niche. The current profitable niche sites at the forefront of the industry are heavily investing in links, with some easily spending high 5 figures per month just to maintain their existing link velocity levels. This is the sort of budget you’re looking at if you want to make a real impact in this niche. How big of a team (if any) do you need to tackle this niche? If your SEO strategy is primarily based around link building (such as outreach), then having a large team can prove beneficial as you can delegate individual tasks to certain members to handle. On the other hand, you don’t really NEED an SEO team in order to tackle the CBD niche. Would it help? Probably. But with the SEO industry also growing fast on a yearly basis, there are thousands of choices on the market for link building services and quality vendors. In my case, I have a team of 3 who handle my outreach activities (they land anywhere from 50–150 links per month per site) and I outsource all my content. In some cases (such as when I need double the links, but don’t have the immediate resources), I’ll also outsource the link building. Is there a specific content plan you’d recommend? Your SEO content strategy will depend entirely on what exactly your affiliate site is about. With my CBD affiliate niche sites, I try to review every single popular brand. Since the CBD industry is growing at a quick rate, you’ll always find new companies setting up shop, and most of them will have affiliate marketing program you can join. If you hit a roadblock, this is where competitor analysis comes handy. More than likely, your competition is ranking better than you for a reason. Clearly they’re doing something right. Why waste time trying to figure out what content will work, when you already have the answers in front of you? Tools like Surfer and Ahrefs make spying on your competition’s SEO efforts easy. If you’re running out of ideas or need help identifying content gaps and topics, just audit your SEO competition to look for opportunities. What kind of backlinks would you recommend for this affiliate marketing niche? You’re going to need the very best. The backlinks I’d recommend for this niche are guest posts, link placements (contextual), and PBN links. Some of you might have expected a huge list of backlink types, but simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. This applies to every affiliate marketing niche: the backlinks you build should ALWAYS have some level of relevancy. Acquiring CBD-relevant links isn’t easy though. For example, when doing outreach, you’ll notice that some webmasters aren’t comfortable linking to CBD-related properties. This makes link building in this affiliate marketing niche challenging, but you know what they say about challenges… Is negative SEO prevalent in this niche? What kinds? How do you deal with it? I believe there is an element of negative SEO/unethicalness in every profitable affiliate marketing niche. It’s only to be expected since you’ll always have haters and jealous people envious of your success. Any parting words for those considering getting into this niche? There is a lot of search volume and money to be made in the CBD niche. Just like there is money to be made in payday, finance, adult, and casino. If you have the budget, mindset, and persistence, I’d suggest dipping your toes into this affiliate marketing business niche and giving it a go. If you’re considering entering this niche, I’d suggest properly doing your research and due diligence. I’m guilty of this myself, but it’s important not to let your excitement cloud your judgment. If an affiliate Read More Read More

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How to Prepare Your Website for a Google Algorithm Update [Case Study]

Matt Diggity — Mon, 13 May 2019 09:39:30 +0000

I hope that you’ve never had to go through the pain of being hit by an algorithmic update. You wake up one morning, your traffic is decimated, and your rank tracker is littered with red arrows. Algorithmic penalties are not a subject I like to trivialize, that’s why the case study I am about to share with you is different than most you’ve read before. This case study is a testament of faith and hard work by my agency, The Search Initiative, in light of a huge shift in the SEO landscape. Unfortunately, with core algorithmic updates you can’t simply change a few things and expect to get an immediate ranking recovery. The best you can do is prepare for the next update round. If you’ve done all the right things, you experience gains like you’ve never seen before. Even if you’ve never been hit with an algorithmic penalty, you should care about these updates. Doing the right things and staying one step ahead can get your site in position for huge gains during an algorithm roll out. So what are “the right things”? What do you need to do to your website to set it up for these types of ranking increases when the algorithms shift? This case study from my agency The Search Initiative will show you. The Challenge: “Medic Algorithm” Devaluation I want to start this case study by taking you back to its origins. There was a big algorithm update on the 1st of August 2018. A lot of SEOs called it a “Medic Update” because it targeted a huge chunk of sites related to health and medicine. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-medic-update-26177.html What Does an Algorithm Update Look Like? Let’s start with a few facts. Fact #1: Google is constantly running search experiments. To quote Google from their official mission page: “In 2018, we ran over 654,680 experiments, with trained external Search Raters and live tests, resulting in more than 3234 improvements to Search.” Here are the official numbers relating to the search experiments they ran last year: 595,429 Search quality tests – this is the number of tests they have designed to run in the search engines. Some of them were only conceptual and were algorithmically proven to be ineffective, therefore these never made it to the next testing stages. 44,155 Side-by-side experiments – this is how many tests they have run through their Search Quality Raters. The SQR team looks at the search results of old and new algorithms side-by-side. Their main job is to assess the quality of the results received, which, in turn, evaluates the algorithm change. Some changes are reverted at this stage. Others make it through to the Live traffic experiments. 15,096 Live traffic experiments – at this stage, Google is releasing the algorithm change to the public search results and assesses how the broader audience perceives them, most likely through A/B testing. Again, there will be some rollbacks and the rest will stay in the algorithm. 3,234 Launches – all the changes that they rolled out. Fact #2: Google releases algorithm improvements every day and core updates several times a year! Bearing in mind everything said above, Google releases algo improvements basically every day. Do the math… They’ve also confirmed that they roll-out core quality updates several times per year: When you suspect something is going on, you can confirm it by simply jumping over to your favorite SERP sensor to check the commotion: https://www.semrush.com/sensor/ During this period, rankings typically fluctuate and eventually settle. Like in the below screenshot: A lot of SEOs (myself included) believe that during the Heavy-Fluctuation Stage, Google is making adjustments to the changes they’ve just rolled out. It’s like while you’re cooking a soup. First, you add all the ingredients, toss in some spices, and let it cook it for some time. Then you taste it and add more salt, pepper or whatever else that is needed to make it good. Finally, you settle with the taste you like. (I’ve never actually cooked soup other than ramen, so hopefully, this analogy makes sense.) Fact #3: There will initially be more noise than signal. Once there is an algo update, especially an officially confirmed one, many budding SEOs will kick into overdrive writing blog posts with theories of what particular changes have been made. Honestly, it’s best to let things settle before theorizing: One strength we have as website owners is that there are lots of us – and the data that is collected by webmasters on forums and on Twitter is sometimes enough to give an indication of what changes you could possibly make to your sites. However, this is not usually the case, and when it is, it is usually difficult to tell if what the webmasters are signaling is actually correct. Keep an eye on those you trust to give good advice. That said… At my agency, we always gather a lot of data and evidence first, before jumping any conclusions… and you should do the same. Very shortly, we’ll be getting to that data. The Question: Algorithmic Penalty or Devaluation? When things go wrong for you during an algorithmic update, a lot of SEOs would call it an “algorithmic penalty”. At The Search Initiative, we DO NOT AGREE with this definition! In fact, what it really is, is a shift in what the search engine is doing at the core level. Put it in very simple terms: Algorithmic Penalty – invoked when you’ve been doing something against Google’s terms for quite some time, but it wasn’t enough to trigger it until now. It’s applied as a punishment. Algorithmic Devaluation – usually accompanying a quality update or a broad algorithm change. Works at the core level and can occasionally influence your rankings over a longer period of time.Applied as a result of the broader shift in the quality assessment. Anyway, call it as you want – the core algo update hitting you means that Google has devalued your site in terms of quality factors. An algorithmic shift affecting your site should not be called a penalty. It should be viewed as a devaluation. You were not targeted, but a bunch of factors have changed and every single site not in compliance with these new factors will be devalued in the same way. The good thing about all this… once you identify those factors and take action on them, you’ll be a great position to actually benefit from the next update. How to Know You’ve Been Hit by an Algo Update? In some cases, a sudden drop in traffic will make things obvious, such as this particular site that I would like to look at more specifically. But we’ll get to that in a second. Generally speaking, if your traffic plummets from one day to the next, you should look at the algorithm monitoring tools (like the ones below), and check Facebook groups and Twitter. Google Algorithm Change Monitors: https://www.semrush.com/sensor/ https://moz.com/mozcast/ https://algoroo.com/ https://www.rankranger.com/google-algorithm-updates https://cognitiveseo.com/signals/ Useful Facebook Groups: The Lab Ahrefs Insider Inside Search Useful Twitter Accounts to Follow Cyrus Shepard Glenn Gabe Marie Haynes The Patient: Our Client’s Site The client came on board as a reaction to how they were affected by the August update. They joined TSI towards the end of October. This was the ‘August 2018 Update’ we were talking about – and still no one is 100% certain of the specifics of it. However, we have some strong observations. 😉 Type of the Site and Niche Now, let’s meet our patient. The website is an authority-sized affiliate site with around 700 pages indexed. Its niche is based around health, diet and weight loss supplements. The Symptoms As the industry was still bickering, there were no obvious ‘quick fixes’ to this problem. In truth, there likely will never again ever be any ‘quick fixes’ for broad algo updates. All we had to work with was this: You can see that in this particular case, the number of users visiting the site dropped by 45% in July-August. If we look at October, when we’re running all our analyses and creating the action plan, the organic traffic looks even more pessimistic: With the niche, site and timeline evidence, we could easily conclude what follows: 100% Match with The “Medic” Update How We Recovered it – What are the “right things”? To contextualize our decision making on this project, this is a rundown of what we know and what we knew then: What we knew then It seemed as many of the affected sites were in the health and medical niches (hence, the “Medic” update). Sites across the web have experienced a severe downturn in rankings. Rankings were affected from page one down. (This was surprising – most of the previous updates had less of an impact on page 1.) A lot of big sites with enormous authority and very high-quality have also been devalued. We had speculated that this would suggest a mistake on Google’s part… What we know now ‘The August Update’ affected Read More Read More

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Case Study: A 4.5x Organic Traffic Increase Using (What?) Page Rank

Matt Diggity — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 09:55:34 +0000

Introduction I’ve been a director at The Search Initiative a while now. We’ve had some crazy results for a whole bunch of clients – all in very different niches. I’m going to share with you how my team and I took a low-authority website and put our foot on the gas to get it moving – fast! I truly believe there was a key ingredient that accelerated this website, but I’m going to share the whole process from the start. Why? Each website is going to be different, so you need to figure out what your site needs. You need to go through the process. Here’s a sneak peek of the growth. Now learn how we did it… Initial Analysis Since starting TSI’s organic seo services, I’ve realized that working with my own sites is hugely different from working with clients; especially if the website has weak foundations. I know how I want my money sites to look, so I build them using rigorous attention to detail. But if you take a website that’s been developed without a certain level of SEO knowledge – there’s normally quite a lot of on-site and off-site to fix. Here’s how my team broke down the initial analysis: Keyword Research On-Site Audit Backlink Audit Competitor Analysis Keyword Research My team tackled keyword research with two main workflows: one is used to monitor the health of a website, and the other is for content gap analysis. When we’re looking to track keywords for a website, we want to track some of the core terms, but also terms that are having problems. If a term is suffering from keyword cannibalization that we’re trying to fix – it’s worth tracking this daily until it’s resolved. Since this client needed a huge content strategy, we did both a health check and initial content gap analysis. This approach included breaking down all keywords for that industry into topics of relevant terms. In total, this process took over 20 hours and included thousands of keywords chunked into neat topics. This work later helped with choosing page titles, headings and content. Here’s an example of how we did it: Step 1. Search Broad Keywords Step 2. Review Parent Topics Step 3. Find Competitors for Parent Topics Step 4. Reverse Engineer Competitor’s Keywords Step 5. Exclude Outdated Keywords There is the option to also export all of these keywords into excel documents and then filter them that way. But most of the time, a lot of the top keywords are fairly similar. Here’s an example for the best dog food term: best dog food best dog foods healthiest dog food what is the best dog food top rated dog food best food for dogs While each keyword is unique, they all follow a singular intent. The users are interested in finding out what are the best dog foods in the market. On-Site Audit Finding all the technical and content issues with the website requires a full on-site audit. However, while big reports are easy on the eyes, it’s small changes that make the difference. We audited the website and found a whole bunch of technical issues, from lack of breadcrumbs, poor internal link structures, bad quality anchor text and unoptimized titles. A full on-site audit tutorial is too big for this post (perhaps coming soon), but here are some quick tips: Screaming Frog – A cheap way to regularly crawl your website. There are lots of ways to find errors, redirects, and missing metadata. You can also use a custom search to find all references of your keywords. Sitebulb – This tool is more expensive and is a monthly recurring fee. However, it gives you lots of extra data that would be impossible to spot manually and hard with Screaming Frog. An example would be empty hyperlink references. Site Search – By using Google’s site search (site:domain.com) and operators, you can find hundreds of issues with index management, outdated page titles, and multiple pages targeting the same keyword. There are a lot of quick wins here. Page Titles – If you wrote your page titles 1 – 2 years ago, you may find that they’re outdated now. A quick site search with “intitle:2018” will find all your content that is either not updated or not yet crawled by Google. Internal Links – A major way to pass relevance signals and authority to your core pages is through internal links. Make sure that your pages are well interlinked and you’re not using low-quality anchors from your power pages, such as “click here” or “more information”. We focused on fixing around 5 issues at a time varying from small changes like improving accessibility, to bigger changes like introducing breadcrumbs for a custom build website. Backlink Audit The website had a relatively small backlink profile, which meant it lacked authority, relevance signals and entry points for crawling. It also meant that a full in-depth link analysis was unnecessary for this campaign. In this instance, the initial check revealed there was nothing to be concerned about, so we moved on to technical implementation as soon as possible. Had the website experienced problems with the link profile, we would have done a full backlink audit to try and recover this. Here’s what to look out for: Link Distribution – Pointing too many links toward internal pages instead of your homepage can cause lots of issues. So make sure that you’re not overdoing it. Anchor Text Analysis – Using exact match, partial match and topical anchors are a great way to pass third-party relevance signals. Too many and you’ll be caught out over-optimizing, but too few and you won’t be competitive. Read more about anchor optimization. Referring IP Analysis – There are a finite number of IPv4 Addresses, so this isn’t often a big cause for concern. However, it’s worth making sure that you’ve not got too many links from the same IP address. Autonomous System Numbers – Since a server can be assigned any number of IP addresses, these systems often include an ASN. This is another way that Google could flag large numbers of websites from the same origin. My team did a case study on how to remove an algorithmic penalty, a lot of these audits come included in any penalty removal campaign. Competitor Analysis The difference between a search analyst and data scientist is how you approach the search engines. An analyst is focused on reviewing the SERPs and finding what is working best today, while a data scientist wants to understand how things work. We built our team to include both since competitor analysis requires a keen eye for reviewing the SERPs and algorithm analysis requires solid data scientists. If you want to do SEO at a high level, you’ve got to constantly be reviewing competitors using various analysis tools. You will notice that tons of best practices get ignored in the top positions and the devil is in the details. In this instance, we found that both more content and more links would be required for long-term success. Content Strategy Building any long-term authority website in competitive industries will include both an authoritative link profile and content plan. My team reviewed their existing content, looked at how other websites in their industry wanted to help users and then addressed these four cornerstones: User Intent – before we did anything, we wanted to nail the user intent on every page. This research meant that we identified three pillars of content for their site. We’ll get into this in further detail below. Service Pages – these pages were dedicated to explaining what service was offered, how to contact and what was included with that offering. Blog Content – these posts were dedicated to providing non-commercial, informative content that was interesting to the reader. Resource Center – this section was dedicated to giving basic information about topics in their industry. Instead of using Wikipedia for all our links to authority content, we wanted to use internal links instead. Here’s a little bit about each section and our strategy for them: User Intent The biggest mistake I see all the time is the simplest thing to check: What types of content is Google ranking in the top 10 positions? If you’re serving 10,000 words of content in a huge blog post, but Google is only interested in serving service pages with 50 words of content – you’ve missed the point. Another commonly found problem we find at The Search Initiative is including too much content in a single post, when your competitors have several shorter posts. One of the main attractions for Thailand are the yoga retreats. If you’re searching for this (yoga retreats) in America, you’re expecting to find destinations. Let’s take a look: The first position is called Yoga Journal and includes almost no content aside from images and headings. That’s exactly what the users were looking for. There are other websites doing a similar service and can help you make bookings. While others Read More Read More

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TF*IDF for SEO: Test Results and Tool Comparison

Matt Diggity — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 08:08:38 +0000

You may have seen the term TF IDF being tossed around in the last year or so, but no one could blame you if you haven’t started paying attention yet. A lot of SEO fads come and go, and some of the most interesting concepts just end up attracting penalties, later on, right? But TF IDF is something a little different. It’s not a manipulation of Google search results; it’s a method of analyzing the topics in content, and it’s built on the same principles as the search engines themselves. Because of that, it has amazing potential for SEOs who need a truly objective method to measure and improve content. I just recently wrapped up a case study into exactly what it’s capable of, and the results are quite interesting. In case some of you are where I was only a few months ago, I want to make sure that I cover what I learned about TF IDF, and how it’s used before I get to what I learned from my personal experiments with it. The crash course starts in the next section, but if you’re an experienced user already, you can find the results of my personal tests and some comparisons of the top TF IDF tools near the end. Looking forward to your questions and comments. Quick Summary What is TF IDF? Term Frequency times Inverse Document Frequency (TF*IDF) is an equation that uses the measurement of how frequently a term is used on a page (TF), and the measurement of how often that term appears on all pages of a collection (IDF) to assign a score, or weight, to the importance of that term to the page. I know… nerd alert, right? We’ll look at why this is so important to SEOs in a bit, but first, let’s look at where it came from. The equation has a very long history in academia, where researchers in fields as diverse as linguistics and information architecture have used it to analyze massive libraries of documents quickly. It’s also used by information retrieval programs (including all search engines) to sort and judge the relevance of millions of search results efficiently. There is an important difference between what you want to do and what the search engine wants to do with this same information. The search engine wants to consider a collection made up of all the search results on the web while you want to compare one page or website to just the sites that are out-performing it…. namely the top 10. Let’s look at TF and IDF in more depth… The Equations that take you to TF*IDF You need to do a little more math to get both of the measurements involved, that is TF and IDF. but I promise it won’t be difficult. Depending on the application, the equations for TF IDF can get a lot more complicated than the examples I’m using below. Simplified or not, you generally don’t want to be caught doing this work by hand if you’re trying to optimize a site. These equations will help you understand how TF IDF functions, but it’s the content optimization tools I’m discussing at the end that really open up the potential. Solve the first one, Term Frequency, by doing a raw count of the number of times a term appears on one page. Then, plug that number into the equation below: Term frequency = (raw count of terms) / (total word count of document) Alone, the TF score can tell you whether you’re using a word too rarely or too often, but it’s only really useful when weighed against the other measure. Calculate the Inverse Document Frequency by dividing the number of documents the term appears in by the total number of documents in the chosen collection, like so: Inverse Document Frequency (term) = log (number of docs / (docs containing keyword) With the IDF score, you can now measure the importance of a target keyword/phrase to a page, not just its number of uses. This is important because it’s putting you in the mindset of the people who are building search engine algorithms. Why Does TF*IDF Matter to SEOs? TF*IDF matters because, with the help of this equation, SEOs are able to an actionable relevance score to their content. Using TF IDF tools available, you can then compare your scores to the scores of the top-performing pages for any term. By grading pages on this measure, you can nearly pull back the curtain on how Google might grade sites dedicated to the same topic. It’s unknown if Google uses TF IDF in its algorithm, and if they are, is it a mutated form of it or not? That said, there have been some private correlation studies that I’ve been privy to whose data suggests that it’s likely. TF IDF analysis allows you to optimize the balance of terms in your content according to what is already being rewarded by the algorithm. That’s huge for the SEO community because it marks the return of something all the old hats knew and…loved? Keyword Density Returns? Nope. No one loved the days when keyword density reigned. However, using TF IDF for SEO could mark a return to the primacy of phrases and keywords as an important marker—just in a very different way. Instead, that SEO strategy was an early attempt to game out how Google was really using TF IDF for its indexing and recall. People were keyword stuffing their blog posts, so then algos and filters came out to combat it (hi, panda). So, in a way, keyword density is back. It ran away from home as a surly teen and has returned as a mature adult with a degree in the sciences. It was an early, limited tactic that mostly encouraged bad habits. Measuring keyword use TF IDF will give you an idea (at least as far as the top search results are using them) balance. It reveals what terms are considered natural, in a very precise way. Using TF IDF Analysis to Enhance Keyword Research TF IDF analysis goes a step further than just the density of keywords. In this way, it opens you to insights about whole families of words on a website, which can take your keyword research to the next level. For example, imagine that you’ve already completed keyword research to optimize a page for “DUI lawyer Chicago”. Most research tools for keywords will spit out keywords like “DUI lawyer in chicago”, “chicago DUI attorney”, etc. When you use the TF IDF tools that I’m covering later on, you’ll also be able to find related non-SEO terms that are being used by the top-ranked pages that you would have never found before using normal keyword research. Terms like “legal”, “experienced”, “rights” and “practice”. These words wouldn’t have shown up in keyword research tools because the articles themselves aren’t ranking for them, yet they’re needed to tell the story of the search intent. Let’s put the equation to use. Fortunately, you won’t need to do it by hand for your sites. There’s always a tool to use, and you’re only a few scrolls from seeing the on-page SEO tools I’ve tested for results. Putting TF*IDF Analysis to Use Oh, no. More math. At this point you may be having high school flashbacks, twisting around in your chair looking desperately for the wall clock that will tell you when you’re free. Don’t worry, this time, I’m going to do the math. Immediately after this, we’ll get to the juicy stuff—How to use TF IDF for SEO purposes. Let’s take a look at the equation in action… Say that a document, such as a client’s landing page you’re examining, contains the keyword “PPC” 12 times, and is about 100 words in length. If you wanted to begin analyzing this piece of content, you would begin by plugging that into the term frequency equation from earlier. TF (PPC) = (12 / 100) = 0 .12 Now, say that you wanted to understand how this usage compared to the usage of this term on the rest of the web. From a sample size of 10,000,000, at least some of these pages are going to be about web services and will include references to PPC. Let’s say, 300,000 of them. We can use those numbers to finish the Inverse Document Frequency equation. IDF (PPC) = log (10,000,000/300,000) = 1.52 Now you score your page based on that term with the TF*IDF equation TF*IDF (PPC) = 0.12 * 1.52 = 0.182 That’s a great score. Or is it? The truth is, it’s not really a matter of meeting a limit. You want to bring your score for targeted terms into balance with the best-performing URLs on page 1. A high score for a certain term isn’t necessarily a good thing (12 uses in 100 words is a lot, after all). What about Common Terms like “the” and “of”? You may be wondering, what about the noise? What about all Read More Read More

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How to Build a Scalable White Hat Agency [Case Study from TSI]

Matt Diggity — Wed, 14 Nov 2018 08:28:58 +0000

Introduction A few years ago, my agency The Search Initiative (TSI) decided to remove PBNs as a part of our link building strategy and move over completely to a white hat link building model. While PBNs only made up a small portion of our strategy, we knew this would be a fairly big undertaking. This would involve the re-design of the overall process and our approach to campaigns. Every decision that we make at the agency is data-driven. We constantly test, experiment and analyze. Our aim is to always put our clients first and to give them the best ROI for their campaign. We needed a sustainable and powerful link building strategy that is not only extremely safe but also moves the needle. In this article, you’ll learn our entire outreach strategy. We’ll discuss the role content quality plays in an effective outreach campaign, how to research and create fine pieces, how to prospect link opportunities, and how to pitch with a high success rate. Bonus: I’ve brought in Rad Paluszak (TSI Director and Chiang Mai SEO Conference 2018 speaker) to chime in with some knowledge bombs. Overall Goals and Strategy During our early brainstorming sessions, we knew that to fully transition from grey to white we needed to base the entire system on high-quality content. Why is high-quality content so important for outreach? Bloggers, website owners and journalists wised up a long time ago to the importance of links in SEO. They fully understand how important they are to us and the value that these links hold. Many prospects are extremely proud of their websites and extremely picky about what content is placed on their own personal soapbox. Just look at how few guest posts I’ve allowed on my site. Outreach link building is an exchange. You provide something that the website’s readers will love and adds true value to the website and in exchange, you attain that all-important link. My advice: Create a systemized approach that focuses on quality. Focus on: Content that is easy to understand Content that teaches Content that is easy to share Content that impresses But how do you create a content marketing machine that can produce this kind of content? We assembled a team who had zero SEO knowledge but were bright and creative, which were the main skills we were looking for. You want your content and outreach team members to be right-brained, creative types. I’m a left-brained robot, so I’m much better at stuff like link prospecting, which you’ll learn more about later. If you chose to train the new outreach team from scratch, you avoid the shortcut mentality that many trained SEO’s have. Think about it. You have your biases about how things work, and you’re likely going to carry them around with you from project-to-project and job-to-job. Essentially, you want a team of content marketers, not SEO’s. This is easier to do when working with a blank slate. One of the key skills we were looking for was someone who had an eye for copy. Thus, we put out job adverts on copywriting groups looking for people who had a background in copywriting but who were interested in being trained up in online marketing. Cult of Copy is a great facebook group to find niche-specific copywriters. [quote] Tip for you The group has very strict rules from the very beginning. To join the group you have to confirm that you understand the following: Only posts requesting or offering a copywriting job are allowed. Only comments accepting a copy job or giving testimonial are allowed. No public complaints or moaning – these kinds of things should go through admin. Not adhering to the above and you’re banned! It’s good to keep everything in order! Do you think it impacts the group’s activity? Not at all! Have a look at the stats: Rad Paluszak – Director of SEO at the Search Initiative [/quote] Content Research There are endless tools and processes for content research available. To cut through the bullshit, keep things as simple as possible, stick to the 80/20, and focus your efforts on a few core resources: Reddit Quora Meta Filter Google Search The reason why these small set of tools are recommended is that communities like Reddit, Quora and Meta Filter have done a great job of keeping spam at a minimum and also encouraging active participation. You can, without too much effort, find the industry pain points, the subjects people care about, and the themes that are recurring time and time again. For a content marketer, this is phenomenal. Reddit If you are not using Reddit as part of your content research then you are seriously missing out on an awesome trick. The really great thing about Reddit is that spam and manipulation are very rarely tolerated. And the users are usually painfully honest, to say the least. Search for variations of topics to find out what questions people are asking and what specific questions receive lots of upvotes and replies. The key here is to create a documented record of the topics that had the most engagement, as this is a great indicator that the content is popular. At this early stage, you should aim to collect as much information as possible on anything and everything in our target niche that has a high level of upvotes and comments. To do this, simply head to Reddit, and search for your market defining keywords within the search bar. Next select ‘Communities and users’ to see which subreddits are in your niche. Look for the subreddits with the highest number of subscribers and ensure that they are active communities. Sort through the subreddits one by one by setting the results to, Sort > TOP, OF ALL TIME, to get the pieces of content and content themes that have had the biggest impact. Record all the data in a spreadsheet – you can create a copy of the spreadsheet or have it already integrated. [quote] Tip for you If you’re not familiar with Google Docs and would prefer to use Microsoft Excel or Libre Office Calc, you can download a copy of the shared spreadsheet as shown below: It’s also very easy to create your own copy of the spreadsheet on your Google Drive – as mentioned above, please use this method instead of requesting the access to our file: Rad Paluszak – Director of SEO at the Search Initiative [/quote] Quora and Meta Filter Quora and Meta Filter are both very highly used question and answer websites. These allow you to search for the themes and mini topics within your niche and look for the specific questions that people are struggling with. This is very important, as you’ll see later. It also allows you to look for further content ideas within the answers that are provided. Again, we are looking for questions that have received a large amount of engagement. In the example from Quora above we can see that both of these questions have a high answer rate (133 and 99 answers). We collect all the relevant questions in a spreadsheet which includes: The question The search used How many answers the question has Any relevant comments [quote] Tip for you If you’re only looking for a bunch of questions that people ask around your niche, my personal favorite is AnswerThePublic.com. Let’s type ‘link building’ and allow it do its magic: You can easily find a lot of common questions the users are searching for. It’s a great inspiration to write useful answers and a way to potentially attack these sweet “Position 0” answer boxes: Rad Paluszak – Director of SEO at the Search Initiative [/quote] Google Search Look at high authority sites to reverse engineer successful campaigns. This allows you to hedge your bets with outreach because you’re following in the footsteps of someone else. Let’s see what kind of SEO related infographics the Huffington Post is sharing. Using a simple search string returns 88 results. If we take one of those results we can see that this infographic campaign has returned links from 24 referring domains. These can simply be exported and saved ready for quality control checks and outreach. As these infographics have been featured on a site such as The Huffington Post, it is likely that it has also been featured on other authority sites. From this research, we can see what kind of themes and topics get featured on high authority sites. Record everything and add it to the research spreadsheet. Content Strategy Our content strategy was based on a few specific content types: High-quality guest posts Infographics Embeddable Interactive content Creative content pieces Guest Posts Guest posts are easy to scale and are a great way to ensure that you have a baseline of high-quality links. There’s ways to do them right and there’s way to do them wrong, so make sure you know the difference or get them from a place you can trust. Infographics Infographics have been done to Read More Read More

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Infographic: Affiliate SEO vs Client SEO

Matt Diggity — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 14:59:56 +0000

Looks like we’re starting a tradition… My link building service, Authority Builders, ran another contest in The Lab Facebook group. Over 300 people responded to the age-old question: Affiliate SEO vs Client SEO: Which One is Better? Since the cool thing to do these days is put data in infographic format, here are their responses, all wrapped up for you. Want to add your own feedback to this battle? See you in the comments section. Share this Image On Your Site: Please include attribution to DiggityMarketing.com with this graphic. <a href=”https://diggitymarketing.com/infographic-affiliate-vs-client-seo “><img src=”https://diggitymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Infographic-Affiliate-vs-Client-SEO.jpg” alt=’Affiliate vs Client SEO Infographic’ width=’700px’ border=’0′ /></a> Shout out goes out to Win Bound Digital for creating this sexy infographic. Looks like we’re starting a tradition… My link building service, Authority Builders, ran another contest in The Lab Facebook group. Over 300 people responded to the age-old question: Affiliate SEO vs Client SEO: Which One is Better? Since the cool thing to do these days is put data in infographic format, here are their responses, all wrapped up for you. Want to add your own feedback to this battle? See you in the comments section. Share this Image On Your Site: Please include attribution to DiggityMarketing.com with this graphic. <a href=”https://diggitymarketing.com/infographic-affiliate-vs-client-seo “><img src=”https://diggitymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Infographic-Affiliate-vs-Client-SEO.jpg” alt=’Affiliate vs Client SEO Infographic’ width=’700px’ border=’0′ /></a> Shout out goes out to Win Bound Digital for creating this sexy infographic. Read More

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7 “White Hat” Link Types that Can Get you Penalized in 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 09:38:32 +0000

Foreword by Matt Diggity: Very shortly, I’m going to be turning things over to Rick Lomas. Rick is an expert in manual penalty removal. I’ve been working with him for quite some time, helping folks recover from manual actions, whether they be “unnatural links”, “thin content”, etc. Starting last year with a Christmas Day spree of manual actions going after scholarship link building, we’ve seen an uncanny amount of manual penalties being triggered by supposedly whitehat seo techniques. This is kicked up significantly in 2018 as we’ve had 3 waves of manual penalty sprees already, compared to typically one-per-year. Rick has kept track of all the “white hat” link types that Google themselves has pointed out problems with. You’re about to learn all of them. What do I know about links? I confess that before 2012 I was a black hat spammer and link builder. In those days I did not care where a link came from, as long as I had more than everybody else. I was in the motorhome/RV rental niche generating leads for a UK based company. The money was amazing, my client was happy and all was well. I had VAs in India building web 2.0s and I had three PCs running SENukeXcr 24/7 using spun content. What could possibly go wrong? On my birthday, April 7, 2012, I received a message in Google Search Console (or rather Google Webmaster Tools as it was called then). It was the dreaded message that all SEOs never want to see: Unnatural inbound links to http://domain.com violate Google Webmaster Guidelines I swear my heart stopped for a few seconds. I checked my traffic and it was still OK, should I be worried? I carried on as if nothing had happened. In the back of my mind, I knew there was a ticking bomb about to explode. On April 23, 2012, the ticking bomb finally exploded and caused mass devastation. I was left with my main money site limping along on Bing and Yahoo traffic. My income had been decimated overnight. The reality struck completely when the boss of the motorhome company called and said, “What’s happened? You’ve been wiped off the face of Google. I’ve got three staff here staring at empty screens, shall I fire them?”. The aim of this post is to educate you to avoid the mistakes that I made. I’m not doing this by spouting some random ideas, but showing you some sample problematic links that have been provided by Google reviewers. I only have this evidence because I have worked on hundreds of Manual Actions since 2013. When does Google provide examples of problematic links? Sadly, not as often as we would like and certainly not when you ask them! At the time of writing the most common time to see them is when you have been through this process: You have received a Partial Match Manual Action for Unnatural Inbound links You have submitted a Reconsideration Request Google has replied saying that your Reconsideration Request has been rejected At this point, more often than not, Google will supply 1, 2 or sometimes even 3 sample links that they do not like. Here are some examples that may surprise you… 7 “White Hat” Link Types that Will Nail You 1) Non-relevant Niche Edits The idea of putting a link into an article that is already established in Google is very sound. But in this case, it seriously backfired. Here the link was on worldofwonder.net which has rather good metrics and good traffic. The link was in a sentence talking about a ‘walker’ as an aid to help people walk. The article was about Alice Walker, an American writer, and activist. Clearly, the link was completely irrelevant. So it seems that Google doesn’t like irrelevant links. Most niche edits I see are pretty tenuous links, so be careful and definitely keep them on topic. 2) Sponsored Posts This one comes as no surprise. Google does not want you to guest post, pay for posts, pay for links, do link exchanges or anything that violates their Google Webmaster Guidelines. That said, this message was meaningless as this site did not have any live links that even vaguely resembled these samples. It’s a fail for Google, but at the same time, we get the message that sponsored posts are bad. 3) Zero Traffic Sites – Site Rebuilds? I don’t always agree that a site with no traffic doesn’t pass link juice. If this was true 99% of PBNs would not work. But we know that they do work. However, in this case, the Google reviewer did not like this link at all. Looking at the site itself http://teampr.info/ it seems to be a site rebuild using content probably from Archive.org. The content is now junk and irrelevant with tons of broken images. Google has the final word, “Your site still violates Google Webmaster Guidelines”. 4) Obvious Guest Posts At first glance, KevinMD.com looks like an authority site similar to WebMD.com. The ‘Contribute’ page says: KevinMD.com is the web’s leading social media health platform, with 3 million monthly page views, and over 250,000 subscribers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and RSS. Could this be true? It’s probably somewhat exaggerated, but SEMRush does show some reasonable traffic: The link in question was not even a money keyword anchor text link. It simply stated something like, “A. Doctor is an anesthesiologist who blogs at AFitnessBlog.org.” at the end of the article. The article itself was well written and informative. The site states that it was founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho. Kevin Pho appears to be a real physician and even has his own Wikipedia page. So how could this be problematic? I think the answer can be found if we go back in time with Archive.org and see how the site looked in 2011: It seems like Kevin has been selling guest posts for many years and Google does not like it. Avoid reaching out to sites that clearly state that they’re selling links in their posts, avoid guest post author box links, etc. Or go with a vendor like Authority Builders that has already done this vetting for you. 5) Best Top Rated Links The one thing that stands out more than anything else in Google’s Manual Actions of 2018 is keywords like: best, top rated, top 10, review of the best etc. The link here is on http://uscombatsports.com and has the word ‘best’ 21 times on this particular page. Throughout this site, the word ‘best’ is completely overused. Take a look at the homepage: Although this site has some reasonable traffic, I get the impression that Google doesn’t like being told what is best! 6) Fake Social Profile Links There are two links given here. The first one Sociable.co might appear to be some sort of social network, but in fact, it is just another blog selling guest posts: The traffic on sociable.co is reasonable, but the fact that they openly advertise the sale of sponsored posts seems to be a definite No-No in Google’s eyes. The second example is on bizcommunity.co.ke. Although this Kenya-based website openly states ‘Advertise with us’ on its menu, the problem link is much more subtle than a blatant ad or guest post link: At first, it appears to be a perfectly innocent profile page with a NoFollow link to the members’ website. On closer inspection, it is evident that there is a second DoFollow link with an obvious money keyword in the anchor text. Google didn’t like them being greedy. It’s also odd how the profile name is Cathy, but then in the description, she appears to be called Rosie. I suspect this may be some software script that set up hundreds of profiles automatically, spinning the text each time. 7) Irrelevant Redirects This was the first time in five years of fixing penalties that I saw a redirect given as an example problematic link. The really worrying thing here is that there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with the domain other than it was slightly off topic. The original domain was about a specific food festival at a town in The Republic of Ireland. This domain was redirecting to a domain about kitchenware which is aimed at a US audience. There is a second link mentioned which Google refer to as a ‘spam link’. The site is now dead, but looking back to January 2018 on archive.org you can see that it was complete rubbish. The opening sentence of this post says it all: Microwave are now very popular among residence manufacturers, when time conserving tools have actually come to be necessary in the transformed lifestyles of the people. This could not have been written by a human and no human ever needs to read this sort of nonsense. So how do you avoid getting manual actions? The examples that I have mentioned above may have shattered all your illusions about link building. Links that you may have thought were white hat are being given as examples Read More Read More

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How to 91x Website Traffic – A Case Study Blueprint for 2024

Matt Diggity — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 08:38:05 +0000

Every once in a while you run an SEO campaign that changes the way you do everything. The lessons you learn, the challenges you face, and the results you achieve inspire you to rewrite your whole SEO gameplan. This is the story of one of those SEO campaigns. As you might already know, I’m a director of a very talented SEO agency called The Search Initiative (TSI). Since coming on, we’ve encountered many wins and this case study is one of them. In a few months, we lifted their algorithmic penalty and increased traffic by 9,109%. You’re about to learn the exact steps we took to achieve this. You’ll learn: A detailed onsite, offsite, and technical SEO audit process How to repair algorithmic penalty problems A safe link building strategy for Conversion rate optimization strategies for fast growth Fair warning: the strategies detailed ahead are intense but worth it. Here’s the success one reader found after following this case study: Case Study: From 1,036 to 95,411 Organic Visitors Per Month This is the story of a campaign for a social media marketing website. Our client monetizes their website by selling monthly subscriptions to achieve better social proof on Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks. If you’ve ever been in this niche before, you’d know it’s not an easy one. It’s one of the hardest niches there is. The Challenge The client joined The Search Initiative with a heavy algorithmic penalty. Traffic at the time had decreased significantly to almost 1/10th of the previous volume. If you’ve ever had an algorithmic penalty before, you can directly connect with the frustration and annoyance of such a disaster. The main challenge was to determine what type of a penalty hit the site and to take action on getting it lifted. General Approach We started by thoroughly analyzing the data based on the tools available to us and the details provided by the client. The initial analysis included looking into: Google Analytics Google Search Console Keyword tracker (Agency Analytics) SEMrush Ahrefs Cloudflare Server settings Previous link building reports and audits Once we determined the most probable cause of the penalty, we put together a plan of action. We created a comprehensive onsite, offsite and technical audit before building the overall domain authority through our own link building strategies and traditional outreach to relevant blogs and sites. How We Did It The Dynamic Start: Backlink Review The link profile of the domain included a lot of spammy, low-value domains. Since a previous automated backlink audit (most probably done using Link Research Tools) had been performed before the client joined our agency, we started by reviewing its results. At TSI we know that if it comes to potential link penalties, especially the algorithmic ones, we have to be very thorough with the link reviews. To start the analysis, we downloaded all the link data from the following sources: Google Search Console – it’s a real no-brainer to include all the links that Google definitely has in their database. However, according to this Google Webmaster Help page, you have to remember that GSC presents only a sample of links, not all of them. Ahrefs – it is our go-to and best 3rd party tool when it comes to links. Their database is an absolute beast and the freshness of the data is also outstanding. To gather all link data, go to Ahrefs, type in your domain and select Backlinks. Now you’re good to Export it to an Excel file: By the way, make sure you select the Full Export option, otherwise, you’ll be exporting only the first 1000 rows with the Quick Export: Majestic – even though their crawler might not be as complete as Ahrefs, you still want to have as many link sources as possible for your audit. With Majestic, you’ll have to type in your domain → Select “Root Domain”→ Export Data. Now, because of the link memory (AKA ghost links – links that are deleted, but Google still “remembers”), we export the data from both, Fresh and Historic indexes. Also, ensure to set the tool to “Show deleted backlinks”. Moz and SEMrush – Similarly to Majestic, with these two we just want to have as many links as possible and complement the database, in case Ahrefs missed some. How to get links data in Moz Open Site Explorer: Your site → Inbound Links → Link State: All links → Export CSV How to get links data in SEMrush: Your Site → Backlink Analytics → Backlinks → Export. Please make sure to select “All links” option. We had all the data now, so it was time to clean it up a bit. There’s no real secret in how to use Excel or Google Sheets, so I’ll just list what you’ll have to do with all the link data prior to analyzing it: Dump all Ahrefs data into a spreadsheet. If you’re wondering why we start with Ahrefs, it’s explained in step 4. Add unique links from GSC into the same spreadsheet. Add unique links from all other sources to the same spreadsheet. Get Ahrefs UR/DR and Traffic metrics for all the links (Ahrefs data will already have these metrics, so you’re saving time and Ahrefs’ credits). Spreadsheet ready! With the spreadsheet, we started a very laborious process of reviewing all the links. We classify them into 3 categories: Safe – these are good quality links. Neutral – these are links that are somehow suspicious and Google might not like them that much – although they’re quite unlikely to be flagged as harmful. We always highlight these in case we were to re-run the link audit operation (for example if the penalty did not get lifted). Toxic – all the spammy and harmful stuff you’d rather stay away from. Some of the main criteria we’re always checking: Does it look spammy/dodgy AF? Does it link out to many sites? Does the content make sense? What is the link type (e.g. comment spam or some sitewide sidebar links would be marked as toxic)? Is the link relevant to your site? Is the link visible? Does it have any traffic/ranks for any keywords? Ahrefs’ data helps here. Is the page/site authoritative? Ahrefs’ DR helps here. What’s the anchor text? If you have an unnatural ratio, then it might be required to disavow some links with targeted anchor texts. Is the link follow/nofollow? No point disavowing nofollow links, right? Is it a legit link or one of these scraping/statistical tools? Is it a link from a porn site? These are only desirable in specific cases, for example, you’re a porn site. Otherwise, its disavow time. If it is likely that the whole domain is spammy, we’d disavow the entire domain using “domain:” directive, instead of just a single URL. Here’s a sneak peek of how the audit document looked like once we finished reviewing all the links: Then, we compared the results of our audit and current disavow file and uploaded a shiny new one to Google Search Console. We disavowed 123 domains and 69 URLs. Additionally, we also used our in-house, proprietary tool to speed up the indexing of all the disavowed links. Something quite similar to Link Detox Boost, but done through our own tool. Here’s a little screenshot from our tool: Crucial Stage 2: The Onsite Audit The next step taken was a full, comprehensive onsite audit. We reviewed the site and created an in-depth 30-page document addressing many onsite issues. Below is a list of elements covered in the audit: Technical SEO Website Penalties First, we confirmed what the client has told us and established what kind of penalty we’re dealing with. It has to be emphasized that there were no manual actions reported in GSC, so we were dealing with a potential algorithmic penalty. We searched Google for the brand name and did a “site:” operator search. If you were able to find your brand name ranking number 1 in Google (or at least among your other profiles, e.g. social media accounts, on the first page) and it’s no longer there, you know you’re in trouble. Basically, if Google devaluates or de-ranks you for your own brand, this is a very strong indicator that you’ve been hit with a penalty. With the site: operator search it’s a bit more tricky. However, as a rule of thumb, you could expect to have your homepage show as a first result returned for a simple query: “site:domain.com” in Google. Another way of confirming the content devaluation is to copy and search for a fragment of the text on your core pages. In the example below I do a Google search of 2 sentences from one of my articles (right-click to bring up a search of the text you highlight): As you can see below, Google finds it on my page and shows as a first result: If it was not the case and Google did not show me first or at all, then it would be a very strong indication that the article page or Read More Read More

The post How to 91x Website Traffic – A Case Study Blueprint for 2024 first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

The 4 Pillars of Mastering Google Website Crawl

Matt Diggity — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 09:45:42 +0000

Foreword by Matt Diggity: In a quick moment I’m going to hand things over to Rowan Collins, the featured guest author of this article. Rowan is Head of Technical SEO at my agency The Search Initiative. He’s one of our best search engine technicians. Other than being overall well-rounded search engines, Rowan is a beast when it comes to the site audit technical side of things… as you’ll soon learn. Introduction: Rowan Collins Without question, the most overlooked aspect of a search engine is the site’s crawlability and indexability: the secret art of sculpting your web crawlers for the Googlebot. If you can do it right, then you’re going to have a responsive site. Every small change can lead to big gains in the SERPs. However, if done wrong, then you’ll be left waiting weeks for an update from the Googlebot. I’m often asked how to force Googlebot to crawl specific pages. Furthermore, people are struggling to get their pages indexed. Well, today’s your lucky day – because that’s all about to change with this article. I’m going to teach you the four main aspects of mastering site crawl, so you can take actionable measures to improve your site’s content standings in the SERPs. Pillar #1: Page Blocking Web crawlers are essential tools for the modern web. Web crawlers work uniquely, and Google assigns a “crawl budget” to each web crawler. To make sure Google is crawling the pages that you want, don’t waste that budget on a broken page. This is where page blocking comes into play in search engine crawlers. When it comes to blocking pages, you’ve got plenty of options, and it’s up to you which ones to use. I’m going to give you the tools, but you’ll need to conduct a site audit of your own site. Robots.txt Search engines use advanced algorithms to sort through millions of pages, so we can easily find what we’re looking for. There are a variety of search engines that have proven to be promising. A simple search engine technique that I like to use is blocking pages with robots.txt. Originally designed as a result of accidentally DDOS’ing a website with a Google’s crawler; this directive has become unofficially recognized by the web crawler. Whilst there’s no ISO Standard for robots.txt, Googlebot does have its preferences. You can find out more about that here. But the short version is that you can simply create a .txt file called robots, and give it directives on how to behave. You will need to structure it so that each search bots knows which search engine rules apply to itself. Here’s an example: User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Sitemap: https://diggitymarketing.com/sitemap.xml This is a short and sweet robots.txt file, and it’s one that you’ll likely find on your web crawler. Here it is broken down for you: User-Agent – this is specifying which robots should adhere to the following rules. Whilst good bots will generally follow search engine directives, bad bots do not need to. Disallow – this is telling the search engine bots not to crawl your /wp-admin/ folders, which is where a lot of important documents are kept for WordPress. Allow – this is telling the bots that despite being inside the /wp-admin/ folder, you’re still allowed to crawl this file. The admin-ajax.php file is super important, so you should keep this open for search engine bots. Sitemap – one of the most frequently left outlines is the submit sitemap directive. This helps Googlebot to find your XML sitemap and improve crawlability and indexability. If you’re using Shopify then you’ll know the digital marketing hardships of not having control over your robots.txt file. Here’s what a good site structure will most likely resemble: However, the following digital marketing strategy can still be applied to Shopify, and should help: Meta Robots Still part of the search engine bots, the meta robots tags are HTML code that can be used to specify crawl preferences. By default all your site’s content pages will be set to index, follow links. This setting ensures that your web page is visible to search engines and that your web page has follow links – even if you don’t specify a search engine preference. Adding this tag won’t help your page get crawled and indexed, because it’s the default. However, If you’re looking to stop your site’s crawlability and indexability of a broken page then you will need to specify. <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”> <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”> Whilst the above two follow links tags are technically different from a robot’s directive perspective, they don’t seem to function differently according to Google. Previously, you would specify the noindex to stop the page from being crawled. Furthermore, you would also choose to specify if the page should activate follow links. Google recently made a statement that a noindexed broken page eventually gets treated like Soft 404s and they treat the links as nofollow. Therefore, there’s no technical difference between specifying follow links and nofollow. However, if you don’t trust everything that John Mueller states, you can use the noindex, and follow links to specify your desire to be crawled still. This is something that Yoast has taken on board, so you’ll notice in recent versions of the Yoast SEO plugin, the option to noindex pagination has been removed. This is because if Googlebot is treating the noindex tag as a 404, then doing this across your pagination is an awful idea. I would stay on the side of caution and only use this for pages showing broken links, and server redirects. These are the pages you don’t want to be crawled or followed. X-Robots Tags Other search engines that people never really use that often include the X-Robots tags. X-robots are powerful, but not many people understand why it’s so powerful. With the robots.txt and meta robots directives, it’s up to the robot whether it listens or not. This goes for Googlebot too, it can still ping all the pages to find out if they’re present. This can either be done by PHP or by Apache Directives because both are processed server-side. With the .htaccess being the preferred method for blocking specific file types and PHP for specific pages. PHP Code Here’s an example of the code that you would use for blocking off a broken page with PHP. It’s simple, but it will be processed server-side instead of being optional for google’s crawlers. header(“X-Robots-Tag: noindex”, true); Apache Directive Here’s an example of the code that you could use for blocking off .doc and .pdf files from the SERPs without having to specify every PDF in your robots.txt file. <FilesMatch “.(doc|pdf)$”> Header set X-Robots-Tag “noindex, noarchive, nosnippet” </FilesMatch> Pillar #2: Understanding Crawl Behaviours Many of the people who follow The Lab will know that there are lots of ways that robots can act as your web crawlers. However, here’s the rundown on how it all works: Crawl Budget When it comes to crawl budget, this is something that only exists in principle, but not in practice. This means that there’s no way to artificially inflate your crawl budget. For those unfamiliar, this is how much time Google web crawler will spend on your site. Megastores with 1000s of products will be crawled more extensively than those with a microsite. However, the microsite will have core pages crawled more often. Rather than trying to force crawls on pages, you may need to address the root of the problem. However, for those that like a rough idea, you can check the average crawl rate of your site structure in Google Search Console > Crawl Stats. Depth First Crawling One way that search engine bots can act as web crawlers on your web page is through the principle of depth-first. This will force google’s crawler to go as deep as possible before returning up the hierarchy. This is an effective way for web crawlers to perform their role if you’re looking to find and strengthen internal links with relevant content in as short a time as possible. An effective internal link structure helps website visitors navigate easily to find the search results they are looking for, as well as helps search engines understand the relevant content of the website. Internal link structure also helps to build page authority, which can result in better rankings for your pages. However, core navigational website pages will be pushed down to the search results page. Being aware that Google’s crawler can behave in this way will help when monitoring your website pages, including doing a site audit of your site’s internal link structure. Breadth First Crawling This is the opposite of depth-first crawling, in that it preserves site structure. It will start by crawling every Level 1 page before crawling every Level 2 page. The benefit of this type of web crawler is that it will likely discover more unique URLs in a shorter period. This is because it travels across multiple categories in your website while overlooking old or deleted URLs. So, Read More Read More

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A Complete SEO Guide to Anchor Text Optimization for 2024

Matt Diggity — Tue, 01 May 2018 13:18:56 +0000

Undoubtedly, the most crucial expertise in offsite SEO lies in mastering the art of anchor text selection. Achieving the ideal anchor text distribution can propel you to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) with fewer links compared to your competitors. Conversely, poor anchor text selection could result in a dreaded Penguin penalty. As an SEO expert, the most frequent question I receive from clients is: “Which anchor text should I use?” While I’d be thrilled to provide a straightforward answer, the truth is that it requires more than just a five-minute explanation. Choosing the perfect anchor text involves thorough analysis and practice. However, there is a systematic and consistent approach you can adopt to optimize your site effectively. It’s crucial to develop this skill independently, rather than relying on others, to truly excel in SEO. Once you’ve mastered this technique, it’s akin to advancing to the next echelon of SEO expertise. In this guide, you will discover the method to determine the optimal anchor text ratio tailored to your specific website, 13 innovative anchor text selection strategies to outperform your competitors, and techniques for maintaining a well-balanced internal anchor text ratio. For those that prefer video consumption, here you go: What is Anchor Text? Anchor text is the clickable text in a link. In HTML it looks like this: And on your webpage, it comes out like this: Awesome SEO Blog. In this example “Awesome SEO Blog” is considered to be the anchor text. Why Care About It? You should care about it because anchor text is one of the indicators that Google uses to determine relevance. For example, if a website is constantly getting quality links with the anchor text “dog collar”, Google is eventually going to determine that your site is about dog collars. Simple stuff. Back in the day, to get websites ranking, all you’d need to do to rank is send enough links with the anchor text exactly matching the keyword you want to rank for. Ah… the good old days. And then Penguin Came The Penguin algorithm (started April 24, 2012) targets backlink manipulation. It looks at the quality of the links your site is getting and, you guessed it, the anchor text pointing to your site. If the anchor text distribution doesn’t look realistic, then you get penalized. Sending anchor text with your keywords in it gets the ranking needle moving, but overdo it to the point that it doesn’t look realistic, and you’re going to be headed south very soon. Now the question is, what is realistic for Google? External Anchor Text Optimization Determining Your Niche-Specific Target Anchor Text The first step in anchor text selection is to figure out what is the ideal target anchor text distribution for your niche. Here’s how I do it, broken down to its basics: Analyze the Competition Many SEO’s often talk about needing a “natural” anchor text distribution. When they describe it, it typically looks something like this: 50% Brand/URL anchors For example, a branded anchor for golfgenius.com would be “Golf Genius”. Branded anchors only apply to non-EMD/PMD sites. URL anchors are variations of the naked URL: golfgenius.com, http://golfgenius.com, www.golfgenius.com, etc 25% topic anchors Example: “sports equipment” would be a topic anchor for the keyword “best titanium driver” 10% target keyword and longtail anchors Examples: best titanium driver, what is the top titanium driver, buy titanium driver online I define an anchor in this category if it has a single word of a keyword phrase you want to rank for (excluding stop words) 15% miscellaneous anchors click here, read more, go to website, etc. We could break this down even further into categories like “Brand + target” (e.g: Golf Genius’ review of titanium drivers), but for the purposes of this exercise, its overkill. We’re looking for guidance, not supreme accuracy. While many people stick to this idea that you need this perfect, “natural” ratio of various types of anchors, this simply isn’t the case. You’ll learn more about this soon… Do a search for your target keyword and toss the results into a backlink checker like Ahrefs. Here, and only here, is where you’ll find the anchor text distribution Google is looking for. Often this looks nothing like the cookie-cutter anchor text distribution that is supposedly “natural”. Case in point – Keyword: “sell my car online” Your anchor text plan often isn’t what you initially expect. I’ve been in niches where I had to consecutively hit the site with target anchors for a month straight until I was able to break into page 1. It’ sounds like anchor text SEO in 2005, but sometimes that’s what the niche is asking for. Here’s an anchor text distribution that is currently going to the URL of one of my sites ranking #1 for a high-stakes affiliate keyword (It’s been ranked #1 since mid-2018). Find the Average Anchor Text Distribution of the Top 5 Rankers To figure out the target distribution of anchors for my particular niche, I rely on Ahrefs and Excel (alternatively SEO Jet and Linkio supposedly do this). Step 1) Download the Ahrefs Anchor Text data for the site in position #1 Step 2) Categorize anchors by type I use the “Referring Domains” column so I don’t double-count anchors sent from the same domain, possibly from a site-wide link. Step 3) Find the anchor text distribution for this URL by creating a pie chart. Step 4) Repeat for Sites in Positions #2-5 Step 5) Your Niche-specific Target Anchor Text Distribution = The Average of the Top 5 Sites Step 6) Record and Implement Now that you know the anchor text ratio that Google is looking for, it’s time to begin your link building campaign whose anchors will mimic this distribution. I first start by recording the target distribution down in a Backlink Management Template. Once you know “where you want to be” you can start incrementally sending links until you get there. Frequently Asked Questions Q: This is great. Do I now send these links and anchors across my whole site, such that the overall domain itself gets this distribution? A: No. Anchor distribution ratios are determined on a per-page basis. Any anchors you send to an inner page, do not affect the ratios on the homepage for example. Q: My page ranks for many keywords. Which one should I use for my search to pull up the competition? A: Use the main keyword you’d like to rank for. For affiliates, this is probably “best _____”. For local seo solutions, its probably “<city> + <industry>”. Q: I believe my competitors are hiding their PBN backlinks. What should I do? A: First, check to see if they blocked some of the less popular crawlers like Open Link Profiler. If they didn’t block it, great. If you still can’t find their PBNs, skip over this competitor. Remember, we’re looking for guidance, not accuracy. Q: One of my competitors is an authority site that ranks with only 2 backlinks. Should I add it to the analysis? A: Skip over it as well. It’s an anomaly and will distort your result. Q: What if one of my competitors disavowed a bunch of their links? A: You’re getting the theme now. When in doubt, skip over the competitor. Mastering Anchor Text Selection At any given time, I’m conducting at least 6 single variable SEO tests. In the last few years, I’ve completed over 200. A huge chunk of them have been related to anchor text. Get a pen and paper handy because I’m about to reveal 13 anchor text selection tricks that will allow you to blow past your competition’s amateur SEO efforts. 13 Pro-level Anchor Text Selection Tricks 1. Never use the same target anchor text more than once Whenever I make any SEO decision, I ask myself the question: “Does what I’m about to do look natural?” Anchor text selection is no different. Back in the earlier days of SEO when you could pretty much get away with anything, people that wanted to rank for “dog training” would simply send all their anchors as “dog training”. Clearly, this doesn’t work anymore but I still see it quite often. Money sites will have a balanced anchor text distribution (50% brand and URL, 10% misc, etc), but all 20 of their target anchors will be the same (dog training, dog training, dog training, …) What are the odds of this happening naturally? The probability of 20 independent websites all linking to another website using the exact same target anchor text is pretty slim. If you have 500 backlinks it might move into the realm of “remotely possible”. Instead, never use the same target anchor more than once and mix up your keywords by throwing in filler words. Not only does it look more natural, but it actually gets a better result with fewer links. So in a nutshell, don’t repeat anchors, except in some cases like… 2. Utilize Your SEO Title Tag as an anchor Your SEO title Read More Read More

The post A Complete SEO Guide to Anchor Text Optimization for 2024 first appeared on Diggity Marketing.

Announcement: Rank Club Acquires Diggity Links

Matt Diggity — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 10:04:06 +0000

4 years ago, I was sitting down with a business partner and we decided to sell links from our private blog network. But if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. We wanted to change the game of PBN rentals. We wanted to have the most powerful links, the most secure network, and the best customer service. I tend to be modest with my accomplishments, but from what I gather, we’ve did a good job. Alas, it’s time for me to depart. Diggity Links has been recently acquired by Rank Club, a new project launched by an investor group that I’ve worked with before in the past. These guys will definitely be able to do a good (if not better) job at taking care of our customers with The Link Service, the rebranded offering. What will my role be in The Link Service? For the first 6 months, I will act as a consultant, making sure that the same level of standards will continue at The Link Service. I also have a few R&D projects to finish off to make sure they get applied to the new offering. As for my team, in order to upkeep the same levels of service and product, my entire team is getting absorbed into the Rank Club. This includes the R&D staff, writers, designers, sales concierges, and support. You’re in great hands. FAQ Q: Why did you decide to step down at Diggity Links? A: As a business, Diggity Links is doing absolutely great. The links are getting amazing results, the customers are happy, and the company is growing. But on a personal level, my time is getting spread too thin and I need some time to focus on existing projects. Plus… I’m getting married soon. ? Q: Does this mean that you are giving up on PBNs? A: Absolutely not. Put it this way, my affiliate SEO agency LeadSpring is Diggity Links (and now Rank Club’s biggest customer) and accounts for 64% of its revenue. Each month, this number increases. I am very much heavily invested in PBNs as a tactic. When/if I change my opinion on that, you’ll know right away. Q: What will you be focusing on now? A: First off, I’m doubling down on what I do best, creating affiliate websites and ranking them in Google. At LeadSpring, we’ve recently bought 2 and launched 5 new sites that I’m crazy excited about. Secondly, I’m putting my heart and soul into The Lab. There’s so much good stuff that we’re teaching there and it’s requiring more of my time and testing in order to do that. Q: Will The Link Service maintain the same level of standard that Diggity Links has? A: Absolutely. In fact, Rank Club has more resources on hand to perform more testing and support. My Director of Research and Development, Rob Rok, is also going along to Rank Club and will continue carrying out all the testing we do with these increased resources. Expect more blog posts on PBN too. Q: Do my PayPal subscriptions need to be renewed or updated? A: Not at all. You will notice no change in how the billing is performed. Q: Who will I contact for new purchases? A: Please continue to contact your same sales concierge using their @diggitymarketing.com email address. It will get forwarded to their corresponding @rankclub.io address. Q: Will The Link Service have more openings per year and let in more customers than Diggity Links did? A: They are unsure at this point. The main focus is to maintain the same level of quality. Q: I’ve applied to Diggity Links and I’m in the application queue. Do I need to reapply for The Link Service. A: No need. I’ve ported over all the applicants. Q: Who will take over for marketing for The Link Service? Where can I find out about The Link Service openings and promotions. A: I’m happy to announce Rob Rok, will be taking over my role in marketing. Many of you have met him before, so the transition should be seamless. Please like Rank Club’s Facebook page, to make sure you’re dialed in for future promotions. To your continued success, Matt Diggity 4 years ago, I was sitting down with a business partner and we decided to sell links from our private blog network. But if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right. We wanted to change the game of PBN rentals. We wanted to have the most powerful links, the most secure network, and the best customer service. I tend to be modest with my accomplishments, but from what I gather, we’ve did a good job. Alas, it’s time for me to depart. Diggity Links has been recently acquired by Rank Club, a new project launched by an investor group that I’ve worked with before in the past. These guys will definitely be able to do a good (if not better) job at taking care of our customers with The Link Service, the rebranded offering. What will my role be in The Link Service? For the first 6 months, I will act as a consultant, making sure that the same level of standards will continue at The Link Service. I also have a few R&D projects to finish off to make sure they get applied to the new offering. As for my team, in order to upkeep the same levels of service and product, my entire team is getting absorbed into the Rank Club. This includes the R&D staff, writers, designers, sales concierges, and support. You’re in great hands. FAQ Q: Why did you decide to step down at Diggity Links? A: As a business, Diggity Links is doing absolutely great. The links are getting amazing results, the customers are happy, and the company is growing. But on a personal level, my time is getting spread too thin and I need some time to focus on existing projects. Plus… I’m getting married soon. ? Q: Does this mean that you are giving up on PBNs? A: Absolutely not. Put it this way, my affiliate SEO agency LeadSpring is Diggity Links (and now Rank Club’s biggest customer) and accounts for 64% of its revenue. Each month, this number increases. I am very much heavily invested in PBNs as a tactic. When/if I change my opinion on that, you’ll know right away. Q: What will you be focusing on now? A: First off, I’m doubling down on what I do best, creating affiliate websites and ranking them in Google. At LeadSpring, we’ve recently bought 2 and launched 5 new sites that I’m crazy excited about. Secondly, I’m putting my heart and soul into The Lab. There’s so much good stuff that we’re teaching there and it’s requiring more of my time and testing in order to do that. Q: Will The Link Service maintain the same level of standard that Diggity Links has? A: Absolutely. In fact, Rank Club has more resources on hand to perform more testing and support. My Director of Research and Development, Rob Rok, is also going along to Rank Club and will continue carrying out all the testing we do with these increased resources. Expect more blog posts on PBN too. Q: Do my PayPal subscriptions need to be renewed or updated? A: Not at all. You will notice no change in how the billing is performed. Q: Who will I contact for new purchases? A: Please continue to contact your same sales concierge using their @diggitymarketing.com email address. It will get forwarded to their corresponding @rankclub.io address. Q: Will The Link Service have more openings per year and let in more customers than Diggity Links did? A: They are unsure at this point. The main focus is to maintain the same level of quality. Q: I’ve applied to Diggity Links and I’m in the application queue. Do I need to reapply for The Link Service. A: No need. I’ve ported over all the applicants. Q: Who will take over for marketing for The Link Service? Where can I find out about The Link Service openings and promotions. A: I’m happy to announce Rob Rok, will be taking over my role in marketing. Many of you have met him before, so the transition should be seamless. Please like Rank Club’s Facebook page, to make sure you’re dialed in for future promotions. To your continued success, Matt Diggity Read More

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The Ultimate Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites

Matt Diggity — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 09:11:37 +0000

Foreword by Matt Diggity: Impressive. Knowledgeable. Underrated. These are a few words that I would use to describe Brendan Tully. B.T. is one of the first SEOs I ever met in Chiang Mai. He’s a veteran in the game and it shows. I mean… the man used to be commissioned by the Australian government to teach SEO. The guy is good. He’s a beast at E-commerce SEO, as you’re about to find out in this monster of a piece. Introduction It’s tough when Matt Diggity asks you to do a guest post. The guy sets a seriously high standard and regularly wows the SEO space putting out stuff that nobody is talking about or has talked about before publicly. When I first started in this game in the early 2000’s, I had zero idea what SEO was, but knew if I changed certain things on my site it would move up and down the SERPs in a particular way. We grew that biz to 7 figures in the mid 2000s and ultimately ended up in client work at some point in 2008. Now through our services, one-on-one consulting, and in-person training workshops, we’ve worked with over 3000 different businesses or sites in some capacity, which has given me an awesome opportunity to try and test different approaches to determine what works and what actually moves the needle. SEO has changed a lot since then – (strangely, stuffing a website footer with 200 suburbs and cities doesn’t seem to work anymore) with the SERP landscape changing week to week in some cases. While the tactics and SERP layout change massively over time, I think it’s safe to say search is here for the long term – which brings me to the next point. The more I speak with different SEOs and clients, the more ecommerce SEO in particular seems completely misunderstood. Because tactics change so rapidly, I’ve tried as much as possible in this article to stay away from short term tactics that have a use-by date. Instead, I focus on core fundamentals and strategies that are time-tested and supported by solid business, sales, and marketing principles – this article is not limited by just ecommerce SEO but instead is more broadly focused on ecommerce marketing and optimization – which is where you ultimately need to be playing if you want to stay competitive. I’ve included action items as we work through this article – some are going to be totally obvious but are things that are regularly missed and some you may not have heard of before but have the potential to make a huge impact with a small amount of work. I’ve also included an audio breakdown for most sections and a handful of videos too as some things are just easier explained that way. Please bear in mind that the bigger your site the chunkier the action items or todos, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to create 3 months of SEO work here for a 7 figure site. Ideally, if I can have you walk away after digging into this article with one easy actionable tactic or quick win, one new broad SEO strategy you can apply to your site, or one principle or SEO foundation you weren’t aware of before – then I’ll be happy to say this article was a success. If you have a question about a particular point here, post in the comments section and I’ll be happy to clarify for you. Ecommerce vs Local SEO vs Affiliate SEO Before we get into the meat and potatoes, let’s look at some of the key differences between ecommerce, local small business, and affiliate sites. There are some fundamental differences between them so let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Ecommerce Sites Typically an ecommerce site has a lot more pages than other types of sites, even if there’s only a handful of products. Most of these pages are auto-generated from the CMS, for example category, tag, cart, and checkout pages. When you add tags, especially if you’re using a platform like Shopify, tons of pages are auto-generated off those tags and can create a canonical and keyword cannibalization mess. For bigger sites, cleaning this mess up can take some serious work but is a key component of getting the site to rank. It’s easier to fix these issues on smaller ecommerce sites, but for bigger sites, it’s tough to handle auto-tags without automation or SEO techniques that work at scale. Local & Affiliate Sites Local SEO sites may offer 5 to 10 services or products. What that translates to are 5 to 10 target keywords or groups of keywords. Affiliate sites are targeting more keywords but generally still not as many as a mid size ecommerce site – for example, an ecom site that offers 100 products will typically have 100 or more target keyword groups. It’s difficult to hand optimise a large number of keywords without using automation, templating, or SEO techniques that scale well when you’re dealing with a lot of pages and keywords. SEO is not just backlinks What I often see is when SEO’s do ecommerce SEO, they do it poorly. A lot of the time the default thinking is SEO=links but that’s not the case at all. Particularly with ecommerce sites, on-page SEO is vital and you need to get it nailed before chasing backlinks and internal links if you’re going to get serious SEO traction. This should be common sense, but you’d be surprised how often we see well established ecommerce sites with glaring on-site issues. On page SEO should be your initial focus, especially for established ecommerce sites. Generally as an ecommerce SEO strategy, I handle backlinks last. Backlinks are usually the most expensive part of SEO compared to internal links but actually give you the least control and there’s often no direct correlation between a link and a result. With on-page, there’s close to a 100% direct correlation between doing the work and getting results. ACTION STEPS: Run a Semrush Site Audit across the site. I’ve tried dozens of onpage audit tools and right now Semrush is my favorite. It picks up a ton of things other ecommerce seo tools won’t and presents them in a way that it makes them easy to get fixed. Semrush will pickup many of the easy technical problems that are roadblocking rankings. Run the site through siteliner.com – this is a fantastic tool for uncovering content duplication and cannibalisation issues. Get a Littlewarden.com account setup. It’ll monitor your site on an ongoing basis and detect basic but critical onpage SEO problems that you wouldn’t otherwise notice until your rankings start to tank (shout out to Kevin from Bulk Buy Hosting for this reco) A Note On Ecommerce Client SEO… It can be tough working with smaller ecommerce sites as clients, brand new sites, or sites where the average sale size is small. Generally I’ll stay well away from these types of clients. Generally when we do client SEO for ecommerce sites we never do SEO only. It’s just too hard to get them fast results and if the client is not commercially mature, often the expectation is that you’ll make them a millionaire overnight Whether I’m talking with a prospect about Adwords, SEO or something else one of the first questions I’ll ask if what is their budget. You can usually tell by the way they react what they’re comfortable spending and how commercially mature they are. A common problem with client SEO is that expectation that SEO is free so that’s where the focus should be versus ads. But that’s the wrong way to look at it. At least half of SERPs are paid ads now. If you don’t include paid traffic into your ecommerce SEO campaign strategy, you’ll have a hard time matching the competition. Ecommerce SEO – The Current State of Play, SEO is not enough any more Let’s talk about the current state of play with ecommerce SEO. As you’re well aware the SERP is constantly evolving which means your SEO approach MUST evolve otherwise it’s simply going to be less effective as time goes on. SEO is becoming increasingly fragmented. 10 years ago, the #1 result on Google was the SEO search results. There might have been one or two adwords results at the top of the page but now the landscape has totally changed. The #1 search result could mean many different things today: Regular paid adwords Google Shopping Google Maps Featured snippet (learn how to get it) Knowledge panel Paid Google Maps, which changes depending on location And more To top it off, the SERP also changes based on device AND the location of that device at the time of the search. The traditional #1 result has been drowned out by ads and other SERP elements now. A lot of SEOs haven’t realised it yet: Google is a paid search engine with some free results. Google wants to sell ads, they don’t care about searchers. Read More Read More

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The Definitive Guide to Keyword Cannibalization: How to Diagnose and Fix it

Matt Diggity — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 02:20:41 +0000

As an SEO veteran since 2009 and the founder of multiple 6-figures SEO businesses, including Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring, The Affiliate Lab, and The Search Initiative, I’ve encountered numerous SEO challenges. One such challenge that’s been causing a stir in the industry is keyword cannibalization. Despite the controversy surrounding it, I believe it’s crucial to address this issue as it can hinder your ranking success. In this article, I’ll show you how to assess internal keyword cannibalization through tools that we use in our SEO agency, and most importantly, the three most effective ways to fix the problem. Quick Summary What Is Keyword Cannibalization? Keyword Cannibalization is when two or more pages on your website have the same target keyword, appear for the same search queries, and as a result, have difficulty ranking. Why did this topic become so popular? Namely, because keyword cannibalization has quickly become an increasingly prevalent SEO issue that can hold back pages from ranking. If you optimize multiple pages for the same search query (intentionally or not), they will likely hurt each other’s chances to rank. Why Is Keyword Cannibalism Bad For SEO? Keyword cannibalism is bad for SEO because when multiple pages try to compete for the same keyword, they split up the power you’ve earned, and every single page becomes less visible on Google. Your goal as an SEO is to make your site as visible as possible for your chosen keywords. If you have an X and a Y landing page fighting each other, for example, on page 2 of search results—instead of a single one that appears on page 1—you’ve messed up. Fortunately, it’s not a problem that’s hard to fix. I’m going to show you ways of identifying diagnosing keyword cannibalization using several common tools. How to Diagnose Keyword Cannibalization 1. Agency Analytics To illustrate keyword cannibalization with an example, I set up an experiment to track an utterly random site that clearly exhibited keyword cannibalization issues for one keyword across multiple pages. Agency Analytics is a keyword tracking tool that we use to track day-to-day Google positions of keywords across your core pages. When used correctly, it can be an option for a keyword cannibalization tool. It’s also a great way to track relevant on-page health and (if used correctly) can diagnose a lot more cannibalization issues too. Below, you’ll see a screenshot of the average overall Google positions over time for the entire website: Since the start of tracking, the focus keywords we chose to track have continued to decline consistently, and on October 23rd, we can see a huge fluctuation. Could it be the result of keyword cannibalization? Let’s look deeper. One of the great features of this tool is that we can track the progress of a specific keyword over time, not just a net combination of all the keywords. So, let’s dive into the broad term ‘acoustic.’ Since we began tracking this keyword, Google has selectively ranked a total of 3 multiple pages targeting the same keywords. There’s potentially a 4th page competing if we consider Bing choosing another page. This is the first and easiest way to pick up keyword cannibalization—by monitoring one keyword daily and tracking the URL changes. 2. Ahrefs Ahrefs is by far one of the most versatile and powerful digital marketing and SEO tools available – if you haven’t got a membership, then you should get one. One of the great features of Ahrefs is its keyword explorer, giving you an option to audit your keywords versus your competitors. Yet, an often-overlooked feature is to the right: When you use the Organic Keywords feature on Ahrefs, you suddenly have access to historical data on all your keywords and instantly spot keyword competition issues. I only have 6-months of historical data with my plan, so perhaps an upgrade is in order. *Cough* Tim Soulo? Click on “Show History Chart” to drop down your ranking graph. Each color on the graph represents a different URL’s rank in Google (as denoted by the legend in the lower left), so if you see more than one color, you’re cannibalized. Notice how the keyword is constantly dropping out of the index, and there have been multiple pages ranking for this term? That is keyword cannibalization and what it does to your keyword rankings. 3. SEMRush One of my favorite SEP keyword cannibalization tools is SEMRush. To do this, export a large chunk of your keywords, perhaps only including your core pages or keywords with high search volume. You do that here: Take a sample of the top keywords with the highest search volumes, which will help you get a holistic view of your site. Throw all of these into a spreadsheet and set it up so that yours looks something like the one below, and if you’re having doubts, you can copy our template here. Once you have set up your spreadsheet, you will want to sort these five columns by Keyword (column B) in alphabetical order. This will mean that any cannibalized keywords are next to each other and will have a different position and URL. You can then scan from top to bottom to determine which keywords have multiple URLs competing. But you don’t want to waste time scanning, right? If you use a little bit of spreadsheet magic and use the following formula: =IF(B2=B3,”Cannibalized”,IF(B1=B2,”Cannibalized”,”Unique”)) If you use this formula correctly, you should easily duplicate the cell and turn Column A into a long list of automated checks – without the work. This means you just checked 10,000+ keywords in less than 2 minutes. Win. 4. SerpLab Edit: Late suggestion from Prince Olalekan Akinyemi [thanks for the contribution]. SerpLab is one of the few SEO rank trackers out there with a freemium plan. One of the features of Serplab is that it tracks which actual URL of your pages in Google SERPs has the top rank, and as such, it is excellent for diagnosing keyword cannibalism. To use Serplab for a cannibalism diagnosis of your pages, here are the steps to follow: 1. Log in to your Serplab account and select the project you want to diagnose 2. On the page that opens, click on any of your keywords that have been experiencing wild fluctuations. 3. Then Click on ‘’View Full Keyword Details’’ as shown below 4. On the page, you will see a graph showing the SERP overview of the keyword in view. When you notice too many fluctuations time and time again (as shown in the image below), then your pages are probably cannibalized in Google. 5. Scroll down a bit to the bottom of the page, and you’ll see a list of URLs that have once ranked for that keyword and the positions they occupied. In my case, I discovered three different pages of my website that were trying to rank for the same keywords. The only issue with this method is that it might be time-consuming as you have to go over each of your keywords one after the other. Aside from that, you need to have been tracking your keywords for a considerable amount of time before you can use it to identify SEO keyword cannibalization. 5. Google Search Console (GSC) Edit: Late suggestion from Joe Kizlauskas [thanks for the contribution]. For the most observant search engine junkies, you will notice that all four tools (Agency Analytics, Ahrefs, Semrush, SerpLab) are focused on the top 100 positions. They only report on detected cannibalization within these positions. Using GSC (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) to diagnose this issue will give you access to the top 300 search positions GSC provides a far larger data set to work with than most SEO tools. It’s also based on all queries that your pages are returned for within Google’s search results, so you aren’t likely to miss anything. Plus, it’s free. Here’s how you get started: 1) Login at https://www.google.com/webmasters 2) Choose your website from the right-hand side 3) Select the options below: 4) Filter by keyword to narrow down the search results: 5) Enter your keyword as an exact match: 6) View the Pages that are being returned for the filtered keyword:7) Scroll down and you can see all of the pages that rank for this keyword You’ll see that the one I’ve highlighted in red is indeed outside the top 100. 6. Google Search Operators For proactive SEO, there’s a sixth technique that can also reach outside the top 100 positions. It takes time, but you have an option to check the entire Google index to find duplicate pages by using Google site operators. Using search operators, you can track down multiple pages that have any content issues like duplicate content. For example, take a look at some keyword duplication on Diggity Marketing. Here are some duplicate keywords on my own site: If I wanted to rank for “pbn link,” I have 17 pages that all include this term. I can cross-reference this with AHREFS and see that this is indeed one page Read More Read More

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The Story of 10Beasts.com – An Uncensored Interview with Luqman Khan

Matt Diggity — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 08:00:29 +0000

About a year ago, I was introduced to a site called 10beasts.com. At the time, it was an 8-page affiliate website in the technology niche that quickly busted out of the sandbox in six-figure profitability within 8 months. December 2016, it broke $80k. This site became incredibly popular when it was featured on Glen Alsop’s Gaps.com. I mean, how often does someone go public with an affiliate website of this level? Fast forward one year… 10Beasts grew in size and earnings and flipped for over half a million dollars. And then the unspeakable happened. It got penalized with an unnatural links manual action in Google Search Console. And guess what? The penalty had recovered in 5 days. Meet Luqman Khan. Luqman is the creator, builder, and recoverer of 10beasts. In this no-holds-barred interview, Luqman discusses the entire story of 10beasts, how he got it ranked, how he sold it, and how he recovered it. In this interview we get into: The story of Luqman Keyword research Content planning Onsite optimization Backlink strategy Social signals The huge flip for $500k+ …and the miraculous 5-day recovery Resources: Tools Keyword Finder – Keyword Research CrazyEgg – Heatmap Monitor Backlinks Services AddMeFast – Social Signals Upwork Fiverr: Character Images AllTop.com Empire Flippers Guides An SEO’s Guide to Flipping Blogs NichePie Backlinko Cloud Living Gaps.com NeilPatel.com Transcript Matt: Hey, Luqman. How’s it going, man? Thanks so much for coming on. Luqman: Hey, nice to meet you, Matt. You’re absolutely welcome and thanks for inviting me for this interview. Matt: Absolutely. For the people that are watching that don’t know who you are, can you give us a brief introduction like what’s your name, how old are you, where you came from? Luqman: Well, my full name is Mohammed Luqman Khan and I’m from Lahore, Pakistan. Lahore is actually the second biggest city of Pakistan. I’m like actually, I’m born here and I’m living since I’m born here, and I have been to England, Turkey, Egypt, and a few other countries. And for now, I am still living in England as a computer science student in University of Manchester. Matt: Oh, great, awesome, so you’re well-traveled. Tell me a little bit more about the home city you grew up in. Lahore, right? Luqman: Yeah. Matt: Is that a city where people are doing like what you’re doing, working online? What’s it like where you’re from? Luqman: Well, Pakistan is actually the second biggest country who are doing the freelance work like freelance jobs are more open here in Pakistan. And what I’m doing here a lot of people are doing here. Actually, I’m inspired from a Pakistani guy called … his name is Salman Baig. He’s from another city called Peshawar. It is the north side of Pakistan. So, yeah, that’s all. Matt: Yeah, cool. And what do your parents think about what you’re doing? Luqman: Well, my parents really don’t like what I’m doing. They want me to really work. They ask me there what you do and I really tried to explain them what. They don’t know what you can do on internet. They want me to get a physical job, they want me to show doing something because the people think that I’m just a lazy guy who’s sitting in home all the time and do nothing but yeah, that’s actually what’s going on here. Matt: It’s not one of their familiar lawyer, doctor, so it’s garbage. I get that too. So tell me a bit about your background. You said you were getting a degree in computer science, right? Luqman: Yeah. Matt: Okay. And are you working on your bachelors or masters? Luqman: I’m doing bachelors yet. Matt: Okay. How are you doing there? Luqman: It’s not that great. It has nothing to do with my career, so I’m actually just doing it to get a degree to satisfy my parents, that’s all. Matt: I hope your parents don’t watch this, and if they do, I apologize for instigating this guy. Okay, cool. Have you ever had a jobby job? Have you ever worked for someone else? Luqman: I had a job in call center. It was in the sales department in some kind of product, I think security installment product in Canada but the call center was here in Pakistan. Matt: That sounds fun. Luqman: Yeah. I had it back in 2011 maybe. I don’t remember. I don’t really … yeah. Matt: Okay, all right. Luqman: So, I only worked for like one month. My back was already completely trashed of sitting on a chair for eight hours continuously. Matt: Yeah, I can agree. Luqman: It’s like … Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And so, when did you get into SEO and how did that happen? Luqman: When I was a freelancer, I started, you know, I figured out online earning from an ad. It was a PTC website, I don’t know. I was I think smartphone were newly introduced back then and I was looking for a smartphone on GSMArena.com, and there was an add earn by clicking in it was a PTC website. I hope you know about PTC websites. Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Luqman: There you click on an add and you get a few cents and things like that. And that was a scam website but I ended up with an idea that earning, online earning is quite a possible thing. So I started research, I learned HTML, CSS, and WordPress. By the passage of time, I started to work on upwork.com, fiverr.com. And I had a project on Fiverr, they were the client who had a website. I think Amazon associate website. That’s how I figured out about Amazon associate and by the passage of time, I figured out about search engine marketing that how you can get visitor to your website and that’s how I ended up on backlinko.com, cloudliving.com. And I saw that guy, Suman Bake, whom I told you about earlier from Peshawar. I saw him. I know he was posting somethings on his Facebook walls so it was good. Matt: Okay, so you were doing some online freelance work. You started working for a website. And you’re like, “Okay, if he’s paying me this much, how much is he making?” Luqman: Yeah. Matt: Then you went down the rabbit hole, I’m guessing. Luqman: Exactly. Matt: And where have you learned from in the meantime? Do you read blogs? Luqman: Yeah, the main learning source is backlinko.com for branding. And a few other Facebook pages, Facebook groups, sorry, and Neil Patel. You know neilpatel.com and Quick Sprout also. These famous blogs, they are really helpful. Matt: Awesome. And this was how long ago when you first started getting into SEO? Luqman: I think in 2013 or ’14. Maybe … I’m not really remember. Matt: So like maximum like four, four-and-a-half years ago. Luqman: Yes. Matt: And I would definitely say you classify as what I would call a very successful SEO. I’d say you’re probably in the 1% considering what you’ve done with 10Beasts. How does that sound to you? Luqman: Oh, thank you. Matt: Like how does that make you feel? Luqman: That sounds great. That sounds really great, man. Matt: I’m not just saying that because its coming from me… but just like you were not an SEO four years ago and now you’re … I would say you’re in the 1%. That … you’re awesome. Luqman: I really do feel awesome actually. Matt: That’s good, that’s good. You deserve it. You did a lot of hard work and I’m excited to talk about that site but not quite yet. On the way to where you are now, did you ever face any setbacks or any big issues that kind of … roadblocks that got in your way. Luqman: The biggest issue I faced was drop out of college in November 2015. I had a fight issue with my ex’s boyfriend and the fight really turned rough fight, fight. Matt: Okay. Luqman: So you know, actually, that guy, he brought a few guys to beat me up from outside the college, those who weren’t students. So the students of the college, they find out that people came outside the college to beat me, the student of the college. So the fight really turned into a big scenario like there were more than 50 to 60 students fighting in the hockey ground. Matt: Oh, my goodness. Luqman: And it really turned bad. They suspended like more than 16 students and including me and that other guy. I was suspended for five years. I cannot [inaudible 00:07:47]. Matt: Wow. So, I mean, that probably not just affected you in your school life. It probably affected every aspect of your life including the relationship with your parents. Luqman: Yeah, exactly. The relationship with my parents, my family, my teachers, so it was really bad. Matt: How did you bounce back from that? Luqman: I flew to England. Read More Read More

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My Favorite Purchases of 2017

Matt Diggity — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 12:00:52 +0000

Having trouble putting together a holiday wish list? Last year, I compiled a list a list of my favorite books in attempt to keep you well-read and inspired throughout the year. This time I’m switching things up a bit with a general list of my favorite purchases of 2017. It’s been divided up into 3 sections, for your browsing pleasure. Marketing Purchases Serpworx This is by far the best, browser overlay tool on the market. I’m borderline depressed that I didn’t find it earlier. On the SERP result, it overlays Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, and Semrush metrics and stats. When you open-up a webpage, you get those same stats, plus information like word count, heading structure, domain age, whois information, and more. And… It’s not slow and clunky like the alternatives. Buzzsumo One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed in 2017 with regards to ranking is the increases importance of overall site quality score. This means that each one of the pages on your website needs to be an asset, as opposed to thin filler content. While you could get away with cheap Iwriter content in the past, those days are coming to a close. I use Buzzsumo for determining what are the highest shared blog topics in my niche, so I can use them for informational blog topics on my affiliate sites. The results have been excellent. Personal The 5-minute Journal I absolutely love this thing. Since I bought it, I haven’t skipped a day. It’s a well-designed gratitude journal that you write in for 5-mintues when you wake up and 5-minutes before bed. It prompts you with questions like “what are 3 things I’m grateful for?” which helps set your day with the right outlook. Let me back up a second… I’m really into the concept of gratitude and gratitude journals. I even made an iOS gratitude journal app a few years ago. Admittedly, the format of the 5-minute journal blows my app out of the water. This journal also asks to list “what could I have done to make today even better?”. Whenever I fill up a journal, I’ll review this question, look for patterns and cut out any behavior that isn’t serving me. This journal has been priceless. Chilipad In general, men are warm(er) blooded than our female counterparts. This usually means that we sleep better when we’re colder and bundled up with blankets. If you’ve ever gone on a ski/snowboarding trip and slept with the window open, you know what I’m talking about. The Chilipad is a thin mattress toper that pretty much just makes your bed cold AF. Usually, I’m a very stubborn sleeper, but this year I’ve never slept better. And speaking of chili, here’s a recipe. 23 and Me It works like this… They send you a plastic vial in the mail, you spit in it, send it back to them, and then a couple weeks later they map out your chromosomal DNA which you can view online. You get to see if you have any pre-conditions for certain behavioral traits, age-induced diseases (Alzheimer’s), etc., which is obviously good to know. They’ll tell you what kind of metabolism you have, so you can figure out what diet will work best for you. One thing tripped me out… They knew that I was 50% Asian, but not only that… the Asian part was completely Japanese. I mean… How the heck did they even know that? Japan has invaded and bred with pretty much everyone around them. I was impressed. Sk2 Facial Treatment Essence Ok. Let me first explain myself. My fiancé is really into skin care and other girly topics. She got me this (what I had thought to be at the time) expensive ass water and I gave it a shot. The result… seriously, it knocked at least a year of aging off my face. Really made a difference. I don’t know what they put in that stuff, but I’m pretty sure someone had to die for it. Books Homo Deus (A Brief History of Tomorrow) – Yuval Noah Harari Homo Deus is Harari’s follow up to Sapiens, a book that changed my life. This book did the same. Harari describes his predictions on what us humans will do in the future given our historical paths through society, culture, religion and industry. The author truly is brilliant. The way he presents his futurist hypotheses, seems more like fact than prediction because of his detailed analysis of how we homo sapiens truly are. Life 3.0 – Max Tegmark If you’re into artificial intelligence and futurism, this is a must-read. The opening prologue to this book is a crazy rollercoaster ride, going through a possible scenario of what could happen if artificial superintelligence came online. Life 3.0 is an exploration of human life in a world with with infinite intelligence. Technological paradise? Cosmic colonization? Conscious uploads into simulators? Prepare to have your mind blown. Surely, You’re Joking Mr. Feynman – Richard Feynman PhD I first heard about Dr. Feynman in physics class in high school. I studied his “Feynman diagrams”, didn’t understand them, so by default, he was smart by my standards. In this autobiography, you see what a playful character and absolute genius this guy was. He is so extremely confident about his intellectual abilities, nothing held him back from learning anything – such as safe-cracking, playing samba, or designing the first atomic bomb. After you read this, you should never have an excuse for hesitating on learning something new. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline This fiction was written for me. In the future, Earth has gone to shit, and everyone spends their existence in a virtual reality utopia called The Oasis. The Oasis was designed by a hardcore 80’s fanatic and gamer, and when he died, he left his entire inheritance and control of Oasis to whatever gamer could solve a series of Easter Eggs. Voltron, Freddy Kreger, the Millennium Falcon… everything cameos in this book. Needless to say, I finished this book in less than a week and I can’t wait for the movie. Having trouble putting together a holiday wish list? Last year, I compiled a list a list of my favorite books in attempt to keep you well-read and inspired throughout the year. This time I’m switching things up a bit with a general list of my favorite purchases of 2017. It’s been divided up into 3 sections, for your browsing pleasure. Marketing Purchases Serpworx This is by far the best, browser overlay tool on the market. I’m borderline depressed that I didn’t find it earlier. On the SERP result, it overlays Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, and Semrush metrics and stats. When you open-up a webpage, you get those same stats, plus information like word count, heading structure, domain age, whois information, and more. And… It’s not slow and clunky like the alternatives. Buzzsumo One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed in 2017 with regards to ranking is the increases importance of overall site quality score. This means that each one of the pages on your website needs to be an asset, as opposed to thin filler content. While you could get away with cheap Iwriter content in the past, those days are coming to a close. I use Buzzsumo for determining what are the highest shared blog topics in my niche, so I can use them for informational blog topics on my affiliate sites. The results have been excellent. Personal The 5-minute Journal I absolutely love this thing. Since I bought it, I haven’t skipped a day. It’s a well-designed gratitude journal that you write in for 5-mintues when you wake up and 5-minutes before bed. It prompts you with questions like “what are 3 things I’m grateful for?” which helps set your day with the right outlook. Let me back up a second… I’m really into the concept of gratitude and gratitude journals. I even made an iOS gratitude journal app a few years ago. Admittedly, the format of the 5-minute journal blows my app out of the water. This journal also asks to list “what could I have done to make today even better?”. Whenever I fill up a journal, I’ll review this question, look for patterns and cut out any behavior that isn’t serving me. This journal has been priceless. Chilipad In general, men are warm(er) blooded than our female counterparts. This usually means that we sleep better when we’re colder and bundled up with blankets. If you’ve ever gone on a ski/snowboarding trip and slept with the window open, you know what I’m talking about. The Chilipad is a thin mattress toper that pretty much just makes your bed cold AF. Usually, I’m a very stubborn sleeper, but this year I’ve never slept better. And speaking of chili, here’s a recipe. 23 and Me It works like this… They send you a plastic vial in the mail, you spit in it, send it back to them, and then a couple weeks later they map Read More Read More

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