Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Thursday, May 19th, 2022
A recent Think With Google article suggests that optimizing for “near me” searches will pay out a bonanza in extra good rankings and qualified referral traffic.
“Near me” has been one of the term optimizations that many of us have recommended for local SEO benefit for years now.
But, there are reasons to think this tactic has completely jumped the shark, making it a waste of time.
And for those who optimized by creating a business name around the phrase, Google’s changes have essentially destroyed their brand name search in Maps.
‘Open now near me’ searches up 400%
In March, Bill Ready, president of commerce, payments and next billion users at Google, penned 2022 Retail Marketing Guide: Drive foot traffic and in-store sales. This part grabbed my attention:
“Searches for “open now near me” have grown globally by over 400% YOY.”
“Near me” searches are queries for local products or services that include qualifier terms like “near me” when consumers want to narrow down to see the businesses closest to them only or primarily.
Also, during its Q1 earnings call, Google revealed that Maps searches for [shopping near me] were up 100% globally year-over-year.
“Open now” is a similar type of qualifier that is often used outside of the typical 9-to-5 timeframe or used later at night, such as to find restaurants that are still open, or clinics and other types of stores that stay open late at night.
While searches for businesses “near me” or “open now” separately are used more frequently, it is not surprising that both qualifying phrases might be used simultaneously in queries.
The rise of ‘near me’ search optimization
If you’ve worked in local SEO for a good length of time, this isn’t particularly surprising. We’ve known for about a decade that “near me” search optimization held huge potential for many types of businesses in many markets.
The 400% YOY growth rate is eye-opening, indicating that consumers have increasingly grown to expect that these qualifiers will help them locate more precisely what they need.
The rising use of mobile devices when conducting searches has influenced the “near me” trend a lot and has helped to drive overall increases in the volume of local searches.
Google Trends demonstrates the increasing popularity of “near me” searches, which is what Ready based his statement upon:
The related searches including “open now” also show considerable growth over time:
Along with others in the industry, I strongly recommended that local businesses optimize for their ideal keywords in combination with “near me” phrases. There are a number of these types of phrases that are used by consumers, including:
- “around here”
- “nearby”
- “close by”
- “close to me”
- “local”
I also performed optimizations using these phrases on behalf of clients. In one case (a specialized attorney), keyword research showed that no other competing attorneys in the niche were using “near me” phrases. I created an optimized page for his “near me” specialization phrase. His referrals increased by about 20%.
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Optimizing for “near me” phrases was a solid gold recommendation for a long time in local search. It was nearly a slam-dunk.
Why?
Because when you had a website and webpages that included a page or pages for “near me,” along with the industry business category name, for many businesses where people wanted local providers this would connect local consumers with webpages and Google Maps boxes for those businesses that had optimized for it. As a great many businesses were clueless about the optimization, this provided a stealth marketing weapon that virtually guaranteed valuable referral increases.
The rise of ‘near me’ businesses
In the last few years, several businesses have taken this optimization to the next level.
How?
By engineering their business name itself to include “near me”.
If you check the business registration databases across the U.S., you quickly find there are a number of businesses across the U.S. that have included “near me” into their official business names.
This includes many business categories beyond just a few of the more predictable kinds (e.g., locksmiths).
Clearly, many companies took the idea of optimizing for “near me” queries and made it into a core piece of their strategy that could be expected to return a lot of referrals.
With all of their online collateral materials associating “near me” with their business, how could they not rank for these searches?
Business registrations for “Near Me” in Nevada
Business registrations for “Near Me” in New York (partial list).
The examples are hilarious:
Dentist Near Me in El Paso, Texas
Sushi Near Me in Los Angeles, California
Custom Signs Near Me, Denver, Colorado
Boxes Near Me, Phoenix, Arizona
Locksmith Near Me Miami, Florida – a service area business
24 HR Locksmith Near Me, Jacksonville, Florida – a service area business
Locksmith, Massage, and Moving Company “Near Me” businesses, Manhattan, New York
It is unclear if these are service area businesses or fake alternate name business listings.
Exterminator Near Me, Indianapolis, Indiana
I’ll take some of the blame for this.
In the distant past, I jokingly promoted some “extreme local SEO tactics” – such as the infamous advice to “change your business name to include a few of the top keywords that users type into search engines when seeking your type of business in your area.” (This was not against the rules at that time, by the way.)
I also had blogged some “ultimate local SEO tactics” which included the idea of having streets named after one’s company, or even having a city or country named after one’s company or brand name!
Part of the point of these joking articles was to educate people as to how Google, and Google Maps search, relied so heavily on literal keyword matching that finagling of keyword optimizations could hotwire a company into appearing more prominently for local business searches.
Google has finally figured it out
Around 10 years ago – when it became clear that consumers were increasingly searching for local businesses while combining the phrase “near me” in their queries – I wondered why Google did not engineer special handling for the phrase.
I asked a Google Maps representative about this issue and was told they had many things on their development priority list – but this was something they would likely get around to.
Well, it seems that Google finally got around to it.
Google has made it now so that a “near me” query will return the closest matching local businesses for one’s search terms within the Maps/Local listings. To do this, Google clearly extracts the “near me” portion of the user’s query and matches the remainder of the query with businesses and websites it believes are closest in location proximity to the user. This handling negates the efficacy of performing keyword optimizations with “near me” phrases for Google Maps/Local search.
Local ranking showdown: business name vs. proximity
I saw this was happening anecdotally, but after locating a number of the businesses pictured above to investigate how they were ranking in their localities for “near me” search phrases that exact-match their business names, the results are striking.
When searching with a Dallas IP address for “ER near me,” 11 businesses come up in the Maps results before a listing for the “ER near me” business is listed. By contrast, searching for other businesses in the list by name results in them being displayed first in the list, and sometimes by themselves in the results.
Searching for another generic-sounding brand by name, “ER of Texas,” produces results listing two of their locations first in Google Maps, followed by other businesses interspersed with more locations for “ER of Texas”.
This is what makes the results for the “ER near me” searches interesting – if Google determined that query was likely a business name search, their listing would come up first in the list.
This dynamic is truly striking. Google has done a lot of work to try to feature a business’s listing first in the search results for its exact brand name search. This is being negated for those listings with “near me” in the business names.
There is a caveat for ranking for the name search if the name appears to be spammy (such as those with keywords crammed in). One could conjecture that the businesses with “near me” names could be treated as keyword-stuffed, which would then negate their keyword benefit. However, I found that they can still rank for the “near me” queries – it’s just dependent upon proximity to the searcher.
Testing for “dentist near me” searches in El Paso in Google Maps, I found a hundred lists in Maps and gave up – the business named Dentist Near Me did not show up when using an IP address location associated with the downtown area of El Paso.
However, the business is located on the eastern edge of town, and by changing the browser’s IP address to a location much closer to that address, I was able to get the Dentist Near Me listing in the fourth organic position in Maps. “Locksmith near me” in Miami was in the 16th position.
Searching for “Sushi near me” in Los Angeles likewise did not return the business with that name in the first three search results. Searching for “Boxes Near Me” in Phoenix produced the business’s listing in the fifth position. The “24hr Locksmith Near Me” was in the 24th position in Maps for a “locksmith near me” search in Jacksonville. Search for “Exterminator Near Me” in Indianapolis placed the business’s listing in the 56th position.
“Custom Signs Near Me” in Denver seems to be an exception to how this is working. But, I believe that is largely because the business is located near the centroid of Denver, and there are few other custom sign businesses that close to the center point.
Switching to a search from Lakewood, which is smack next to Denver, moves the listing’s position down a number of slots. It also could be that “custom signs” might be less-recognized as a business category than “sign shops” by Google. Performing a “sign shops near me” search in Denver places the business’s listing down at the fifth position. It is likely the business only ranked prominently due to its location near the city’s centroid – not because of keyword optimization for “near me” in its business name.
While searching to find examples of businesses with “near me” in their official names, I ran across a great many more instances that are fake business names and locations. A number of companies have created additional listings in Google Maps for “_______ near me” names. These often use the same exact address as their regular business, perhaps expecting consumers to search “near me”, see the location, and arrive in a hypnotized state to walk into the business with the real brand name signage.
The three listings I show above from Manhattan (a locksmith, a moving company and a massage provider) potentially could be fake listings. In many cases, some “near me” listings appear to be completely fake, appearing for service area businesses, and once you view their pinpoint locations they are next to police stations, under overpasses, next to parks or next to shared workspace locations. Predictably, these listings are for moving companies, locksmiths, roofing contractors, plumbers and the categories of businesses that have long been rife with fake listing issues.
Now, for the real “near me” businesses I documented, a number of their websites did appear prominently in the regular, keyword search results outside of Google Maps – often in the first organic position, but not always.
The “near me” keyword optimization does appear to still work there, and there may be some level of value to that in terms of referral traffic. But, experience indicates that the greater value was to be had in Maps search.
Many consumers seeking a local provider are conducting searches directly in the Google Maps app, and those will see other businesses the majority of the time for “near me” searches, and not these over-optimized companies.
Google itself indicates that consumers are showing local intent with these queries, because every one of the test queries reflected blended search results with the Maps 3-Pack at the top, before regular keyword search results.
Is ‘near me’ optimization a detriment to businesses?
When those of us in local SEO first began recommending keyword optimizations for “near me,” there was some light criticism that the keyword optimization was difficult to incorporate on websites and directory listings in a natural-looking manner. But doing so, by adding it into business names, is far more of a smack-you-in-the-face option than merely including it in some isolated paragraphs, page titles and headings.
Incorporating it into business names seems likely to detract from building a non-generic-sounding brand.
While including valuable keywords in a business name can often have a synergetic value if done well, these near me brand names seem to be brute-force functional search marketing above all other marketing and brand-building considerations.
Some would undoubtedly call these brand names spammy-sounding. I think these would not work as well for word-of-mouth marketing or repeat business.
Because Google is now using the “near me” parts of users’ queries as a type of proximity indicator, rather than a literal keyword matching phrase, the use of this in brand name optimizations is arguably a serious disadvantage at this point.
Customers inclined to use a business again will often search online by business name, and if they do so in Maps they will have a lot of trouble finding these businesses because Google’s functionality is now damaging their ability to rank well for their brand name searches.
I do not believe this is necessarily any sort of a penalty. Google simply determined that the “near me” queries are far more frequently consumers’ expressions that they desired to get the specific types of businesses nearest to their physical locations rather than businesses with names that match “near me” queries.
For established businesses, one of the top types of search queries that will refer traffic over time is brand name queries. Whereas using “near me” in brand names may have paid dividends in the past, the tactic is now a major detriment to a local business’s online strategy.
A gimmick whose time has passed
The Think With Google article that references the 400% YOY growth of “open now near me” searches advised businesses to optimize for local to capitalize on those queries. Google didn’t provide instructions on how to do that.
However, I believe this optimization should no longer mean the inclusion of “near me” keywords, in the web marketing materials, much less should it involve hotwiring the business name to include the “open now” and “near me” phrases.
Optimizing for this will mean updating your hours of operation, truthfully, in your Google Business Profile, and including all the address and location signals in your online collateral materials to make your location signals very strong.
Proximity to the user isn’t the sole criteria. Optimizing for prominence signals is vital (e.g., volume and velocity of reviews, having other websites mention and link to your business website).
Bottom line: Any benefits of Incorporating “near me” in your business name are largely canceled out by the disadvantages.
The post Surprise: ‘Near me’ brand names don’t rank higher for ‘near me’ searches appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Thursday, May 19th, 2022
Competitive backlink research is one of the first steps in either building your own link-building strategy or figuring out what it takes to achieve your competitors’ organic rankings.
Links are certainly not the only ranking signal, but they are still one of the most powerful factors (if not the most powerful one).
When selecting your competitors to analyze you will likely choose those that rank particularly well for your target queries, which makes sense because you want to know what has worked for them.
There’s one important thing to keep in mind here: It’s generally best to select your peers (sites directly in your vertical or niche). In other words, stay away from large websites that play within a variety of verticals but happen to rank above you (big box stores, Wikipedia, etc.).
There’s not much you can learn from Amazon’s backlink profile, for example, apart from the fact that being a web giant is working well for them.
Likewise, there’s less to learn from your oldest competitors apart from starting early (and earning all those age and trust signals over time) is certainly a good idea.
Instead, look for sites that have seen a recent growth in rankings to zero in on tactics working well for them. These are the types of sites you can best learn from, and this is what will make your competitive research actionable, i.e. help you build and implement your own strategy.
Once you have 2-4 competitors to analyze, make sure you rule out all the red flags you want to avoid first. In other words, start with what you don’t want to do. Filter those lower-quality and often risky links out to be able to find the best links common amongst the peers within your industry.
Step 1: Filter out red flags
When it comes to link building, too much of any questionable tactic can be detrimental but let’s get a bit more specific. Look for the following red flags:
Exact match anchor text
Are you seeing a lot of backlinks that repeat the same (or almost the same) anchor text over and over again? This is always a sign of poor and outdated link building that may get (or may have gotten) your competitors into trouble.
Very often when you see a backlink profile that is full of obviously SEO-driven links, you may also notice that the site lost visibility at some point: look for dips in organic visibility that may have happened over the years using Semrush or your favorite SEO toolset.
You cannot access their disavow file, so chances are they have gradually revived their rankings by urging Google to discount those low-quality links. But if those links haven’t caused them to lose rankings yet, chances are it will eventually happen.
It doesn’t have to be a manual penalty though: Google may be already discounting those links, so they have zero impact on their organic visibility at this point.
In either case, these are not the types of links you’d want to be after.
Outdated link building tactics
There are still quite a few outdated link-building patterns found in lots of backlink profiles out there.
These include:
- Directory links
- Links from blog networks
- Article directory links
- Content syndication (Press releases or other)
- Low-quality guest posting links
Look out for links from websites that invite one to submit an article or “sponsor content” on them. Keep an eye on thin content that was obviously created for the sake of linking to your competitor. More importantly, try and see obvious patterns behind those backlinks: The same link building tactic appearing over and over throughout a backlink profile.
These links are probably also discounted by Google; none of these link types are worth your effort or investment.
Step 2: Learn from their success
Now that you know what to stay away from focus on what you can learn from your competitor’s backlink profile.
If you choose your competitors wisely based on organic visibility, there will likely be more to learn than to avoid. After all, if those sites rank well, Google obviously likes their backlink profile, or at least they are doing something right.
So, what can you learn from your competitors’ backlink profiles?
1. Your competitors’ content marketing tactics
Which content seems to work for your competitors in terms of link generation? What’s their most linked content? Have they managed to get any of their content assets viral or picked up by notable web publications? Can yours do better?
Obviously, you don’t know what happens behind the scenes of them achieving those links, but it is usually obvious when a particular content asset did extraordinarily well for generating solid backlinks.
It is usually easy to identify content that went viral and generated hundreds of links or a resource page that got cited by highly trusted websites like universities and government organizations.
Can you recreate those types of assets for your website and bring them up to date or make them better?
It is also a good idea to identify your competitor’s high-ranking content. Content that ranks on top of Google tends to bring in links naturally as bloggers and journalists use Google to find sources. Getting your articles to rank is also a link acquisition tactic bringing organic link equity on a continuous basis without you having to actively build those links through traditional outreach.
- Find your competitors’ articles that rank high for searchable keywords.
- Check backlinks of those articles to identify if that works for them.
- Try and claim those rankings by creating much better content.
Keep an eye on higher-level tactics that bring your competitors rankings and links. What type of content is delivering topical links? Oftentimes these would be:
- Glossaries and knowledge bases;
- In-depth how-to content;
- Statistical studies and survey results (these tend to be the most powerful), etc.
2. Your competitors’ outreach tactics
Who are your competitors reaching out to when trying to build links?
It is usually easy to tell by the type of links they are getting:
- Links from news outlets come as a result of journalistic outreach
- Trusted links from educators (college professors, teachers, etc.) require targeted trust-bait content and outreach
- Links from blogs are built through blogger outreach (and often creation of viral assets, like free tools and infographics)
Which of those links seem to dominate your competitors’ backlink profile? Knowing the answer will inspire your own link acquisition strategy and help you make more informed decisions.
3. Your competitors’ influencer marketing tactics
Who are your competitors’ content amplifiers? In other words, who are those people (authors, niche experts, etc.) behind those links your competitors are getting?
Influencer marketing is a great way to generate backlinks on many levels:
- Lots of niche influencers have sites and blogs they can use to link from
- Influencers (if you choose them wisely) can drive organic links by simply sharing your content or mentioning it in their newsletters.
- You may be able to actively engage with influencers within your niche via interviews, podcasts, Q&As, etc.
Sometimes, influencer-based tactics are hard to track in your competitors’ backlink profiles. It is often hard to correlate a sudden surge of backlinks to your competitor’s site without knowing the root cause of the spike.
This is where well-organized social media research and listening can help your competitive backlink analysis. Search Twitter and Instagram for your competitors’ brand names to see who is talking about them and what kind of an audience is involved in listening to those messages. Tools like Keyhole (a social media analytics platform) and Milled (a newsletter archive) can help you distinguish those sources of influence and match them with your competitor’s backlink profile.
Conclusion
Competitive backlink research is often enlightening if you know what to look for.
It is no use in trying to go after each and every one of their good links, though. Instead, take a higher-level approach: What is it they are doing to generate links and how can I do the same but better?
Trying to be as good as your competitor means there’s no reason for Google to rank your site higher. You need to always strive to do better: Better content, better outreach, better promotion tools. There’s often a lot of “heavy lifting” internally to get this right, and many companies choose to hire a better link-building company in order to do it right. Whichever direction you go, staying on top of your competitor’s backlinks (and your own!) will help you earn and maintain top rankings as time goes on.
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Thursday, May 19th, 2022
Google is current having access issues with video pages in Google Ads. If you currently try to access video pages in Google Ads you will likely be presented with a red banner about an error message.
Notice. Google posted this issue over here saying:
We’re aware of a problem with Google Ads affecting a majority of users. We will provide an update by May 19, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.Users trying to access Video pages in Google Ads Frontend will see an error message with the red banner.No workarounds are available at this time.
Fix coming. Google is clearly aware of the issue and working on a fix, but there is currently not estimated time on when this will be fixed.
If you notice this issue, try it again later in a few hours and move on to other areas of your Google Ads accounts.
Why we care. This is just a heads up that if you are noticing this error, you are not alone. Google has confirmed the issue and is working on a fix. We will update this story when the issue is fully resolved.
Resolved. A couple hours later, Google has resolved the issue. Google wrote “the problem with Google Ads has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.”
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Thursday, May 19th, 2022
When it comes to promoting and selling products, content is the beginning of everything. The demand for content management is greater than ever as customers receive information across an ever-increasing number of channels.
Disorganized content workflows can be a recipe for disaster. So it’s imperative that product assets are organized, controlled, and accessible to a range of internal and external stakeholders. Join experts from McCormick & Company and Acquia as they discuss the challenges, opportunities, and lessons learned through McCormick’s DAM journey.
Register today for “Content Comes First: Transform Your Operations With DAM,” presented by Acquia.
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Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
Google Analytics is the top player when it comes to tracking website visitors. The platform’s value is reflected in its popularity, which is why it’s the market leader boasting an 86% share. But with great value comes great responsibility, and Google Analytics lacks in that department.
Designed to maximize data collection often at the expense of data privacy, Google Analytics and its mother company, Google LLC, have been on the radar of European privacy activists for some time now. Reports of questionable privacy practices by Google have led to legal action based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that might result in a complete ban on Google Analytics in Europe.
On top of that, Google recently announced it will end support for Universal Analytics in July of 2023, forcing users to switch to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). So, if the switch must be made, why not seek a new analytics provider? There are great free and paid solutions that allow organizations to balance valuable data collection with privacy and compliance. With a GDPR-compliant analytics solution in place, your data collection becomes as it should be predictable and sustainable.
The problem with GA4 from a user perspective
Universal Analytics’ successor is very different from what you’re familiar with. Apart from the new user interface, which many find challenging to navigate, there is a laundry list of issues with the feature set in GA4—from no bounce rate metrics to a lack of custom channel groups. Here are some of the limitations in GA4 from a user perspective that you might find frustrating.
Not-so-seamless migration
GA4 introduces a different reporting and measurement technology that is neither well understood nor widely accepted by the marketing community. There is no data or tag migration between the platforms, meaning you’d have to start from scratch. The challenge grows with the organization’s size—you can have hundreds of tags or properties to move.
Limits on custom dimensions
A custom dimension is an attribute you configure in your analytics tool to dive deeper into your data. You can then pivot or segment this data to isolate a specific audience or traffic for deeper analysis. While GA4 allows you to use custom dimensions to segment your reports, there’s a strict limit—you can only use up to 50.
Lack of custom channel grouping
Channel groupings are rule-based groupings of marketing channels and, when customized, allow marketers to check the performance of said channels efficiently. Unlike Universal Analytics, GA4 does not allow you to create custom channel groupings in the new interface, only default channel groupings.
Why Google is giving you a short deadline to make the switch to GA4
It’s startling to consider the deadline Google has left the analytics community when it comes to acting: Universal Analytics will stop processing new hits on July 1, 2023. This could be a way to motivate users to migrate more quickly. Perhaps Google was disappointed with the speed of adoption for GA4 and decided to act decisively for this next version.
Another possibility for the short deadline is that Google wants to cut costs and rid itself of technical debt associated with thousands of websites with legacy solutions installed (many of those users are not active users of the product). Since GA4 is designed to support Google’s advertising network, it guarantees more revenue than the competition.
Whatever the case, users need to prepare to move to GA4—or switch to an alternative.
The problem with GA4 from a privacy standpoint
Google claims the new platform is designed with privacy at its core, but the privacy concerns are far from over. A lack of clear guidelines on data processing has many questioning the legality of GA4 in Europe. Here are some of the reasons that leave us to believe GA4 won’t last long in Europe.
Recent laws and regulations
Google makes it difficult to collect data in line with data protection regulations such as GDPR. This means that organizations engaged in gathering, storing and processing data about EU citizens have to adjust their policies and introduce serious technological changes to be GDPR-compliant.
One of the key compliance issues with Google Analytics is that it saves user data, including information about EU residents, on U.S.-based cloud servers. As a U.S.-based technology company, Google must comply with U.S. surveillance laws, such as the Cloud Act. This legislation states that Google must disclose certain data when requested, even when that data is located outside of the U.S.
In the judgment known as Schrems II, a European court ruled that sending personal data from the EU to the U.S. via transatlantic transfers is illegal if companies can’t guarantee this data will be safe from U.S. intelligence.
Companies with an international presence must now adapt to a wide range of regulations, often with different requirements and restrictions.
Transparency
A Google guide implies data is transferred to the closest Google Analytics server hub. However, the data may be stored in a geographic location that doesn’t have adequate privacy protection to the EU. This lack of transparency poses a problem for Google and organizations using Google Analytics in the EU.
Newly introduced features in GA4 partially address this concern by allowing the first part of data collection (and anonymization) on European servers. However, data can, and most likely will, be sent to the U.S. The best thing to do is be open when it comes to collecting data from people.
With proper transparency, individuals feel a sense of safety and assurance. In return, organizations get more data because individuals now feel taken care of and have the trust needed to provide data.
Time to re-think how you handle consumers’ data
The advantage of these regulations is users’ increased consciousness about their data. This is where alternatives come in handy. They provide you with privacy features you need to comply with laws and obtain the data you want. So, thinking about making the switch to a Google Analytics alternative? Here’s what you need to know.
Addressing concerns about switching to an alternative analytics solution
A lot of users may be hesitant to make the switch. It makes sense—Google has dominated the marketplace for so long that it might feel like too big of a hassle to switch. For a marketing director or CMO to suggest using a different analytics tool and then for that tool to have even more limitations than the last would not be a good look.
You need to make an informed decision and choose the platform whose feature sets fit the organization’s needs to process user-level data while building trust with visitors. Here are the facts and myths when switching:
I’ll lose historical data.
This is a fact, but not for long. Some alternatives have developed data importers in the wake of Universal Analytics (Google Analytics v3) being deprecated.
It’s expensive and hard to switch.
This is a myth. Alternatives are built with easier user interfaces, use similar measurement methodologies, and often have solutions to help with Google Tag’s migrations.
Alternatives don’t offer demographic data.
This is true: Google’s first-party data add sex, age group, and interests to profile data, and none of the alternatives can offer such data enrichment.
I miss some reporting capabilities.
This is false. Each alternative has unique reporting capabilities, and some are very flexible, allowing for more transformations and data exports than Universal Analytics.
It is easier to run advertising campaigns with Universal Analytics.
This is true. There is deep integration with Google Analytics and Google Ads/Google Marketing Platform, which gives access to an extensive repertoire of data.
I’ll lose my rank in Google Search.
This is a myth. Alternatives’ customers don’t report a lower rank in Google Search. Make sure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, popular (links) and with complete metadata.
The mindset to take when switching.
Marketers considering switching to a new platform need to take a new analytics mindset. We are experiencing a rapidly rising awareness that data is of value and must be protected. Since the future of marketing requires users’ consent, the vendor you choose must allow you to perform analytics in a privacy-friendly way.
Our intention with Piwik PRO Analytics Suite has always been to give clients powerful analytics capabilities along with key privacy and security features. The user interface and feature sets are similar to Universal Analytics, so marketers feel at home when switching to our platform.
Piwik PRO is geared towards both delivering valuable insights and privacy and compliance. Notably, switching to Piwik PRO excludes the privacy and compliance issues associated with Google Analytics to collect data predictably and sustainably. There’s both a free and paid plan, which allows different organizations to get an analytics service tailored to their needs. If you’d like to learn more about Google Analytics alternatives or get more information on the Piwik PRO Analytics Suite, visit piwik.pro.
This article was written by Maciej Zawadzinski, CEO, Piwik PRO.
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Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
According to Techradar, there are more than 547,200 new websites every day. Google has to crawl and store all these sites in their database, therefore occupying physical space on their servers.
The sheer volume of content available now allows Google to prioritize well-designed, fast sites and provide helpful, relevant information for their visitors.
The bar has been raised, and if your site is slow or has a lot of jargon in the code, Google is unlikely to reward your site with strong rankings.
If you really want to jump ahead of your competitors, you have a huge opportunity to be better than them by optimizing your site’s code, speed and user experience. These are some of the most important ranking signals and will continue to be as the internet becomes more and more inundated with content.
Auditing your website’s technical SEO can be extremely dense and with many moving pieces. If you are not a developer, it may be difficult to comprehend some of these elements.
Ideally, you should have a working knowledge of how to run an audit to oversee the implementation of technical SEO fixes. Some of these may require developers, designers, writers or editors.
Fortunately, various tools will run the audits for you and give you all the comprehensive data you need to improve your website’s technical performance.
Let’s review some of the data points that will come up, regardless of what technical SEO audit tool you use:
Structure
- Crawlability: Can Google easily crawl your website, and how often?
- Security: Is your website secure with an HTTPS certificate?
- On-page SEO elements: does every page have the keyword in the title tags, meta description, filenames, and paths? Does it have the same on-page elements as sites ranking in the top 10 for your target keywords?
- Internal links: Does your site have internal links from other site pages? Other elements you can consider are site structure, breadcrumbs, anchor text and link sculpting.
- Headings: Is the primary KW in the H1? Do you have H2s with supporting keywords?
- Compliance issues: Does your site’s code include valid HTML? What is the accessibility score?
- Images: Do your images load quickly? Are they optimized with title, keywords and srcset attribute? Do you use some new image formats such as webP and SVG?
- Schema and semantic Web: Are your schema tags in place and set up properly? Some schema tags that you can use include WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Organization, Product, Review, Author/Article, Person, Event, Video/Image, Recipe, FAQ and How-To.
- Canonicals: Do you have canonical tags in place, and are they set up properly?
- SiteMap: Do you ONLY have valid pages in the site map, and are redirects and 404 pages removed from the sitemap?
These are simply a few of the elements you’d want to look into that most tools will report on.
User experience
Google has been placing more focus on ranking factors revolving around user experience. As the web collectively becomes more organized, Google is raising the bar for user experience. Focusing on user experience will ultimately increase their advertising revenue.
You’ll want to audit the user experience of your website.
- Is it fast?
- How quickly is the page interactive?
- Can it be navigated easily on mobile devices?
- Is the hierarchy of the site clear and intuitive?
Some of the ways of measuring this include:
- Site speed
- Web Core Vitals
- Mobile-friendliness
- Structured navigation
- Intrusive ads or interstitials
- Design
Make sure you are working with a developer that is well versed in the latest technical SEO elements and who can apply the changes required to raise your SEO performance score.
Technical SEO audit tools
Some of the most popular SEO audit tools include:
- Semrush Site Audit
- Screaming Frog
- SiteBulb
- Website Auditor
- ContentKing App
- GTMetrix
- Pingdom
- Google Lighthouse
- Google Page Speed Insights
We’ll look at a couple of these tools and the data points you can gain from them.
Semrush site audit
Once you create a project in Semrush, you can run a site audit. Your overview will look like this:
Click on the “Issues” tab, and you’ll see a detailed list of the issues that were uncovered, divided by Errors, Warnings and Notices:
If you click on an item, you’ll see a list of the pages affected by each issue.
Review these as sometimes the data points are not valid.
Ideally, you should export the CSV for each of these issues and save them in a folder.
Screaming Frog
This desktop tool will use your computer and IP to crawl your website. Once completed, you’ll get various reports that you can download.
Here are a couple of example reports:
This is an overview report that you can use to track technical audit KPIs.
For example, this report gives you details of the meta titles for each of your pages.
You can use the Bulk Export feature to get all of the data points downloaded into spreadsheets, which you can then add to your Audit folder.
SiteBulb
Like the others, Site Bulb will do a comprehensive crawl of your website. The benefit of this tool is that it will give you more in-depth technical information than some of the other tools.
You’ll get an Audit Score, SEO Score, and Security Score. As you implement fixes, you’ll want to see these scores increasing over time.
Google Search Console
The Index Coverage report contains a treasure trove of data that you can use to implement the fixes that Google has discovered about your site.
In the details section, you’ll see a list of the errors, and if you click through to each report, they will include the list of pages affected by each issue.
Implementing technical SEO fixes
Once you have all of your CSV exports, you can create a list of all of the issues and go through them to remove duplicate reports created by the different tools.
Next, you can assign what department each fix belongs to and the level of priority. Some may need to be tackled by your developer, others by your content team, such as rewriting duplicate titles or improving descriptions with pages with low CTR.
Here’s what your list might look like:
Each project should include notes, observations, or details about how to implement the fix.
Most websites will have dozens of issues, so the key here is to prioritize the issues and make sure that you are continuously fixing and improving your site’s performance each month.
E-A-T Audit
It’s important that your website reflects topical authority and relevance. E-A-T means:
- Expertise: Are you an expert in your field? Are your authors authoritative?
- Authoritativeness: Are you considered authoritative in your field by industry organizations? Do your social profiles, citations, social shares and link profile reflect this authoritativeness?
- Trustworthiness: Can visitors trust that your website is secure and that their data is safe? Does your site have an SSL certificate, including privacy disclaimers, refund information, contact info and credentials?
Google has an entire team of Quality Raters that manually review websites to assess them based on these parameters. Google has even published the Quality Raters E-A-T guidelines for site owners to reference.
If your website is in a YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) niche, these factors are even more important as Google attempts to protect the public from misinformation.
Analytics audit
- Is your Google Analytics code working properly?
- Do you have the proper goals and funnels to fully understand how users navigate your site?
- Are you importing data from your Google Ads and Search Console accounts to visualize all of your data in Google Analytics?
BrainLabsDigital has created a Google Analytics audit checklist that will help you review your Google Analytics account. The accompanying article will give you a straightforward and strategic approach to ensuring your Google Analytics is set up properly.
Prioritizing technical SEO fixes
Make sure you prioritize continuously improving your on-page SEO. Depending on your site, you may have a list of a dozen or a few hundred fixes. Try and determine which fixes will impact the most pages to see a greater improvement from your efforts.
It can be discouraging to see a list with 85 different technical SEO improvements. The benefit is that, as you go through these improvements, you will start seeing movement in your rankings. Over time, you’ll want to have very few, if any, errors show up in all of your crawling tools.
If your content is relevant, targeted and well developed, and you’re receiving new, quality links every month, these technical = optimizations will become the key differentiating factors for ranking better than your competitors.
The post What to look for in a technical SEO audit appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
The staggering amount of change in the last 24 months has presented search marketers with an unrivaled amount of challenges… and opportunities:
- The role of automation is expanding
- Major platforms are evolving
- Algorithm updates and ranking factor rollouts are endless
And that’s just the start. Your key to a more successful future is continued training with trusted experts. Attend SMX Advanced for free, online June 14-15, to learn elite, sophisticated, actionable search marketing tactics that can help you stay a cut above the competition.
Keep reading for 10 undeniable reasons why you should join us online next month:
- You’ll unlock unbiased, trustworthy content from the Search Engine Land experts.
- 100% virtual means you can attend from anywhere: office, home, couch, etc.
- For the first time in more than 15 years, registration for SMX Advanced is 100% FREE.
- You’ll only learn safe, reputable, reliable training — no get-rich-quick schemes or dodgy tactics.
- Live Q&A means you’ll get expert answers to your toughest questions.
- Can’t attend live? On-demand access is included with your free pass, so you can train at your convenience.
- Hear what the best of the best are up to… and validate your own initiatives and instincts.
- Forge invaluable connections during topic-driven Coffee Talk discussions and engaging afternoon breakout discussions.
- Unite your departments with a shared training experience – invaluable to on-site and remote teams alike.
- Earn a personalized Certificate of Attendance to demonstrate your commitment to continued training and furthering your career.
Ready to register? Smart move. Secure your free pass now!
The post 10 reasons to join us at SMX Advanced online this June appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, May 18th, 2022
Catching your prospect’s eye and moving them along the buyer’s journey has never been easy. Add the pandemic to the equation, and we know your job as a marketer has probably never been as challenging as it is today.
We invite you to take the marketing challenges survey so we can better understand what you’ve been challenged with the most and how you’ve overcome these obstacles. The survey results will help you see how your peers take on these challenges and prove ROI.
The first 100 people who fully complete the survey will be automatically entered in a drawing to win $250 to donate to a charity of your choice or a $250 Amazon gift card.
The post What are your secrets to overcoming marketing challenges? Take our survey appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Tuesday, May 17th, 2022
Claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile is one of the best things you can do to help your company rank higher in Google search results.
Several changes have been made to Google’s local listing program in the past year, including the enhanced functionality of managing your Google Business Profile directly from Google search.
People have been able to manage a Business Profile from Google search since 2017. But the features and functionality of managing and editing your Business Profile in search have blown up in the recent months.
Yet, many business owners are unaware this management feature is even an option. Or they’re confused about how to navigate this new way to manage their profile.
This is a problem. Especially because Google wants merchants to adopt Google search as the go-to way to manage most Google Business Profiles.
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Because the majority of businesses with Google Business Profiles have only one location, Google recommends they manage their location directly from Google search versus the Business Profile Manager.
If you’ve been in your Business Profile Manager lately, you’ve probably noticed the blue prompt encouraging you to try managing your Business Profile directly from search.
If you have more than 100 businesses in a single account, you will not be able to manage those Google Business Profiles through search. You’ll need to manage them the old-fashioned way – through the Business Profile Manager.
Once your Business Profile has been verified, you can manage your profile directly from Google search – but it could take up to 14 days before you get that option. (We are hoping that Google remedies this issue so that single-location businesses can start managing their profile immediately from Google search after verification.) However, as of right now, you can use the Business Profile Manager to manage your profile until you’re able to manage in Google search.
How to start managing your Google Business Profile in search
I love the ease of use of managing my business profiles in the Business Profile Manager.
But Google is making a push to get single-location merchants to use Google search to manage profiles instead of the Profile Manager. This is where confusion and more help and instructions are needed.
To get started, make sure you’re signed into the Google Account you use to manage your Business Profile.
Next, go to Google and search for your exact business name (you may need to add your city), or you can also search for “my business.”
If you do have more than one profile and you need to manage a specific Business Profile, click View Profile.
You should see your company’s Knowledge Panel on the right side and the Business Profile management section on the left.
In the management section in search, you will see two main items: the Menu and Chips.
The menu allows you to perform the main functionality of managing your Google Business Profile. This is where you can make most of the edits to your profile, add updates, include products and services, etc.
You will also find any updates and changes Google might make to your profile based on information it finds online – or from user suggested edits.
Here are brief descriptions of each section of the menu:
Edit profile
What you can do:
- Edit business information – hours, contact information, website URL and other details.
- Add and delete products and services.
- Upload photos and videos.
Promote
This is where you can check your Google Business Profile insights, add photos, get a shortened URL to ask customers for reviews, create posts and more.
Customers
You can see and respond to reviews, see info about inbound calls, view and reply to messages/chat and answer questions people ask in Q&A.
Chips
You will also see various “chips” in the Business Profile management section. Chips let you do a variety of other things to help improve and optimize your profile.
Your chips might look different than another merchant’s chips. Look at the various chips available to you and see what they allow you to do.
For instance, if you click on the “Add exterior photo” chip, you’ll be able to easily upload a photo of the exterior of your storefront or office building.
Use these chips to maximize and optimize your Google Business Profile.
What if Google changes your Google Business Profile information?
Google gathers information from a variety of sources:
- Third-party sources they have contracted with.
- User-suggested edits.
- AI.
- Other online resources (e.g., government databases, online directories/citation sites, the business’s website, information it receives from people who answer “know this place” questions).
Google often cross-checks the information on your Business Profile and compares it to what they find online. If they find discrepancies, they may decide that your information is incorrect and will change the information on your Google Business Profile.
If Google changes information in your Business Profile, you’ll receive an email alerting you that information has been changed.
You’ll then need to go to Google search and look at the various areas in the menu section of your profile and look for a blue highlighted area. There you will see what changes Google made to your profile.
If the changed information is correct, you can simply click the Accept link.
Did Google mess up? If the changes are wrong, click on the section you want to edit (or correct), and you’ll see the pencil icon. You can then edit the information. Remember to click the Save button.
It’s important that you frequently check your Business Profile to make sure no incorrect changes were made to your Business Profile.
Managing your profile from search is the way to go
Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve. But once you get used to this new interface, you will likely enjoy the ease of use and functionality. And I expect that Google will only be adding more features in the coming months.
The post How to manage and edit your Google Business Profile from Google search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, May 17th, 2022
Vimeo, a popular video hosting platform (obviously not as popular as YouTube), has added structured data to all of its publicly available videos on its platform. Vimeo said the SEO changes they made to the videos will give “your videos the best opportunity to appear for relevant searches.”
Google worked with Vimeo? Vimeo wrote that they worked with Google as an “early adopter of Google Search’s best practices for video players” to provide Google with “additional context about your videos.” This will help Vimeo surface those videos in Google search and take advantage of the video-rich results, like displaying key moments for videos in Google Search by adding chapters and timestamps to video structured data.
Google’s video best practices. The video best practices are not exclusive to Vimeo or “early adopters.” These best practices are published by Google over here for anyone who hosts videos to read and adopt on their websites or platforms.
The video best practices cover:
- Help Google find your videos
- Ensure your videos can be indexed
- Allow Google to fetch your video content files
- Enable specific video features
- Remove, restrict, or update your videos as needed
Steps to take in Vimeo. Vimeo said there is really nothing specific you need to do to take advantage of these SEO changes, outside of making your videos public. Vimeo wrote, “all you need to do is make sure your videos are listed as public. Our technology will handlee the rest.” That means the video platform will ensure the videos are (1) indexable, (2) that your metadata is optimized, and (3) that your chapters are visible to Google Search for key moments.
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Vimeo’s SEO advice. Despite Vimeo handling this by default for you, Vimeo posted some tips for you when uploading your videos, naming them and adding descriptions and other data. That advice includes:
- Add chapters to your videos: Google doesn’t only review the title, but also the titles used for each chapter – which means adding chapters can help users discover the part of your video that is most relevant to their search.
- Choose your titles wisely: The title is displayed alongside your video thumbnail in search results. While it’s great to have a unique and catchy name for your video, it’s also important to keep your title descriptive using keywords most relevant to your audience’s searches.
- Research the best keywords: If you want new people to discover your video, it makes sense to describe it in the terms that people are searching for.
Note, that chapters are only available on the Pro plan or above or Vimeo.
Why we care. If you are using Vimeo for hosting, distributing and marketing your videos – rest assured that Vimeo is taking SEO and Google rich results seriously. If you have not used Vimeo and been using YouTube, you may want to try Vimeo out now that they have implemented video SEO tips from Google.
Of course, keep an eye on your video analytics to see if these changes impact any of your past videos. It is possible that Vimeo videos might gain more visibility and thus have a positive impact on Vimeo-hosted videos and potentially a negative impact on other video platforms going forward. Either way, we know YouTube and most SEOs implement video SEO best practices and now you can lump in Vimeo to that list.
The post Vimeo adds structured data to all public videos to improve Google Search visibility appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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Seen yesterday while driving on the Tollway. #NearMe #SEO #LocalSEO pic.twitter.com/e0GuNTf2jA
