Google's 20th Birthday Logo Remembers Popular Searches https://ift.tt/2R14mqw Tomorrow, September 27th is Google's official 20th birthday or anniversary. To celebrate the day, Google has a special Google logo, Doodle, remembering the day they launched with a video of someone searching on the original Google.com. It also takes you through some of the more popular searches throughout the past 20 years. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 September 26, 2018 at 07:30AM
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Google Images Algorithm Now Uses Page Authority & Image Placement On A Page https://ift.tt/2QZeYGc Google said on Monday that they have updated their image search algorithm to use the authority of a web page as a more important factor. They also said they are looking at prioritizing images from fresher content and Google looks at the placement of the image on the page. So an image that is central to the page, and higher up on the page is valued more to Google. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 September 26, 2018 at 07:14AM
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Google Topic Layer To Knowledge Graph, Enabling Dynamic Categorization & More https://ift.tt/2zvzMhN As part of the blitz of new announcements from Google this past Monday, Google also introduced what they call the Topic Layer in the Knowledge Graph. With that, they can also dynamically categorize knowledge panels based on sub-categories and topics to better provide search answers to their users. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 September 26, 2018 at 06:59AM Google Related Activity & Collections In Search https://ift.tt/2Q7DOT2 Earlier this month we saw Google testing what we called relevant history, but now Google is calling it related activity cards. In short, Google announced Monday a new card that shows past searches related to your current search. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 September 26, 2018 at 06:50AM
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Google Stops Showing Sexual Assault Attorney Local Listings https://ift.tt/2xCci9u Google may have stopped showing listings for searches for Sexual Assault Attorney in Google, both Google Maps and web search. The local panel does not seem to come up very often anymore and/or some listings have been recently removed. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 September 26, 2018 at 06:31AM Google Double URL In A Single Snippet https://ift.tt/2OTgsAf I've never seen this before, Google showing a double URL in a single search result snippet. In fact, I was able to reproduce this by turning off safe search and trying the query multiple ways. This was spotted by @dudesweet on Twitter. SEO via Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/1sYxUD0 September 26, 2018 at 06:14AM
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How to create a style guide for your SEO content writers https://ift.tt/2NBc6kS “How do I find good writers?” “My writers are inconsistent.” “How do I know if a writer ‘gets’ SEO?” As someone who’s deeply immersed in the world of search engine-optimized (SEO) content writing, I hear these statements quite a bit. What I find is that there seems to be a gap between the data-focused SEO pros and the creative copywriters they tend to hire. That is, it’s hard to find that sweet spot where a writer both understands SEO and how to write in a way that sells. It’s essential that you have both pieces of the puzzle. Yet, SEO agencies and consultants often struggle to:
So, what’s the secret to getting your web page copy just right? It all comes down to the magic of a well-organized, descriptive and mission-focused style guide or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). In this article, I give my “10 Essentials” for creating an effective style guide, as well as an example template that you can use for your own business. What is a style guide vs. an SOP?I often use “style guide” and “SOP” interchangeably, because what you really want to create for your writers is an all-encompassing guide on how to write SEO-friendly content for your site or your clients’ sites. Many people separate these two, but that doesn’t have to be the case. In fact, I recommend being as concise as possible and not overwhelming your writers with too much “fluff.” They often don’t need to know all of the ins and outs of your entire brand (or robust SEO strategy, for that matter). So, what is this document, really? An SOP (aka Standard Operating Procedure) is a set of instructions on how to do something. This can be used for SEO, writing, project management, onboarding clients or what-have-you. In our case, an SOP outlines how you want your writers to write you content. I also tack on the style guide because there is a creative element to writing (something that other types of tasks often lack). Writers need to have an idea of what the brand is about, what kind of language should be used, who the target audience is and more. That’s why including a style guide is an essential add-on to your typical SOP. Why do you need a style guide for your content writers?One of the biggest complaints I hear from SEO agencies and consultants is that they struggle to find consistent writers. Additionally, they feel that their writers don’t really understand SEO. Well, I’ve got some news you may not want to hear: part of the reason your writers are inconsistent and don’t get SEO is your fault. Sorry. But let’s be honest — the typical SEO/writer engagement goes something like this:
Not ideal. There is a crucial step missing here, and that’s instruction. Your writers can’t (and shouldn’t have to) read your mind. If you give them limited information and direction, they are left to their own devices. The end result may be amazing, or it may be way off from what you expected. You can’t afford to have that kind of hit-or-miss engagement in your business. It is your responsibility to outline your expectations, brand details, procedure, SEO strategy and desired writing format. This gives your writers the information they need to do the job right the first, second, third, fourth time… and so on. By giving them a style guide, you set them up for success. You also help prevent the headache of receiving inconsistent work that you then have to edit on your own, which can be a huge time and money suck. If you are struggling with getting consistent content from your writers or don’t know how to teach them SEO, then creating a style guide may be the best solution for you. What information do you need to create a writing style guide?Recently, I have done a couple of Facebook Live tutorials on what matters in SEO content writing, and I have come to recognize a common theme in the SEO space: Many SEO agencies haven’t done the front-loaded work of market research to adequately understand their audience or the audiences of their clients. This means that, aside from the typical SEO data, they are essentially going in blind when it comes to writing content that sells. And we all know that writing content that is SEO-friendly is only one part of the equation. Your content also needs to be able to drive conversions. This realization was the main reason I decided to write this article. Many SEO pros struggle to write conversion-optimized content themselves, or to find writers who can write it for them. The information in a style guide should help you zero in on a successful approach. So, I have outlined what you need to know before you can create a writing style guide. The ‘10 Essential’ questions you need to answer before creating a style guide
Having answers to these questions for your own brand and every client you work with will both help you understand the brand better and communicate it with the people you work with, particularly writers. If you don’t know these essentials, it’s likely that your content will fall flat. SEO and competitor analysis is not enough to go on when it comes to cultivating a message that truly resonates with the focus audience. In other words, it just won’t sell. Note: If you are struggling to answer these questions, I suggest looking into the concept of the Ideal Client Avatar (ICA) or Persona. Developing these descriptions will help you paint a clear picture of what the brand’s audience looks like, what they want and need and what message relates to them best. Applying the ‘10 Essentials’ to your writing style guideWith this information lined out and organized, you will be ready to start creating a style guide that you and your writers can use to write content that’s made to sell. A good writer will know how to incorporate these elements into their writing. If they don’t, it may be time to find someone else. Most writers will be able to pick up on the basics of SEO (what will be outlined in the next section), but it is much harder to teach the psychology behind persuasive copywriting. That’s why, when looking for writers, you should focus on their ability to cultivate an on-brand message instead of their knowledge of SEO. Creating an SOP for SEO content writingThe next element that should be included in your style guide is how to structure content to be SEO-friendly. If you are an SEO expert yourself, your strategy may be different from mine or that of other SEO agencies. That’s OK. What matters here is that you are creating a document that effectively outlines how you want your writers to organize their content. The easiest way to do this is with a template. While I don’t recommend adhering strictly to a template, this can be a good starting point for writers who have little to no knowledge of SEO. Then, this template can be altered down the road, once your writers come to understand the basics and even advanced strategies of SEO content writing. What to include on your SEO writing template (SOP)
What you include in your SEO writing template will depend on the purpose of the post or page, the structure of the site and your SEO strategy. Here, I try to be as concise and possible, knowing that my writers may not understand SEO jargon or the purpose behind some of the formatting. An overwhelmed writer is not a happy writer. This may be a learning curve for them, so be patient. However, you can rest easy knowing that you will reduce the need for hours of editing. Minor edits are to be expected. Regular, major edits may reveal that you need to hire someone else. Outlining writer and client expectationsOne last thing that I like to do in creating a style guide is to clearly outline the writer and client expectations. Oftentimes, people do this in the contract, but it can be helpful to add it to the style guide. It helps ensure that everyone is following through on their responsibilities and that the process goes off without a hitch. For example, if the expectation is that you or the client will be including the focus keywords, you may want to note this on the document. If, however, the writer is expected to do their own keyword and SEO research, this should be on the style guide as well. Again, the focus here should be on providing essential information to help your writer do their job better and be consistent, without overwhelming them with the ins and outs of your advanced SEO knowledge. Example of a style guide for SEO content writersBelow I have included a simple outline of what I include on style guides for SEO content writers, especially when it comes to sales pages, lead generation pages and the like. Feel free to revise this based on your own approach and needs. SEO Content Style Guide for (Client)Client Name: (client name) URL: (client URL) Mission: (Client) mission is to be a resource for local contractors in (location) to outsource their digital marketing and generate high-quality leads for their business. Words:
Purpose: web page; to generate leads for (client). Audience: local contractors in (location); $10-20K per month budget; family-owned businesses. Solution: A complete outsource for local contractors that are tired of being nickel-and-dimed by other digital marketing agencies or don’t have the time/knowledge to do it themselves. Tone: Approachable, understanding, not sales-y, authentic. Style: Conversational with persuasive edge. Organization: Short, concise sentences that hook the reader; (data to prove it). Platform: Landing page for Google AdWords; local SEO traffic. Conversions: Sign-ups for free consultations with a digital marketing expert. Page format:Title: eye-catching; contains focus keyword. Meta Data:
Words: 1200-1500 words. Keywords: (include list of keywords). Keyword Implementation: Use focus keywords in H2s and throughout content where applicable; run through (SEO tool) to check for over-optimization. Internal Linking: link to (page) and (page) using (anchor text) and (anchor text), respectively. External Linking: no external links. Headings: 4 H2s and 3 H4s (maybe specify what these are and where). Organization: (include an outline of the content if you wish. Optional.) Length: 2-3 sentences per paragraph. Calls-to-action (CTA): 3 CTAs at top, middle and bottom of page; callout to “Sign up for free consultation” or “Call us today.” Other: Include bulleted list in (section) with at least 6 bullet points. Expectations:
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorJessica Foster is the Founder and lead SEO Strategist at Keys&Copy- an SEO agency with a focus on content marketing and SEO copywriting. She is also the founder of TrueToast Magazine, an online resource for and by millennial entrepreneurs. She lives in the very beautiful and very hipster Seattle, Washington. SEO via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1BDlNnc September 25, 2018 at 12:15PM
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WTF Is Thin Content? (And How Do You Fix It?) by @ronlieback https://ift.tt/2ND5q5z WTF exactly is thin content? New clients who suffer from little engagement of conversion often ask me this after my agency conducts a content audit. The short answer? The content is invaluable. It lacks quality and resolves nothing for the reader – most of it isn’t remotely relevant to a user’s intentions that initially brought them to the particular page. With thousands of $10-a-page copywriters available and content strategies that lack a long-term focus, thin content is one of the largest epidemics in modern digital marketing. Publishing thin content on your website can quickly damage your brand’s image. It can also destroy any possibility of engagement and stop users from taking any profitable action. For some – especially SMBs with smaller websites – the solution is simple. For others, such as huge ecommerce sites with hundreds of products and endless category pages, the solution is also simple – but it’s going to take much more time to implement. This piece will focus on three elements:
WTF Exactly Is Thin Content?Back in the days of keyword stuffing and cloaking, it was simple for low-value websites to rank high for competitive keyword queries in the search engines. Simply scrape content from value-driven websites and use shady link building tactics to get your content ranking higher than the original content creators. This, among other spammy SEO tactics, prompted Google to release its first Panda algorithm update in February 2011. The Panda update had one simple goal: to stop low-quality websites from ranking high in the search results. The update was built upon penalizing sloppy content practices, including duplicate content and poor quality copywriting that failed to provide a relevant solution to a user’s intended search query. Thin content provides little to no value, and typically resides on pages with:
The latter is a big one, and easy to recognize. Google describes these doorway pages as:
Any of the above incidents of thin content can cause your website’s ranking to tank. This is why it’s always smart to start with an audit of your current content – first from thinking like a reader and then moving onto some technical elements. How to Analyze & Diagnose Current ContentNow that you understand what thin content is, and what pages it mostly resides upon, it’s time to take a closer look at how to analyze a website’s current content and diagnose any issues. Get the Big PictureStart by taking a human approach:
Remember the site operator results are not in order of importance, and sometimes the SERPs look much different than they would for a search query based on a specific keyword. Now push the 80/20 principle into play so you can provide the most value to the client up front. Ask the business owner what the highest ROI pages are, and focus on them. Using Google Analytics or a third-party tool, check the highest-trafficked pages. You’ll want the focus to be on these for the beginning of any content audit. Read the ContentTake some time to read the content. Focus your attention on the quality and relevance of that particular page (not the number of words). Long content doesn’t necessarily rank better; it’s a matter, again, of quality and relevance. The best content can say something sharply in 250 words vs. a sloppily-written 2,500-word article. The above process will quickly diagnose the major issues – the ones that are basically costing the most money for the client. Address Any Duplicate Content IssuesTwo tools make this task easy: Copyscape and Screaming Frog. With Copyscape, you can enter the domain and quickly recognize any threats of duplicate content. Duplicate content issues are always an issue for websites with quality blogs. Things get much worse for news-based organizations that post hundreds of stories a month. For one of my news-based clients, which sometimes creates up to 50 posts per month, Copyscape has been the go-to tool to immediately recognize others who scrape content. I check it once a week for any scraping so I can immediately address the issue (typically through a cease and desist email to site owner). The other tool is Screaming Frog, which crawls the website and provides data for each URL, from page titles to meta descriptions to canonical elements to redirects (the free version provides 500 URLs, typically enough for SMBs). Here you can check for duplicate title tags, which sends a signal of duplicate content to the search engines. Another worthy trick with Screaming Frog is sorting by word count. Focus first on the pages with the least amount of words, and compare the word count with the performance of that page. You can reverse engineer here, and prioritize the fixes from the worst performing to the best-performing pages. Typically, the pages with the least amount of text rank the worst, but sometimes you’ll find a proverbial gem that already ranks well – beefing up the content with a strong keyword strategy can help push that page even higher – and quickly. As for pages with auto-generated content and doorway pages, do what’s needed to abolish them. If that means a total rewrite of an auto-generated page or not pointing those other domains at your main website, just do it. It will help in the long term. Also, if you have weak affiliate pages, make it a point to work with that affiliate to create stronger content, explaining that the work is best for both parties when it comes to boosting revenue. How to Fix Pages/Posts with Thin Content (Including Some Technical SEO Elements)Once you’ve diagnosed which pages have thin content, create a prioritized list based on ROI and get to work. Yes, it may be a huge task, but look at it as an opportunity to further strengthen your website’s overall SEO because you’ll be adhering to an updated strategy. How much fixing you do is a page-by-page decision, which I base on budget. If my agency finishes a content audit and recognizes and prioritizes 100 pages with thin content, I’ll work out an engagement based on that client’s budget. Sometimes this will be month-to-month, other times a one-time project. And I’d argue 90 percent of the time you’ll find some major issues where you can provide super value for the client. One client had a few pages with outstanding content – but it wasn’t using keywords properly, used no subheadings, and had zero internal links throughout the text. The other pages had about 50 words of text that seemingly was written by a toddler. Again, every situation will be unique and will need a unique strategy based on prioritization of highest ROI pages and down. Besides actual content creation, here are a few of the top tech issues that can send signals of thin content to search engines, and how to resolve them. www vs. non-www URLsThere should be only one preferred URL, which seems super basic to SEO pros – but sometimes it quickly gets overlooked. Always have the unwanted version 301 redirect to the preferred canonical version. HTTP vs. HTTPSSame as above, but also make sure all internal HTTP links are redirected to the HTTPS version. Thin Category PagesSome product-based companies have hundreds of category pages, and some may only feature a few items, which may appear like thin content to search engines. You can either chop the category itself, or noindex it. Print PagesIf the website provides print-friendly pages, this can create duplicate content due to the creation of print-friendly URLs. Make sure to block the print URLs with robots.txt or a robots meta tag. Comment PaginationThere are 172 million websites online – and 75 million of those are on WordPress, according to WhoIsHostingThis. The main problem with WordPress is it allows comment pagination, which means a new URL will be created for each new comment on the same article. Never allow comment pagination, or make sure there’s a canonical tag in place that directs to the URL of the main article. Mobile WebsiteThough this is (mostly) a thing of the past, due to (almost) everyone having a mobile-first design, some websites still have subdomain for mobile users (m.example.com), which can cause an onslaught of duplicate content issues. If this is the case, make sure the proper canonical tags are in place that point back to the desktop version. Concluding ThoughtsThin content is an epidemic. It can cause some major problems for websites, whether you have a few dozen pages or thousands of pages. Now that you know exactly what thin content is, and what to do about it, you can diagnose your issues and get to work. While expanding on those thin pages it’s also a great time to create an updated content strategy based on up-to-date keyword research. Also, make content audits part of a yearly ritual – there may be some serious problems that need to be addressed the first time around, but that will prevent any issues in the future. And with constant analyzing, you’ll be able to recognize any major thin content threats before they damage your rankings – and your website’s reputation. More SEO Resources: Subscribe to SEJGet our weekly newsletter from SEJ's Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh September 25, 2018 at 09:54AM
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Bored, Broken & Burned Out: Overcoming Challenges in Search Marketing by @bigalittlea https://ift.tt/2O7IbAg Search marketing is, by nature, a monotonous game. It’s a series of math problems. We’re working the levers that we have at our fingertips to make more people click more buttons. Its excitement comes in its power. A few small tweaks to a landing page, a few more keywords in the account, or a few lifted bids can be life-changing. Picking all the low-hanging fruit on a new account yields instant gratification. “We’ve doubled our numbers year over year,” you exclaim. The initial results are amazing! But what happens when you have to start comparing yourself to… yourself? What do you do when you’re stuck in the grind of day-in, day-out tweaks that make marginal lifts? What happens when year-over-year numbers fall? What do you when you’ve lost the spark and excitement to drive great results? I’ve been doing the same job for 12 years, and have had more than my share of ups and downs. I’ve burned myself out, developing a process blunt-force pushed onto every client I’d touched. Sometimes the processes worked, sometimes they didn’t. But they were my best practices, they have to always work, right? I’ve learned, over the years, to shift my way of thinking and to find continued satisfaction (and success) in my work. We’ll walk through three scenarios you’ll encounter in your search marketing career.
I’ll examine through the lens of SEM, but the advice should ring true for all disciplines. Bored: Your Accounts Are StagnantNobody ever made a car faster with more oil changes. I often see accounts that are flat year over year, or worse, spending more for the same results. The account manager is going through the motions. There are ad tests, bid tweaks, search query reports, and new keyword builds. There are best practices, but there’s a lack of innovation. Odds are these accounts are devoting the budget to “what’s always worked.” When an account falls stagnant, the best bet is to challenge old assumptions. Use new tools to take the same old same old to the next level. What to Do1. Challenge the adage of being in position 1.0 100% of the time for your brand terms. You’re devoting more and more money to brand each year as your CPCs creep up higher and higher – nudge bids down (not up). Find the sweet spot of efficiency and volume. You won’t lose much, trust me. 2. Bear with me here; relinquish control! Google Ads started The Smart Era because there are too many bidding levers that we can’t control. Shift budget away from exact match and towards broad match with Smart Bidding layered on. I didn’t think it’d work either, but it does. 3. Review your attribution philosophy. I don’t mean turning on Data-Driven Attribution (which, yes you should do), but rather evaluating your KPIs. Some tactics aren’t meant to drive a user to the end of the funnel on the first try. Test alternate KPIs; develop an email list or feed a remarketing audience with top of funnel tactics. 4. Add Audiences EVERYWHERE. Audiences will be a more powerful targeting tool than keywords. Imagine intent layered on broader keywords, pointing the algorithm in the right direction. Start by adding as many audiences as you can on observation mode and see what insights arise. Broken: Your Accounts Are Doing Worse Year Over YearSticking with the car metaphor – I am unreasonably excited about the premise of self-driving cars. I cannot WAIT to be on a long drive, relaxing behind the steering wheel with a good book or movie. I’ll have the opportunity to grab the wheel if things go awry, but if I don’t feel like driving, I won’t have to. That’s where a good SEM account should be today – self-driving with a steering wheel. Focused on automation, but keeping the opportunity for manual intervention. If an account is trending down year over year, odds are it’s resting on laurels of dated best practices. I realize the irony here, as I’ve long been a proponent of super ultra crazy hyper account segmentation. I teased this in the prior section, but the days of controlling everything are over. An account that’s trending down doesn’t need tweaks – it needs a new foundation. New tools for automation won’t have the same power on a structure built for control. What to Do1. Simplify your accounts. Mitigate SKAGs and SKCs except in the position of extreme competition. With the shift in exact matching behavior, SKAGs don’t work the way they used to anyway. Instead, focus on thematic ad groups. Allow algorithms to make the decisions they need to make to bid. 2. Craft campaigns based on budget and volume. Remember, automation needs data to make decisions! Your new campaigns built for automation should generate 50 conversions/month. The more data AI has, the faster it learns. 3. Don’t ignore what’s flopped before. Make sure to port any negative (or positive) terms and targeting features. Most bidding algorithms focus only on bidding, not targeting. If you know where to point the machine already, make sure to do it. 4. Give the machines as much data as possible. Take advantage of custom conversion types and data uploads to bid on business data. Place a higher value on new customers for ecommerce accounts. Port in down down-the-line sales information for lead generation. Teach the tools to optimize what you the business is after. Burned Out: You’ve Lost Your FireWarning: we ‘bout to get preachy! Search marketing is an odd industry. I’ve had a day where I thought “well, I’m done! I did all the search there is to do today.” It’s a job that doesn’t end, a job where there is no such thing as perfection. While I haven’t heard it in a few years, the word Kaizen was tantamount among agencies for years. The institutional process of constant improvement, seeking but never achieving perfection. Process improvement is crucial as I’ve outlined in previous segments. The idea of constant evolution is mentally and physically exhausting. We wind up letting our roles run our lives instead of supporting them. We bring our work home with us. We squeeze in an hours’ worth of work after the kids go to bed. We fall into the busy trap. We keep doing the work over and over and over again because that’s what we’re trained to do. We fail to adopt the economic principles at play in our work to our lives. We don’t think of why, or what the return is. We just do the work. We find our personal value in clearing our inboxes, in dropping CPA by a few percentage points. We’re never bored if we have our work, and we’re never uncomfortable. We have our dopamine security blankets in our back pockets or purses every waking hour. We glue ourselves in front of our laptop screens. We bask in the comforting glow of a line graph reaching up and to the right. Over the course of my career, I’ve learned how to value my own time and how to release the false locus of control. I’ve adopted a few core economic metrics that we all use in our daily digital marketing lives as core to my own work life. Return on investment (or Return On Effort) and the law of diminishing returns. Every hour in every day has less value than the one before it. I do the most important things first, the more monotonous last. The most monotonous tasks, I get rid of. I still do them, but manually computing 10,000 simple math problems in a given day doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. A machine should take care of any simple repetitive tasks. It’s better at them, it’s faster and it’s more precise. I devote as much time as possible to what I’m great at, that is strategy and analysis, and leave the rest to a calculator. I’ve also learned the value of re-setting myself, both on a daily/weekly/annual basis. I have a few personal rules that have eased any semblance of burnout over the years. What to Do1. No new work after hours. I’ll attend to emergencies only, or I’ll schedule projects I want to do when I have a few hours in the evening. But I won’t create new work for myself. Save that for the good hours, not the bad ones. 2. One day a week is work free. It doesn’t matter what day it is, it could be Wednesday if I plan my schedule right. But there will be one day a week where I do not work. That means no email, too. My team knows to call me if there’s an emergency; it’s more important to free my mind and body for a day and do something else. Of late, that’s been making hot sauce (reserve your samples!), but anything non-digital will do. I recommend everyone do this to remind themselves of what it feels like. 3. Take a vacation, physically and mentally. Not “I’ll be available if you need me,” but entirely offline. I left HeroConf this year to take a jaunt through Eastern Europe with my best buddy. I deleted Gmail from my phone and turned my computer on only to buy train tickets. It took planning, but the refresh week worked wonders on my psyche and motivation. SummaryWe have a rule at my agency for this: it’s required that everyone take at least one consecutive week off a year. These rules were hard for me to set in my life thanks to an addiction to constant work gratification. What I’ve learned is that freeing myself for a few hours a day makes me a better worker and marketer. I’m better able to observe the world from an outsider’s perspective. To tailor my strategy to the end user rather than the best practice. Above all, I’m able to maintain my passion for the industry no matter what gets thrown at me. I’ve adopted a phrase I heard some time ago as an adage for work/life success. Everything works better when you turn it off and back on again – even you. More Paid Search Resources: Image Credits In-post Photo: Provided by author, September 2018 Subscribe to SEJGet our weekly newsletter from SEJ's Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry! SEO via Search Engine Journal https://ift.tt/1QNKwvh September 25, 2018 at 08:48AM
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My New SEO Tool: Ubersuggest 2.0 https://ift.tt/2OT8E1L I promised you months back that I was going to release a newer, better version of Ubersuggest for free. And can you guess what? I just released it! ? Before I go into the features of the new Ubersuggest and how it works, I just want to tell you that not all of the features have been released yet. For the first release, I focused on keyword research. So let’s dive into the new Ubersuggest. Keyword OverviewThe keyword research is broken down into 3 main sections: overview, keyword ideas, and SERP analysis. The overview looks like this: The first section is a graph that breaks down the search volume over time. You can see the search volume for any keyword in any country and language over the course of the last 12 months. The graph will show you if the keyword is gaining or declining in popularity or if it has seasonality. In addition to that, it breaks down the cost per click, the SEO difficulty, and the paid difficulty. The difficulty scores are from 1 to 100. The higher the number the harder it will be to compete for that keyword. And the lower the number the easier it is to compete. Keyword IdeasThe second part of the keyword research is the ideas section. This is the section that is most similar to the prior Ubersuggest but with a few more features. You’ll see a list of keyword ideas. The keywords are pulled using both Google Suggest and AdWords recommendations. This way you can get a comprehensive list of potential keywords you may want to rank for. And similar to the overview section, you’ll also be able to see volume data for each keyword as well as cost per click (CPC), paid difficulty (PD), and SEO difficulty (SD) data. Now on the right side of the keyword ideas report you’ll see all of the sites that rank in the top 100 for that term. This is my favorite part of the keyword ideas report because you can easily see the estimated visit count based on rankings. This metric looks at whether a keyword has seasonality and if there are any rich snippets or paid listings for the term. In addition to showing you the estimated visits based on rank, you’ll also see how many social shares each URL has and its domain score. Domain score is a metric between 1 and 100. The higher the number, the more authoritative a domain is and the harder it will be to beat that site. As for the social shares, this will tell you how much people loved that particular web page. If more people are sharing it, they must have really enjoyed it. The last feature in the keywords idea report (other than the exporting to CSV feature which doesn’t need much of an explanation) is the filtering. This is where you can filter the keyword results based on any data point you want. From limiting the results to just Google Suggest or AdWords or by filtering keywords based on their popularity and competition. If there are also too many results like the screenshot above, you can exclude or include certain terms or phrases. This will help you filter the results even faster. And if you want to focus on long tail terms, just “uncheck” the “Google Ads” option and you will see all of the long tail terms. SERP AnalysisThe last section, SERP analysis, shows you a simple view of the top 100 sites that rank for any given term. I know many of you are doing keyword research in different languages and regions and you’ll be able to do that with all of the reports, including the SERP analysis. Eventually, I’ll showcase rich snippets and paid advertising data in this report. We are already taking those two things into account when we run our calculations on estimated visits. And of course, you’ll also see social share data and domain score. So, what’s next?I wish I was able to release everything at once, but development is never easy or fast. I have an amazing team… but good things just take time. A few of the features I want to release over the next few months include a traffic analyzer report, which shows how much traffic a domain receives from Google. Another feature I will release will be a report that showcases top pages for any given website and the search terms that each of those pages rank for. Once I release the traffic analyzer report, the team will be focusing on the content ideas report. The content ideas will be part of the keyword research section. When you research any keywords, you’ll be able to see the most popular articles on that subject based on search traffic and social shares (similar to Buzzsumo). ConclusionWhat do you think about the new Ubersuggest? If you haven’t used it, go check it out. And if you find any bugs, please email them to support@neilpatel.com so my team and I can work on fixing them. Like I mentioned earlier, this is a work in progress and other amazing features are already being worked on for future release. A lot of these ideas come from you guys so, please, the more feedback the better. So, what do you think about the new Ubersuggest? SEO via Neil Patel https://neilpatel.com September 25, 2018 at 07:55AM |
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