Chart of the Day: New experiment on outbound links shows their impact
A lot of discussion of SEO is around the right type of backlinks, links into a site, and rightly so given their continued importance to ranking. But what about links out from a site, do they have an impact? These are discussed less often, but can have an impact as the chart from this experiment by Reboot Online shows.
The experiment involved purchasing 10 new domains which mentioned the niche term "Phylandocic". Each article mentioned 2 authoritative, related websites. On 5 of the websites, mentions are in plain text whilst on the other 5 sites, they are hyperlinked. The domains were all registered at the same time to remove any domain age influence. All domains contained 10 random but pronounceable characters and all domains were confirmed as having 0 search volume produced in Google. All sites were co-hosted to minimise any…
'Rich Cards' to feature in SERPs for new verticals
Importance: [rating=4] For Marketers working for restaurants and e-learning sites
Recommended Source: Google Webmasters Blog
Back in May 2016, Google announced the launch of 'Rich Cards' - a new way Google displays content in certain SERPs that is a lot more visual and mobile-friendly than traditional text SERPs. These differ from the already common 'rich snippets' in that, well, they were 'richer'- that is they feature even more visual content.
Rich cards were only available to a select few verticals when they originally launched. Just two in fact: Recipes and Movies. But now Google have announced they will be expanding the new content medium to more verticals, these being local restaurants and online courses.
Non-specific local restaurant related SERPs, like 'Best Restaurants in Toronto' etc. now will feature rich cards which display the search results…
A detailed guide to scaling SERP rankings using competitor analysis
Every time search engine optimisation comes up in discussions with colleagues or clients, the first thing I do is place a mental bet on how quickly the chat is going down the rabbit hole. There is absolutely no denying the importance of SEO. No matter how much runway you think you have with PPC to fuel your business’ needs, sooner or later you’ll want to incrementally reduce the cost of acquiring users at the top of the funnel.
What’s that thing about rabbit hole again? There are numerous factors (some say over 200) that Google takes into account to decide where your page ranks for a given search query. If you go about optimising each of these factors, it is going to take you a whole lot of time before each piece of content goes out into the world. Either that, or…
Time changes all things - Especially SEO!
You need not cast your mind back far to reminisce about a time when the principles of SEO were little more than a rhythmic check list, putting everything in its place to best support the client at hand.
Now, times are changing, not only has the landscape been forever altered by Penguin 4.0, but we now have a new concept on the rise in interest and popularity: Semantic SEO.
Saying Semantic SEO is going to change everything is inaccurate, yes, it is a different approach to SEO but not entirely unrecognizable. The most common current SEO tactic is to filter out a target phrase, use it throughout the URL and, with fortunes’ grace, rank for the phrase chosen. With semantic SEO, you target a topic, not just a phrase. This is due to Google being much more competent at understanding the intentions of the user and…
Don't fall foul of these common but expensive SEO mistakes
Google’s engineers have said there are at least 200 ‘ranking signals’ which affect whether you can rank above your competitors or not. To make SEO even more challenging, many of them change frequently in Google’s algorithm updates.
So, it can be really tough knowing what matters in SEO and what doesn’t. To help give you focus, here we show some really common mistakes we have seen again and again as we have worked on SEO consulting and training projects.
We think SEO isn’t just for SEO specialists, all ‘hands-on’ marketers need to understand the main factors so they can ask the tough questions of SEO specialists and agencies. Here we're giving you five of the top 10 most costly SEO mistakes. If you're interested to discover more common SEO mistakes you can sign up for free to download the guide to the top 10…
Chart of the Day: Travel Sector finds earned & owned media like organic search and email marketing the most effective for gaining new customers.
We all know customers don't like ads, and have got especially good at ignoring them or blocking them when they're online. Now this is really starting to filter through into the channels driving results online - Organic is rated as more effective than Paid Search or Affiliate marketing, at least when it comes to acquisition for travel brands.
The travel industry involves single big-ticket purchases - with customers only occasionally engaging in repeat business. This makes it very different to many other industries, especially FMCG, where it's low margins and repeat purchases that are the name of the game. Therefore I'd be very wary about applying these findings outside of the travel industry. But the implications for travel brands are clear - invest in exceptional content to build organic…
Knowing if you’ve got a successful retail SEO campaign all starts with picking the right metrics
With a wealth of information at your fingertips in Google Analytics, how do you determine what the key performance indicators (KPIs) are for your website? Everyone wants to demonstrate the value of organic campaigns but since the cruel and unusual punishment of the removal of the organic keyword conversion report in Google Analytics to be replaced by the opaque 'not-provided', it can seem difficult to measure the impact of all the hard work although the improved Search Console-Google Analytics integration does help. Before we dive into the KPIs, it’s important to remember a few things when you’re pulling data out of Google Analytics and drawing conclusions from this…
What is data without human interpretation?
As with any quantitative data you get the what but not the why. Human interpretation of this data is where the…
Just because Penguin constantly updates, doesn't mean you can throw out the disavow file
When taking to the familiar waters of the social media swimming pool this morning, instead of enjoying my relaxed, smooth, exercise regime, I was met by the sound of shrieking and splashing from the children’s pool of Twitter. Upon investigating, I see there is a lively debate about the implications of disavow in the fallout of Penguin 4.0.
The main topic for the heated discussion? With the new incarnation of Penguin and its constantly refreshing live scrutiny when it is evaluating domains and URLs, is the presence of a disavow file even necessary for your business going forward? There are arguments both for and against this, there are those who are of the inclination that complete and utter removal of the disavow file is in their best interests as Google Penguin 4.0 algorithm is only doing minor devaluing…
We asked top SEO experts about how they see the implications of Google's announcement of a separate mobile index
Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, announced this month in a keynote on Google's search plans at Pubcon, Las Vegas that rather than its current single index for all sites, Google will run two indexes in parallel. One will be for informing mobile search results, the other desktop, but the mobile one will be the primary database and will be updated more regularly.
It's a big, bold move from Google, and there's no doubting it will have a huge affect on SEO, with the possibility of a big divergence between mobile and desktop search results. For marketers the implications will be less instant, as they'll take longer to filter through. But that is no reason for complacency. A change in rankings one day is a change in sales the next, and…
Don't mess with Google
The competition for a top spot in the Google search results is as competitive as ever. Companies spend millions of dollars annually to try and rank at the top spot for competitive keywords. There is good reason for that type of spending. Ranking first in Google results in 33% of all traffic from that keyword. Many high profile companies have taken a rank-at-all-cost mentality to clawing their way up to the top of the Google search rankings. These companies have tried, and failed, to gain an unfair advantage and have paid the price with a Google Penalty on their website.
Major companies like The Washington Post, WordPress, BBC, BMW, Mozilla, Genius, eBay, The Home Depot and even Google itself have been penalized by Google for violations of their guidelines. Digital Third Coast, a digital marketing agency located in Chicago, has compiled a list of high profile companies have…
