Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google vote, AMP errors, Bing Ads & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-google-vote-amp-errors-bing-ads-256569
0 Comments
Posted by rjonesx. Let's start with the happy ending, which is actually a happy beginning, too. Moz Keyword Explorer has utilized clickstream-derived keyword data in a novel manner since day 1, allowing us to provide consistent keyword volumes despite Google Keyword Planner's dramatic shifts in data availability and reporting. You probably haven't noticed any changes in our keyword volume, and you probably won't notice any going forward, which is just how we built it to begin with: resilient, evolving, and trustworthy. That being said, the truth is that keyword data has been on shaky ground lately as the foundation upon which most keyword tools are built — Google Keyword Planner — has been grossly disrupted. This single point of failure has put a lot of tools at risk, so let me explain how we preemptively addressed this concern and subsequently haven't lost a step. Problem 1: Keyword Planner has started aggressively grouping keywordsYou have probably seen this story floating around for quite some time. Google Keyword Planner has always combined some words, especially misspellings, so when we built Moz Explorer, we already planned out a strategy to correct for these wherever possible. It turns out that same volume disambiguation technology works for other types of grouped terms. For example, Google Keyword Planner groups "SEO" and "Search Engine Optimization" together, recognizing that one is an acronym of the other. As you can see, Keyword Planner reports "SEO" and "Search Engine Optimization" as having identical average monthly searches and suggested bid price. Even worse, because Google has grouped the words when making volume predictions, but not un-grouped the words when building the graph, it appears that if you were to advertise on both of these terms, you would get over 200,000 impressions per month (at least, according to the graph). Well, you don't have to worry about this if you're a Moz Keyword Explorer user, because we get it right, showing the two phrases as having different volumes in the correct proportions. Another classic example of keyword grouping we see in Keyword Planner is related to stemming. Take, for example the word "play," which is also the stem of "plays" and "playing." Google groups these three terms together in Keyword Planner and presents them as having identical average monthly searches and suggested bid. Once again, we see the same graph problem as well, where it appears that someone ranking for these terms could enjoy nearly 1 million searches per month. This is actually a misrepresentation of already grouped keywords. Sometimes you can get lucky and, if the keywords are commercial enough, you can see their actual proportional relationship in Keyword Forecaster. This is not always the case. Forecaster has very peculiar behavior when it perceives a grouped keyword as a misspelling rather than simply a similar term. This differing treatment of lexically vs. semantically related terms makes Forecaster an unreliable replacement for Keyword Planner alone, but in this case it serves as a decent illustration. If we were to set identical bids in Google for these terms, the keyword "play" would return far more impressions and clicks than "playing" or "plays." We can confirm this with our clickstream data, which gives us similar representations. We can marry clickstream data with historical data, forecaster data, and planner data to build our own volume predictions. Which, when all worked out, looks something like this: Problem 2: Keyword Planner has started throttling access to raw data for users not running active campaigns.In perhaps a bigger bombshell announcement, Google has started obfuscating data for users who aren't spending enough money in Adwords. The ranges are very large and, frankly, unworkable for anyone looking to do keyword research (for Adwords or SEO). But, once again, Moz Keyword Explorer's blended technology keeps us ahead of the curve. Even if we were never able to get keyword volume again from Google Keyword Planner, we would be able to continue to provide users with a stable set of volume metrics that models closely to actual Google search volume. How we do it:1. How do we determine when words are grouped together?This is one place where size really does matter. Moz has a huge keyword corpus of over 2 billion keywords, and we have collected volume from Google for hundreds of millions of them. Because of this, we can identify the rare occasions where two words have identical search data histories (same CPC, competition, volume, etc.). Sometimes two words share the same history just by chance, so we then use a variety of NLP and string-similarity measurements, including an incredible deep learning model built by Dr. Matt Peters to determine if the keywords are related to one another. It is important to use multiple methods because string-similarity methods are notoriously finicky. Once we apply these various string similarity metrics to the set of keywords with identical metrics, we can identify those that are grouped by Keyword Planner. 2. Once we know what words are grouped together, how do we determine the volume of each?Once we have a group of related terms, we apply a predictive model based on data both from Google and our clickstream sources to determine the appropriate percentage of traffic that should be allocated to each word or phrase. Again, this is where having a huge data set really shines. Without detailed data on the constituent phrases, we would have to make unjustified assumptions about how to divide the grouped volume. Luckily, this is rarely the case, and we choose to be explicit with our customers and state "no data" when we do not have sufficient data to make a prediction. 3. How do we determine the volume for keywords when we don't have Google Keyword Planner data?Luckily, we can rely on our vast clickstream data to make these calculations. Clickstream data is intrinsically noisy and biased, so our models are quite comprehensive to remove random occurrences, strip out bias in the sampled data, and model projected traffic against the general Google corpus. There is a chicken/egg problem here, to a degree, because we can't model against the Google data if it has grouped-keyword problems, but we can't solve all the grouped keyword problems without the clickstream data. However, as long as we are reasonably certain that the clickstream data is internally proportional, then we can rely on it to solve the grouping problem first, and then use the ungrouped Keyword Planner data to model against with general clickstream data. It is a complex procedure, but in the end we can reasonably predict monthly search volume without ever having data from Google. Let me give you an example. Khizr Khan, father of Purple Heart recipient Captain Humayun Khan, has caused quite a political stir following his speech at the DNC convention. His story represents a common issue in keyword data in that, prior to his speech, no one ever searched his name. After his speech, his name shot up on Google Trends but, even then, Google Keyword Planner has lagged in reporting his numbers due to the month-long delays in releasing data. Because our clickstream data can pick up on rising trends, we can predict Google volume without needing to have Google Keyword Planner data. This is also the case for keywords that are not trending. If we see a term that is regularly searched in our clickstream data, but is not represented in our Google data set, we can make predictions without having to rely on the potentially misleading (grouped volumes) or inaccessible data sources that Google Keyword Planner has become. A long story shortIf you're a Moz Keyword Explorer user, you can be confident that we will continue to deliver you state-of-the-art metrics, regardless of how difficult Google makes it to get data from Keyword Planner. This is just another way that Moz Keyword Explorer continues to lead the way in keyword research. If you need keyword data, come and get it. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! via The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/4162401
Google's latest search feature for voters includes a "2016 Election: How to Vote" box with information on voter IDs, deadlines and mail-in ballots. The post Google adds new state-by-state voting guide for “how to vote” searches appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-new-state-state-voting-guide-vote-searches-256537
In addition to launching a hub for the Olympics, Google Trends has released new tools for viewing and exporting search data. The post Google Trends refresh includes geographic comparisons & export to Excel feature appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/google-trends-refresh-includes-geographic-comparisons-export-excel-feature-256519
Capitalizing on sporting events can be a great opportunity for advertisers, but will this strategy work for everyone? Columnist Laura Collins looks at the results of some recent campaigns to find out. The post Should you hitch your campaigns onto the sporting bandwagon? appeared first on Search...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/hitch-campaigns-onto-sporting-bandwagon-255524
Wondering how much follow-up is too much? Columnist Julie Joyce gives us advice on how to follow up on link requests without bugging your contacts. The post How to follow up on link requests appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/follow-link-requests-255256
Advertisers can begin migrating from destination URLs to final URLs and tracking parameters. The post Bing Ads rolls out Upgraded URLs globally appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/bing-ads-upgraded-urls-global-256420
AMP error notifications now are showing in the core search results, but only if you are the site's owner. The post Google showing the site owner AMP implementation error warnings in search results appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/google-showing-site-owner-amp-implementation-error-warnings-search-results-256510 Posted by Casey_Meraz In this article I'm going to address the current state of local SEO in 2016, review some findings from a new data-driven local SEO study, and provide you with some actionable tips to win the local SEO game. If there's one thing that's consistent about Google, it's the fact that it's always changing. Over the years we've seen many changes in local search. The most recent changes included ads that display in the 3 pack of local results, leaving only two positions. Since Google removed the sidebar ads, you now have to scroll further down the page just to see the local results. These days, local SEO is more competitive and more confusing. So where do you start? I suggest that you start by defining your primary goals. You can't get to your destination if you don't know where you're going. If you're promoting a hotel, for instance, your primary goal is probably to get more reservations — local SEO for you will mean ranking high in Google's local results, attracting positive reviews on websites like Tripadvisor, etc. The reality of local search in 2016The algorithm, the amount of effort business owners are putting in, the amount of effort marketers are putting into their local SEO — it's all changed. Where just a few years ago there were many businesses on the sidelines not doing much in the way of optimizing for local search, you now see more people trying harder. Just the other day at the gym, my personal trainer told me how his business partner figured out what was necessary to rank higher in Google's local results. But how does Google decide which business deserves to rank higher than another when most of them have followed the same guides that preach the same basic optimization tactics? Do you see the problem here? If everyone is doing the basics now, the bar has been raised. Speaking of goals, keep this in mind: There isn't just one way to search. #1 rankings don't mean everything.Let's talk user behavior for a moment, because it's super important. Imagine you find yourself in the bummer of a situation I was in last week. I needed a plumber. To find one, I decided to turn to Google (since I spend all day there anyway) to search for a local plumber. Here's my personal journey. Step 1: Search for a local plumber. I skip the paid ads because I feel bad clicking on them. Step 2: Look at local results. Ahh, that's more like it! Let me click on the one with the most reviews. I like reviews. They make me feel good. Step 3: Let's be honest — I wasn't really happy with a 3.1 rating. I'm going to look at the finder results now. I skip over the first result and move to the one that looks the best based on the star rating. I'm in the industry, I know how people can spam these things, and yet I still like shiny objects. I find myself overly critical and biased. Step 4: After judging everyone at face value, I decide to click on Master Blaster and read the reviews. Step 5: I'm not convinced with the reviews for whatever reason. After this, I ended up turning to Yelp and reading reviews which I thought were from real people. I decided on this company, which did a great job at a fair price. My behavior seems really weird in retrospect, but it proves a point. There's not just one way to search. Some users may not click on the first result; some will click the third result. They may click into the local pack and look at reviews. They may go to another website to check out your reviews. I think this proves my point: you need to focus on your primary goals. Let's look at a data-driven local SEO study & what it means for youAt the end of June, Local SEO Guide and PlacesScout.com published a great study on local SEO ranking factors. (Props to Andrew Shotland, Dan Leibson, and Mark Kabana.) While there are other studies that are mostly opinion-based, they looked at data to come to their conclusions (which I really like and respect). As with any SEO study, there are more data points we could analyze and many we can't, as we don't have access to the necessary data (because Google hates us). That's why you hear "correlation is not causation" a lot in our industry; this is especially true with machine learning. However, I think Mike Blumenthal said it best: "Dan and the team at LocalSEOguide have done some great work attempting to bring some clarity & discipline to an otherwise opinion-based and myth-rife topic: local search ranking factors. While correlation studies can never elucidate causal effects, particularly in an era of machine learning, they can provide real and solid clues on where to look." I agree. To be honest, there haven't been very many data-driven local SEO studies done yet; I hope this is the first of many. Now, let's look at some of the top factors from the study and break them down. Key takeaways from the study:Here are the top 5 ranking factors they identified:
Obviously there were many more data points than those top five. You can see the whole graphic they made above, published with permission from Local SEO Guide. Now, let's break down the top 5 local ranking factor from the study. 1. Locations with a lot of reviews seemed to rank higherWe'll talk more about this later, but if you do a lot of local searches you'll also see that businesses without many reviews (or less reviews than their competitors) can certainly still rank high. On the other hand, if you've seen some of the click studies I've ran, we've consistently seen that local listings with reviews tend to get more clicks. This will tie into #2 below: 2. Profile views seemed to correlate with higher rankingsIf you're new to SEO, you may not have seen some very interesting click-through rate studies done by Darren Shaw of Whitespark and Rand from Moz. There seems to be measurable correlation that, when a result is clicked more, it's given a higher ranking. This being the case, you can see why reviews might be important and also correlate with higher local rankings. On a side note, I always click my client's websites in the local results and stay on the page for a bit when searching. 3. Majestic AC Rank seemed to have a high correlationThere are tons of backlink measuring tools out there. Moz has one, Majestic SEO, Ahrefs, Link Research Tools... and the list goes on. This study compared Moz & Majestic. In the future, it would be nice to compare other tools, as well, to get a better sample. Link tools don't detect every link that Google does, as of course Google itself has the most resources for web indexation. Importantly, 3 out of the 5 top correlation ranking factors from this study involve link signals. So should you believe all of those "SEO is dead" posts? No. Links still carry a tremendous amount of weight. Not only does this study help show that, I can tell you from personal experience that moving the needle in competitive law firm niches requires good-quality links (assuming you're doing everything else right). What was missing from the top factors?
Noticeably missing from the top factors were citations and website landing page (on-site) factors. I know what you're thinking: "But wait, Casey, everyone says to build those darn citations!" I'll address this in the section below. Overall the study had lots of great insights. I suggest you check it out yourself and dig in when you have a chance. But now I want to shift the focus a bit and talk about what you must do to rank higher in competitive local niches. Conquering the competitionAre you ready for the top-secret super-formula we use to get our clients ranked in competitive niches? Well, it's probably not a secret. We just work hard and take into consideration that tools are not 100% accurate. Speaking of being competitive here and beating your competition, I'm going to assume you've put in the elbow grease to get your Google My Business listing optimized. If not, I suggest you read the best practices in my Ultimate Local SEO Audit guide and make sure your listing adheres to Google's guidelines. And if you're not ranking organically for your keywords, you have a lot of work to do. Don't expect to rank locally unless your website deserves to and does rank organically. Here are the things I look at once everything else is in order. If you have major outlying issues, fix them firstIf you're not ranking in the local finder's top 20 results for the keywords you're targeting, this article may not be for you yet. First make sure you don't have any underlying problems with your website or listing. If you're sure you're doing everything else right and seeing movement, then feel free to follow along. Otherwise, here are some common problems you may want to look at first:
Stop taking shortcuts // Report spamSeriously. If your competitors are spamming, be sure to call them out. Google has made this much easier now. If you need practical advice, check out Joy Hawkins' article The Ultimate Guide to Fighting Spam on Google Maps. Those of us working in this industry have the ethical and professional responsibility to avoid spamming local results and to report those who are behaving badly. Traditional signals go a long way
Although I've been seeing more variation than normal, it still rings true that companies who rank high in organic, non-local search results will also rank high in local search results. Your organic optimization should be in order, both from a ranking perspective and a user experience perspective. Don't treat these as separate, isolated channels. Reviews // Reviews are cool
Let's talk millennials for a second. According to a study from The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Reviews, in my opinion, can have a positive impact on rankings due to the resulting increase in click-through rates. Reviews will also help you build trust in your business and earn more business. I'm excited that the next big local SEO study is slated to take a deeper look at reviews. Build reviews & customer feedback into your business modelIf you haven't already done so, you need to be sure you're getting customer reviews. They need to be built into your business processes. It's as simple as that. If you don't have a review strategy, you're going to struggle with this forever. If you're in-house or need a solution for your clients, check out a review service like Get Five Stars. It's easy to use and allows you to easily streamline reviews from your customers. It also allows you to easily add a review widget on your website. Easily create a review link for customers
If you're using your own marketing system like Infusionsoft you can generate direct review links for your emails by using tools like this one. This will bring up a direct link to the "leave a review" screen for your business if your user is logged into Google. Check out the sample link we created for ourselves here. Put reviews on your website
One thing I like to do for my legal clients is add reviews on the website. Not only do we like to add yellow stars, customers' faces, and quotes on actual website pages, but we also like to add the review schema to help get stars in organic search results. Although this is more of a conversion rate and organic play, you should try it. On-page SEO // Technical SEOI bring up on-page and technical SEO because of the shocking number of people I speak with who say things like "Well, I don't care about organic SEO, I just want to show up on the map." That's still a common misconception. Try to be the best in all of your marketing efforts and you'll be rewarded for doing things the right way. How's your site speed? If you don't know how Google sees your website's site speed, check out their mobile-friendly test here. Is it bad? Is it slow? If you get traffic to your website, you're probably missing out on conversions unless you're taking site speed and usability into consideration. UsabilityWhat's the conversion you care about? Now ask yourself this question: "If I was given a list of search results with an ad, my business, and one competitor, would the user click on my result before the others? And once they've clicked, will they be satisfied with the results?" If the answer is no, you have to consider why. It's nice to have a high ranking for an important keyword, but you have to think about the customer journey. If the user sees your listing, clicks on your website, and then bounces back to click on another result, how does that look? Why would they do that? It's probably because a) they couldn't easily find the information they need, b) it took too long to load, or c) there were usability issues. Why I still talk about citations // What you should doAs I mentioned above, citations were notably missing from the local ranking factors study. This is probably because Google's gotten much better with data and data sources. Devaluing citations as a ranking factor has been a discussion in the local SEO world for quite some time. I'm in the camp that citations should be cleaned up, but probably won't help you much outside of the basics. Here are a couple of thoughts to go along with that. First off, many citations are links, or have a place to add a link. Those sources where your link is hidden between millions of businesses and given a nofollow aren't really going to help you move the needle, in my opinion. At the same time, you have to value your citation sources as link sources, too. Second, you still need to correct the data at the data aggregator and top citation levels because of potential bad data issues. If you're a new business, you can just create these and go. If you're an established business that has moved in the past, you need to get this stuff right. Why? It wouldn't be the first time I've seen an incorrect listing created off of bad or old data. If a new Google My Business page is created off of this bad and old data, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. Alternatively, if there aren't a lot of signals sending bad or wrong info, you should be fine. Just sign up for Moz Local to fix this issue — it's super easy to use. Third of all, you can still get business from 3rd-party websites. Like the example I gave earlier, if you're promoting a hotel, you want to be listed on TripAdvsior. This provides value towards your primary goals. You don't need to be listed on ThisAwesomeHotelBookingWebsiteThatNobodyWillSee.com. I will say that you should only really focus on the top citations, though. Let's face it... Nobody is visiting YourCitysIndustryDirectory-CitationSourceofAwesome.org, which is ranking on page 47 for your city and industry keywords. I've done that in the past. Don't get that tunnel vision. Focus on what's going to make a difference. Outside of the top citations, be sure to turn your attention to links instead of citations to avoid diminishing returns. I have not seen an example where getting more low-quality citations helps a business rank better in local results... but I have seen quite the opposite with link penalties from low-quality websites. On a side note, also make sure your citations are indexed. I recently did a study that showed an automated platform didn't work that well. Get some links // Don't get more crap links, get fewer great linksIf you've done everything else, my advice is to focus the majority of your efforts on links. Links still work and they still make the most difference — not only in my opinion, but also based on data from studies like the ones discussed here. Out of curiosity, I also reached out to Garrett Mehrguth at Directive Consulting for his #1 tip to move the needle: "The top thing you can do to move the needle in local SEO today, in my opinion, is to build authoritative links. After working with a client who received a nasty manual penalty a few years ago, I changed how we get our links for our clients. If you can get your city name or type of business in the anchor text naturally, then that's great. Don't overdo it though. Now, let's get you 4 links that are legitimate for your business. 1. Sign up for HelpAReporter.com 2. Sponsor a local event 3. Get listed on your local business directories 4. Run a community initiative; give back. Need more links? Check out Point Blank SEO's guide on link building here; it's a very good list for any industry. If you're a law firm in need of links, check out these specific resources. Moving the needle furtherIf you're having trouble moving up in the SERPs to at least that number 3 position, remember that it gets harder to rank the higher you get. The people competing in that landscape are probably investing resources. You don't have to outspend their resources, but you do have to outsmart them. In addition to this, I believe that Google's much slower than it used to be. The effects of the links you do get may take longer to have a positive effect.In situations where I have to move the needle in a tough market, you'll find me doing this:
Keep in mind that tools are imperfect. If your metrics look better on one tool versus another, that's not a stopping point. It's a point where more effort needs to be put in to figure out what you're missing. Broaden your toolset, rack your brain, and work to outsmart the people trying to outsmart you. Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! via The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/4157121
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google restricts Keyword planner, quality score changes & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-google-restricts-keyword-planner-quality-score-changes-256502
Search Engine Land’s SMX East is every SEO and SEM’s dream: a tactic-packed agenda, more than 100 dynamic and authoritative speakers, keynotes, exceptional networking, and more. If you’re involved in SEO, SEM, PR, social media or any other customer-facing activity, you owe it to...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/check-big-smx-east-preview-register-save-256479
Users no longer have to generate Report Editor reports from scratch or rely on pre-defined options. The post Google adds Export to Report Editor option in AdWords appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/adwords-export-report-editor-256472
Great content is essential for success in local SEO, but unfortunately, a lot of local business websites are sorely lacking in this area. Columnist Greg Gifford shares his advice on how to write excellent website copy for local SEO. The post The secret to writing awesome local content appeared...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/secret-writing-awesome-local-content-255234
Wesley Young of the Local Search Association provides 5 tips to create a seamless search-to-purchase experience for your local business. The post ‘Omnichannel’ may never catch on, but it’s the next big thing for local appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/omni-channel-may-never-catch-next-big-thing-local-255346
The null replaces the current default Quality Score of 6 for new keywords. The post Google will soon report null Quality Scores for new & low activity keywords appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/google-will-report-null-quality-scores-new-low-activity-keywords-256397
Not a big AdWords spender? You may notice a lack of data in your Keyword Planner account. The post Google officially throttling Keyword Planner data for low spending AdWords accounts appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/google-officially-throttling-keyword-planner-data-low-spending-adwords-accounts-255795
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google critic reviews, local positions & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-google-critic-reviews-local-positions-255742
According to the announcement, Bing's updated RTBF policy for the EU will use location-based signals to remove relevant URLs on all versions of Bing. The post Bing to censor Bing.com in the EU for Right To Be Forgotten searches appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/bing-censor-bing-com-eu-right-forgotten-searches-255731 After complaints Google lets any publisher apply to have Critic Reviews of local businesses8/12/2016
Initially open to five publishers, Google opens the doors to anyone to apply after criticism by Yelp and TripAdvisor. The post After complaints, Google lets any publisher apply to have “Critic Reviews” of local businesses appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/google-critic-reviews-open-255692
Local search columnist Lydia Jorden delves into how businesses can utilize hot trends in news and popular culture -- like Pokémon Go -- to drive SERP positioning and a presence in the local digital ecosystem. The post Using popular culture to drive local positioning appeared first on Search Engine...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/using-popular-culture-drive-local-positioning-255117
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google Pride Boat: Source: Twitter Bill Murray at Google: Source: Google+...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/search-pics-bill-murray-google-seeoo-glasses-google-pride-boat-255615 Posted by randfish You've got content on your site that doesn't intentionally target any keyword. But how do you identify those opportunities and, most importantly, capitalize on them? Video TranscriptionHowdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about building a killer content-to-keyword map. Now this is something that pretty much every SEO does when they do an audit of a site, whether that's in-house or as a contractor or an agency consultant. SEO CartographySo what I've done here is build out a big one, but actually this is not as fully featured as you might imagine some content-to-keyword maps can be. I've seen them with double the number of columns of these, and I'm sure plenty of you who are watching are saying, "Oh man, Rand, I have even more in my map." Usually this is done in Excel or it's done in Google Spreadsheets. Either one can work fine. Unfortunately, there's no great software to do this right now. You could use a tool like Moz or a tool, if you're on the enterprise side, like Searchmetrics or Conductor to get a lot of this data. You may pull the data from tons of different places, a Screaming Frog here or a Stat over there, whatever it is, OnPage.org. ColumnsBut what you're trying to build here is essentially all my keywords mapped to all my URLs. Sometimes you might . . . in fact, if you're doing a comprehensive job, you should find places where you don't have a URL for some keywords because some keywords haven't been targeted yet, but you still want to rank for them. You should probably have some URLs for which you have no keyword. Essentially you haven't intentionally targeted a keyword with that page yet, and this might actually help you prioritize and try and do some of that. Then you have things like: How much search volume does this get? You're going to try and estimate or use a tool to give you a grade around the title, the content, maybe the URL itself, load speed, and engagement. Engagement could be browse rate or time on site or pages per visit or some combination of all of those things. You might be looking at internal and external links to the page. Internal links to say, "How well linked to is it internally? Do I have opportunity there?" External links to say, "Am I ranking or not ranking because I don't have external links pointing here?" I might look at something like a page authority to try and roll those up, Google Desktop and Google Mobile rankings, and the organic visits that that page has received from search engines. Now, there are a lot more columns that you might consider adding. You could add things like:
You might have more keyword-driven metrics if you're trying to prioritize a big keyword research function, like the things in Keyword Explorer:
Proceed to the routeSo now you've got this big content-to-keyword map. "Rand, why am I building this?" Well, look, this map lets you do a bunch of incredibly important, critical things, like:
If you have great ideas or you've done great things inside your content-to-keyword maps, I would love to see them. Please, leave them in the comments. Feel free to link to things. Show off your maps if you feel like uploading them. I would love to see the see columns and the ways that you use this map. Hopefully, in the future, maybe I can convince the Moz Pro software guys to build this for you. ;-) All right, everyone, take care. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Video transcription by Speechpad.com Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! via The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/4127357
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google link tool bug, Search Engine Land awards & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-google-link-tool-bug-search-engine-land-awards-255610
With nearly 200 entries in the second annual Landy Awards presented by Search Engine Land, this year's competition was filled with incredible efforts by search marketers across the globe. We are thrilled to announce this year's short list of finalists... The post The 2016 Search Engine Land...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/2016-search-engine-land-awards-finalists-255315
Want to be great at search engine optimization? Columnist John Lincoln believes that this requires more than just deep SEO knowledge -- it's about building good habits, too. The post The 4 daily habits of the most successful SEOs appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://searchengineland.com/4-daily-habits-successful-seos-255224 |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2016
Categories |