Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
With 800 million active users worldwide, TikTok is influencing a whole new generation of social media users and consumers.
This webinar will break down how content and influencers drive engagement and influence consumer behavior. Learn how to measure your competitive share of voice, engage consumers and drive revenue growth for your business.
Register today for “Unlock the Power of TikTok for Your Social Strategy” presented by NetBase Quid.
The post Webinar: Unlock the power of TikTok for your social strategy appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
Google has updated its Merchant Center policy to no longer automatically disapproved free listings for products that have login required and/or restricted purchase access. Google said it now will list these products as active but with the caveat that they may “have limited visibility on Google.”
What changed. Google said previously, Google Merchant Center accounts with the “Login required” or the “Restricted purchase” issue were automatically disapproved.
Now, free listings in Google Merchant Center accounts with this issue status are still active, but their products have limited visibility on Google. This only impacts free listings.
What is login required. Google explained “Login required” issue status means that customers visiting your store website need to provide account access information, such as entering a username and password or installing a program, before being able to view your products.
What is restricted purchase. Google explained “Restricted purchase” issue status means that the ability to buy products on your store website is limited to certain customers as defined by location, device type, information provided, or some other exclusive criteria. Fields like business information should be optional and content should be consistent and available to visitors in all locations.
Why we care. If you have been juggling these policies on your e-commerce site with these login required and/or restricted purchase listings in Google Merchant Center, you now should know that the status won’t be disapproved. Instead, Google will show them as active but these free listings may not show so highly and often in Google Search and Google Shopping.
The post Google Merchant Center no longer disapproves login required and restricted purchase free product listings appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
Everyones favorite new tool Google Analytics 4 is now showing performance data from Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns.
Where. To view PMax and SS campaigns, navigate to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, you’ll see that the data is organized by the Session default channel grouping dimension. (Click + to choose a secondary dimension.) Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns are under Cross Network.
Google announcement. This is one that Google may or may not have forgotten to publicly announce, but Charles Farina discovered and posted about it on Linkedin this week. You can review the GA4 default channel groupings help doc here.
Why we care. The rollout of GA4 has a lot of us less than enthused. Mix that in with the elusiveness of Performance Max and you have yourself some pretty PO’d advertisers. While the addition of this data gets us one step closer to full visibility, let’s just see how the information is reported and attributed.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
Many of the same concepts that you may be used to from Universal Analytics exist in Google Analytics 4. There are, however, several new concepts to GA4.
This article will detail some familiar and not-so-familiar concepts that GA4 brings to the table.
If you’re new to GA4, I’d encourage you to first check out this article to get up to speed on some of the differences between Universal Analytics and GA4, otherwise, read on.
Similar concepts, slightly different application
Let’s start with the familiar by looking at concepts that exist in both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.
But first, a small caveat: Universal Analytics has the ability to filter data in a robust manner at the view level. Google Analytics 4 only has a few filters currently available at the property level (there are no views in GA4), and so any differences you may see in your data should keep your current UA filters in mind.
With that being said, let’s dive into some familiar metrics:
Users
In Universal Analytics, the Users metric looks at the total number of users during the selected time period. In Google Analytics 4, the Users metric is actually split into two: Total Users and Active Users.
Active Users is the primary Users metric in GA4 and what you will see used in the default reports within the GA4 UI. Active Users are the users during the time period that have had an engaging session on your site in the past 28 days.
For most sites, these numbers will likely be close. But if you see differences between UA and GA4, this could be a reason why.
Sessions
In Universal Analytics, a session is a period of time that a user is actively engaged with your site. There are several things that may end a session, such as an inactive 30-minute time period, a change of UTMs or the session breaking at midnight.
In Google Analytics 4, a session is determined via the session_start event. GA4 does not restart a session with a change of UTMs and does not break the session at midnight, but it does look for an inactive time period of 30+ minutes to restart the session.
Due to the varying ways a session is started between the two property types, total session counts may look quite different between UA and GA4 depending on how often you may have been subject to the restart criteria in UA – definitely keep this in mind as you compare numbers between the two platforms.
Pageviews
These should be pretty similar concepts between UA and GA4. The biggest difference here is that if you are using GA4 to track both app and web, GA4 combines the pageview and screenview metrics into Views. If you are only tracking web for both UA and GA4, the numbers should look pretty consistent between platforms.
Less familiar concepts
Conversions
Conversions are the new Goals, but please note that they are not equal.
A Conversion in GA4 is simply an event that has been marked as a conversion. This is as simple as toggling a button on or off to note that the event is now a conversion.
Two main things to be aware of here for the differences between Goals in UA and Conversions in GA4:
- Goals in UA counted only once per session. That means that even if the goal occurred multiple times in the same session, for example, a goal fired each time a form was completed, and a particular user completed three forms in one session, it would only count as one goal completion. In GA4, the conversion will fire every time the event has been satisfied, so in the same example, it would count as three conversions in the same session.
- In UA, you could create a goal based on several factors: destination, duration, pages/screens per session, event and smart goals. In GA4, Conversions can only be based on events. This means that you’ll need to get creative, such as creating an event for a specific destination/page, to convert some of your goals to events. Audience Triggers are another thing to consider for things like duration goals.
Engaged sessions
This is a new concept to GA4. An Engaged Session is defined as “the number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least two pageviews or screenviews.”
This new metric allows you to get a better understanding of the sessions that are higher quality and/or more engaged on your site content. Engagement Rate is the percentage of Engaged Sessions. The inverse of Engagement Rate is Bounce Rate (see below).
A blending of the two
Bounce Rate
I need to start this one off by saying that I have never been a fan of bounce rate (or time on site metrics for similar reasons). I think that there are many places where the bounce rate calculation in Universal Analytics can lead you astray in your analysis. Simo Ahava even has a funny little website dedicated to showing you what a good bounce rate is.
But I do recognize that some businesses (especially verticals like Publishers) rely heavily on Bounce Rate. And I know SEOs tend to like this metric.
Google recognizes the need for this metric too. That is why just this month, they’ve released Bounce Rate back into the wild of GA4 (it had previously been considered a deprecated metric for GA4/wasn’t built into GA4 initially).
Here is where I need to stress that this is NOT the same bounce rate that you had in Universal Analytics.
Not.
At.
All.
In Universal Analytics, Bounce Rate was “the percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page.” Every “bounced” session had a duration of 0 seconds for the total time on site calculation. This meant that even if a user came to your website, hung around for 5 minutes reading every word on your home page, but didn’t click on anything or cause any other event or pageview to trigger, they would be considered a bounce.
To say this metric was flawed is an understatement.
In GA4, Bounce Rate is a simple calculation that is the inverse of Engagement Rate. Earlier, I mentioned “Engaged Sessions” – 10 seconds or more than one event or pageview. These are the basis of Engagement Rate. This means that Bounce Rate is the percentage of sessions that are considered to be not engaged.
Why does this matter?
Bounce Rate is now a much more useful metric to show you how many people did not engage with your website. The people who came, read everything on your homepage for 5 minutes and then left are now considered an engaged session, so they will not be counted as a bounce.
While imperfect, it’s a much better definition of what a bounce actually is, helping you as the analyst to better understand who is and who is not engaging with your site content.
Hurray for improved metrics in GA4!
The post GA4 brings new and familiar concepts to the future of analytics appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
Today Google announced that they have created Confirming Gross Revenue – a new solution to give ad buyers and publishers a way to verify that there were no hidden fees taken from their transactions within Ads Manager.
View the report. Advertisers can view the new Revenue Verification Report to see the total gross revenue received from a specific publisher. Google says that the ad buyer and media publisher can then come together to verify that the media cost from the buyers’ report matches the gross revenue the publisher received. The idea here is that if the numbers match, the buyer can assume that their full media spend reached the publisher and no hidden fees were taken.
Early testing. Google is testing the new reporting with Display and Video 360, but are collaborating with other demand-side platforms, sell-side platforms, publishers, and agencies to implement similar reporting with other partners.
Thanks, Google? Google claims that (on average) 15% of advertisers’ ad spend is unattributable, and they estimate about half of the revenue from display advertising is kept by the advertising technology providers themselves. They claim that while the Google Ads platform doesn’t take fees, they “can’t speak for other companies in the space.”
Even when ads flow through both our buy-side and sell-side services, publishers receive most of the revenue. In fact in 2019, when marketers used Google Ads or Display & Video 360 to buy display ads on Google Ad Manager, publishers kept over 69 percent of the revenue generated. And when publishers use our Ad Manager platform to sell ads directly to advertisers, they keep even more of the revenue.
Google has also participated in industry transparency standards “across buyside and sellside businesses, like ads.txt / app-ads.txt, sellers.json and SupplyChain Object into Ads Data Hub to help marketers using Display & Video 360 see the steps their impressions took before arriving on a publisher’s site.” The objective of these transparency initiatives is to give advertisers better visibility into buying decisions and strengthen fraud detection.
What Google says. “Confirming Gross Revenue is one part of our efforts to address concerns over the lack of transparency that we have heard from publishers, agencies, advertisers and regulators. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to work with the industry on shaping this new solution and, more broadly, initiatives to instill more confidence in online advertising. Bringing greater transparency to advertisers, agencies and publishers is core to our approach. We welcome participation from others who want to work together to advance an ad-supported internet that works for everyone.” Allan Thygesen, President, Americas & Global Partners.
Read the full blog post. You can learn more and read the full post here.
Why we care. Do we? Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve never been fortunate enough to question where my ad dollars are going, and I don’t know any other agencies or advertisers that have. While I don’t agree with some of the websites and platforms my ads end up on, I never considered that mysterious fees were the explanation for any mismatch in revenue reporting.
On the upside, this new report might call out shady behavior of platforms that have been taking fees or a cut of ad spend. It doesn’t hurt to check out the new reports if you use Display or Video 360 and see what information they provide about where your ad spend is going.
The post Google just announced a Revenue Verification Report to confirm buyer and publisher ad spend appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
Providing a memorable and consistent customer experience is more crucial and challenging than ever.
Businesses must consistently adapt by adopting new technologies, reliably benchmarking performance, and listening to critical customer feedback to deliver unparalleled value and achieve positive growth.
Highly personalized, seamless experiences are at the forefront of customer expectations, which means businesses must evolve to provide connected journeys every step of the way. A comprehensive set of solutions that seamlessly mix local marketing and customer experience technology wasn’t available; until now.
Local marketing and customer experience technology power unparalleled local experiences
Every customer’s experience begins the moment they discover your brand. A customer may conduct an online search to learn more about a business or read customer reviews. The experience doesn’t end once a purchase is made. Customers have the power to be a brand’s best advocate or its most vocal critic – either way those experiences are invaluable. Having the tools accessible to better understand your customers’ pain points allows your business to engage more effectively at every touchpoint and build a loyal following.
Forsta, the global leader in customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and market research, is combining capabilities with Rio SEO, the industry-leading local marketing platform for enterprise brands. Together, the combined technologies power a seamless customer experience solution, enabling brands to engage customers throughout the entire buyer’s journey, from discovery to purchase and through to brand reputation and advocacy.
Rio SEO and Forsta are reshaping the local search landscape by bringing to market the industry’s only end-to-end local marketing and customer experience solution for global enterprise brands.
We call this unique combination Local Experience (LX), and it’s a game-changer for enterprise brands looking to optimize their business and deepen customer relationships.
Rio SEO’s Open Local Platform supplements Forsta’s Human Experience platform by enabling customers to seamlessly expand their customer experience programs into the discovery and consideration phases earlier in the purchase funnel and through to the post-purchase brand reputation and advocacy stage. Rio SEO’s local marketing solutions drive discovery and sales at the local level, at scale and complement Forsta’s technology to support customer engagement and loyalty post-sale.
Forsta’s market research and customer experience solutions, recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant
for Voice of the Customer, take you from data, to insight, to action by helping you understand your customer, see who they really are, and better respond to their needs.
Enhance your discoverability, attract new customers, and build long-lasting relationships with Forsta and Rio SEO’s LX solutions. Visit rioseo.com/forsta to learn more.
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Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, July 27th, 2022
If you’ve enjoyed every SEO job you’ve had in the first 90 days, kindly remove yourself from this article for being a liar.
We good? Awesome.
Did you know that 33% of employees quit their job within the first 90 days that they’re employed.
That’s a sobering fact.
The kind that makes you want to get not-sober as you kickstart for your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO Director.
Enterprise SEO departments have a high turnover rate due to cultural challenges because other departments don’t understand SEO or how to work together.
At the risk of stating the obvious, your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO Director sets the stage for the rest of your time at the company.
Have you found yourself asking these questions before:
- How do you make a business use case for more budget for SEO?
- How do you scale your enterprise SEO department?
- How do develop alignment with Product and Editorial?
Over the next few articles, I’ll help you answer these (and more) questions, based on my experience as an enterprise SEO Director. Starting with
Become a strategic player
In due time, you can show up to Zoom meetings acting like “the champ is here,” but not in the first 90 days.
You’ve got massive plans afoot for an SEO makeover for your enterprise company.
- Site architecture changes.
- Removing old content.
- Possibly building a new website.
It’s a lot to take in.
So I recommend starting with developing relationships. You want your enterprise SEO department to be seen as a strategic player on a bigger team.
Allow me to paint you a picture.
It’s your second week as the new SEO Director. SEO is a brand new department at the enterprise company. Everyone is excited to have you join the team.
Until you start to notice other departments are already doing SEO, but do not realize they are doing SEO.
In the second month as the new SEO Director, you present your observations of the challenges and offer new solutions to the executive team. Your presentation goes well.
Later, you find out those other departments are not happy with you presenting the challenges you see in their department.
This is not what you want to see in your first 90 days as a new enterprise SEO Director. This is a common problem SEO professionals face as SEO is still relatively new in enterprise companies.
SEO Directors need to position themselves as a strategic partner that flows and moves with other departments.
You will lose credibility and trust without empathy
Getting SEO done on a website with millions of webpages requires other teams’ resources.
Enterprise SEO teams are never self-contained. Instead, SEO departments lean on the resources of other departments to get things done.
The hardest part of my job as an enterprise SEO Director is selling SEO to other teams. I have to persuade other teams that my goals can help impact their goals.
So how do we find common ground?
The key to finding common ground with empathy.
You need to understand what your engineering, editorial, design and other teams care about. You need to look at their goals and priorities and build your goals and priorities to align with them.
If you come to the table with audits, deliverables and recommendations, you start to lose social capital. You’re turning people off by getting too into the SEO terminology weeds.
For example, instead of saying “I need to set the SEO strategy,” say “I need to align our SEO strategy with your work so my team can make better decisions.”
Let’s say that the marketing team’s Q3 goal is to scale the international audience.
As an SEO, you might see opportunities in site architecture, page layouts and technical improvements.
Ask yourself: Are there SEO improvements we can make that support the scaling of international audiences?
You need to overlap your SEO opportunities with the marketing team’s strategy.
But your deliverable is documentation of the process into the strategy. You don’t want to skew the conversation by talking about deliverables as audits or keyword research. Your communication is the deliverable.
Your SEO deliverables don’t exist for change. Your SEO deliverables exist to create documentation and standardize the process.
This way of looking at SEO deliverables will help set the landscape to get the resources you need to execute in your first 90 days. You may need to negotiate for resources.
As the SEO lead, you want to communicate that you understand the strategic initiative and that your strategy supports it.
My SEO Director 30-60-90-day plan
Days 1–30
Focus: Learning
Priorities: Get up to speed on needs and challenges for the Content and SEO team and [Company Name] as a company. Understand the expectations [Your Boss’s Name] has for me, learn how the internal processes and procedures currently work, and start to explore some of the challenges facing [Company Name] and Content and SEO.
Learning goals:
- Read all of the relevant internal materials available to me. Ask across teams for recommendations of articles, reports, and studies I should review. Get up to speed on [Company Name] as a company and the industry. Gain product knowledge. (Metric: Reading completed)
- Get access to the accounts (email, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Asana, Workfront, Contentful, Google Drive, WordPress, etc.) I’ll need to do my job. Spend time familiarizing myself with each of them. Determine what tools/software we are missing. (Metric: Task completed)
- Listen to 10 recorded customer calls (good and bad). (Metric: 10 customer calls listened to)
- Understand the need for my open roles to adjust job descriptions if needed. Align with interviews and questions for each interview. (Metric: Task completed)
Performance goals:
- Organize the Content and SEO tech stack. (Metric: Establish a list of tools, budget and logins)
- Kickstart content inventory research and recommendations on the top 25 pages. (Metric: Content Audit completed on top 25)
- Initiate Technical SEO research and break down priorites-based team org structures (Ex: thin content edits to the editorial team, sitemap tweaks to engineering team) and recommendations for the overall health of the website. (Metric: SEO research completed with top 10 priorities)
- Dive into a Competitor Analysis that is focused on content and SEO only. (Metric: Competitor Audit of top 5 competitors completed)
- Begin to build and document Content & SEO Strategy for FY2022 through the next 3 years based on audit findings. (Metric: Task completed)
- Prepare content style guide and deployment checklist to align with SEO best practices. (Metric: Task completed)
Personal goals:
- Meet with [Your Boss’s Name] and key stakeholders from product, engineering, editorial, PR, etc. Introduce myself and learn about their roles within the organization. (Metric: Ten meetings held)
- Set up recurring meetings with everyone I’ll need to work with on a regular basis—including cross-functional and external partners. (Metric: Regular meetings set and attended)
Days 31–60
Focus: Contributing
Priorities: Perform my role as Director of SEO at full capacity, with a decreased need for guidance. Start to explore how I can make a unique impact within the SEO channels and [Company Name].
Learning goals:
- Analyze current SEO performance so far and establish key metrics and benchmarks I care about (sales, leads, revenue, etc.) and share findings across departments and key stakeholders. (Metric: Task completed)
- Explore Content and SEO workflow improvements to document in SEO strategy. (Metric: Task completed)
- Listen to five recorded customer calls (good and bad). (Metric: Five customer calls listened to)
- Continue to work with the Talent team to review candidates for the open roles. (Metric: Task completed)
Performance goals:
- Create a Wiki page SEO tech stack for future reference and guidance. (Metric: Task completed)
- Share Content research and initial findings (and Competitor Analysis) and recommendations on the top 25 pages to teams and align across departments to tackle recommendations. (Metric: Content Calendar created with research findings included in workflow along with Best Practices documented in Wiki)
- Share Technical SEO research (and Competitor Analysis) and recommendations for the overall health of the website to teams and align across departments to tackle recommendations. (Metric: Get recommendations in team queues for completion (i.e. Sprints, Asana, Jira, etc.))
- Continue to build and document SEO Strategy for FY2022 through the next 3 years based on audit findings. (Metric: Task completed)
- Begin Backlink SEO research (and Competitor Analysis) along with recommendations. (Metric: Competitor Audit of top 5 competitors completed)
Personal goals:
- Schedule coffee or lunch with someone from the company I haven’t gotten to know yet. (Metric: Task completed)
Days 61–90
Focus: Taking initiative
Priorities: Start assuming more autonomy and finding small ways to practice leadership skills. Start to explore SEO goals for the rest of the year.
Learning goals:
- Work with the Analytics team to establish consistent automated reporting. (Metric: Task completed)
- Listen to five recorded customer calls (good and bad). (Metric: Five customer calls listened to)
- Continue to work with the Talent team to review/hire candidates for the open roles. (Metric: Task completed)
Performance goals:
- Kickstart quarterly content research projects based on website ownership.
- Onboard Blog Content Manager to kickstart quarterly content research for the blogs.
- Establish monthly, quarterly and yearly goals for the SEO team. (Metric: TBD)
- Share SEO Strategy for FY2022 and beyond (hiring, resources, prioritization, etc.). This will include key findings from the research along with a content calendar, technical SEO project roadmap, and reporting metrics (content, technical, backlinks).
- Sync with PR and Social teams to begin to talk about an Influencer/Ambassador strategy. (Metric: Task completed)
- Develop a Content Distribution Playbook to work across departments. (Metric: Task completed)
- Develop a Technical SEO Playbook to work across departments. (Metric: Task completed)
Personal goals:
- Schedule coffee or lunch with someone from the company I haven’t gotten to know yet. (Metric: Task completed)
Your first 90 Days as an SEO Director is a fresh start for you and your company
Most enterprise companies don’t have an SEO strategy at an executive level.
During your first 90 days, you want to build a foundation for your SEO strategy that aligns with the bigger marketing and product strategy.
The post Your guide to the first 90 days as an enterprise SEO director appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022
Want to know an easy way to speed up and improve the overall performance of your website?
Invest in good hosting.
Ignorance is no longer an excuse for any company to use a cheap web host.
Website performance is a critical element that can help improve your rankings, traffic and conversions.
This guide will cover everything you need to understand about why web hosting is important for SEO.
What is website hosting
A website hosting service provider, or web host, is a service that offers the technology required for a website to be viewed online.
Think of a web host as the home base of your website. Websites or webpages are stored on special computers called servers, and through the server your webpages get connected and delivered to internet browsers.
So, when users want to view your website, all they have to do is type your website address or domain into their browser.
When building a website, companies typically invest a lot of time and resources on design, development, digital marketing and SEO.
But web hosting is one area that tends to be an afterthought.
If you are willing to invest in making sure the website looks good and driving traffic to it, why not also ensure that the actual website is fast, functional and flexible?
Using a high-quality web host can maximize your conversion rates, along with other helpful benefits.
How web hosting benefits businesses
If you want a website for your business, then you will need a web host. Although web hosting is usually left at the back of a business’ mindset, it is crucial for your online presence.
A reliable web host can give your company a variety of benefits, such as:
- Improved site performance.
- Effective data management.
- Enhanced security.
- High uptime.
In short, investing in a reliable web host is wise – and should help grow your business.
Expected features from hosting providers
Web hosts offer more than just web hosting services for businesses. Web host firms offer multiple services that ensure a hassle-free experience for business owners and to make sure their only focus is the time and energy spent on their business.
Here are some features you should expect from a good web hosting provider:
- Email accounts: Hosting providers will require users to create their own domain name. Domain names and email accounts will be one of the features provided.
- FTP access: FTP allows you to upload files from a local computer to the web server. Your website will be accessible through the internet, with files transferred from your computer straight to the server using this feature. FTP access is critical for web developers.
- WordPress support: WordPress, which powers nearly half of the websites on the internet, is a convenient way to create and manage your website content.
- Enhanced security: Many hosting providers, such as WPEngine, now provide complimentary SSL certificates with their hosting services.
Most popular web hosts
Popular web hosting companies include:
- GoDaddy
- Amazon Web Services
- Google Cloud Platform
- 1&1 IONOS
- HostGator
- Bluehost
- Hetzner Online
- DigitalOcean
- Liquid Web
- WP Engine
Why web hosting is important for SEO
When it comes to SEO, Google strives to deliver the best possible results for its users.
This means that a strong and reliable web host will lay the foundation for your SEO efforts.
Google looks at several factors to ensure the user has a positive experience after using their search engine. Websites that work faster with improved UX can get a rankings boost.
SEO is a huge focus for nearly all businesses and brands today. Everyone wants their site listed on the first page of Google for relevant search queries.
Websites that fail to rank on Page 1 of Google likely won’t be found. As the saying goes, “the best place to hide a website is the second page of Google.”
There are three main reasons why web hosting is important for SEO: speed, security and location.
Speed
Looking at it from a practical standpoint, speed is an extremely important factor for SEO.
A slow and cheap web host will result in a slow website. The domino effect is that it would result in poor rankings, low organic traffic, and minimal leads.
What’s the solution?
A good web host will have high speeds, which will decrease the load time of your pages.
When determining how fast a website should load in 2022, it should always be as fast as possible. Google’s benchmark for the ideal time for mobile speed is two seconds or less.
A 2022 study showed average loading time for mobile-sites was around 4.5 seconds. For 20% of the analyzed mobile landing pages, the visual content took longer than 6.6 seconds to load.
Considering that speed equals revenue, this is still far too slow.
Tools for Measuring Page Speed
Need to measure your page speeds? Use these helpful tools:
- Google Page Speed Insights
- GTMetrix
- Pingdom
Target Metrics for Websites
The Core Web Vitals report is what shows how your webpages perform based on real world usage data, which is also referred to as “field data.”
With the Core Web Vitals, the URL performance is shown by status, metric type, and URL group.
Core Web Vitals are based on three metrics:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): This shows the amount of time it takes to render the largest element of visible content in the viewpoint from the moment when the user requests the URL. The largest element of content is typically an image or video, or large block text. This metric is important because it informs the user that the URL is loading.
- FID (First Input Delay): This shows the time from when the user interacts with the website by clicking on the link to the time in which the browser responds to the action. This metric is important since it is when the page becomes interactive.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): This measures the sum total of all the individual layout shifts for every unexpected layout shift. This takes place during the entire lifespan of the page. The measurement can range from zero, which implies no shifting at all, to any positive number. The rest of the numbers indicate how much the layout shifts. This metric is important because it creates a bad user experience if the user experiences a layout shift while interacting with the website.
Security
Without a strong security system for your website, it can suffer from detrimental issues such as hackers, spam pages, and fake backlinks.
All of these things can harm your Google rankings – and potentially result in a manual action.
There is also the risk of your site getting infected with malware, which could potentially result in your site getting blacklisted by search engines or showing a security warning in the search results.
If you don’t use a web host with a strong security system, it could negatively impact your SEO efforts.
One feature that web host providers may offer is a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This is a security certificate that is the standard technology for keeping the internet connection secure.
Another plus side of strong security comes from reliable tech support and customer service. As a company, you want to ensure that the web host you’re using has top quality tech support and customer service.
If something is too slow or the site crashes, you can get it solved quick and efficiently. A strong tech and customer support team will ease any worries or panic if your site ever goes down.
Location
Location is an important factor in the SEO of your website. Search engines will look at location-based signals into consideration when searching for optimal results.
Some questions to consider:
- Where is the user?
- Where is the business?
- Where is the site located?
All of these are practical reasons for where your website will be hosted. It plays a role in determining how far the data must travel, and its speed.
For example, if your business is located within the United States, you want your website to be located in the U.S. data center. If your company is in the United Kingdom, then you would want the site to be in a UK data center.
If your business operates globally, you will want a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that offers hubs around the world, so the hosting is fast regardless of the user’s location.
Using a cheap web host can result in not being placed in a local data center. This can potentially negative impact your website, including how the site performs for your users and your organic search rankings.
Which web hosting service should you use?
All hosting platforms have their benefits – but to be blunt, some really stink.
So how exactly should you choose a reliable service?
You can look for the following factors:
- Length of the web hosts’ experience
- Reputation among other clients/companies
- Seeking a web host that offers security measures such as SSL
Why WP Engine is (almost always) my recommendation
We have worked with (and still work with) clients on a variety of hosting platforms.
But when it comes down to which is the best, I almost always suggest WP Engine.
In my experience with WP Engine:
- Their customer service is incredibly responsive, helpful and always available.
- Their security and speed are second to none.
- They conduct daily backups in the unlikely event the website were to go down.
The cost of WP Engine is extremely reasonable. The beginner package (which is great for most website) at only $23/month.
The speed and performance of this hosting platform is tremendous and really aids your efforts as you optimize the site for mobile-speed and core web vitals.
Furthermore, WP Engine also provides a free SSL certificate to their members, even further beefing up the website’s security and meeting Google’s known-standards.
Working with WP Engine has allowed me to focus on my SEO work and less on server and performance issues that may be associated with a weaker hosting service.
Educating your clients/stakeholders on the value of good hosting
Your clients or stakeholders are already investing so much into creating a successful website (content, SEO, etc.)
Picking the wrong web host could undermine all of those other investments.
Picking the right web host can almost instantly improve your speed, Core Web Vitals and standing.
If your website has poor web hosting, it runs the risk of negatively affecting your SEO.
Your site could suffer from downtime, which is about as bad of a user experience as someone could have.
If the web host is slow, it is more likely that the user will leave your page and switch to another option.
Load time equates to reputation. And any website that takes longer than a few seconds to load will lose users (which means fewer conversions and less revenue).
Think of it like this: if you purchased a new Bentley (new website), you wouldn’t want it to have the engine of a Kia Soul (slow web host/server). (I drive a Kia Soul, so certainly not a dig!)
The post Web hosting for SEO: Why it’s important appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022
Are you able to develop a relationship with your current clients and make your future prospects like you?
The best way to do this is to understand the personality of your customers. This can help you predict their motives.
Approach content by developing it for the psychology of the user, rather than the psychology of the writer.
For example, for me (who has the attention span of a gnat), what if a content writer knew that she only had 30 seconds to answer “what are the best running shoes I can wear as a beginner?” Or what if she knew that for my friend (who can overthink how a garage door opener works for hours), she had a good 30 minutes to inundate him with as much information about “what are the best running shoes?”
Dr. Taylor Hartman wrote the book on understanding motives in psychology. I was fortunate to have met him and to learn about how “The People Code” could be transformed into developing deep psychological trait-based content for better performance.
I’ve taken these ideas and tested them. Not only the behaviors of individuals, but all the way up to entire countries and cultures.
I was astonished by what I found, from the improved ROI to the more efficient buyer journeys.
Who are you?
The best way to start writing ads or content based on psychological behaviors is to first understand yourself.
There are many different systems and tools you can use for personality assessments. However, for this article, I’m going to use Hartman’s tests and methodology. It starts with an honest quiz you give yourself of about 50 questions.
For example:
What ONE word of Phrase describes what you are like most of the time?
a/ Opinionated
b/ Nurturing
c/ Inventive
d/ Outgoing.
As a child, I was:
a/ Stubborn, bright, and/or aggressive.
B/ Well-behaved, caring, and/or depressed
C/ Quiet, easygoing, and/or shy
D/ Talkative, happy, and /or playful.
When you are done with the self-assessment questions in the book, you tally up your answers on how many As, Bs, Cs, and Ds to determine where you stand on the psychological trait spectrum, with:
- As being Red (Dominant).
- Bs being Blue (Compliant).
- Cs being Yellow (Influential).
- Ds Being Green (Steady).
What Am I?
All of our behaviors will fall into a personality classification on this spectrum.
Sometimes they will fall in between two color behaviors as well. For example, you can be evenly split between a Red Dominant and Blue Compliant or a Steady Green and an Influential Yellow.
Dominant Reds
Most of these traits are people who have type-A personalities. Direct, decisive, doers and workaholics.
They may come across as too confident, demanding and domineering. Often they thrive and appreciate admiration, they have a specific need to look good to others and can also be a bit on the selfish side.
The patience of this trait is usually at a minimum, which means content absorption is also at a minimum.
Compliant Blues
Very much the intimate ones. Usually cautious about how they go about things and as a consequence, they tend to have anxiety and be very worry-prone.
There is a need to connect with others and to be understood and appreciated. They are dependable, loyal and expect honesty from others.
They can also come across as moody, self-righteous, condescending and sometimes even a little too empathetic.
Most Compliant Blues love other Compliant Blues. They tend to get each other so very well.
That being said, content absorption is usually done when you can touch their heart and their soul.
Steady Greens
These are the slow, peaceful yet independent people. Typically quiet by nature, they resist and hate confrontation. They are great listeners yet they thrive and need their alone time.
Even-tempered and supportive, but also silently stubborn and over-sensitive. Sometimes it’s harder for this group to embrace or even understand empathy, yet they are diplomatic. T
hey are the polar opposites of dominant reds and tend to do a lot of research and take their time making decisions. The more content, the better.
Influential Yellows
These are the fun-loving, extremely social, playful influencers. The ones that are likely to be interesting, interactive, happy and spontaneous.
They thrive on adventure and need to be adored and praised. Friendships are the highest priority for them yet they can turn off others easily by their impulsive and sometimes irritating loud nature.
Always need to look good socially and it seems like nothing can go wrong, except for their attention span. Your content better not be boring or this group will be off with their mind wandering around the next palm tree vacation.
How to create content around these psychological traits
As you can see from the four different personality types, we are all pretty different and what we absorb in terms of content and creative is also different.
What may resonate well with one group, may fall short with another. Using the “Running Shoes” topic, take a look at how each content reverberates with each group differently.
Dominant Red content
This group is the dominant power type-A personalities. They will make quick decisions if you can feed their ego and not bury them with too much information.
Here are some examples that this group would enjoy:
Compliance Blue content
This group (of which I consider myself a member) is motivated by the heart and feelings. Considering they are so trusting, they can easily be taken advantage of.
This group does have an analytical side and can be brutally honest if need be. They tend to over-read into everything. But throw in a horse with a hurt leg that’s been patched up and is walking again, you’ll have already won them over.
Here are some examples that this group would enjoy:
Steady Green content
This group is the peace-lovers. The ones who take life in the slow lane.
This group is often what we all need in order to slow down, take a deep breath, pretend we do Tai Chi and then go with them on their journey of never-ending research. Stretching the period of decisiveness from what you thought would be two hours to three weeks.
Influential Yellow content
This group is made up of little rays of sunshine – the influencers who not only make me smile but make me want to pick up a good self-help book so I can be just like them.
Content-wise, you’ve got to make sure you style your content as much as possible. Just about anything colorful and fun can get them going. Because they lack the patience for deep research, I will need to write content that’s fun, useful and clear.
Frustrating an influencer is like death. They can go from the funniest clown to the meanest Karen in a heartbeat.
More to come
In my next article, I plan to do a deeper dive into other forms of psychological profiling, how to tag classifications to personas, how culture, country and language also have their own psychological traits, and how to survey your customers to get insight into what types are attracted to your brand.
Even if you feel you have perfected your writing, re-developing what works based on behaviors is the next step in really enhancing your reader base and ultimately, developing that bond with your current clients and future customers.
Because, finally, you understand them and they get you.
The post Content creation: A psychological approach appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, July 26th, 2022
Today, we are living in the era of the Fake Web, where a large portion of the internet is made up of malicious scrapers, spam bots, suspicious human users and other bad actors. It seems like every day there is a “breaking news” story about another company falling victim to a data breach, customer information being leaked or servers being hacked.
Historically, these cyber threats were handled exclusively by the chief information security officer or the IT department. However, in recent years search marketers have begun to notice how bots and fake users harm their efforts. When fake traffic makes its way to a company’s website, it can damage a brand’s online reputation and ultimately hinder the effectiveness of paid and non-paid marketing campaigns. Throughout this article, we will cover three specific ways search marketers are impacted.
1. Page rank is penalized.
Malicious scrapers frequently arrive on websites to scan for information and extract data or content to use elsewhere. Because of this, the way they navigate throughout a website appears more erratic than typical human behavior. Bots tend to jump from page to page, rapidly click on various modules, and exit quickly once they have stolen the information they were looking for. Because of the nature of these actions, these harmful automation tools can have much higher bounce rates and shorter time on each page than a standard user. Furthermore, because the end-game of a scraper is often to duplicate content or data somewhere else on the internet, they can also lead search engines to believe that the original content is actually duplicate content. When this type of activity is factored into the overall user behavior on a given website, it can reduce page rank and leave search marketers frustrated and confused.
2. Site speed slows down.
Site speed is also largely impacted by various types of bots and fake users. When malicious bots arrive on a website, they often preoccupy servers with high volumes of requests within short periods. This can overwhelm a website and make the experience slower and more difficult for legitimate human users. Slow website speeds then also harm the website’s ability to rank highly on SERPs, which can be devastating for search marketing key metrics. Additionally, when search rankings drop, the website becomes more difficult for potential customers to find and businesses may begin to lose those customers to competitors and alternative solutions.
3. Keyword strategy is misinformed.
Both SEO and PPC marketers habitually perform keyword research before launching a new initiative or campaign. However, since bots and malicious human users frequently click on both paid and organic links at a large scale, marketers might misunderstand which keywords are actually the best performing. For example, high click-through rates on a given keyword are typically seen as a positive indicator – but if a high percentage of those clicks came from bad actors, the marketer should probably avoid that keyword. The presence of malicious traffic can cause implementation of misguided strategies, which will continue to harm the business’s overall ability to drive quality traffic to the site.
Trying to run an effective marketing operation in the era of the Fake Web can be intimidating at times. Still, the good news is that many organizations are beginning to fight back against malicious traffic. Today, more businesses are starting to implement go-to-market Security technology which can help mitigate these risks and allow marketers to focus on what they do best.
The post 3 ways bots and fake users are killing your search efforts appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
