Is Video Marketing Good for SEO?
Three reasons why video should be part of your SEO strategyFor years marketers have been talking about video in marketing. The rise of video..the importance of video.. everyone should be watching out for video. And they’re right. People are watching more videos than ever, so It’s safe to say that it’s a worthy investment for just about any brand. In fact, it’s one of the most important trends for 2020. The good news is that you can produce any number of types of videos depending on your niche: Vlogs, ads, product videos, live videos, webinars, testimonials...the list goes on. It’s just a matter of figuring out which type will work best for your business, and what makes the most sense for your customers. But what about organic traffic? Can you use video marketing for SEO? While there are a few different factors to consider (your audience, the industry, the size of your business and the purpose of the videos), the short answer is YES. That’s because video is the preferred way to consume information. What is video SEO?Before I talk about why video is good for SEO, I’ll explain what video SEO is. Video SEO is the process of optimizing your video to help search engines understand what’s on your page and in your video. In doing so, the search engine can match your relevant content with a user’s query. A great way to do this is to add schema markup to your video, preferably JSON-LD. By adding this metadata, you’re telling search engines things like:
Here’s an example of VideoObject schema provided by Google A few tips:
Other SEO factors to keep in mind:
With so much video content on the internet after the YouTube boom, how can anyone get any views?! Google has released detailed instructions about how to achieve this as well as its standards when it comes to getting your video found by users. However, going into detail about this deserves a whole post of its own. For now, I’ll delve into three reasons I think you should be using video as part of your SEO strategy in 2020. Video Drives Conversion and Lowers Bounce RatesI hate to point out the obvious, but the goal for any business is conversions. Whether that’s someone signing up for a demo, purchasing a product, or subscribing to your blog. Conversions are important, they keep the bus moving. According to 2018’s video marketing stats, 84% of consumers stated that they were convinced to purchase a product after watching a product video and that including a video on your landing page, can increase conversion rates up to 80%. Not only does video drive conversion, it lowers bounce rates on pages. Wistia conducted their own study and found that on average, people spent 2.6x longer on a page with a video than one without. Featured Snippets and Video AnswersGoogle loves video. Why? Because people love video. Moovly released statistics outlining that you’re 50 times more likely to show up on the SERP if you have a video embedded on your site. This may come as no surprise after Google announced the acquisition of YouTube in 2006, but it’s still a staggering number nonetheless. And what do featured snippets and video answers contribute to? Organic traffic. Links and SharesSEO comes down to links (the good kind) and content, right? And as I mentioned before, people prefer consuming video information rather than reading it. A blog post that has a video will attract 33 times more inbound links than a page without one. And social videos are 12 times more likely to be shared than images and text COMBINED. So, quality content paired with video content is an excellent way to obtain links or get your content shared. Not all platforms are equal.Yes, Google owns YouTube. And YouTube can do wonders for your organic traffic business goals. But there are other platforms that might be better tailored to your individual needs. Keep this in mind when you’re deciding what the purpose of your videos are and where you want to host them. Youtube: This is a free platform with a built-in audience. YouTube videos also often get prime real estate on the SERPs, because well, Google owns it. Wistia: This is the best platform for video marketing. A couple benefits of Wistia is that they create the JSON-LD markup for you, and you can personalize your videos to your brand. This makes it a prime candidate when thinking about video SEO and brand awareness. Vimeo: Vimeo is a great candidate for social platforms or collaboration. You can access analytics, share and collaborate on a video with your team or client and you can give access to anyone, even those who don’t pay for vimeo. Now, this was a very quick rundown of the top three platforms and what I believe they offer to your business. However if you’d like a more thorough rundown with different options, check out this Zapier post. TakeawayVideo is in, and it’s here to stay. People are watching more video than ever. Google is increasing the amount of video answers they serve to users. If you’re thinking about jumping on this train then you should! Just remember:
via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/05/is-video-marketing-good-for-seo.html May 19, 2020 at 10:13PM
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Distilled and Brainlabs Have Combined Forces: What’s Next For Us?
In case you missed it, back in February, Distilled merged into Brainlabs. This was the first step towards a joint vision of creating the agency model of the future: no silos, no departments, just brilliant teams centered around clients, allowing us to deliver best-in-class digital marketing. Since Distilled was acquired, Hanapin Marketing & Hero Conf have also merged with Brainlabs. Now we’re a few months in, it’s time to reflect on everything that’s happened and take a quick look at where we are going.
What does this mean for SEO consulting?For our team, it is full steam ahead. We’re are still going to have offices in London, New York and Seattle, and with the addition of Hanapin in the US, we are going to be working to expand our SEO capabilities to even more offices in the US. We’re already running workshops for all the Brainlabs team and increasing their SEO knowledge and our SEO capacity. We continue to offer expert consulting to our clients, but we now have access to more resources and data than ever before. And this goes both ways, we’ve already seen existing SEO clients taking advantage of Brainlabs’ PPC power and vice versa. There is a whole host of opportunities for all our clients to now run the SEO and Paid Media (Search and Social) capabilities, all under one roof. If you want to speak to our team you can still contact us via distilled.net/contact. What does this mean for blog content?We’ve been writing here for years, and yes, we actually mean 11 years (here’s one of our early efforts looking into generic vs local TLDs)! We’ve always pushed our team to share their knowledge, findings and resources through our blog. We will continue to be publishing content here frequently for the immediate future. Over time we’ll be transitioning to the Brainlabs site (Will has already posted some thoughts), but we’ll make sure you know when we do. In the meantime, make sure that you follow us and Brainlabs in all the right places. During the merger, our @distilled accounts have now become @SearchLove. Check us out on Twitter (SearchLove and Brainlabs) and LinkedIn (SearchLove and Brainlabs). What does this mean for SearchLove conferences?In the midst of COVID-19, conferences have ground to a halt. Unfortunately, we’ve already had to postpone SearchLove San Diego, New York and London. Once we reach the new normal SearchLove will be back, bigger and better than ever before. Our team is going to be headed up by Lynsey, who has been at the front of our conferences for many years. We’ll also be sharing our knowledge with the Hero Conf team and grabbing ideas from them to make our conferences better than ever! We’ve already got new dates for SearchLove San Diego and are working on plans for our New York and London conferences. We’ll also be heading back to all three cities in 2021! What does this mean for SearchPilot?SearchPilot is our SEO A/B testing tool, formerly known as DistilledODN. It was spun out into an independent company before Distilled and SearchLove merged with Brainlabs. Our teams will continue to work closely together, as well as sharing test information and results. We’ll keep sharing these findings with you through the blog. You can keep following the SearchPilot story at searchpilot.com and by following them on Twitter and LinkedIn. To wrap up
via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/05/distilled-and-brainlabs-have-combined.html May 05, 2020 at 03:29AM
Tips for Effective SEO Project Management
Project management and SEO, what do they have to do with each other? Isn’t SEO just about some geeky technical magic that will get your site more traffic? SEO is a relatively young field, which has grown significantly in the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I know who are not very familiar with the industry, just refer to it as “that SEO thing” and how can I blame them? Therefore, project management might not be seen as a main element when thinking about SEO. In reality, whoever works in SEO will know that project management is actually a large and crucial part of our daily job. This post comprises a series of tips and suggestions for effective SEO project management, with a stronger perspective on the agency side of things, based on our long experience in the digital marketing space. Don’t miss the downloadable project kick-off checklist to help you get started on an SEO project with one of your clients! A comprehensive guide that covers a spectrum of SEO (and non-SEO) questions, which we find extremely useful when starting on a project. Let’s get to it with some simple FAQs. What is SEO Project Management?It is simply, project management that involves any SEO work. We refer to it as any day-to-day practice that involves planning, executing, monitoring, and finalising the work of our SEO team to accomplish a specific goal within a specific timeframe. Why does Project Management matter in SEO?Without project management, it would be impossible to develop a functional relationship with clients. Effective project management provides a series of invaluable benefits for your SEO team, from a stress and health perspective, to a communication and expectation management point of view. Furthermore, it creates a deeper relationship with your clients. What is the difference between SEO Account Management and Project Management?Differently from project management, SEO Account Management focuses on the overall success of a certain SEO account, rather than just a specific project. While the outcome of project management is determined by a defined target, successful account management relates to a successful relationship with the client. In reality, there is a very fine line between the two and this post covers some elements of account management as well. At the end of the day, we like to think that project management is about getting things done. What skills are needed for Project Management?It boils down to three core skills:
#1 Project management is an SEO skillThe success of an SEO strategy is not limited to your ability to execute tactics. It's also dictated by your ability to manage projects, people, clients, and external factors. As your strategies become more complex, learning how to manage a project is invaluable. A successful project manager handles expectations (internal and external), puts out fires and work to get buy-in on ideas. #2 Have a planSEO strategies can be very complicated and involve a lot of stakeholders, between team members, clients and other third parties. Here at Distilled, we do our best to evaluate what a project looks like, before getting to it: it all boils down to having a clear plan of action. This process can normally be broken down into the following components. Project KickoffThis is the initial face-to-face or call with the client. This is the meeting that “kick-starts” the project (or relationship as a whole) and aims to cover an exhaustive list of topics in order to have a much better understanding of what should be delivered and how value can be provided. Goals and expectations are discussed and often defined here, followed up by a series of emails to confirm what agreed upon. It is helpful to have a clear list of points and questions you want to cover in a kickoff meeting: I always prefer to come prepared, so I put together a list of questions that we tend to cover for all our projects. Keen to see what that looks like? Our project management template contains an extremely comprehensive list of SEO and Digital Marketing questions we normally ask during a kick-off meeting, which help us get an exhaustive picture on a project / client. Pro tip: use a collaborative document to keep track of meeting/call notes, from the very first kick-off; it will come handy when you need it to trace back what was discussed in the past. This could be internal (shared among your team only) or external (shared with the client) depending on the relationship and objectives. Regular catch-ups: internal and externalDepending on what works for you, regular catch-ups can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. The formula that works for me, as an SEO consultant, is to have a mix of monthly and weekly catch ups - this would look something like this:
This is an iterative process that allows a project to be adapted to changing demands. It would be nice to walk into a project with a complete and accurate set of requirements for a project, but that rarely ever happens. Regular catch-ups allow you to have a good understanding of the overall picture, no matter what changes or delays affect your project, so to react accordingly. #3 Use the Right Tools for the JobHaving the right tools to manage your project is key, but there is no need for a complicated system. Before providing a list of tools and suggestions, it is important to clarify something: proposing change and effective ways of working is part of our job, but ultimately it is worth considering the tools that your client is comfortable with/already uses. They will see you as an extension of their business, and it will be easier to impact change. These are some of the tools we use at Distilled to manage projects. Tracking timeWe use a custom-built internal software; however, other great tools to track time are the following: Toggl, Hour, Harvest- they all have a free version with their own limitations. Sharing documents & filesGoogle Drive is extremely effective (and free!) to do the job - most of our work is now just on the drive: from Google Docs to Sheets, its offering makes it very easy to share any piece of work with others. What are the main alternatives to Google Drive we recommend? Dropbox is an excellent tool, and extremely easy to use with its desktop application; OneDrive by Microsoft is not bad either, in case you prefer to work with the Office package. Pro tip: Due to some client limitations to access any of the major tools above, I recently came across Airtable which can work like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organise any projects you might be working on. CommunicationFor internal communications, Slack has really revolutionized the market: its highly organised structure makes internal communications so efficient that you will never want to use anything else. Forget your messy inbox, conversations in Slack happen in dedicated spaces called channels. For external communications, Google’s offering is still very powerful: Gmail & Google Hangouts constitute a great option. As for video conference tools, Zoom seems to have separated itself from the competition, even if a lot of our clients still use Skype. Should you go back to your client and propose a new communication tool? Maybe - what works for me is to normally prioritize whatever ways of working / platforms the client is more comfortable with, and then potentially suggest alternatives if there is a need / opportunity. Pro tip: We also use Slack as an external communications tool with some clients, as it has replaced emails in many ways. Project management platformI am a bit biased: Trello’s clean and simple interface is a no brainer (my colleague Chris talks about Trello in his post here). Its system of boards, lists and cards allow individuals and teams to monitor a project and collaborate in an effective manner. I like to use boards for different work areas - this could look like the below, where I separate my technical SEO projects from content, analytics or CRO tasks. There are hundreds of alternatives to Trello, I personally recommend checking out the following: Monday.com, TeamWork, ProofHub. What about when working with developers?It is part of our job to effectively communicate with devs and help them “get things done”. Jira is a major project management tool, used by a lot of our clients. Basecamp, Asana & Youtrack are some other popular software I came across over the last few years. #4 Teamwork is keyThe outcome of a project highly depends on teamwork: learning how to work successfully in a team is no joke. Every project is different, so is every team. From briefing to quality assurance, even tasks that seem simple can vary broadly depending on the people you work with. Learning how to work with your colleague determines how likely your project is to be successful. It may take a while, but leveraging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses will make the difference. Balancing talent is something every project manager should work towards. How to assess team members' strengths & weaknessesLet’s be clear: there is no magical way to get this right straight away, it takes time to develop team chemistry and assess an individual's skillsets. Some useful ways I came across over the years are the following:
Appreciate your team members’ workWe try our best to create a culture of feedback: this allows our team members to work and progress in a much peaceful environment and in a faster manner. Part of this philosophy includes being very vocal about work appreciation: taking the time to appreciate someone’s job, either privately or publicly, is something that goes a long way. A tool that comes really handy for this purpose is 15Five: it is a “continuous performance management suite that allows you to coach your employees as fast as you sprint.” Managees spend about 15 minutes a week answering a series of questions which focus on personal productivity and team-wide morale. On the other hand managers spend circa 5 minutes to go through all responses, which trigger real conversations that translate into improved comms and overall ways of working. It is a great way to evaluate weekly performance reviews and get a sense of the company’s morale. Furthermore, the tool can be integrated with Slack, using a dedicated channel for public praises: #5 Knowledge sharing within the teamI am a big advocate of knowledge sharing: both internal and external. For all my projects, I encourage my team to share findings, deliverables and news regularly in order to maximise the team potential and optimise our work. Creating a culture of knowledge sharing is something that goes beyond project management per se, but it can really help daily work and different challenges, whatever they might be. One of the most beneficial tactics we use is a centralised location for our deliverables - we take advantage of Google Drive to create folders where to store documents, broken down by topic. What about knowledge sharing with the client?That is important too! I like to update my clients with digital marketing news which I think could be relevant for the project we are working on, even if they are not strictly-SEO related. #6 Offer value to the client
As SEOs, we set high standards and KPIs for our clients - these can sometimes be quite ambitious when starting to manage a project. As a project manager, my job is to make sure the client is satisfied with our work, while doing my best to achieve the predefined SEO goals. This means sometimes I have to do things that aren’t optimal. Transparency on your projects goes a long way. Trying really hard to sell clients on things they do not need, or simply saying yes to everything they ask for might not be the right strategy when looking to deliver the optimal value on a project. #7 Know Your Tactics & ResourcesBefore you can come up with your tasks, you need to know the tactics required to meet project objectives and the resources you have available. SEO resources may include time, money, bandwidth, and talent. Having a clear plan of the resources and tactics needed will make the difference. There is often a degree of estimation, as it is hard to exactly predict what obstacles your team will come across the way. The more experience in the field, the better your skills will be when finalising your plan. Here at Distilled, we use a flexible approach for resource and tactics allocation, which can slightly vary from consultant to consultant. Personally, I like to lean on the following:
This is a screenshot of how our Google Drive folder looks like: ConclusionProject management is a vital skill for today's SEOs, despite how technical our industry might look from the outside. Hopefully, our tips can inspire a few tweaks in your daily work or at least start a conversation on some of the above subjects. Here at Distilled, we are always curious to hear other people’s opinions on the topic, so please get in touch with us on Twitter to share your views! If you interested in downloading our project kick-off Checklist, do it here Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/04/tips-for-effective-seo-project.html April 25, 2020 at 12:21AM
E-commerce: What to do when you can’t make deliveries
Covid-19 is impacting businesses across the world and a lot of industries are taking a hit. E-commerce sites are seeing a particular problem where warehouses and delivery centres are closing and deliveries can no longer be made. If that’s a problem facing you and your business at the moment, read on for guidance on how to handle your e-commerce site when you can no longer make deliveries. How to communicate Covid-19 updatesClear communication with customers is always essential. Customers will now be expecting to find Covid-19 announcements or words of reassurance on e-commerce sites. We recommend that communication is specific, in this case, to Covid-19. Here are some options: Top of page bannersThis banner should provide clear details about any delivery delays or cancellations. We recommend having this banner on every page. If that’s not possible, include it on the homepage and the basket/checkout pages. Link out to the relevant policy or FAQ page. Here’s an example from Target: Pop upsSimilar to banners, pop ups should have clear information detailing the change in deliveries. Pop ups can be more intrusive than a top of page banner, so we’d recommend including one on the homepage and the basket/checkout pages. Keep messaging detailed and optimistic. Here’s an example from M&S: Update meta descriptionsUse your site’s meta description to let existing and potential customers know how Covid-19 is impacting deliveries. This will appear within the SERP, so include information on free deliveries, delivery cancellations or if it’s “business as usual”. See this example from ASOS: Implement Covid-19 specific structured dataGoogle is now supporting Covid-19 specific structured data, which displays clear updates within the SERP. Some examples include:
See Google’s guide on Covid-19 special announcement structured data. Update your FAQ pageYour FAQ page should be updated to reflect any changes to your service. To get an idea of the kind of Covid-19 specific questions people are asking, look at:
How to keep your site functionableA website helps users fulfil their needs. Although you may be facing delivery difficulties, you can support your customers in other ways - e.g. allowing them to browse, creating shopping baskets or wishlists. Keeping your site live is essential and now is the opportunity to prepare for a post Covid-19 recovery. Here is what to focus: Ensure search engines know that your site is still live and deserves to rankMaintaining rankings will be crucial in weathering this storm. Health checks you can make include:
Find an extensive guide to tech audits here and information on common tech issues of e-commerce sites here. Keep category and product pages live and updatedCategory pages are often essential to rankability, people are often looking for a category rather than a specific product.
Here’s a guide on creating and optimising new category pages and how to write an incredible title tag. Introduce shopping baskets and wish listsAllow customers to create wish lists or build up their shopping basket without expiry. Remember, we’re thinking about how to make future sales easy for customers that may be browsing now. Example from ASOS: How to collect and use customer dataNow is a great time to understand your customers and the journey they take across your site. As mentioned earlier, customers will still be looking for products. Here are some ways to gather and optimise that data: Ensure your analytics tracking is correctly set up and accurateIf sales are down, this is also a good time to explore the customer journey and map out any areas where the journey can be optimised. For example, are you finding customers are landing on product pages instead of category pages and fail to make a purchase? Read more on how to conduct a Google Analytics audit. Encourage customers to subscribe to be notified when delivery is availableAs well as data collection, this offers the customer an extra service which they might not have previously had, helping customer relationships and therefore, retention. Any data collected through subscription can be used for retargeting during this period and post Covid-19. How to write engaging contentSo your sales have dropped and you can no longer make deliveries, how else can you engage the customer? Write some great content! Here are some ideas to get you started: Write top of funnel contentTop of funnel content can capture potential customers and lead them down the path to purchasing. This type of content is worth investing in now, as it’ll pay off in the future. Some examples include:
Check out this guide to writing content for organic traffic. Example: Lush.com (UK)Lush can no longer make deliveries. They have communicated clearly to customers that deliveries can’t be made, kept category and product pages live and are instead showcasing related content. The screenshots below are taken from their homepage. To communicate the lack of deliveries to customers, Lush have provided a banner and large announcement above the fold on the homepage. This communication is clear and links out to a more detailed article. Instead of displaying products on the homepage, Lush are now showcasing relevant content such as, a guide to looking after your hands and recommendations on “ways to cope” during Covid-19. The top nav allows customers to easily contact Lush, browse for products and access their basket. Although orders can’t be made, Lush does encourage customers to signup to create wishlists instead.
Final thoughtsAlthough the world is experiencing a period of uncertainty and disruption, take the time now to prepare your site and business for a post-Covid world. Investing time into ensuring your site is healthy, that content is being written and that customers feel supported will pay off. Now is the time to pay more attention to customer support, retention and brand reputation in preparation for the future. Share any of your e-commerce tips and tricks with us! Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/04/e-commerce-what-to-do-when-you-cant.html April 17, 2020 at 03:02AM
Why Every SEO Should Be Using Google Sheets Query Function
Google Sheets allows us SEOs to manipulate data in a multitude of different ways - but Google Sheets combined with the power of SQL (“Structured Query Language” for the uninitiated) takes this to the next level. The examples will focus on:
An Introduction To QueryWhat actually is the Query function?QUERY is a Google Sheets formula that enables you to manipulate data sources. This function is largely considered to be one of the most powerful functions on Google Sheets and can be a gamechanger in performing key SEO tasks (and other sorts of data manipulation).
In the first tab we would have the full export including a large number of varying quality keywords. The second tab would have our Query formula in A1 - =QUERY('All Birthday Cards Keywords'!A:G,"SELECT * WHERE B < 20 AND NOT A CONTAINS 'moonpig' AND C > 150 AND G CONTAINS 'Featured snippet' ORDER BY C desc")
How does this relate to SQL?SQL is a programming language used to communicate with a database. The QUERY function on Google Sheets allows you to use a Google Sheets version of SQL, named Syntax Query Language, which allows far more granular, accurate and speedy insights from relatively large datasets. You may have heard of SQL in relation to BigQuery - Google’s cloud based tool which allows users to query really big datasets. For SEOs, BigQuery comes in really handy for handling huge datasets and is useful for tasks such as log file analysis, analysing CrUX data or crawl analysis. For more insights check out this blog by one of our Senior Consultants, Dom Woodman. What is the advantage of using Query on Google Sheets?
How to Write a Query FormulaGoogle Sheets QUERY SyntaxGoogle Sheets Syntax: =QUERY(range, sql_query, [headers])
Google Sheets SQL - The BasicsAs mentioned earlier, the Query formula uses SQL - which has the advantage of being very logical and easy to follow. There are a few generic rules that you need to follow when using SQL. The main one being that you need to write clauses in the correct order. Our sample dataset consists of keywords related to the term “birthday cards” - there are a number of columns including the Keyword in Column A, Difficulty in Column B etc. SELECTSELECT allows you to specify which columns you wish to import.
WHEREWHERE allows you to specify a condition you want to match (CONTAINS is when a cell contains specific text). WHERE NOTWHERE NOT allows you to specify a condition you do not want to match.
ORDER BYORDER BY allows you to specify how you would like your data ordered - “asc” for ascending or “desc” for descending.
LIMITLIMIT allows you to specify a limit to the number of results
LABELLABEL allows you to specify a name for a column.
Google Sheets Query ExamplesUsing QUERY for Keyword ResearchThe first stage in querying a large data set is to have all the raw data in one tab which can be the reference for queries in other tabs. I have named this tab “All Birthday Cards Keywords.” This may feel slightly familiar to those who read the previous section. Example 1 - Isolating Branded KeywordsFor this example, I am looking to pull out all the rows of data associated with keywords containing the text “moonpig.” I am also ordering this by estimated search volume.
Example 2 - Isolating Keywords Matching Specific CriteriaIn the next tab, we are looking to extract all rows of data where;
Our Query =QUERY('All Birthday Cards Keywords'!A:G,"SELECT * WHERE B < 20 AND NOT A CONTAINS 'moonpig' AND C >150 AND G CONTAINS 'Featured snippet' ORDER BY C desc")
Example 3 - Isolating “Mother” or “Mum” related keywordsIn the next tab, we are looking to extract just the keyword and search volume where;
Our Query =QUERY('All Birthday Cards Keywords'!A:G,"SELECT A,C WHERE A CONTAINS 'mum' OR A CONTAINS 'mother' ORDER BY C desc")
Using QUERY for Crawl DataSimilarly to the KW research data, we will want to have all of the data in one tab - In this case, I have run a Screaming Frog Crawl of https://www.distilled.net, naming the tab “Distilled Crawl Data - Raw & Unedited.” Example 1 - Pulling Redirects and their Redirect URLFor this example, I am pulling just URLS that are 301 or 302 redirects and the subsequent redirect URL.
Example 2 - 404 Pages Sorted By Number of Unique InlinksThis example requires selecting just 3 columns where the status code is 404 order by the number of unique inlinks. Our Query Function Example 3 - Title Tags Over 60 CharactersThe purpose of this query is to extract the URLs with title tags over 60 characters ordered by length (highest first). Using Query for Backlink AnalysisAgain, we will want to have all of the unedited data in one tab - In this case, we have a tab called ‘Full Backlinks Export - Distilled.net.’ You can see all these examples in this Google Sheet. Example 1 - Analysing a Backlink ProfileFor this example, I am pulling the Referring Page URL, Domain Ranking, Referring Page Title, URL Ranking and Type of Link based on specific criteria:
Our Query Function
Example 2 - Analysing a Backlink Profile (Round 2)For this analysis I am pulling the Referring Page URL, Referring Page Title and Link URL based on specific criteria:
Our Query Function
Example 3 - Analysing Anchor Text from Non “no follow” linksFor this analysis I am pulling the Referring Page URL, Link Anchor, Link URL, Type and Traffic based on specific criteria:
Our Query Function
ConclusionThat’s the QUERY function - welcome to a new world without copy and paste errors ruining your day. via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-every-seo-should-be-using-google.html April 02, 2020 at 02:11AM
How eCommmerce is Being Impacted by Coronavirus and What SEOs Could Do
Covid-19 has had a noticeable impact on our economy so far, there is no doubt about that. Here at Distilled<>Brainlabs, we are doing our best to help our clients understand consumer insights and behaviors during this unprecedented time. With no surprise, e-com has been very affected by such circumstances, especially in geographical areas where the virus has been more prominent. With this post, we aim to share some of the insights we have been seeing, with the intent to help other agencies and brands gather valuable insights to emerge faster from a time of crisis. We've had many clients asking:
The main takeaway is that, from our current research, what we are seeing in the SEO industry is that traffic drops are drops in interest, not rankings. Top level findingsHere you will find a list of top-level insights, gathered in the first two weeks of March. It is worth clarifying that most (not all) of the findings relate to the clothing e-commerce space, with a stronger focus on the luxury vertical.
Google Trends data for three brand queries of popular e-commerce websites in Italy, in the last 30 days vs the same brand queries in the UK.
While interest in these three brand queries dropped drastically in Italy after the events of the lockdown, we have witnessed very little to no change in UK’s trends for the same period of time - after Boris Johnson (the UK’s prime minister) addressed the nation on live TV, there has been a slight impact on such terms, which seem to be on the verge of a slight decline after the weekend.
Baidu Index data - a similar data source to Google Trends - for a series of luxury brand queries (selected based on Gartner data for China) in China since January 2020. [Enlarge image] After a very large drop between mid to end of January, interest appears to pick up form mid-February.
We analysed the number of clicks recorded in Google Search Console (GSC) for the blog of a client of ours based in the UK, for the following period: 19th of February to 17th of March, comparing two weeks periods. We removed all brand & irrelevant queries while focussing on the top 500 informational & navigational terms in GSC. As shown in the bar chart above, clicks driven by the keywords analysed have seen a slight improvement from 550 to 638 clicks.
What should you do to help limit this decline?The list below contains a series of recommendations that can be applied to all e-commerce sites:
See an example here - this is Nordstrom’s homepage: they have increased the visibility of their editorial content, easily accessible from the homepage.
Nordstrom’s homepage appears to be a great example again.
See an example here - this is Zalando women’s dresses page
See this Instagram post - the Italian clothing brand Gutteridge is now offering free delivery on orders over 30 Euros, while supporting the hashtag to stay at home during the lockdown.
See an example here - M&S has a plethora of sizing and buying guide videos on YouTube that could be used to reinforce their marketing message.
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SquareSpace (SS) Term | SEO Term | Where it appears | Meaning |
Site title | Title tag | At the top corner of each page. It also appears in the browser tab and can appear in search results page | This is the name of your website homepage or main page. It is also the search results title by default. This can be text, a logo or thumbnail image file |
SEO title | Title tag or Page title | In the search results page and browser tabs (if the user adds it) | This title replaces the site title when you want different text to show in search results. You can add this to all pages on your website. |
Page title | Title tag or Page title | *some pages at the top of page | For *some templates, this shows on individual pages and in search results if there's no SEO title assigned |
Heading tags | Headings, Headers (h1, h2, etc.) | On-page at the top of page (e.g., blog post title) | Headings are the on-page titles that also show up in the page source code as <h1>, <h2>, etc. They help visitors and search engines understand the page content |
SEO site description |
Meta Description
*homepage* |
Search results page |
Short description that appears in search results that says what that page contains.
*in SS this is only for the homepage* |
SEO description | Meta Description *all pages* | Search results page |
Short description that appears in search results that says what that page contains
*in SS this is for individual pages or collection pages (products, blog posts, etc)* |
Page descriptions |
Meta Description
*on-page description* |
On-page content and
search results page |
On-page description on individual pages, this will also appear in search results if SEO description is not added
*in SS only some templates have this feature* |
Header (Navigation) |
Navigation Bar
or Main Navigation |
On-page, usually at the top | This helps website visitors find what they’re looking for on a website. It usually includes anchor text/links to other pages on your website |
There are many other facets of SEO that aren’t covered here, but I hope this helps users better navigate Squarespace and improve their website visibility. For those who want to learn more about SEO best practices, I’ve listed some resources below to help you get started.
- Five Golden Rules For SEO Beginners to learn about SEO-friendly plugins, research tools and more!
- How to Use Screaming Frog: A Beginners Guide download this SEO tool and learn to use it!
- The SEO Apprentice’s Toolbox: Gearing Up for Analysis slightly more advanced, this post covers on-page elements, pagespeed and other technical SEO concepts
via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/03/squarespace-seo-for-people-who-dont.html
March 11, 2020 at 05:38AM
The humble title tag. Probably the single most important 50-60 characters of that piece of content you’ve written.
Perhaps you’ve found this post because you’ve spent hours pouring your soul into a piece of writing and now you’ve realised people will only read it if you write a good 50-60 characters. Or maybe it’s just that your boss told you that he needs quick wins for your product pages and so you’re turning in desperation to the ol’ title tag. Writing a good title tag is part art, part science. How do you do it?
We’ll start with some quick basics for beginners. If you’re looking for the split test results, fun processes & all the more advanced things, scroll down two sections. Nothing to see here.
Contents
- What is a title tag?
- How long should a title tag be?
- What do we want a title tag to do?
- How to write a title tag for a single article
- How to write hundreds of title tags for a template
- What are the chances you write a good title tag?
- How much impact do title tag changes have?
- 7 learnings from title tag split tests
- How long does it take to see the impact of a title tag change?
- Summary
What is a title tag?
The title tag of a page is the HTML tag which is used to summarise the content of your webpage. It’ll be used by search engines as the title in search:
Yes, I’m using my own post as an example...
In your browser tab:
And even as a fallback in social sharing posts:
It isn’t the same thing as the on-page title! An on-page title could be written as a variation of your title tag, or something completely different. If we take a look at the article I’m using as an example we can see that the brand isn’t on the on-page title.
- Title tag: A Complete Guide to Log Analysis with Big Query | Distilled
- On-page title: A Complete Guide to Log Analysis with Big Query
If you want a more severe example take a look at this Redbull article.
How long should a title tag be?
A title tag should typically be 50-60 characters. Technically Google's maximum size is 600px. This usually works out at about 50-60 characters.
What do we want a title tag to do?
Welcome back, experienced people. What do we want our title tags to do?
- Summarise our page: Our title should summarise the general thrust of our page. Google is going to use it to understand what our page is about.
- Get people to click: It’s what users are going to see in the SERP. We need to convince people to pick us.
And if we just do one, you usually don’t get the best results. For example, using the title from the blog post above:
- Totally factual: A Guide on Log Analysis.
- All click: 6 Easy Steps to Log Analysis They Don’t Want You To Know.
We want to maximise how clicky our titles are without… you know… lying, mentioning that one trick dentists hate and crucially without compromising on summarising the page.
The title is primarily for people arriving on your site from Google. We’re not trying to pull people in who are idling. Those people are on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram etc. (I know we did mention above that the title can sometimes be for social, but you can overwrite that if you’d like!)
The audience for your title is someone searching with an intent & that always comes first.
The process is quite different now depending on if you’re writing for a single article, or a template.
How to write a title tag for a single article
Step 1 - Write the article
Write the article. It’s far easier to write a title when you know what you’ve written about. (This is assuming you know what you’re writing about, otherwise, sometimes headline writing can be a good way to generate ideas.)
Step 2 - Summarise the primary purpose/point of the article
Pull out the primary purpose/point of the article. No clickiness yet, just the factual summary.
Example
- Example post 1- A guide to log analysis
- Example post 2: There is an industry backlash against Flybe’s government bailout
Step 3 - Find the factual, commonly searched keywords needed to describe the topic
Try to summarise what someone might search to find your article. Aim for the simplest most basic version of it. Search that term, take the top 5-10 articles which rank for it, plug them into a tool like Ahrefs, SEMRush, Searchmetrics, Brightedge etc. and download all the keywords those articles rank for.
If the top 5-10 articles look nothing like yours either:
- You’re first to a topic (unlikely, but possible)
- Or your phrase is wrong, try again.
Once you’re happy with the phrase, take that big list of keywords and look for any other commonly occurring phrases you’re missing and take note.
Example
We’re going to continue using my old article on log analysis as an example. Because it doesn’t have a great title...
First search phrase pick: “log analysis”
If we look up this keyword these are the top articles (only 3 shown below). Clearly we can see here that none of these articles are about search log analysis, I probably need to change my keyword:
Second search phrase pick: “seo log analysis”
Yep, that search result looks far better. We’ve still got a short phrase, but now the articles are now on topic with my own:
Excellent. Now:
- Let’s take all the URLs that rank in the top 5-10.
- Download the keywords they rank for. (Ahrefs, SEMRush, Sistrix etc.)
And then get the most common keywords from that list. This ngrams tool is a nice way to do it. We get:
word | frequency |
log | 164 |
analysis | 65 |
file | 56 |
analyzer | 41 |
server | 40 |
logs | 29 |
grep | 13 |
analyze | 13 |
access | 12 |
excel | 11 |
If we pull out the big generic words which would also apply to my article we get:
- Log
- Analysis
- File
And possibly also:
- Server
Step 4 - Writing lots of titles
Process
Now we’ve got all the factual words we’ll want in our title and brand.
What inspiration can we get for the clicky part? Lets quickly blast through a couple:
- Writing an emotional headline:
- Fear
- Surprise
- Anger
- Disgust
- Affirmation
- Adding numbers:
- Number of items in a list
- Price
- Date
- Shameless clickbait inspiration:
- Adding in mindblowing adverbs
- The word “actually”
- Being unreasonably specific
Then we try to write as many headlines as we can, but without trading away our relevance and factual keywords.
When I started I worked with Hannah Smith on several projects. I remember her beating into us - “Write 20 titles. 20 is really hard.” Most of them will suck, but you’ll force yourself to be creative and somewhere there might be gold.
Example
Back to our previous example.
We’ve got our important factual words. We also know we want SEO as without that the intent of results shown wasn’t correct. Together those 4 words (without server) take up 18 characters. Which gives us roughly 32 characters left to play with. Let's also look at our current title and see what we’re working with:
- A Complete Guide to Log Analysis with BigQuery | Distilled
- Making it clicky
- Factual description
- Brand
We can see I’ve used “Complete Guide” to try and make it clicky and that I’ve also put the method of analysis “BigQuery” into the title. Both of these we could definitely play around with. Now we just try to write as many titles as we can.
- “A Guide to SEO Log File Analysis | Distilled”
- “What is a log file and why is it helpful for SEO? | Distilled”
- “6 Stage SEO Log File Analysis - A Complete Guide | Distilled”
- “How to do an SEO log file analysis | Distilled”
- “SEO Log File Analysis - The most important technical analysis | Distilled”
- “5 Ways to Analyse Log Files for SEO You Didn’t Know | Distilled”
- “Logging in the SEO jungles of the internet | Distilled”
- “Log analysis is the technical audit you should be doing | Distilled”
- “Stop wasting your time crawling and look at the logs | Distilled”
- “Log analysis for SEO in 2020 | Distilled”
- “Server Log Analysis Guide - SEO For Large Websites | Distilled”
I started with the restrictions and gradually just ignored them in my attempt to get to 20 titles. I didn’t get there. Sorry Hannah.
Step 5 - Picking one
How do we decide which is best?
Honestly, it’s savagely hard to pick the right title by yourself. Of all the title tag tests we’ve run at Distilled, only one in five is typically positive. When I first started in search, I thought titles were the easy win. About a year and a half of running endless title tag split tests and I’m no longer convinced.
If you can test it. The two easiest ways for a single article are:
- Paying for it: If you’ve got the budget, you could run paid social media campaigns and see which title performs best.
- Friends & Colleagues: Make a poll for your friends & colleagues and get them to vote.
How to write hundreds of title tags for a template
The above process works great if all you need to write is a single title.
But if you’ve got a template with hundreds of thousands of pages, then you can’t really do that. Well, you could, but it would be exhausting. Instead, we’re going to need a format for a title that we can apply to all our pages, to make our template shine. That previous process won’t cut it.
Step 1 - Summarise the primary purpose/point of the page
We’re going to start by trying to summarise the attributes of the page in as much detail as possible. This will give us an idea of what pieces of detail we can pull into our titles across our template.
Example
I’ve pulled two page templates from rightmove.co.uk (this isn’t every page template but we’re keeping it simple):
-
Properties for sale - Page:
- URL: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Manchester.html
- Location: Manchester
- Properties types: Houses & flats
- Number of properties: 3,940
- Price range: £190,000 - £3.5 million
-
Numbers of property types:
- 269 detached
- 851 semi detached
- 690 terraced
-
Properties to rent - Page:
- URL: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/Manchester.html
- Location: Manchester
- Properties types: Flats
- Number of properties: 7,155
- Price range: £75 - £34,667 per month
-
Numbers of property types:
- 238 detached
- 864 semi detached
- 1,770 terraced
Step 2 - Figure out what searches should return our template
Our templated page matches a specific intent. We need to figure out how to represent that in a title tag.
Two things make this hard:
- We might have multiple templates with similar intents.
- The pages in our template may be similar.
We need to try and make a title which:
- Differentiates our template from other templates.
- Differentiates pages in our template from each other.
If we’re really struggling perhaps these pages shouldn’t even exist. But that’s a conversation for another day.
Example
We have two templates:
- For sale
- To rent
In this case, it’s pretty simple. For sale & to rent are clearly the important keywords we need to keep each template different. We can see that by looking at the SERPs. Changing those keywords, changes the results from for sale to rent.
Within our template, we have lots of different locations.
- Properties for sale in Manchester
- Properties for sale in Ipswich
In order to keep the pages in our template different, we’re going to need the location in the title.
Step 3 - Accept that it’s messy
But anytime you work with titles it’s going to get messy.
Take our previous example. Rightmove actually has pages for Manchester & Greater Manchester. One ranks for properties and the other for flats. Something is clearly going on there. Uh oh.
Should that change what we do?
When we’re working at scale, patterns are going to breakdown. There hopefully is an underlying pattern, but look long enough and you’ll find exceptions. All we can do is do our best. Make a reasonable guess at what is going on and spoiler for stage 6. Test.
Step 4 - Are there any common phrases we’re missing?
This is exactly the same as step 3 for articles.
- Take your phrase which summarises the page.
- Search for it. Download all the keywords the top 5-10 results rank for.
- Find the most common words.
Example
To keep it brief, we’re going to just stick with the properties for sale template for the rest of these steps! Running this example with the top phrases for “properties for sale in manchester” we get:
Keyword | Frequency |
manchester | 211 |
sale | 122 |
for | 107 |
for sale | 96 |
houses | 59 |
house | 45 |
buy | 42 |
sale manchester | 40 |
houses for | 36 |
property | 32 |
Words to note here are all fairly self-explanatory:
- Property
- Houses
- Buy
Step 5 - What can we add to make it more attractive?
We know what we need to include to make the intent of our page clear.
- Property/houses
- For sale/To rent
- Location
Now let's use that as a base and write as many titles as possible.
We want to:
-
Make them as clicky as possible.
- Use extra attributes.
- Get creative.
- Avoid using words which might change search intent.
A general difference between this and individual articles: If you end up with an entirely factual template title that is far more acceptable here than with an individual article.
Generic ideas for things you can put in titles
- Adding prices into the title.
- Adding some sort of quantity into the title.
- Adding year into the title.
- Put in the obvious e.g. “online” in an online shop.
-
Popular synonyms.
Words to watch out for that can change an intent
- Comparison style words - best, compare etc.
- Deal seeking words: cheapest, cheap, deal, affordable
Example
Let’s have a go at writing titles for our category pages
Our base is:
- Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
Let’s make variants:
- Properties & Houses for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
- Buy Properties & Houses for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
- Buy Houses & Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
- 3,940 Houses & Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
- 3,000+ Houses & Properties for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
- Properties for Sale - Houses for Sale in Manchester | Rightmove
- 3,940 Houses & Properties for Sale Across Manchester | Rightmove
- 3,940 Houses for Sale in Manchester - Get there first | Rightmove
- 3,940 Properties for Sale in Manchester - Find your Happy | Rightmove
That’s a lot of variations. We even managed to fit in their tag line at the end.
Step 5 - Pick a title
Process
Just like with articles we’re going to end up with a list of titles and unsure which one will be best. Far more than with individual title tags, it’s really really important to split test.
- Template level title tags are messy. We’ve already seen that in our example. You can make educated guesses from performing some large scale analysis, but there are going to be effects you miss.
- What works on one site won’t work on another & we’ve found only 1 in 5 title tags ends up being positive.
- The stakes are often higher. We’re not changing one page, we’re changing a group of pages which is often a non-trivial amount of your search traffic.
If you can test at all I’d highly recommend it. We’ve got plenty of resources to help you get started. The two most useful should be:
If you can’t test, you can at least lean on our tests, I’ve got results from those in the next section.
Important context for our title tag split tests
We’re lucky enough at Distilled to have access to SEO split testing software we built. It lets us test different titles & accurately measure the impact on organic traffic. We’re about to talk about the different results we’ve learned, so it’s important to briefly talk about the assumptions implicit in these results.
You can only run SEO split tests on large groups of similar pages (e.g. all category pages, all listing pages etc.) and that means our results are from certain types of websites:
- The websites are mostly large and authoritative.
- They tend to be in competitive SERPs.
- The companies usually have SEO teams who have done the basics. There usually isn’t anything glaringly awful like product pages without titles that we can fix.
- They are more typically tests applied to template pages like category, product & listing pages rather than blog pages. (Although that’s not everything, we run split tests on the Moz blog for example!)
I think you can learn a huge amount from these tests, but it’s still important to bear those assumptions in mind.
What are the chances you write a good title tag?
Writing titles is really hard. We mentioned this above, but let's look at our numbers in slightly more detail. We’ve run many title tag tests across different industries. Our results break down as follows:
- Successes: 22%
- Null: 38%
- Failures: 40%
Oof. 78% of the time title tag tests fall flat or actually harm the website. That makes testing super important. It’s not impossible you could work on a website where you never have a positive title tag test. Nothing you try will ever work. Without testing, you’d probably still roll out those titles. Just spotting the failures and not rolling them out will save you a huge amount of traffic.
With a single article, this isn’t so worrying, you’ve got a far larger creative space to play in and if it does go wrong, it’s a far smaller proportion of your traffic.
If you’re changing titles on big page templates, please make sure you test them!
How much impact do title tag changes have?
Broadly most title tag tests have an impact between 4-15% in either direction.
You can see a distribution of our title tag tests below.
7 learnings from title tag split tests
Most title tag changes are unique to a website, changing words and phrases which don't generalise well from website to website. However, there are some more common patterns we’ve been able to test.
Putting in prices
50% of our title tag tests involving adding the price into the title have been positive. Not only do we get to put a number into the title, but it also provides more information.
Why was it null or negative the rest of the time?
Our consultant Emily Potter thinks this is down to whether or not Google can find the price you put in the title on the rest of your page - i.e. are you being honest about price. We also think it may make a difference depending on how competitive you are on price.
Putting in year numbers
We haven’t had the chance to test this a huge number of times, but so far this change has been positive in the niches where we’ve done it. The shameless putting 2019, 2020 in the title has helped.
Shortening title tags hasn’t actually been that helpful
When you have lots of automatically generated titles, it’s common to end up with titles that are too long.
We’ve run a number of tests about shortening these titles and nearly all of them have been null (~80%). They’ve also never been positive. Our best current theory is that the templates which often end up with long title tags are typically attracting long tail traffic. When they are truncated, they’re still the only relevant result and so continue to rank, perhaps for long tail queries, keyword stuffing isn’t a problem.
Having said that I’d still say it’s worth trying to shorten your titles. If you manage to cut 4-5 characters from your title with no effect, you could use that space to add price or something else which may have an effect.
Emojis didn’t work
We’ve run several tests to put emojis into title tags and so far it hasn’t helped. Sorry folks :(
I mean c’mon. Marketers can barely be trusted with FAQ schema, can you imagine what we’d do to Emojis.
Eye-grabbing on category/listing pages
We’ve tried some title tags for category/listing pages which were very different, actively calling out to the user in the SERPs.
- Standard: Ford for Sale | CarShop
- Example of our type of test: You there! Fords for Sale at the CarShop
These did not work.
Localising language
We tested using localised versions of phrases. This wasn’t single letter changes (like s for z in UK vs US), but entire words e.g. pants instead of trousers.
This was notably positive (~20-25%).
Removing implied words from the title
We’ve seen mixed results from this. We ran a split test & found removing “online” from title tags had no effect on one particular client. Outside of our split-testing platform for a different client, we removed the word “online” from the title of an online store.
Our rankings for the terms including "online", dropped and we quickly put it back in.
More detail on the split tests
If you want to hear more detail about some of these tests, or just love video and you’re signed up to DistilledU, you can see Emily Potter's video on split testing from last year. If you’re not subscribed, you can see my slightly older talk here.
How long does it take to see the impact of a title tag change?
We usually see the impact of a title tag in 3-5 days. We’ve had a couple which has taken longer, but this is the majority. The previous caveats are of course important here, we typically work on larger websites, which are heavily crawled.
Summary
I genuinely thought when I started I’d be able to get this post done in 1000 words. Even now, I can see all the little bits of context & other things that go into writing a good title, which I just couldn’t fit into this post. We didn’t even start talking about internal politics :)
But hopefully, this has got you on your way. Now let's hear some stories.
What title tag tests have you found effective? What’s the worst title tag you’ve ever tried?
Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/02/how-to-write-incredible-title-tag.html
February 18, 2020 at 02:37AM
Writing a blog that no one ever reads is the internet equivalent of throwing a party, where half the people who’ve marked themselves as attending on Facebook don’t turn up.
That moment when you log into Google Analytics and see that your posts have had three visitors in the past month, and two of them were GoogleBot, is exactly like watching the hummus you decided to make from scratch (that’s a thing) remain untouched by the four guests that come to your house; two of whom are already claiming they’ve got another birthday party to go to and are making for the door.
There are two questions here. The first is whether Facebook RSVPs can ever be an accurate way of knowing how many people are actually coming to your event (absolutely not). And the second: what’s stopping people turning up?
Let’s now transfer this clunky metaphor to the marketing world and get to the point of this post: why is no one turning up to read the content on your blog?
We’ve all seen brand and company blogs that lean too far towards being salesy, unrelatable and self-serving. They answer the company’s needs (here’s why you should buy hummus!) rather than those of potential readers (how do I make hummus from scratch?) - and the amount of organic traffic they get suffers as a result.
Which is why getting people to arrive on your blog requires planning, research, and having a bit of a clear out. And a lot of this needs to happen before anything even goes live.
So if you’re wondering how to get organic traffic to your blog, here are some steps to follow. Done right, it’ll increase visits over time, build your company’s reputation as an authority on topics within your niche, and help your site’s SEO as a result.
(Disclaimer: I can’t guarantee it’ll also make people come to your party).
1. Audit your existing content
This is the necessary bit of cleaning before you invite people over.
Except in this scenario, you’re using a big spreadsheet to work out what needs to stay, and what needs to go. My colleague Ben has helpfully created a content audit template which makes life a lot easier, so take a look at that before you get started. But I’ll go through some basics below.
Hopefully, you’ll already have Google Analytics running on your blog, so head to
Behaviour > Site content > All pages
...and change the date range to at least the last year. This should bring up a list of all your blog posts, and the traffic they’ve received over that time. Export it. You’re going to use this list to find out what blog posts are already getting traffic, and which ones aren’t.
You might also want to check other metrics on these posts, like whether they’ve got any backlinks - because that might also inform what content you want to keep. To do this, you could combine backlinks detected in Google Search Console with data from either Ahrefs or Majestic.
Then, starting with the highest to lowest traffic, one by one, go through each of the posts in terms of content and note/look out for the following:
- What posts are getting consistent traffic?
- Which posts have seasonal spikes in traffic?
- Which posts get no traffic at all?
- Are there any popular topics/themes/categories?
Make a note to fix:
- Outdated content
- Broken images
- Strange formatting
- Broken links
And ultimately against each one, mark whether to:
- Keep it
- Keep it, but update/repurpose it
- Delete it completely
- Delete it + redirect to a more useful post
By the end of this stage, you’ll have a list of actions to go through to help your existing content work harder.
2. Keyword research
Next, you need to find out which topics it makes sense for your brand to be writing about in the future. And within that, the specific terms people are actually actively searching for.
Spoiler alert: it might not directly relate to whatever you sell.
There are a number of tools you can use to do this (free and paid) - and we’ll go into those in a future post. But essentially, it’ll involve using tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush and Keyword Planner to identify:
- Relevant search terms within your niche
- Their monthly search volumes
- What your competitors are writing about
- Seasonal trends where traffic might spike
And once you’ve got a list of search terms to write content around, it’s time to start turning these into long tail ideas for evergreen blog posts. It’s these that, little by little, will build up traffic to your blog over time.
3. Brainstorm topic ideas
Your keyword research will leave you with a list of questions or informational non-branded terms and their search volumes, and an idea of when they peak.
But the tricky bit is turning those terms into useful, relevant blog post ideas that fit neatly into a content calendar and align with your brand’s demographic. Remember, your aim here is to answer queries, become an authority on a particular topic, and provide relevant information.
No one wants to come to a party and have the host do a hard sell.
To rank in the SERPs, the posts will need to be detailed and well researched - so keep your business’ expertise in mind when you’re coming up with ideas. Don’t be afraid to go niche.
Again, you might want to use some tools here to help you. Sites like Answer the Public can give you suggestions, or ‘People also ask’ on the Google SERPs.
Let’s take an example: you’re a hotel brand, and your keyword research says that “things to do in London” is a good, high volume keyword to target.
But it’s also a highly competitive term. So perhaps there’s a better way to narrow things down even more:
What other things dictate someone’s need for a hotel in London?
- Time of year / seasonality
- Specific interests, activities or events
- Location: particular areas/boroughs
Your list of potential blog post ideas could a bit like this:
- Things to do in London when it’s raining
- Baby-friendly museums in London
- Where to take mum for her birthday in London
Do this until you’ve built out a big list of blog post ideas covering all the different topic areas you identified in your keyword research. Next step: plan it out.
4. Plan out the content
Once you’ve got a huge list of blog post ideas and an idea of when their search volumes peak, use a content calendar to plan out what you’re publishing month by month. Here’s a useful guide to creating a content calendar which you can feed these organic traffic posts into.
When you’re planning out your content, consider:
- Resource and time: to stand a chance of ranking, these posts will be comprehensive, well researched, and detailed (more on that next)
- Posts will need to be written and published before the search volume peaks
- Aim to publish at least 4 weeks beforehand, e.g. a post about Halloween outfit ideas would need to be published around mid September to catch the upward tick
5. Research the competition
Ok, let’s see what’s happening at that party. Not yours; no one’s at yours. The other, better one your guests are off to instead. You do some digging, and find out that party’s got a proper DJ and a decent sound system, while you’re putting your iPhone speaker in a wine glass. Where would you rather be?
Basically, before you start writing: know what you’re up against.
Take the blog post title you want to rank for (e.g. “things to do in London when it’s raining”), Google it, and see who and what is already ranking.
- Format: are they numbered listicles (if so, how many ideas do they list?), long form pieces, or step-by-step guides?
- How recent is the article?
- Who currently has the featured snippet and what could increase your chances of getting the top spot?
- What’s the word count? How many items are they listing?
Remember: depending on your niche, your blog content competitors might not be your direct business competitors.
So, Booking.com might be your competition when you’re selling hotels in London, but when you’re informing people about things to do in London, you could be up against established authorities like Time Out, travel magazines, or tourist boards. This gives you an idea of how detailed and well researched your post needs to be to compete.
Once you’ve got an idea of what your blog post needs to include, write a strong brief.
5. Training for copywriters
Unless you’re working for one of the media outlets above, the chances are you don’t have a team of journalists working in-house.
And as I said, depending on your niche and industry, your competition might be lifestyle publications staffed by journalists.
The shift to writing more editorial-style content can be tricky if you’re working with in-house copywriters who are used to writing quite short, salesy product-focused copy.
Depending on the competition, these evergreen, organic traffic driving posts are going to need to be more than 500 words of generic fluff. It’ll require research, sometimes resulting in upwards of 1,000 words, to be able to compete with whatever’s ranking on page 1.
So if you don’t have the expertise in-house, consider where you might be able to get it.
- Who in your company can add expertise?
- Can you interview them and shape their answers into a post?
- Do you have the budget to source external freelance resource?
- Can you invest in basic SEO training for your copywriting team to help them along?
If you’re stuck, here’s a post on how to write high quality content to get you started.
7. Optimise, optimise, optimise
Before you publish, there’s a last bit of admin. Here are some things to check:
- Whether you’re linking to other relevant blog posts (internally or externally)
- If you’ve included a call to action at the end of the post
- Whether your titles and meta descriptions are optimised for search (if you’re using Wordpress, a plugin like Yoast allows you to specify different titles and descriptions for search and social)
- Avoid putting dates in the URL (i.e. best-things-to-do-London-winter-2019) so you can update the same post next year without it looking out of date
- Images are consistently named, spaced and formatted, the file sizes are low
8. And last but not least, keep it updated
Kind of like getting people to turn up to your party, having an organic content strategy requires planning and work along the way.
It’s not a short term plan. It can take a good few months for a blog post to start getting organic traffic, and you might find you need to revisit the posts every so often to keep them updated and relevant.
So once you’ve written a post, keep a calendar note for seasonal posts that can be updated each year / as appropriate instead of creating new ones.
That’s just an overview of the steps you need to take, and we’ll be going into more details in future guides.
If you’ve got any questions in the meantime, or are wondering why your blog isn’t getting the organic traffic you think it should, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.
Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/01/how-to-start-getting-organic-traffic-to.html
January 29, 2020 at 03:49AM
The Salesforce Community Cloud is a content management system (CMS) specialized for support or community-focused websites. It is a powerful CMS that allows brands like NASA, Ancestry, PlayStation, Intel, and many others to share information in a concise and organized way for their communities.
A well-implemented CMS complements a website’s SEO. The CMS platform is a medium through which a business presents content to its users. However, the content reach and indexability through Google can be impacted by a CMS’s technical limitations. Content management systems’ ability to improve a website's SEO depends on its capacity to support the implementation of SEO best practices.
One of our clients had come to us for help after they noticed their organic reach had dropped. They suspected their recently implemented CMS had something to do with it, so we decided to investigate further. To identify the concerning behavior, we conducted a technical audit of our client’s website, as well as five other sites that use Salesforce Community Cloud. We found the following issues, which are fairly standard but nothing too unusual.
SEO Issues in Salesforce Community Cloud
- Status codes served differently for user and user-agent: A page a user sees as a 200, gets picked up by Googlebot as a 302.
- No Canonicals: None of the pages we observed are using canonical tags, but Salesforce support indicates that it is possible to implement them.
- JavaScript Rendering: Pages using Salesforce Community Cloud are rendered in JavaScript, possibly slowing down the index rate of a website.
- Redirect Limits: We believe Salesforce Community Cloud has a limit on redirects. They do not have any public documentation stating that they do.
Although I wish I could share what client, and what websites I found this behavior in, I am not allowed. I was, however, able to find this behavior on OpenTable, which is a website that Salesforce publicly announces as using their platform. Let’s dig deeper as to why these issues are showing up on Salesforce and what we recommend your team does to handle them.
Status codes served differently for user and user-agent
Status codes represent the communication between a browser and a server. When a user submits a browser request, the site server is asked for information, and it returns a status code.
The behavior we noticed in websites with Salesforce Community Cloud was that our crawler was classifying most URLs with a 200 status code.
In theory, if a user would visit that page, the information would be visible, and the user can interact with the website. We clicked into some URLs to confirm that they were a 200 status code, and we identified misclassification on status codes. We got the “User” status code by opening up the link in our browser and found the status code with the Redirect Path extension for Chrome. To get the “Crawler” status code, we used the Mac Terminal. In Terminal we executed a curl command with additional filters, to get the status code and HTML source code as Googlebot.
Our Terminal command:
curl -v https://help.opentable.com/s/article/Account-Management-Incomplete-Reservation-History-1481744282490?language=en_US -H "User-Agent: Googlebot"
The following are examples of how URL status codes were different for the user and crawler.
Examples:
OpenTable Dinner Help
Crawler: 200 Status Code
User: 302 Status Code
Crawler: 200 Status Code
User: 200 Status Code
No canonicals
Canonical tags are used to help Google identify which URL we want them to index. This is helpful when multiple URLs have the same information. Implementing the canonical tags helps Google identify and index the URL we want. These tags prevent Google from labeling multiple URLs as duplicate content.
The behavior we picked up on Salesforce Community Cloud was that out of the multiple websites we crawled only one was using canonical tags in three of its URLs. Supporting documents on Community Cloud’s page state that adding canonical tags is possible with the platform.
We recommend that those who are using Community Cloud implement canonical tags as soon as they know which URLs they want to be in the index.
JavaScript Rendered Page
The relationship between Googlebot and JavaScript has always been very uncertain. Recently the Search Engine Journal published an article titled “JavaScript Indexing Delays Are Still an Issue for Google”. In this article, they test and confirm that Googlebot is still taking longer to index a page that is rendered using JavaScript. We recommend that if your page is using JavaScript the source code visible to the bot should include the links that are found within that page. This allows for the Googlebot to more efficiently crawl its way through your website.
The behavior we found on Salesforce Community Cloud is that all those using it have their pages rendered in JavaScript. It is often that tabs or actions a user may take are linked to by using a JSVoid(0) command. Another essential behavior we noticed was that the source code that is visible to the user does not contain the same information as the source code available to Googlebot. We can confirm that Salesforce Community Cloud was designed to be this way, and they are single-page applications according to Salesforce’s Blog on Lightning Communities.
While this does not mean that Google cannot index or crawl your site, it does mean it will take longer for new content to be indexed. At this point, there is not a lot that can be done, so either Salesforce optimizes their CMS to make HTML crawlable, or Google speeds up indexing JavaScript-rendered pages.
Redirect Limits
We have worked with clients in the past that have had a limited amount of redirects available when using Salesforce Community Cloud. Although we are not able to confirm this with current public Salesforce documentation, we were still able to find a solution for our client. They wanted to redirect all their previous links and met the threshold. Our recommendation to them was to use a CDN to manage the redirects beyond the limit.
If you are thinking of using Salesforce Community Cloud, we recommend making sure that they can redirect all of your current links.
In Conclusion
Salesforce Community Cloud is a great CMS allowing businesses to efficiently and quickly show content to their users. However, some of its behavior may significantly impact your site’s search performance. While the behaviors highlighted in this article are not necessarily bad, they are helpful to keep in mind when it comes to thinking about Googlebot crawling and indexing your site. For businesses interested in using Salesforce Community Cloud, I recommend asking questions around the common behaviors to a Salesforce Sales Representative and making sure that this CMS will work for your business.
If you have any questions about this behavior or want to know more, please don’t hesitate to reach out at [email protected]. This project would not have been possible without the support and collaboration of Lydia Gilbertson.
Via Marketing http://www.rssmix.com/via Blogger http://johnjxjackson.blogspot.com/2020/01/seo-insights-on-salesforce-community.html
January 16, 2020 at 10:16PM