How to boost search rankings using only your internal linking strategy

How to boost search rankings using only your internal linking strategy

Three examples of site architecture modifications that offer big SEO gains in digital marketing.

Links, even within a website, show relationships between content. They transfer value and importance between pages. Even more importantly, internal links define your website’s structure. They help users to navigate and search engines to understand your website. A healthy internal linking strategy makes it easier for your pages to be indexed and to rank, as well as increasing click-through rates and conversion rates for visitors who can find what they are looking for. Before we start looking at three ways to boost your SERP rankings, let’s take a look at some of the basic principles of internal linking:

  • The more links a page receives, the more value Google gives it. Just like external links indicate an overall value with regard to other pages on the web, internal links help Google determine the importance of a page with regard to the other pages on your website.
  • Internal links are so important that Google now considers that 1000 is a “reasonable number” of links per page. Don’t forget that this includes every single link in the header, footer, menu and sidebar.
  • Linking is so powerful that it can (unintentionally) give unparalleled boosts to relatively low-value pages that receive a large number of internal links, like the home, about and contact pages.
  • Links from fresh content pass fresh value, and can, therefore, signal new content to Google, helping new pages get crawled.

Original Article Here

Has Google killed SEO?

Has Google killed SEO?

Ahh, the good old days. Online marketing used to be so much simpler.

I have fond memories of clean websites with proper structure. I remember when assigned
keywords on the right pages complemented branding campaigns that could rank effortlessly in the SERPS. Oh how times have changed.

Today, the current state of our industry offers a stark contrast to those straightforward beginnings. Yes, times do change, but some of the latest updates have created a cause for genuine concern amongst my clients who wonder what the future holds. Could recent ‘advancements’ in online marketing potentially have a negative impact on our business?

In the past year, Google has added countless new ‘features’ designed to enhance the user experience. Google decided these features are necessary for the future of its platform, but along the way, managing a website is becoming more complex for SEO’s and more expensive for businesses to implement.

As Google continues to roll out changes through the years, it’s easy to be blinded by expectations. The industry simply follows and quickly implements Google’s suggestions. Meanwhile, we ignore that these “new features” offer a quick pat on the back (like CTR boost or higher rankings) while allowing Google to use our content and branding to help create a “pay to play” model within its search engine and platforms.

Is our inability to see past the Google “Gospel” allowing Google free reign to force its own regulations on us while manually choosing which sites should rank on top of the SERPS?

Digging Deeper in Search of Answers

Prompted by concerns from my own clients in the drug rehab and restaurant vertices (whom I believe to be particularly vulnerable to these changes), I recently dug a little deeper into the current SEO situation and discovered that some “features” in the SERPS are clearly having a negative impact on free organic traffic.

It appears that Google’s promise to provide the best results for its users may, in reality, be providing the best PAID results for its users.

Could it be that Google’s current SEO structure and strategy is creating a money grab?

I believe there is cause for concern. So let’s take a closer look at some findings based on my SEO work with drug rehabilitation centers and restaurants

Example 1 – Drug Rehabilitation Centers

The drug rehab industry is a confusing and a unregulated market. A fluctuation of rehab facilities owned by investor firms is causing a stir with insurance companies — resulting in massive costs for online advertising. Meanwhile, Google’s most recent regulations for paid advertising in this competitive market has weakened many of the “certified facilities”, rendering them unable to make sufficient changes needed to overcome these issues.

After seeing an abundance of deceptive and misleading ads for unregulated drug rehab services, Google and Facebook now require mandatory “certification” for any drug rehab that wishes to participate in any form of paid advertising services within their platforms.

Even though these certifications are approved and vetted by the National Association of Addiction and Treatment Providers and the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse, the cost for certification is steep.

Following is a screenshot from LegitScripts, a third party vetting these certifications.

 

Original Article Here

Google debuts Shoppable Image ads, video in Shopping Showcase ads

Google debuts Shoppable Image ads, video in Shopping Showcase ads

The new formats, introduced for the holiday season, are intended to help advertisers attract new customers.

This week, Google announced two new ad formats for retail and brand advertisers ahead of the holiday shopping season that deliver shopping experiences on third-party sites, in Google Image search and in Google Search.

Add video in Showcase Shopping ads

Now, Google is rolling out another space for retail and brand marketers to extend the footprint of their video assets.  This time in Search with videos in Showcase Shopping ads.

Showcase ads are the multi-image Shopping format that Google rolled out last year. When users click on the ads, they go to a Google-hosted landing page that features promotions, descriptions and select products from the advertiser’s product feed. They typically display on brand and broad queries.

Videos are displayed in the featured image position. After clicking on the ad, the video plays in full at the top of the Google-hosted landing page that features a selection of products from the advertiser’s product feed.

Google touts Showcase Shopping ads as a vehicle for attracting new customers and should be thought of as top-of-funnel consideration formats. The top Showcase slot drives 3.6X higher than average CTR, and Showcase receives 20 percent more conversion credit with first-click attribution, according to Google.

The option is currently available to advertisers already running Showcase Shopping ads.

Original Article Here

Keyword research strategies in a close-variant world

Keyword research strategies in a close-variant world

Revisiting your keyword research approach is essential to preparing for imminent match type changes. Here are some considerations for a successful keyword research strategy in a close-variant world.

Google once again has disrupted the search marketing community by announcing exact match close variants will now include same-meaning variations. As a result, marketers putting all their chips into exact match keywords will have to shift their bidding, structure and keyword strategies to avoid wasted spend. The writing has been on the wall since 2014, and while the motive and benefactors are debated, the importance of focusing on intent rather than granular, exact keyword sets is clear.

Revisiting your keyword research approach and tactics is not only a suggested regular optimization task but also an essential step in preparation for match type changes rolling out in October. The process of keyword research is already changing, as it’s no longer necessary to launch with a hefty keyword list full of variations.

Rather, keyword research has become iterative and more valuable post-launch as needed. Following are some pertinent points of consideration when conducting keyword research for more effective spend and results.

Reviewing your PPC structures

For pay-per-click (PPC) practitioners, exact match becoming less important can seem discouraging. It can also bring challenges surrounding intent in B2B spaces. The new reality is that as Google improves its machine learning, marketers must adapt by combining keyword sculpting and research with many other available corresponding intent-centric signals. Think demographics, site engagement or browser history, location or proximity, time of day, income targeting and so on.

First and foremost, you should review performance within accounts and revisit your management approach. If accounts contain predominantly exact match, look to understand how close variant changes could affect performance or intent based on:

  • Keyword order.
  • Multiple-word keywords.
  • Addition of a location or preposition within a keyword.
  • Synonyms, close or similar-word variants.

Findings and responses will inherently dust off the topic of how the current campaign structure strategy aligns with performance and match type deviations. Remember, Google’s optimization levers work best when sufficient data is flowing through.

Don’t fret over giving Google the full reign over an account. Instead, focus on how consolidation (paired with “safety nets”) could bring benefits to the overall program. Single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) are powerful for personalization, granularity and quality scores, but be careful the contextual changes haven’t made you compete against yourself.

Original Article Here

Google is right; click-through and conversion rates kinda don’t matter

Google is right; click-through and conversion rates kinda don’t matter

Say what? Turns out you may be focusing on the wrong things if you’re fixated on click-through and conversion rates. Here are a number of reasons why.

Google has told CNBC that “there is very little search personalization” going on in the Google search results ranking right now and that the personalization that is currently used is limited to “user’s location or immediate context from a prior search.”

Fading fast: Personalized search for search rankings was a big deal several years ago, but now you barely see cases of it in the search results. You do see it in other Google products, but not too much in core web search. Google said that after a lot of testing around personalization, they found it didn’t really help searchers find the content they are looking for and it very rarely helped improve search results.

Pandu Nayak, who leads ranking at Google, said, “A query a user comes with usually has so much context that the opportunity for personalization is just very limited.”

What happened? The last time Google wrote a detailed case on how they use personalization in search was in 2011. And in 2012, it started getting a bad rep, and competitors like DuckDuckGo used it as ammo against Google.

CNBC has pointed out that Google’s step back on personalization has helped them stay out of some of the controversy that sites like Facebook or Twitter have seen with their news feed algorithms.

Why should SEOs care? Many SEOs track search results, and without much personalization taking place, it might make it easier for SEOs to report on their ranking success or failures. Of course, localization is a heavy factor, and that plays a role in ranking. Google Search Console does provide ranking reports, as do many other tools.

Original Article Here

Google admits it’s using very limited personalization in search results

Google admits it’s using very limited personalization in search results

Outside of a searcher’s location or immediate context from a prior search, Google doesn’t personalize the search results.

Google has told CNBC that “there is very little search personalization” going on in the Google search results ranking right now and that the personalization that is currently used is limited to “user’s location or immediate context from a prior search.”

Fading fast: Personalized search for search rankings was a big deal several years ago, but now you barely see cases of it in the search results. You do see it in other Google products, but not too much in core web search. Google said that after a lot of testing around personalization, they found it didn’t really help searchers find the content they are looking for and it very rarely helped improve search results.

Pandu Nayak, who leads ranking at Google, said, “A query a user comes with usually has so much context that the opportunity for personalization is just very limited.”

What happened? The last time Google wrote a detailed case on how they use personalization in search was in 2011. And in 2012, it started getting a bad rep, and competitors like DuckDuckGo used it as ammo against Google.

CNBC has pointed out that Google’s step back on personalization has helped them stay out of some of the controversy that sites like Facebook or Twitter have seen with their news feed algorithms.

Why should SEOs care? Many SEOs track search results, and without much personalization taking place, it might make it easier for SEOs to report on their ranking success or failures. Of course, localization is a heavy factor, and that plays a role in ranking. Google Search Console does provide ranking reports, as do many other tools.

Original Article Here

Work on PDFs wherever work takes you.

Work on PDFs wherever work takes you.
Work on PDFs wherever work takes you.
With the all-new Acrobat Pro DC, you can complete work from anywhere, anytime. Create a PDF at work, share and edit from a tablet,* and track reviews from your phone — all without missing a beat. Now you can:
Work on desktop. Create and edit PDFs, convert them to Microsoft Word or Excel, and so much more.
Use any browser. Access files and tools, and track activity, from the browser of your choice.
Work on the go. View and edit PDFs using the free Acrobat Reader and Adobe Scan mobile apps for your iOS or Android tablet.*

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The Ultimate Guide to HTTPS and SSL for WordPress

The Ultimate Guide to HTTPS and SSL for WordPress

Posted by B.J. Keeton on Oct 16, 2018 05:00 am
You have probably noticed over the past few years that many of your favorite websites have moved from HTTP addresses to HTTPS. The added letter, while adding very little time and effort to type, adds immense value and security to those websites. Not only will having a WordPress HTTPS site make your business more trustworthy to […]

DuckDuckGo reaches 30 million queries per day

DuckDuckGo reaches 30 million queries per day

DuckDuckGo, the privacy focused search engine, keeps growing steadily.

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, posted on Twitter that it has reached a new milestone, breaking 30 million queries per day on average.

50 percent growth. The company said it took seven years to reach 10 million searches in one day. To get to 20 million searches, it took another two years. Now, less than a year later, it is now at 30 million searches per day.

The growth keeps on increasing as you can tell from the published traffic charts:

original article here

5 ways to avoid duplicate content and indexing issues on your e-commerce site

5 ways to avoid duplicate content and indexing issues on your e-commerce site

Before a page can rank well, it needs to be crawled and indexed. Contributor Manish Dudharejia shares five tips to give your pages the best chance of getting indexed in the search results.

More than any other type of site, e-commerce sites are notorious for developing URL structures that create crawling and indexing issues with the search engines. It’s important to keep this under control in order to avoid duplicate content and crawl budget complications.

Here are five ways to keep your e-commerce site’s indexation optimal.

1. Know what’s in Google’s index

To begin with, it’s important to regularly check how many of your pages Google reports as indexed.  You can do this by running a “site:example.com” search on Google to see how many pages Google is aware of across the web.

While Google webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes has mentioned this number is only an estimate, it is the easiest way to identify whether or not something is seriously off with your site’s indexing.

In regards to the number of pages in their index, Bing’s Stefan Weitz has also admitted that Bing

…guesstimates the number, which is usually wrong…I think Google has had it for so long that people expect to see it up there

Numbers between your content management system (CMS) and e-commerce platform, sitemap, and server files should match almost perfectly, or at least with any discrepancies addressed and explained. Those numbers, in turn, should roughly line up with what returns in a Google site operator search. Smart on-site SEO helps here; a site developed with SEO in mind helps considerably by avoiding duplicate content and structural problems that can create indexing issues.

While too few results in an index can be an issue, too many results are also an issue since this can mean you have duplicate content in the search results. While Ilyes has confirmed that there is no “duplicate content penalty,” duplicate content still hurts your crawl budget and can also dilute the authority of your pages across the duplicates.

If Google returns too few results:

  • Identify which pages from your sitemap are not showing up in your Google Analytics organic search traffic. (Use a long date range.)
  • Search for a representative sample of these pages in Google to identify which are actually missing from the index. (You don’t need to do this for every page.)
  • Identify patterns in the pages that are not indexing and address those systematically across your site to increase the chances of those pages getting indexed. Patterns to look for include duplicate content issues, a lack of inbound internal links, non-inclusion in the XML sitemap, unintentional noindexing or canonicalization, and HTML with serious validation errors.

If Google is returning too many results:

  • Run a site crawl with ScreamingFrog, DeepCrawl, SiteBulb, or a similar tool and identify pages with duplicate titles, since these typically have duplicate content.
  • Determine what is causing the duplicates and remove them. There are various causes and solutions and those will make up much of the rest of this post.

Original Article Here