Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Daily Search Forum Recap: June 26, 2018 https://ift.tt/2KntE1A Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Search Engine Roundtable Stories: Other Great Search Forum Threads: SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 June 26, 2018 at 03:00PM
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How to Diagnose Your SEO Client's Search Maturity https://ift.tt/2Iv2pge Posted by HeatherPhysioc One of the biggest mistakes I see (and am guilty of making) is assuming a client is knowledgeable, bought-in, and motivated to execute search work simply because they agreed to pay us to do it. We start trucking full-speed ahead, dumping recommendations in their laps, and are surprised when the work doesn’t get implemented. We put the cart before the horse. It’s easy to forget that clients start at different points of maturity and knowledge levels about search, and even clients with advanced knowledge may have organizational challenges that create barriers to implementing the work. Identifying where your client falls on a maturity curve can help you better tailor communication and recommendations to meet them where they are, and increase the likelihood that your work will be implemented. How mature is your client?No, not emotional maturity. Search practice maturity. This article will present a search maturity model, and provide guidance on how to diagnose where your client falls on that maturity spectrum. This is where maturity models can help. Originally developed for the Department of Defense, and later popularized by Six Sigma methodologies, maturity models are designed to measure the ability of an organization to continuously improve in a practice. They help you diagnose the current maturity of the business in a certain area, and help identify where to focus efforts to evolve to the next stage on the maturity curve. It’s a powerful tool for meeting the client where they are, and understanding how to move forward together with them. There are a number of different maturity models you can research online that use different language, but most maturity models follow a pattern something like this:
For search, we can think about a maturity model two ways. One is the actual technical implementation of search best practices — is the client implementing exceptional, advanced SEO, just the basics, nothing at all, or even operating counterproductively? This can help you figure out what kinds of projects make the most sense to activate. The second way is the organizational maturity around search engine optimization as a marketing program. Is the client aligned to the importance of organic search, allocating budget and personnel appropriately, and systematically integrating search into marketing efforts? This can help you identify the most important institutional challenges to solve for that can otherwise block the implementation of your work. Technical SEO capabilities maturityFirst, let’s dive into a maturity model for search knowledge and capabilities. SEO capabilities criteriaWe measure an organization on several important criteria that contribute to the success of SEO:
Click the image to see the full-size version. SEO capabilities maturity stagesWe assign each of the aforementioned criteria to one of these stages:
Click the image to see the full-size version. While this maturity model has been peer reviewed by a number of respected SEO peers in the industry (special thanks to Kim Jones at Seer Interactive, Stephanie Briggs at Briggsby, John Doherty at Credo, Dan Shure at Evolving SEO, and Blake Denman at Rickety Roo for your time and expertise), it is a fluid, living document designed to evolve as our industry does. If necessary, evolve this to your own reality as well. You can download a Google Sheets copy of this maturity model here to begin using it with your client. Why Stage 0?In this search capabilities maturity model, I added an unconventional “Stage 0 - Counterproductive,” because organic search is unique in that they could do real damage and be at a deficit, not just at a baseline of zero. In a scenario like this, the client has no collaboration inside the company or with the partner agency to do smart search work. Content may be thin, weak, duplicative, spun, or over-optimized. Perhaps their mobile experience is nonexistent or very poor. Maybe they’re even engaging in black hat SEO practices, and they have link-related or other penalties. Choosing projects based on a client’s capabilities maturityFor a client that is starting on the lower end of the maturity scale, you may not recommend starting with advanced work like AMP and visual search technology, or even detailed Schema markup or extensive targeted link-building campaigns. You may have to start with the basics like securing the site, cleaning up information architecture, and fixing title tags and meta descriptions. For a client that is starting on the higher end of the maturity scale, you wouldn’t want to waste their time recommending the basics — they’ve probably already done them. You're better off finding new and innovative opportunities to do great search work they haven’t already mastered. But we’re just getting started...But technical capabilities and knowledge are only beginning to scratch the surface with clients. This starts to solve for what you should implement, but doesn’t touch why it’s so hard to get your work implemented. The real problems tend to be a lot squishier, and aren’t so simple as checking some SEO best practices boxes. How mature is your client’s search practice?The real challenges to implementation tend to be organizational, people, integration, and process problems. Conducting a search maturity assessment with your client can be eye-opening as to what needs to be solved internally before great search work can be implemented and start reaping the rewards. Pair this with the technical capabilities maturity model above, and you have a powerhouse of knowledge and tools to help your client. Before we dig in, I want to note one important caveat: While this maturity model focuses heavily on organizational adoption and process, I don’t want to suggest that process and procedure are substitutes for using your actual brain. You still have to think critically and make hard choices when you execute a best-in-class search program, and often that requires solving all-new problems that didn’t exist before and therefore don’t have a formal process. Search practice maturity criteriaWe measure an organization on several important criteria that contribute to the success of SEO:
Click the image to see the full-size version. Search practice stages of maturityStage 1 - Initial & ad hocAt this stage, the organizations’ search application may be nonexistent, unstable, or uncontrolled. There may be rare and small SEO efforts, but they are entirely ad hoc and inconsistent, and retrofitted to the work after the fact, at best. They tend to lack any discernible goal orientation. If SEO exists, it is disconnected from larger goals, and not integrated with any other practices across the organization. They may be just beginning their search practice for the first time. Stage 2 - Repeatable but reactiveThese organizations are at least doing some search basics, though there is no rigorous use or enforcement of it. It is very reactive and in-the-moment while projects are being implemented; it is rarely pre-planned and often SEO is applied as an afterthought. They are executing only in the present or when it’s too late to do the highest caliber search work, but they are making an effort. SEO efforts may occasionally be going after goals, but it is unlikely to be tied to larger business goals. (Most of my client relationships have started here.) Stage 3 - Defined & understoodThese organizations have started to document their processes and are satisfactorily knowledgeable and competent in search. They have minimum standards for search best practices and process is emerging. Many people inside and outside the organization understand that search is important and are taking steps to integrate. There is a clear search strategy that aligns to organizational goals and processes. Proactive search preparation and planning happens prior to activating projects. Stage 4 - Managed & capableThese organizations have proactive, predictable implementation of search work. They have quality-focused rules for products and processes, and can quickly detect and correct missteps. They have clearly defined processes for integration, implementation and oversight, but are flexible enough to adapt to a range of conditions without sacrificing quality. These organizations consider search part of their “way of life.” Stage 5 - Efficient & optimizingOrganizations at this stage have a strong mastery of search and efficiently implementing as a matter of policy. They have cross-organizational integration and proactively work to strengthen their search performance. They are always improving the process through incremental or innovative change. They review and analyze their process and implementation to keep optimizing. These organizations could potentially be considered market-leading or innovative. Click the image to see the full-size version. You are hereBefore you can know how to get where you want to go, you need to know where you are. It's important to understand where the organization stands, and then where they need to be in the future. Going through the quantitative exercise of diagnosing their maturity can help everyone align to where to start. You can use these scorecards to assess factors like leadership alignment to the value of search, employee availability and involvement, knowledge and training, process and standardization, their culture (or lack thereof) of data-driven problem-solving and continuous improvement, and even budget. A collaborative exerciseThis should be a deeper exercise than just punching numbers into a spreadsheet, and it certainly shouldn’t be a one-sided assessment from you as an outsider. It is much more valuable to ask several relevant people at multiple levels across the client organization to participate in this exercise, and can become much richer if you take the time to talk to people at various points in the process. How to use the scorecard & diagnose maturityOnce you download the scorecards, follow these steps to begin the maturity assessment process.
To get your own scorecard, click the image and make a copy of the Google Sheet. Choosing where to startThe goal is to identify together where to start working. This means finding the strengths to capitalize upon, areas of acceptability that can be nudged to a strength with a little work, weaknesses to improve upon, agreeing on areas to focus, and finally, how to get started tackling the first change together. For a client that is starting on the low end of the maturity scale, it is unrealistic to expect that they have connected all the dots between important stakeholders, that they have a clearly defined and repeatable process, and that their search program is a well-oiled machine. If you don’t work together to solve the underlying problems like knowledge or adequate personnel resources first, you will struggle to get buy-in for the work or the resources to get it done, so it doesn’t matter what projects you recommend. For a client that is advanced in a few areas, say process, planning, and capacity, but weaker in others like knowledge and capacity, that might suggest that you need to focus efforts on an education campaign to help the client prioritize the work and fit it into a busy queue. For a client that is already advanced across the board, your role instead may be to keep the machine running while also helping them spot minor areas of improvement so they can keep iterating and perfecting the process. This client might also be ready for more advanced search strategies and tactical recommendations, or perhaps more robust integrations across additional disciplines. One foot in front of the otherIt’s rare that we live in a world of radical change where we overhaul everything en masse and see epic change overnight. We tweak, test, learn, and iterate. A maturity model is a continuum, and brands must evolve from one step to the next. Skipping levels is not an option. Some may also call this a “crawl, walk, run” approach. Your goal as their trusted search advisor is not to help them leap from Stage 2 to Stage 5. Accomplishing that trajectory and speed of growth is exceedingly difficult and rare. Instead, focus your efforts on how the client can get to the next stage over the next 12 months. As they progress up the maturity model, the length of time it takes to unlock the next level may grow longer and longer. Click the image to see the full-size version. Even when an organization reaches Stage 5, your/their work is not done. Master-level organizations continue to refine and optimize their processes and capabilities. There is no finish line to search maturityThere is a French culinary phrase, “mise en place,” that refers to having everything — ingredients, tools, recipe — in its place to begin cooking most successfully. There are several key ingredients to any successful project implementation: buy-in, process, knowledge and skills, capacity, planning, and more. As your client evolves up the maturity curve, you will see and feel a transition from thinking about aspects only once a project is sliding off the rails, to including these things real-time and reactively, to anticipating these before every project and doing your due diligence to come prepared. Essentially, the client can move from not being able to spell “SEO” to making SEO a part of their DNA by moving up these maturity curves. It is important to revisit the maturity model discussion periodically — I recommend doing so at least annually — to level-set and realign with the client. Conducting this exercise again can remind us to pause and reflect on all we have accomplished since the first scoring. It can also re-energize stakeholders to make even more progress in the upcoming year. 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! SEO via SEOmoz Blog https://moz.com/blog June 26, 2018 at 02:45PM
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Yoast SEO 7.7: New snippet editor & better snippet variables https://ift.tt/2IpjzMt The snippet editor is one of the core pieces of technology in Yoast SEO. It helps you build snippets that truly stand out in the search results to get you traffic. To make this vital piece future-proof and to update it with new features, we needed to rebuild it. In Yoast SEO 7.7, you’ll find the result of that. Plus, a new and incredibly easy way of working with snippet variables. Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium » Info
The new snippet editor in Yoast SEOThe new snippet editor offers a much better user experience. Editing your meta descriptions and titles is a breeze and checking how it all looks a joy. It’s robust and easier to use. You’ll notice it right away when you open a post. Heading over to the Search Appearance settings (Content Types, Archives or Taxonomies), you will also see the editor pop up. There, you can now visually edit the appearance of your snippet variables. More on that later. While preparing for Gutenberg, we are steadily rebuilding all parts of the Yoast SEO interface in the JavaScript library React. This makes it easier for us to port different parts to Gutenberg and to do awesome new things with those parts. Improved mobile snippet previewImproving the snippet editor also made it possible for us to enhance the mobile snippet preview. It’s much more accurate and closely matches what Google shows. We now default to the mobile snippet preview. In addition, we take a critical look at how long the title that we show can be. For this, we use the longest possible character count available on all platforms. Revamped snippet variablesYou can automate some of your SEO work by using variable templates for your titles and meta descriptions. This way, you can use some existing content, for instance, an excerpt, or a focus keyword and have these filled automatically. What’s more, if you have a WooCommerce store and run Yoast SEO for WooCommerce, you can automatically fill in the product’s sku, brand and price. You can find the list of all supported template variables in our Knowledge Base. The snippet variables in Yoast SEO are very powerful. While you can do awesome stuff with it, most sites will probably be fine using the well-thought-out default settings we provide. Previously, these variables looked kind of scary with those Introducing the new snippet variables in the Search Appearance settingsAs I said, the new snippet editor lets us do cool stuff. It made it possible for us to revamp how we use variables for titles and meta descriptions to make it instantly understandable for non-experts. This leads to huge usability benefits and a truly enjoyable user experience. We’ve opted for sensible defaults fit most sites fine — for instance, for the SEO title: Title, Page number, Separator and Site title —, but you can change these if you really want. We’ve made a handy button called Insert Snippet Variable to quickly add the requested variable. You can simply pick the variable from the dropdown menu. The same goes for the Meta description field where you can automatically generate — parts of — your snippet’s meta description by adding variables. You can set sitewide variables for meta descriptions and titles in the Search Appearance settings, but you can always override them on a per post basis in the post editor. The last thing we’ve opted for in the new snippet editor is to change how the meta description preview functions when there is no handwritten meta description. We no longer mimic Google by showing a part of your content, but explain what Google does instead. Hopefully this will remind you to write those killer meta descriptions. Check your Search Appearance settingsIt’s always a good thing to dive into the settings of Yoast SEO regularly to see if everything is still perfectly set up for your site. Definitely take a look at the new Search Appearance settings page and check the different tabs to see if there’s anything to improve. While doing that, you probably discover a new setting or feature from time to time, like setting template using the new snippet editor. Cool community contributionsFor Yoast SEO 7.7, we reviewed several community contributions. There were a couple that made the cut this time. First, Laurent helped us improve the lists of French transition words, stop words, and function words for use in the readability analyses. Thanks to Matteo, we have now added support for JSON-LD breadcrumbs. You can switch on the breadcrumbs setting and see the necessary code for it generated in the source code. Last but not east, we’ve added a Update now to Yoast SEO 7.7There you have it: Yoast SEO 7.7 is available to all. It’s a great release with lots of new stuff to discover. The new snippet editor makes for a great user experience and the revamped template variables can give your productivity a big boost. Check out the new and improved tools and update to Yoast SEO 7.7 now! Or check the changelog here. Read more: ‘Why you should buy Yoast SEO Premium’ » The post Yoast SEO 7.7: New snippet editor & better snippet variables appeared first on Yoast. SEO via Yoast • SEO for everyone https://yoast.com June 26, 2018 at 02:04PM
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25 Sales Questions to Qualify Your Leads Faster https://ift.tt/2Km3mcH You can attribute a lot of great relationships to perfect timing. When you connect with the right person at the right time, everything seems to just fit. This is especially true for sales. Connecting with your lead too early means they won’t be ready to buy. But if you wait too long, they may have moved on to a competitor. Unfortunately, finding the perfect time to connect with a customer is complicated. It’s not like you can set a timer that will ding when they’re ready to connect. Instead, you need to qualify your leads yourself. It’s always important to connect with your leads to figure out where they’re at in the buying process. Asking questions, getting feedback, and building a relationship can set you on the right path for being available when they’re ready to buy. To help you qualify your sales prospects, here are 25 questions you should be asking. Establishing the relationshipThe relationship is the most important part of closing a sale. When it comes time to make a purchase, your consumers aren’t going to buy from just anyone. Instead, they’re going to turn to someone they know they can trust. Unfortunately, only 3% of people trust marketers and salespeople. In order to be there when they’re ready to buy, you want to work on establishing the relationship early on. To lay the foundation for the business relationship you’re creating, here are a few questions you should be asking. 1. How did you hear about us?Sales leads should be coming to you from a variety of angles. In fact, buyers typically consult almost five different information sources when deciding on products, vendors, or services. Some may find you on social while others may have participated in a webinar that you hosted. Referrals are another popular way new sales prospects tend to find potential vendors or agencies. Customers or clients who come to you by referral actually have a 16% higher lifetime value. Knowing how the lead found you can help you understand the best way to move forward. If the lead is a referral, this can strongly influence their willingness to work with you. You can leverage that relationship to win over the lead and convince them to purchase. If they found you through a more traditional lead generation source, you can get a better understanding of what aspect of your brand interests them. 2. What are you looking for in a new vendor or agency?Ask your leads what their “dream” vendor or agency would look like. Have them point out three key factors that they’d expect out of a new vendor or agency. For buyers, the most important factors of a new pairing are adapting to fit processes, scaling with growth, and providing measurable results. While you may not fit this description perfectly, it can help you better understand what they’re really looking for. Then, think of ways that your company fits the description they’ve created. However, don’t try to trick them into believing that you’re exactly what they’re looking for – especially if you’re missing some key components. Instead, be upfront and honest about what you can provide and how you can help. This kind of honesty can do wonders for the relationship you’re creating. 3. What attracted you to our brand?Try to find the characteristics or qualities that made you stand out to your prospect. Whether it’s your unique branding or your pricing strategy, understanding why the lead likes your brand can help you better understand where their priorities lie. Knowing their favorite points about you can also give you an angle to focus on during your conversations. For example, say that a lead mentions that your pricing attracted them to you the most. This means they’re probably sticking to a tight budget. As you nurture the lead into making a purchase, you can focus conversations around pricing and budgets. This personalized approach can convert leads faster and help the prospect feel like you’re taking care of them. 4. How can we best help you make this decision?Every sales prospect has something holding them back. Whether it’s budget or not being entirely sure what they need, you want to find the hurdle that’s preventing them from pulling out their credit card. Finding where that obstacle is can help you qualify your leads faster. Ask your sales prospect what you can tell them about or offer them that will help them say “yes” to a deal. Remember to listen to their unique challenges and fears. Even if you’re trying to qualify multiple leads at once, you want each to feel special. 5. Who else is part of this decision-making process?On average, 6.8 people are part of the B2B decision-making process. Unless you’re working with very small business, you’ll probably need to convince more than just one person that you’re the right agency or vendor for them to work with. However, 90% of individuals stated that there is usually one member who pushes the decision their way. To ensure you’re establishing a relationship with all the right people, you want to find out exactly who is involved in the process of making decisions. You’ll also want to find out where this individual fits within that process. Knowing if you’re dealing with the CEO or the manager can make a major difference in how you pitch your solutions. Discovering the problemBefore a lead can make a decision to work with you, they need to understand why they need a change. You can do this by helping them find the problem with what they’re currently doing. According to Gong.io, discovering business issues should make up the majority of your discovery calls. Chances are, they probably know something isn’t right. However, they may not know exactly what needs to change, so they don’t know why they need your help. By bringing the problem to the surface, you’re making your leads more aware of where they’re falling short. Focusing on where they’re going wrong or falling behind can encourage them to look for a solution faster. You can help them find their problem with these questions. 6. What resources or solutions have you tried in the past? What happened?Ask your prospects to talk about what they’ve already tried. This can help see if you can offer different solutions. It also helps the lead recap what they’ve already been through. By going back and covering all the things they’ve tried and failed with, they can begin to understand what solution they might be looking for. Additionally, covering the things that have brought success can give you some insight into their audience’s behavior. Arjun Varma, Sales Manager at Quantcast, uses the tactic “ask, define, explore” to get more from his prospects. He says:
You can then use this information going forward to provide them with solutions that are more likely to work. 7. Why weren’t you happy with your last vendor or agency?Sometimes, it isn’t the attempted solution that isn’t working. It’s who they’re working with. Letting your lead discuss the problems they’ve experienced with their current agency or vendor can help you better understand what they’re expecting out of a new partnership. Maybe their current agency isn’t working fast enough. Maybe they aren’t giving them the personalized attention they had hoped for. Or maybe they’re just looking for something new and different. However, knowing what they don’t like can help you become what they do like. 8. What are you hoping to accomplish in a new partnership?Bouncing off their unhappiness with their current vendor, try to see what they’re hoping for in a new partnership. Try to go beyond simple business goals. Instead, focus on what they’re looking for in the actual relationship with your business. And remember: use collaborative language. Sales representatives who used “we” instead of “I” or “you” were more than twice as likely to get a deal. As you talk about what a new partnership would look like, start creating an image in the prospect’s mind of the two of you working together. 9. Why are you choosing to look for a new agency or vendor now?Try to get to the root of what happened to push the lead to connect now. Was there a particular event that made them realize they need to make a change? Are they fed up that others aren’t meeting their expectations? Are they looking to launch a new product or service and needs some additional hands on deck? Customers tend to leave companies when they feel like the company is ignoring them, when they find a better deal, or when they have a bad experience. When you know their purpose behind connecting, you can get a better idea of when and why they’re looking for a new deal. 10. What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?Take a minute to try and understand the lead’s perspective about their own business. Ask your sales prospect to outline where they believe they shine and where they think they may be lagging behind. Knowing how they view themselves can help you understand their priorities. Finding a solutionOnce you’ve discovered the problem and agitated it, you want to help your leads find a solution. By working with them to discover what their next move should be, you’re establishing trust and confidence that you can help them through the next stage of their business. Here are a few questions that can help you and your lead discover the right solution for them. 11. Where do you see your competitors surpassing you?Ask your lead who they believe their competitors are. Then ask how they believe their competitors are surpassing them. By getting them to think about the areas their competitors are doing better in, they can better understand the solutions they need to implement to see similar success. This can give both of you a better idea of what steps you need to take moving forward. 12. What is your budget?The budget is arguably the most important part of a new partnership. That’s why almost 60% of buyers want to discuss pricing on their first sales call. For both you and your lead, you need to find a way to create a deal everyone is happy with. Talking about budget expectations up front can help you understand where the lead falls in becoming ready to purchase. You can also get an idea of where they can fit within your pricing strategy and if they’ll be able to afford your products or services. 13. What is more important: money or productivity?Unfortunately, you typically can’t have more productivity on a smaller budget. Asking your leads if they’d rather grow quickly or save cash can allow you to get a feel for where their current priorities lie. If they’re looking to move quickly, they may be more likely to make a purchase sooner. However, if they’re looking for a new budget-friendly option, you can provide them with the marketing materials they need to see you as the right financial fit. 14. What requirements or deal-breakers are there for working together?Requirements and deal-breakers can sometimes be a difficult thing to talk about. However, discussing these requirements up front can make it easier for you to tell if you’re the right fit for each other. Regardless of the direction the conversation goes, it’s always important to be open and honest about your product. Buyers find vendors more influential when they are honest about their product or service – even if it means admitting it isn’t the best fit. Trying to deceive the customer into believing you offer the perfect solution will only cause headaches and frustration down the road. 15. What is your biggest priority right now?When a new lead comes to you, they probably have a few ideas about what they’d like to accomplish. Unfortunately, it isn’t likely that you’ll be able to tackle all of these problems at once. Talk about what the customer’s main priority is at that time. This can give you a better idea of what solutions they’re really looking for. Discovering a timelineTiming errors or miscommunications can cause serious problems in new deals and partnerships. Discussing a timeline up front can also help you identify when the prospect might be willing to buy and what commitment they’re looking for from you and your team. By determining your prospect’s ideal timeline, you can then get a better idea of where they are in the buyer’s journey. The more you know about when they’re looking to buy, the more specific content you can provide them with. Here are a few questions you should ask to learn more about your prospect’s purchasing timeline. 16. When do you hope to get started?There is a big difference between starting in a week and starting in three months. However, 63% of people requesting information about your business will take at least three months to buy. Another 20% will take more than twelve months. If you know that your lead isn’t looking to buy for another year, you can focus your nurturing efforts further down the line. However, if they’re looking to get started immediately, you’ll need to be more aggressive about the way you promote. Although it may not be exact, ask your prospect for a timeframe of when they’re looking to get started. 17. What is the timeline for your goals?Talking about goals is great, but it’s more important to know when they’re hoping to accomplish those goals by. Getting a timeline for when they’d like to achieve their priorities can help you better understand what kind of commitment they’re looking for. If they need to accomplish their goals within just a few weeks, they may be looking to hire a committed team immediately. On the other hand, if they have no idea when they’d like to accomplish their goals, they may need some more nurturing and education. 18. Do you have any outside factors influencing your timeline?Your leads may have an idea of when they’d like to get started or complete their goals by. However, it isn’t always in their control. Sometimes, outside factors constrain our leads. External due dates and other factors can make your job more complicated. At times, they can influence when a deal can actually go through. They can also add some restriction about when a prospect is really ready to make a purchase. Whether they have a contract they need to see through or they have a deadline they’re scrambling to meet, you’ll want to ask if there are any outside factors that will influence the timeline. 19. What could stop us from working together?Unfortunately, lots of things can make a deal fall through. In fact, the average lead-to-deal conversion rate for B2B sales is only 0.08%. Maybe your lead found a better deal elsewhere or they decided that they didn’t need your product or services after all. Regardless, discuss what potential events could prevent you from working together. Head sales experts like Geoffrey James use this type of “reverse selling” trick. In an article that Inc. published, Geoffrey sites “The Reverse Close” as one of his five key ways to close a deal. Once you know what might inhibit a deal, you can find solutions to ensure that the sale goes through. 20. How soon do you want to see results?Knowing what kind of turnaround your prospect is expecting can help you better understand when they may be willing to make a commitment. If they want to see results in just a few weeks, you’ll want to get started right away. However, if they have no idea when they’d like to start their progress, they’re probably not yet ready to make a purchase. Establishing future successIt’s always more efficient to gain repeat customers than it is to constantly connect with new prospects. This is why you should always plant the seed of a long-term relationship when you’re still in the nurturing process. Letting your sales prospects know how you can help them through growth and changes can help you secure long-term relationships with them. Here are a few questions you should ask to help establish a future relationship. 21. What hurdles might we run into down the road?It’s impossible to know exactly what hurdles will show up when you’re working with a new client or customer. However, determining what they could be can help you plan ahead. Discuss which hurdles might arise and what solutions they may need. 22. How do you measure success?Small business owners are becoming increasingly confident in their success. However, success can mean different things to different people. Some simply see success in dollar signs while others focus on the number of happy customers who keep coming back for more. Knowing how your sales prospect defines success can help you determine what will keep your customer happy and what they’re ultimately looking for from you. 23. What are your long-term goals?Chances are, you’ve already discussed some goals at this point. However, you really want to dig deep to find out what long-term goals the individual or company is hoping to achieve. Ask what they’re looking to accomplish further down the road – even if those dreams are too far out of reach at this time. 24. How do you see your needs changing as you grow?Your sales leads are looking for a solution for now. But if you can also provide a solution for the future, you can help them achieve growth with a smoother progression. Helping them understand how their needs may change as they grow – and how you can be there to help them solve new problems or meet new goals – can help set you up for a long-term partnership. 25. Where do you see this relationship going moving forward?Find out early if they’re only looking for a short-term deal. Are they just looking for someone to help with their current goals, or do they want a long-term partner who can help them overcome future hurdles? For PJ Pereira of Pereria & O’Dell, a willingness to collaborate is one of the most important factors when choosing a new agency to work with. Showing your prospects that you’re thinking about how you can keep the relationship going as they grow might encourage them to work with you over a competitor. ConclusionQuit playing the guessing game when it comes to connecting with sales prospects. If you want to stop missing out on high-quality leads, stop assuming that you know when they’re ready to make a purchase. Instead, let them tell you when they’re ready – even if they don’t realize they’re doing it. By asking these 25 questions, you can get a better idea of who your prospect is, what they’re looking for, and how you can help them. What questions do you like to ask your sales prospects? The post 25 Sales Questions to Qualify Your Leads Faster appeared first on Neil Patel. SEO via Neil Patel https://neilpatel.com June 26, 2018 at 05:06AM
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TF-IDF: Advanced On-Page Optimization https://ift.tt/2K8mDlY Google's algorithm has dramatically evolved over the years. In 2013, the Google Hummingbird update transformed Google's ability to provide the most relevant results by interpreting the searcher's intent rather than relying on a specific keyword. For searchers, this meant Google turned into a knowledge assistant, helping to close knowledge gaps that would have made it difficult for the searcher to find a relevant search result. For example, Google was now able to recognize the intent of a query for "president of Canada" and return information on Canada's prime minister. For SEO's this meant no longer trying to account for every synonym or keyword variation and stuffing them onto a page. It also sparked a call (once again) for focusing on creating high-quality, relevant content. While creating quality content is the goal, understanding how Google identifies quality content is crucial to staying competitive as Google's SERPs continue to evolve. Tying together synonyms and similar phrases were the beginning of a smarter Google algorithm, but now Google can tie together related concepts to understand which content provides the greatest breadth and calculate how often those concepts appear on a page to identify which piece provides the most significant depth. This in-depth content analysis is called term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) analysis. What is TF-IDF?TF-IDF is Google's way of determining the quality of a piece of content based on an established expectation of what an in-depth piece of content contains.
In a previous article about TF-IDF, A.J. Ghergich tells us "The overall goal of TF-IDF is to statistically measure how important a word is in a collection of documents". For example, if you are a small business owner wanting to learn how to use SEO to drive more traffic to your website, there are several topics that a complete SEO guide would cover including:
Other topics that would also be relevant but would likely appear less frequently than those on the list above include:
When evaluating a piece of content, the Google algorithm would calculate how often each of the above terms appears on all of the content currently associated with "SEO guide" in comparison to all of the other terms. This data is then used as a baseline "score" that any one piece of content can be scored against. When to Use TF-IDF AnalysisSEO's and content creators can use TF-IDF to identify content gaps in their current content based on the content currently ranking in the top 10 search results. It can also be used when creating new content so that content ranks higher, faster. However, marketers also have limited time, so which content pieces should you focus on first to get the most benefit? 1. High Potential Content Stuck on the 2nd PageStart by identifying content that has been live on your site for a while but is struggling to break the first page. If that content has already been optimized for technical SEO considerations and has some authority going to it, it likely would benefit from further content optimization. 2. Content Slowly Losing Traffic (and Rankings) Over the Past YearWhenever I see a site that has slowly dropped from the top of the first page to the bottom of the first page, it's typically due to increasing competition or Google's algorithm changing which content is most relevant to that SERP. A quick way to check this is to pull up a screenshot of the SERP from a year ago using a tool like SpyFu and comparing it to the current SERP. In either case, revisiting your content to ensure that it still relevant and the most relevant helps you recover and maintain those rankings. 3. Product Pages Struggling to RankWhile it is more common for top-of-funnel content to benefit from TF-IDF, if your product pages are struggling to rank for your money terms, critical content is likely missing from that page. How to Complete TF-IDF AnalysisCollecting the data necessary for TF-IDF is relatively easy. I start by pulling the top 10 results for my target keyword and putting them in Screaming Frog to get an average word count. This number helps me determine whether I'm going to need to add large sections of content to my page or if I'm covering too much of the wrong subject. I then run the analysis with a TF-IDF tool. There are several available including Ryte and Link Assistant. Ryte (offers free accounts) compares a live URL to the top 10 results and provides a text editor that provides optimization recommendations as you are creating new content. Ryte provides you with a list of the most important keywords and scores your website based on that list.
How to Optimize With the User in MindThe tricky part comes next. How do you take this list of terms and add them to your content, so the content is more useful to the user? 1. Edit the ListStart by using common sense to narrow down your list. In the analysis above, SquareSpace shows up as a relevant keyword. Competitors who use their brand name frequently throughout their site show up in these analyses. Unless Google is looking for a product or vendor comparison, mentioning competitors will typically not help your content to be more relevant. 2. Identify Missing SubjectsMany SEO's see a list of TF-IDF terms and immediately go back to their keyword density days. While adding variations of a keyword to copy can still be valuable, the goal of TF-IDF isn't merely to stuff each word into the copy somewhere a couple of times. Instead, TF-IDF should help you identify missing subjects that should be in your document, which could be as small as providing sizing on a product page or as big as adding a paragraph or two to a blog post that makes the piece more comprehensive. Reviewing how competitors are using your missing terms helps you identify the best way to go about optimizing your content. Start by pulling up the top 10 pages for your target keyword and search for the TF-IDF term within the competitors' content. Identify patterns of content that your competitors have that you don't. Ryte also identifies which page uses the TF-IDF term the most, so you can click directly to that competitor's page.
3. Adapt Format if NecessaryChanging the design and layout of a website takes time and resources that aren't always available or necessarily worth it for every SEO update. However, if you've experimented with several similar pages and found that changing the overall content is useful, updating the design to match creates a much better user experience and helps you optimize additional content in the future. When to update your design:
Once you have identified a page that needs to be updated, remember the following best practices:
An ExampleDoes this stuff work and how will I know if it does? Great questions! Last year, Lucidpress created this brand management software page to promote its new enterprise features. While the page was optimized, crawl-able and relevant, it was struggling to rank months later. We used Ryte to pull a TF-IDF analysis:
In the chart, the higher the orange bar is, the more relevant the keyword is. As you can see, digital assets are considered nearly as relevant as brand assets in this SERP. From here, we needed to determine what topic other pages were including that ours wasn't. To do this, go to the SERP for your original keyword and review how your competitors use that term. A look at the title tags provided the first clue:
Digital asset management and brand asset management are technically two different product categories, but they tend to get used interchangeably, and the same sites rank for both terms. (See Brandfolder above). Lucidpress currently does not have all of the features of a digital asset management solution, but there is much overlap, so we added the topic by addressing that overlap:
The chart below shows the resulting keyword ranking increase. Before the content updates, the page either didn't rank (where the line drops off suddenly) or averaged a ranking of #50. After the content updates, the page ranks consistently around position #25.
Our niche, long-tail keywords were ranking at the bottom of the second page. Since making updates, those rankings have moved to the first page.
Remember, the goal of TF-IDF is to help you approach content quality in the same way that a machine (Google) does, but the ultimate goal of both Google and yourself is to create the best piece of content for the user. Questions? Comment below, and good luck! SEO via SEMrush blog https://ift.tt/1K8Zzbp June 26, 2018 at 03:28AM
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SEO & Quality Assurance: Getting Serious About SEO QA Testing by @therealseoradar https://ift.tt/2MZ5etB This is a sponsored post written by SEORadar. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Quality Assurance (QA) Testing for SEO is a huge challenge! Critical problems can (and do) slip through the QA process, particularly in large organizations. In this article, I will review how you can use SEORadar to automate the process of testing a staging environment for changes that can damage SEO. Each Website Update Brings RiskYou have product managers, engineers, designers, and content writers all making changes that can affect SEO. The number of touchpoints that can affect SEO is huge and the more hands in the mix, the greater the chance that something can go wrong. I used to run SEO for Trulia, at the time the second largest real estate site in the U.S. and in the midst of a brutal battle with the number one! Our traffic was dominated by SEO and as a public company, the pressure to meet traffic goals was intense. All in-house SEOs face that same intense pressure. One morning I received an email from the CEO. He was definitely SEO savvy and was checking out some HTML. Why was it that our most important phrase on the most important page template was not an H1? I assumed he was not reading the HTML correctly. I pulled up the source code and – to my horror – the H1 had been removed. My CEO had detected a problem that had slipped by our QA process as well as me! I had some serious explaining to do! Turns out there had been a minor update to the site the day before and as result, the H1 indeed disappeared. How did this happen? Our site was massive, with nearly 90 million indexed URLs and more than 30-page templates with many variations of each. When it comes to testing an update, the numbers are daunting. Consider a typical large dynamic site:
Is it any wonder the industry is littered with stories of SEO initiatives getting deployed live and traffic tanking? In our case, a quick page update was made and quickly deployed live. The H1 change was simply missed. Not good! Google is now incredibly fast when it comes to crawling and indexing changes. Even when using a product like SEORadar to monitor production and detect issues, in a matter of days, the damage can be done. While getting ready to prepare a fix, the issues are propagating across Google’s index. It is critical to catch problems before they go live! SEO Staging Testing: Verifying ChangesBefore giving the OK for a production update, I want to know how the key on-page elements changed! The variety of items to review for each page include:
If the mobile site is separate or adaptive, then all this testing must be replicated there as well. Essentially the work is double! Back in my days at Trulia, verifying SEO elements was largely a manual task. For a fast-moving startup with multiple releases a week, the risk of missing something was always present. Automated SEO Testing to the RescueAn automated SEO QA testing platform is included in SEORadar. The laborious, time-consuming, and stressful task of validating a pre-release version of website update now is simplified with a straightforward report that identifies any issues at a glance. All you need to do is pull up a report that summarizes all the changes between staging and production. Let’s take a look at the website Ifly.com, which uses SEORadar to test staging prior to a production update. This is the result of the staging vs. production audit: No need to parse and compare HTML elements, it’s been done automatically across a controlled set of targeted URLs. In this case, there are several things that need to be addressed and other things that need to be reviewed before giving the OK to update production. Let’s zoom in a bit and take a look at the critical alerts: Everything here needs attention. For instance:
We can bring up the details of the alert for specific URLs. For instance, let check those missing canonical tags: In this case, there is clearly an issue as the self-referring canonical tag was deleted. If you decide you want the canonical back, you can update the status to “pending” and forward the alert to the appropriate engineer. Detailed Source Code DiffYou may want to drill into the source code to see all the page changes. Here are some detailed alerts that showed up on a staging audit on our own site (seoradar.com): Most of the alerts here are pretty obvious, but a couple need further explanation:
We can pull up a diff on a URL with the alert and see everything that changed on the page. There are several types of diffs you can run. Here is a section of the structured diff report for the URL that created several of those alerts: There are definitely some things here I would not let get deployed!
If you want to do a full HTML diff you can see that too. Here you can see all changes! There is also a text view that shows content changes only. SEORadar Access to StagingIf your staging or test site is not available on the Internet, there are a variety of ways to make the audit work:
Post DeploymentOnce staging is in a state to get deployed to production, you still need to verify the state of production. Even if staging was perfect, things can still go wrong. Run a SEORadar diff audit on production which should match your staging audit. However, sometimes production issues may arise so you should not skip this step. SummarySEO testing is a difficult and daunting task. Complexity is increasing all the time with new technologies like AMP, JS frameworks, Progressive Web Apps, and Google’s new mobile index. With so many hands touching a website, every new update creates risk. An SEO-specific staging testing solution like SEORadar will reduce risk and anxiety, and protect traffic and revenue. Contact us to set up a demo! Image Credits Featured Image: Image by SEORadar. Used with permission. SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh June 26, 2018 at 12:12AM
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How to Rock MozCon 2018 Like the Marketing Superhero You Are https://ift.tt/2Ir35TY Posted by FeliciaCrawford MozCon is just around the corner, meaning it’s time to share one of our absolute favorite posts of the year: the semi-official MozCon Guide to Seattle! For those of you following the yellow brick road of I-5 into the heart of the Emerald City to spend three days absorbing all the SEO insight you can hold, this should help you plan both how you spend your time at the conference and outside of it. For those watching on the sidelines, scroll along and you’ll find a treasure trove of fun Seattle ideas and resources for future cons or trips you might make to this fair city by the sea. And if you’ve been waffling on whether or not to take the plunge (to attend the conference — I wouldn’t recommend plunging into the Puget Sound, it’s quite cold), there may still be time: We’re now over 99% sold out, so act fast if you’ve got your heart set on MozCon 2018! Official MozCon activities:We know you’re here for a conference, but that’s only part of your day. After you’ve stuffed every inch of space in your brain with cutting-edge SEO insights, you’re going to want to give yourself a break — and that’s exactly why we’ve put together an assortment of events, activities, suggestions, and Seattle insider pro tips for how to fill your time outside of MozCon. The MozCon kickoff party!With day one behind you, we’re guessing you’ll be some mix of energized, inspired, and ready to relax just a bit. Celebrate the first day of MozCon at our Monday night kickoff party with a night of networking, custom cocktails, and good music at beautiful Block 41 in Belltown. Meet with fellow marketers and the Mozzers that keep your SEO software shiny while you unwind after your first full day of conferencing. It’s our privilege and delight to bring our community together on this special night. Our famously fun MozCon BashThere ain’t no party like a MozCon party! We invite all MozCon attendees and Mozzers to join us on Wednesday night at the Garage Billiards in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. From karaoke to photobooth, from billiards to shuffleboard, and peppered liberally with snacks and libations, the Wednesday Night MozCon Bash is designed to celebrate the completion of three days of jam-packed learning. This is the industry party of the year — you won’t want to miss it! Birds of a Feather lunch tablesIn between bites of the most delicious lunch you’ll find in the conference circuit, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with your fellow community members around the professional topics that matter most to you. Each day there will be seven-plus tables with different topics and facilitators; find one with a sign noting the topic and join the conversation to share advice, learn new tips and tricks, and discover new friends with similar interests. Monday, July 9th
Tuesday, July 10th
Wednesday, July 11th
The delight is in the detailsMozCon is literally brimming with things to do and ways to support our attendees when they need it. Aside from our hosted events and three days’ worth of talks, we’ve got things to fill in the cracks and make sure your MozCon experience is everything you’ve ever wanted from a conference. Photobooth with Roger: Admit it — you see that cute, googly-eyed robot face and you just want to hug it forever. At MozCon, you can do just that — and memorialize the moment with a picture at the photobooth! Roger’s a busy bot, but his photobooth schedule will be posted so you can plan your hugs accordingly. Ping pong play sesh: Don your sweat bands and knee-high socks and keep your paddle arm limber! During breaks, we’ll have ping pong tables available to burn some excess energy and invite a little casual competition. The world map of MozCon: Ever play pin the tail on the donkey? Well, this is sort of like that, but the donkey is a world map and (thankfully) there’s no blindfold. You’ll place a pin from wherever in the world you traveled from. It’s amazing to see how far some folks come for the conference! Local snacks galore: Starbucks, Piroshky Piroshky, Ellenos Yogurt, and Top Pot Donuts will happily make themselves acquainted with your tastebuds! Carefully chosen from local Seattle businesses, our snacks will definitely please your local taste pallet and, if past feedback is to be believed, possibly tempt you to move here. Stay charged: Pining for power? Panicking at that battery level of 15% at 10am? Find our charging sofas to fuel up your mobile device. MozCon is for everyoneWe want marketers of all stripes to feel comfortable and supported at our conference. Being “for everyone” means we’re working hard to make MozCon more accessible in many different ways. The Washington State Convention Center is fully ADA compliant, as are our other networking event venues. But it’s important for us to get even better, and we welcome your feedback and ideas. Here are a few of the ways we’ve worked to make MozCon a welcoming event for everyone:
Bespoke city exploration — Get to know Seattle!In years past, Tuesday nights were reserved for our MozCon Ignite event, where brave folks from myriad backgrounds would share stories in lighting-fast Ignite-style talks of five minutes each — the only rule being it can’t be about marketing! While MozCon Ignite has always been a much-loved and highly anticipated event, we’ve also listened closely to your feedback about wanting more time to network on your own, plan client dinners, go on outings with your team, and in general just catch your breath — without missing a thing. That’s why this year, we’re folding Ignite into the official MozCon schedule so everyone can benefit from the tales shared and enjoy a fun five-minute break between SEO talks. Wondering about what topics will be covered at Ignite this year?:
We’re opening up Tuesday night as your chance to explore the Emerald City. We’ll have a travel team onsite at the conference on Tuesday to help you and your friends plan an exciting Seattle adventure. Perhaps you’ve met a fantastic group of like-minded folks at a Birds of a Feather lunch table and would love to talk featured snippets over fresh fish n’ chips at the Pike Place Market. Maybe you’ve always wanted to catch the view at the top of the Space Needle (recently renovated and reopened to provide even better views!). Or perhaps a quiet sunset picnic overlooking the water at Gasworks Park seems like the perfect way to relax after a long day of learning and networking. Regardless of whatever floats your boat, we encourage you to plan local meetups, invite your newfound and long-standing friends, and forge a few irreplaceable Seattle memories. Wondering what there is to do, drink, eat, and see in Seattle?Well, who better to ask than us Seattleites? Using tons of real suggestions from real Mozzers, we’ve put together a Google Map you can use to guide your exploration outside the confines of the event venue — check it out below! Seattle’s got more to offer than we can name — get out there and discover the renowned Emerald City quirks and quaintness we’re famous for! Travel options:Seattle’s got a pretty solid transit system that can get you where you need to go, whether you’re traveling by bus or train. The city also has its share of rideshare services, as well as taxis, bikes, ferries, and water taxis, depending on where you're headed. Public transportation
Rideshares and taxis
Are you ready to rock MozCon?!If you’re already MozCon-bound come this July, make sure to download the app (must be on mobile) and join our Facebook group to maximize your networking opportunities, get to know fellow attendees, and stay up-to-date on conference news and activities. If you’re thinking about grabbing a ticket last-minute, we still have a few left: And whether you’re going to be large, in charge, and live at the conference or just following along at home and eagerly waiting the video release, follow along with the #MozCon hashtag on Twitter to indulge in the juicy tidbits and takeaways attendees will undoubtedly share. 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! SEO via SEOmoz Blog https://moz.com/blog June 25, 2018 at 06:49PM
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SearchCap: Bing Ads app updated, Google Search Console releases URL tool & more https://ift.tt/2ttAlFF SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc June 25, 2018 at 03:15PM Daily Search Forum Recap: June 25, 2018 https://ift.tt/2lynYDB Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web. Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 June 25, 2018 at 03:00PM
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Parsing pages: Is it better to update or remove thin content? https://ift.tt/2Kks6ly Some people look at the changes Google makes to its algorithm as adding new rules and penalties, but most of the time, the company is just reshaping the existing order. The Panda algorithm of 2011 introduced a new structure to Google’s ranking factors and was implemented to keep poor-quality content from ranking well. Panda had a seismic effect on our industry and changed how the search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) industries approach content creation. Under the new algorithm, not only did thin content devalue a web page’s value, but it also devalued the quality of your domain as a whole. In general, parsing pages should be taken case by case to evaluate different strategies that would fully utilize the value of each individual page. There are three basic strategies for dealing with thin content: You can update or redirect it or use a noindex tag on the web page you don’t want in the search index. There are advantages to each strategy, although your decision should depend on the purpose and equity of the content itself. Ask Google engineers whether it’s better to keep thin content, update it or remove it entirely and you’ll receive a couple of different answers. Here is Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller saying to noindex thin content: VIDEO Considerations for updating contentDepending on the size of your site or blog, you may have hundreds of thin or outdated posts that need to be optimized. We define thin and outdated content as:
Not all people consider thin or outdated content to be “bad.” There are a lot of situations where it can be adding value to a website. For example, if someone had an old blog post titled “Best practices for web design” that is still a significant source of backlinks and traffic, they may not want to change the post for fear of losing the traffic. The key question here is “How old?” If that post was written in 2012, there is a high likelihood the pages currently serve no purpose to the end user; too much has changed in the web design community. In this case, consulting the data is important, such as traffic flow, backlinks and keyword rank, but over time, poor user signals will erode the value of this web page in Google’s eyes. No one looking for web design information today is interested in content from 2012. When deciding between removing or updating existing content, ask yourself these questions:
In highly technical verticals, such as the medical, accounting or legal field, content needs to be updated regularly to comply with current regulations. With all this in mind, let’s look at which situations may require removing or updating thin content on your site. Redirecting or removing contentThere are many reasons you would consider removing content altogether, such as if it was duplicated or user-generated. But there are additional reasons to consider removing content before replacing it:
Aside from this, you may consider updating or replacing content that doesn’t provide value for your customers and has a high bounce rate. I do not recommend inserting a 404 gateway on a web page with any keyword ranking and would instead recommend a 301 redirect to a relevant web page to retain its equity. For all duplicate or outdated web pages, inserting a noindex tag is a good way to prevent disrupting your internal navigation, while also removing it from search results. If a web page still receives some positive metrics, but it ultimately doesn’t conform to your current product mix or industry trends, consider placing a 301 redirect to a relevant source that would add value. This strategy should be followed for outdated product pages, as well as outdated legal pages. Instance to update contentOn the other hand, there are probably some blog posts and old pieces of content that could still add value to your SEO if properly optimized. This presents many advantages over creating a new piece of content:
Even scheduling your content management system (CMS) to update your posts to make them appear fresher in search results could increase keyword rankings. You could also consider updating all headlines, meta descriptions and available snippets to increase the post’s click-through rate (CTR) and relevance to specific keywords. Consider repurposing old content and updating it with multimedia content. Consider creating an infographic or video to support a piece of thin content and share over the social networks and through your email channels. A smart strategy is to update and rewrite content when you can. As an investment, you don’t want to remove web pages you took the time to create but if it makes sense and adds to your brand, I would do it. Audit content regularlyParsing pages is a difficult task. One bad 301 or 302 redirect could present grave problems for your user experience (UX) and internal navigation. To resolve issues of content becoming outdated, it’s important to schedule an annual content audit that goes through each web page to evaluate performance and its relevance to your current website focus. Use tools like Screaming Frog and Moz to help you go page by page to analyze where thin and underperforming content exists. Regular audits could be a first step in finding new opportunities to reach your customers and provide more value. Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorKristopher Jones is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and best-selling author of "SEO Visual Blueprint" by Wiley (2008, 2010, 2013). Kris was the founder and former CEO of digital marketing and affiliate agency Pepperjam (sold to eBay) and has since founded multiple successful businesses, including ReferLocal.com, APPEK Mobile Apps, French Girls App, and LSEO.com, where he serves as CEO. Most recently, Kris appeared on Apple's first TV Show, "Planet of the Apps," where he and his business partner, comedian / actor Damon Wayans, Jr., secured $1.5 million for an on-demand LIVE entertainment booking app called Special Guest. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc June 25, 2018 at 02:38PM |
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