Daily SEO Tips

Hello and  thanks for listening to SEO tips today In May, SEMRush changed its keyword difficulty. Keyword Difficulty (KD) is a metric that tells you how much SEO effort it might take to organically rank a page in the top 10 results on Google for a certain keyword. And overall with keyword difficulty, the higher the percentage is, the harder the competition will be.They launched an infographic walking through how they now calculate KD which might be worth printing and putting on your wall.The new calculation that takes into account the median # of backlinks & Authority Score PLUS the relative weight of the links and what the SERP looks like related to other SERP features.From an inbound link perspective, it looks at:Median number of referring domains pointing to the URLs that are ranking.The median authority score of the domains that are rankingMedian ratio of  ratio of follow no follow links pointing to the URLs that are ranking.And then it takes into account the keyword itself. And in that case it looks at:The median number of referring domains for the ranking URLs.search volume median follow no follow ratio for ranking URLs featured snippetinstant answerWhether the keyword is branded local pack Knowledge panel top storiesPeople also ask sitelinks the word count in the keyword or whether the search result has no search features.SEMRush then weights the score based on whether or not it's in a regional database to ensure that the data is not skewed by less populated countries with lower search volume. Now I recommend that nobody takes one of these measurements and runs with it in a vacuum for every keyword where you want to create a plan to rank you should actually take a look at the SERP results. I have found that for some Industries frankly the search results are whitelisted. In my experience, you discover the true lift around what it will take to rank for particular keywords once you do a competitive analysis. That competitive analysis should include finding out how many SEOs are working for the other brands with which you compete. For example,  I've had to tell Federal clients that they can't rank for particular topics because the other brands appearing in those search results have huge SEO teams.So that's your SEO tip for today -  be aware that the keyword difficulty measurement in SEMRush has changed and plan accordingly to make sure your clients are aware.Thanks for listening come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Do you have a site with mixed content - both YMYL (Your Money or your Life) and other types of content? Do you know if that is best for organic traffic?Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Here's the takeaway: for that YMYL content to rank (and that's content where Google thinks could have an impact on the searcher's current or future well-being (physical, financial, safety, happiness, etc.).  You need to break the site in two.As you probably know, YMYL content needs to be created with a high level of expertise and authority.Yes, that's the latest guidance from John Muller at Google - your non-YMYL content is probably dragging your site down. This came up in Google's April  SEO office hours. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip. 

Google updated its User CTR PatentHello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Yes, they say that they don't use click-through rates, but they just filed an update to their CTR patent. You should read Bill Slawski's analysis to make up your mind. I'm in the camp of using user signals (and we know that Bing does), so I think it's worth adding to your SEO processes.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip. 

Did you know that Google can figure out *who* wrote your site content?Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.John Mueller says they use something called recognition where they spot writing patterns that they know comes from a particular author, even if there isn't a bio on the site. However, Google still recommends a biography and links to your author's social media profiles. Now is the time to develop even deeper relationships with subject matter experts to write your content (vs. unknown ghostwriters). Search Engine Journal covers it in more detail.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Spotify had made sharing podcast content easierHello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Spotify lets you share a specific timestamp from a podcast. When you tap the share button, you'll see a toggle option that enables you to create a link for the particular spot in the podcast you want to share. This is also helpful as a host if you're going to share specific mentions of resources or other people in your marketing promotions for each episode. Learn more here.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Subfolders vs subdomain - which is more effective when you're consolidating your website?Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Here's the tip (and is what I recommend to clients): moving to a subfolder almost always increases trafficBut don't take my word for it. Rand Fishkin recently shared 14 case studies around how moving a subdomain to a subfolder (almost always) increases search trafficAnd how moving from a subfolder to a subdomain (almost always) decreases search traffic. I've added a link to his tweet thread on my site. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about RSS feeds.Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Google recently announced an updated use for RSS - allowing users to follow brandsI spotted this announcement on the Chromium blog - an option to enable Android users (using Chrome Canary) to follow their favorite websites and opt into RSS feed updates via a “follow” button. Just when you thought RSS had died - here's another reason to keep it alive and up to date. I kid, of course, as Bing LOVES RSS feeds and podcasts are based on RSS.So make sure that your RSS feeds are accessible by search engine bots and go ahead and upload them into Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about the Google I/O Updates that impact SEOHello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Here's a quick overview of the updates from Google I/O that impact SEO.1. Google announced their new natural language engine - that they call MUM (the Multitask Unified Model). This model will allow them to answer sophisticated queries such as: "I've hiked Mt. Adams and now want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall. What should I do differently to prepare?"  It also gives users answers from different search verticals and harvests information from over 75+ languages. Google pulls information from various sources: Lens, Photos, YouTube, Google Search, Gmail, Maps, and Shopping. It can understand implicit meaning and context 1000x better than BERT.2. Google provided details around their handling cookies (which BTW dropping first-party cookies has now been pushed off for two years), details around APIs, PWAs, and Web Core Vitals improvement tips.3. They also talked about how in May, they started rolling out About This Result to all English results worldwide. They plan to add more details to the panel with information about how a site describes itself, what other sources are saying about it, and related articles to check out. Google states that they pull this information from Wikipedia, so if your brand's information on Wikipedia is out of date, I can refer you to a reputable Wikipedia coach who can help you resolve the issue.4. Shopping Graph announcement. Google uses its “deep understanding of products, sellers, brands, reviews, product information, and inventory data” to power this shopping graph. Additionally, when you take a screenshot, Google Photos will prompt you to search the photo with Lens, so you can immediately shop for that item if you want. Shopping Knowledge Graph will connect to Google Lens, YouTube, Images, Photos, Chrome, and loyalty programs and display shopping carts on the Chrome homepage.5. Google has released open-source Schemarama, which hosts a variety of schema troubleshooting tools. They have also added more rich snippets that you can earn in search based on your schema markup, like online activities that they can do from home, math solvers, and practice problems. They also reminded us of how to mark up your videos for their key moments for additional rich display in Google search.So that's the update.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about GA4 and its different terminologyHello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Let's talk about two different terms you'll find in GA4 that are not in the older version of Google Analytics.Google Analytics 4 Bounce Rate (Why It Isn't In GA 4)In GA4, Google has flipped it to engagement rate, which is “engaged,” a session must either result in a conversion, last over 10 seconds, or have multiple screens or page views. This article also goes into an explanation of the new page value metric in GA4.What are Data Streams in Google Analytics 4?GA4 is SO different from Universal Analytics, and it's worth reading this article as a way to start to get familiar with the new ways data is filtered and viewed in GA4 vs. what you're used to.If you'd like to learn more about GA 4, Olga Zarzenczna has created a Basic GA 4 Guide at seosly.com.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about Facebook GroupsHello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.1.8 Billion People Use Facebook Groups Every MonthThis is a HUGE amount of potentially untrackable visits to your site - Facebook groups are a part of that “dark web” you heard talked about - unless, of course, you're in the group, and you've shared a link with UTM tracking. So how do you take advantage of this audience?Well, If your audience is active in Facebook groups, you can often reach out to an admin to see if your brand can hold an AMA of value to the group. Or if the group is relevant to you personally, you can join the group. I'm a member of a variety of podcasting groups which allow for you to share your most recent episode once a month.  One of those groups is using a text to email confirmation method that I've seen speakers use. They trigger it at the sign-up questions for their group and you're automatically added to their Facebook group. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

How to Create a plan to build a Page or Hub that sets you up as a Topical AuthorityHello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.This article from OnCrawl was an intense read, but the most helpful part I picked up is the following tips around creating a topical map before creating a content hub, which includes: Crawl your competitors' sitemaps to understand their topical maps.Pull Google Trends - the related queries and related topics.Collect data from autocomplete and search suggestions.Notice how your competitors are connecting content hubs.Use Google Knowledge Graph to pull relevant entities.Use non-web resources to view the properties of entities and their hierarchies and connections.Check competitor's anchor texts for a specific article internally and externally.And my tips: Use Wiki Topic Grapher to graph the topic based on the entities in Wikipedia pages.Use social media forums like Quora or Reddit to understand the additional questions users post on your topic and add those to your content brief. Read the comments on the top pages ranking in search to spot additional insights around your topic.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about whether Mobile Only Indexing might be impacting your site.Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.If you were not aware, Google announced that they would crawl all sites (desktop or mobile) with the mobile-only crawler. This announcement means that if you have anything on your desktop site that is not on the mobile view (content, comments, reviews, etc.) - those will not be in the new index. They started dropping desktop-only sites (March 2021) out of their index, but the last batch of sites is being moved over to mobile indexing in April/May 2021.  I think most people think because they have a responsive site that they will be fine, but that's why I find Mike King's analysis of the impact of mobile-only indexing so interesting. His article was probably the most impactful I read last month. Mike looked at the disparity between mobile sites and their desktop counterparts, and he predicts that those missing elements will significantly impact SEO rankings. He also offers up a free tool to help you troubleshoot on your own, called PARTITO. It lets you check to see if your desktop and mobile experiences for search engines are the same or if you're missing items on mobile from a technical perspective.So that's your tip for the day.Double-check that the relevant parts of your site that are on your desktop site are also visible to Googlebot's Smartphone crawler.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

How much of an impact will Web Core Vitals have on your organic traffic? Learn more in today's SEO tip.View podcast show notes at:https://wostrategies.com/podcast/seo-tips-flash-briefing/web-core-vitals-impact-on-website

Let's talk about optimizing your podcastHello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.First of all, did you know that (based on the State of Podcasting Listening 2021 report) the number of Americans listening to a podcast (80 million) is more than the number of Americans who reported ever using Twitter, TikTok, or Snapchat? And Spotify's US podcast listenership is on track to be larger than Apple's! According to a new market forecast, Spotify's U.S. podcast listenership will surpass Apple Podcasts for the first time this year. Sarah Perez of TechCrunch has the numbers: Spotify is expected to reach 28.2 million listeners per month, a slim margin over Apple Podcasts' 2 million. So here's your tip:If you're running a podcast and not distributing to every podcasting platform on the planet, stop reading this email and do that now. I use Buzzsprout for my show.AND if even if you don't have a podcast of your own, you should add becoming a guest on a podcast to your marketing list. Or, perhaps use the Podcast Audience Grap tool, which will tell you, for most shows, which other podcasts share a similar audience. It visualizes connections between podcast ‘neighbors' as a 3D graph, informing choices around ads and promo swaps, or in this case, guest spots.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Google's newest data setHello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Let's talk about Google's newest data set and how I think they might apply it to search.Google is going to offer heart and respiratory rate measurements using just your smartphone's camera. I think this is creepy.  I wonder what they will do with this data? They already have patents filed around keeping the user's voice and emotional state in mind when providing search (or voice) results. If you are not taking into account your customer's emotional state when creating personas, you should.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Free public speaking tipsHello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Last month I also released a new podcast episode on the Digital Marketing Victories podcast. If you're interested in public speaking tips, or how to speak persuasively on Zoom meetings, or need suggestions about how to improve your soft skills but are introverted, this episode is for you!  https://digitalmarketingvictories.com/podcast/episode-8-brenden-kumarasamy/Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Google Has Updated My Business Guidelines For Co-Working SpacesHello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.The update mentions that if your business location is out of a co-working space, it must have signage, accept customers, and have staff at the site eligible to have a Google My Business listing with a coworking address. This change is an improvement over the outright ban on coworking spaces as business locations.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about the SEO tools and resources that I discovered last month.Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Today's tip is just going to be a quick rundown of the new tools and resources that I've discovered and bookmarked. Let's get into it.Here are the newly released SEO tools that are worth checking out:SEOAsked.com - This is a directory of quotes from Googlers from SEO's questions. This site makes my homegrown Trello board, where I save these quotes for audit documents (and client questions). I'm so stoked that someone built this. FYI: Chrome is now hiding all URL paths and showing the domain name for all URLs unless you hover over your address bar. See Lily Ray's tweet.Here's a timeline of changes to Structured DataQuick Google Search Console Insights [free Google Sheet]Google Data Studio Templates and Learning ResourcesHamlet's Batista's SEO contributionsSEO Forecasting: A Google Sheets TemplateFree PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themesCumulative Layout Shift GIF GeneratorLearning Python for SEO: https://i.codeseo.dev and https://searchenginejournal.com/author/ruth-everett/#close and https://jcchouinard.com/python-for-seo/ and https://www.jcchouinard.com/python-for-seo/ and Automate the Boring Stuff with Python http://automatetheboringstuff.com/ That's your roundup of new tools and resources. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Today's tip is going to focus on whether any benefit to adding audio files to your website.Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.And the latest from Google, No. There is no SEO benefit to audio versions of text posts.Unlike photo and video, Google doesn't do anything special with audio content that is not part of a podcast, and it's not processed separately by Google. However, IF you have audio in a podcast format and surface it via an RSS feed, Google can index it via your podcast feed and surface it in Google's podcast search and the podcast one box.  So the takeaway here is to no just randomly upload audio files to your landing pages, but instead launch a podcast to take advantage of potentially a new traffic source to your content.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Curious about the new brand associations in Google Search Console? We are going to talk about what they are in today's tip.Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.This new feature lets you link your Google Search Console account to any other Google property (Analytics, YouTube, etc.) and “ can unlock more functionality for your site.” This feature helps Google associate your entities together. Every webmaster should go ahead and associate all of your Google properties together. There's more about the new feature in the Google Search Console help files.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Do you know much of your direct traffic is actually Google Discover?Are you suspicious that your direct traffic might instead be Google Discover traffic? Learn more about how to get a sense of this in today's tip.Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Unfortunately, Google Discover is recorded as “Direct” in your analytics, though you can add a filter to your Google organic traffic in Google Analytics to find out how much. You can go to your traffic report, flip to Google as your traffic source, add the secondary dimension of Direct Session, and add the following: “include” direct session containing “no.” If you line up your Discover reporting from Google Search Console and it matches direct spikes in Google Analytics - that's probably the source of your direct traffic spike. Also, until last month, when a user opens a Chrome tab on Android or iOS to use Google Discover, it was *not* shown in the Google Search Console reporting, and now will be.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Topical expertise and rankingHello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Google's John Mueller said they could recognize if a site has a good reputation on a specific topic area. Websites should work to build a reputation within a particular topic area. Additionally, I've seen via the various search algorithm updates over the years that being too broad topically for a website could be more challenging from a ranking perspective.If you're curious about your current topical authority, it turns out that you can get a sense of your topical authority by looking at topical citation flow in Majestic. Majestic looks at the backlink profile that your website has had based on the types of websites linking to you.So that's your quick tip for today. If you are working on a brand new website, you need to be aware that you will need to build your authority and expertise in a specific niche topic. You do this through your overall real-life marketing efforts and by strategically building backlinks from websites that cover topics (or closely related topics) you're an expert in. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about the SEO tools and resources that I've recently discovered.Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.So today's tip is just going to be a quick rundown of the new tools and resources that I've discovered and bookmarked. Let's get into it.I found a great case study around strategically allowing indexing of your faceted navigation based on search volume to increase organic traffic. I also found case study from Deloitte on how improvements in mobile site speed positively affect a brand's bottom line.Spark Content Optimizer. A quick (and free) one page at a time SEO audit tool (and a Chrome browser plugin). Here's a  software option called SpeedCurve to measure the Web Core Vitals for your site via synthetic testing. Free Google Search Console Data Exporter - which allows you to export all of your GSC query data - code free. Analytics Mania has some great Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager starter views on their YouTube channel that I would recommend.Labrika at Labrinka.com- This one was new to me.. machine learning-powered all-in-one SEO tool. It includes page-specific, machine learning powered content suggestions. Ahrefs' new Site Explorer 2.0. You can use it to show changes in pages and keywords impacted by algorithm updates.That's your roundup of new tools and resources. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Let's talk about Keyword Research Tips For YouTube VideosHello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.This tidbit comes from the YouTube Creator Insider channel, where members of YouTube's search and discover team answer questions from users. In their video about search and discovery, they shared the following. Here are their three recommended tactics for keyword research:Audience InsightsGoogle TrendsCompetitor AnalysisAudience Insights are found within YouTube Analytics and show creators what other videos your audience is watching. Smart optimizers would note the titles and thumbnails of those videos to see if there are enhancements that you can make to your videos.Google Trends (filtered for YouTube), which most SEOs should be familiar with helps you spot trending topics in general which you can apply to your YouTube video creation. And Competitive analysis involves looking at which videos appear in YouTube search when you search. You should analyze how your competitors are optimizing the labeling of their video and their video format and how they are working to increase their overall watch time and engagement. I would also add that tools like Ahrefs and Keyword.io actually help you query the YouTube database and show you monthly averages for queries on YouTube.So that's your tip for today. Three areas you can use for keyword research for YouTube videos.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Finding missing URLs that need redirects during website migrationsWe are going to talk today about all of the ways you can find URLs with backlinks to your site that might need redirects during website migrations.Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.All week I've been living in spreadsheets over the past month-  tracking down the links that were missed during the original round of redirect mapping for a client's recent website migration. This client site has been migrated quite a few times over the years and has seen various domain changes as well.Here are all of the places that I've discovered additional backlinks that need mapping:Ahrefs backlink tools - particularly the best pages by links report. I also spent quite a bit of time looking at the HTTP version of the site to make sure that I've captured everything.SEMRush - particularly the ability to go back in time.Bing Webmaster Tools - it turns out that Bing never forgets your URL structure, and you can find that in their Site structure reporting.In all of these reports, if I spot a new domain that looks like it would potentially be an earlier version of this site, I've put that new domain in the various SEO tools to see if those sites have backlinks (or are ranking for some reason).I've also pulled URLs that are still ranking from the old domains in Google Search Console and Bing webmaster tools to troubleshoot any URLs that do not have active redirects or were missed. And I've gone into Google Analytics for the old site and have pulled URLs that are still getting human traffic that need redirects.And when I load the final result URL, I use the Chrome Redirect Path plugin to make sure that the redirects are true 301 redirects and not some other version. I've also eyeballed the page, and many tools will only execute the first redirect, which could be a 301 but at the next hop, the URL could resolve into a 404. You want to make sure that your redirects are 301s and that they resolve to a page that is indexable, it's not blocked by a meta noindex tag or a robots.txt directive. I quickly spot-check these types of issues with the SEO Minion Chrome plugin (my current favorite plugin).Of course, you can do some of this checking in bulk with ScreamFrog, but sometimes you just need to look at what page is rendered to make sure that the final redirect makes sense.So that's your tip for today. Be a true investigator to map all of those redirects post-migration!Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Tips around robots.txt file and workaroundsHello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Just last week a client asked me where the best place to put an XML sitemap file was, which made me curious as to whether there are best practices for robots.txt file locations as well.When it comes to an XML sitemap file, the best practice is to have it at the root of the domain it covers, and usually, it's at domain.com/sitemap.xml. BUT if you list the XML sitemap file and submit it via Google Search Console, Google doesn't care where it's located. So to repeat, you could load the sitemap file up into a subfolder, submit it to Google Search Console, and any URLs in there can be for any verified path on your account.Related to robots.txt files, you also can host it anywhere, just as long as it 301 redirects to your domain (Source).So that's your tip for today - workarounds if you can't host either your XML sitemap file or robots.txt in the “ideal” locations.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Today we are going to highlight a few stats focused on how important it is to be mobile friendly.Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.So I wanted to share some great insights on our increasing mobile use here in the US from App Annie.The highlights:We collectively spent 4.2 hours on our phones in 2020 (a 20% YOY increase).This increase is the greatest in the Gen X/Baby Boomer dynamic.And as a reminder, Googlebot is crawling mobile-first, and all desktop-only content will be dropped sometime in March 2021 (so this month). Mobile friendly includes ensuring that your site is:Fast loadingElements don't shift as the page loadsElements are clickable with a thumb, and Images that are viewable/expandable on a mobile phone. I also check to ensure that my clients have navigation that is crawlable with JS turned off with their responsive websites (which is a common issue). To check to see if you have any pages that are not rendered to show well on a mobile device, you can use Screaming Frog by turning on the “Rendering ->JavaScript” mode under the spider configuration tab and turn on rendered page screenshots. You can also view mobile usability errors in Google Search Console. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Today's tip is from Brody Clark. (or @BrodieSEO on Twitter)There are now two reports in Google Search Console that reports on your site's news performance, but they measure different things.The first report is under the Search Results tab where you can filter to news queries. That will show you results returned in the “news” tab and will show a sampled version of these queries. The second separate Google News report you can see on the right rail inside Google Search Console is traffic from news.google.com or the Google news app. Both serve the user results based on their interest profile so the report for you as a webmaster does not have query data. Note that the top stories carousel in Google search also has news, but you can't pull that reporting from Google Search Console.So that's your takeaway from today - keep in mind what each report measures if you're working to improve your Google News performance.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Big Tech is using your voice to personalizeHello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Let's talk today about how the big discovery algorithms might be using aspects of your voice to personalize to you and the impact on marketers.Spotify was granted a patent (originally filed in 2018) for technology that analyzes listeners' voices and background noise to suggest content based on their mood, gender, age, accent, or even social setting. The patent outlines that it uses the speaker's pitch to determine gender and age and causes like the intonation, stress, and rhythm of speech to potentially determine specific emotions or personality attributes. They can use this information to personalize music recommendations in real-time and they are most likely going to leverage this data for the voice assistant that they are developing. It's worth noting that Google and Amazon have both filed patents using the data provided by voice responses in similar ways, and YouTube allows you to search via voice as well.This is why for my clients that have users who are searching during times of high emotion, I've encouraged them to revisit their personas and how they are presenting that information. We know a lot about how different emotional states impact our ability to view and interact with online information. I specifically encourage those clients to look at their CTAs and meta descriptions to make sure they are addressing the emotional state of the user. So that's your tip for today. If you're doing persona work, consider the emotional state of the user.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

How to request that search bots index your contentHello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.After months of the “request indexing” tool being unavailable, the feature returned right before the end of 2020. Many SEO's praised its return, but that was about it; SEOs went on about their day. We didn't hear much about how the feature changed or any limitations it might now have.You can submit about 10-12 a day before it throws you an error. Of course, both search engines also lean heavily on content discovery via clean XML sitemaps - especially when you submit them via your search accounts.Now for Bing, you can submit 10,000 a day via their URL submission feature or you can submit URLs through the Bing Webmaster API. Botify has a feature where it will submit for you. In general, though, you should think about why Google or Bing has not found your content and indexed it in the first place. With the increasing popularity of JavaScript frameworks, there could be something else going on that is limiting the search engines in discovering and indexing your content. And of course, your content also has to be *worth* indexing in the first place.Now for Bing, years ago we noticed that if a URL was tweeted, it was picked up faster (and Bing says it does use social links as signals), though I'm not sure if that tactic still works today.So that's your tip for today - how to manually submit URLs via Google and Bing.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Google's Question HubToday, let's talk about Google's question hub.Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Google has released https://questionhub.google.com/. By creating a free account SEOs can use the tool for content generation. In their announcement, they said that:“We collect unanswered questions directly from users to identify content gaps online.”You sign in with your personal Gmail account (as it's not available for Google Workspace users, just as an FYI).And then, you browse the topics or search for topics you're interested in, and you can then see unanswered questions where you can create a web copy. I searched for commercial fishing and found the following unanswered questions:Each nation-state can set commercial fishing operation law as far out as what region?What kind of ropes are used for commercial fishing?Or my search for covid 19 brought up these unanswered questions:Is the covid-19 vaccine safe for long haulers?Are mutant strains of covid 19 checked in every test given out?I have always thought SEO is more like a public service - answering the public's burning questions, and now Google makes it even easier by surfacing those that are unanswered.You can also export the questions into Excel to organize your writing process.Once you have an answer, you can then click on “answer” and submit a link to your article. So that's your tip for today. Create a Google question hub account and start submitting your answers.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Your entire website matters.Today I'm going to talk through all of the ways Google looks at your ENTIRE website when it determines what type of search equity your site can expect. I often work with clients where different teams manage different parts of their website, and this tip is for them.Hello! Thanks for listening to SEO tips today.I was inspired to create this tip based on Google's John Mueller's comment that slow URLs can potentially impact the ranking of other faster URLs on your site. If all of your slow URLs are on a subdomain, it might just group those URLs. Also, Google has recently announced that  Noindexed Pages Can Impact Core Web Vitals. Frankly, this was my WTF for the month. If you block the page from indexing, clearly you don't want it included in evaluating your site's ranking? All the more reason to not generate and try to orphan those pages when possible, so hopefully, Googlebot won't find them in the first place.Google has referenced other ways that parts of your site can impact the overall ranking of your site, like:Server errors, whether found on your main domain or subdomain.  If found on your primary domain, or If all of those subdomains are on the same server, and a subdomain has server errors, Googlebot will back off so that it doesn't tank your overall site.Doorway pages - if Google sees a high number of orphaned pages, that might be what they think you are doing, which could generate a penalty.A high number of broken internal links, as it's a sign of a low-quality website.Large amounts of thin content. The Panda algorithm is domain-wide. Google source.You are linking to Penalized Sites. This is the "Bad Neighborhood" algorithm. Matt Cutts has said: "Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods.” Now has suggested using the rel="no follow" attribute if you must link to such a site because "Using no-follow disassociates you with that neighborhood."Crawl traps - If Googlebot gets caught on one part of your site, they often won't reach all of your site's pages. I've fixed crawl traps on sites that resulted in ranking lifts across the entire site. Soft Error Pages. Google could treat “soft 404” pages as low-quality pages on your site, lowering your overall domain's search equity. Unmaintained subdomains that are on the same server as your primary domain. The low maintained websites *could* present a liability if Google sees them as being part of the main domain. Here's the guidance from the Google Human Rater guidelines around web maintenance:"Some websites are not maintained or cared for at all by their webmaster. These “abandoned” websites will fail to achieve their purpose over time, as content becomes stale or website functionality ceases to work on new browser versions. Unmaintained websites should be rated Lowest if they fail to achieve their purpose due to the lack of maintenance. Unmaintained websites may also become hacked, defaced, or spammed..."This is not an exhaustive list but highlights how neglected parts of your overall website can impact its ranking and search equity. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Updates on free Google and Bing ToolsLet's talk about the tools that have disappeared, and the new tools that are available.Google temporarily disables issue validation in Search Console.They are updating the criteria for the issues provided by the coverage report.And here are a few that have come back:'Request Indexing' is now back in Google Search Console.You can find it under the URL Inspection navigation. Here's Google's announcement.Google Structured Data Testing Tool - Moving to Schema.org in April 2021SEOs were frustrated that Google discontinued the tool, and it seems like Google was listening. SEOs will be able to find a refocused version of the tool on Schema.org by April. In the meantime, I recommend using schema.dev.And there are a few completely new tools available:There is a new crawl stats report in Google Search Console.This discovery was my SEO nerd excitement moment from last month. It's hard to find in the navigation, and you can access your report here, but it's Google log file analysis for your site. SUPER exciting for those that can't get access to their log files regularly. Here's more from Google's announcement.New Bing Webmaster Tools now has free heat mapping. The data is powered by Microsoft Clarity and is free to activate inside Bing Webmaster Tools. It only requires you to add the tracking code to your site. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Page Experience Update - How to audit, measure and improvePage experience and performance (measured via the core web vitals) will be a ranking factor in May 2021. Here are some great resources on how to audit, measure, and create an improvement plan below.How to audit your site's Web Core Vitals This presentation by Rachel Costello from SEO Nerds Switzerland's Meetup is excellent.The deck is here, and the recording is here.Her tips include:A list of areas you should check and add to your audit and tools to check those items.She also mentions URL Profiler, which you can use to query the Mobile-Friendly test API and Google's Safe Browsing API at scale. And as you're digging into solutions to improve your Core Web Vitals, loading CSS Asynchronously might help. Here's the 411. And there's another great article here on Search Engine Land that walks you through finding improvement recommendations.Tools to measure + Case Studies to Persuade OthersCheck out this sheet of tools from Aleyda Solis to help you measure and case studies to convince others to take these metrics seriously. It includes case studies like this one. You can also benchmark your site against competitors with the Core SERP Vitals tool over at defaced. Dev where you can See the Core Web Vitals directly in search results.You can also push the Core Web Vitals into your GA (the code to use in GitHub), then use a Google Data Studio dashboard to report on that data. Or if you're on WordPress, there's a plugin.You can crawl using Screaming Frog's Pagespeed Insights API to track performance on your staging server before launching.And you can spot-check using GT Metrix, which now has Core Web Vitals included as Google Lighthouse now powers it.Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

New tools inside Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Today we are going to talk about a few new SEO tools that are inside the search engine s webmaster tool accounts and why you d want to use them. Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today. There is new version of the crawl report in [...]

Stay up to date on the new tools inside your search engine accounts. Learn more in today's SEO tip.

A collection of YouTube updates There s been quite a few updates in the video space last month – from both YouTube and Google. Let s dive into them. Hello. Thanks for listening to SEO tips today. Let s first talk about the YouTube algorithm updates. Here are the crib notes from the Search Engine Journal article: [...]

Trying to up your video game? Listen to today's SEO tip to learn more about new tools and resources to help you pivot your video strategy.

Does Google crawl 307 redirects? 307 redirects DO NOT function like 301 redirects. Listen to today s tip to learn about how and why you should fix these redirects. Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today. These types of redirects (307) occur because the site was set up with HSTS which globally tells [...]

Confused about 307 redirects? Listen to today's tip to learn more about why and how to fix these redirects.

It s time to optimize your audio Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today. Interested in optimizing your audio assets? This episode is for you. Did you know that one-third of US adults listen to a podcast a month? That s more people consuming podcasts than are on some of the major social media networks [...]

Learn more about how to optimize your audio assets in today's SEO tip.

Creating a plan to rank in voice search Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today. In previous episodes, we talked about knowing the source of the answers is key to rank in voice search, and the vast majority of answers provided come from either Bing or Google search engines. Today we are going [...]

Creating a plan to rank in voice search Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.In previous episodes, we talked about knowing the source of the answers is key to rank in voice search, and the vast majority of answers provided come from either Bing or Google search engines. Today we are going to talk about what it takes to rank once you've determined that your audience and query are being provided voice answers from Google's ecosystem (keep in mind that with Alexa's reliance on Bing, 41% of the time information based voice answers are pulled from that ecosystem instead).Google voice ranking:To be found in Google search for an information-based voice query, the result will be reliant upon:The answer (URL, YouTube video, etc.) must be currently ranking #1 with a concise answer and a fast page speed (1.10 seconds). Most of the time this answer  is often in the Featured Snippet slot. One-third of the times a Featured Snippet will be used as a voice search answer. Or your brand has a strong Knowledge Graph presence.Or you have Schema.org markup on your website that creates a Google action or custom Google Action that fulfills intent.If it's a query with commercial intent , you will need to have your product in Google's product feed.If it's a local voice query, you need to claim and optimize your Google My Business listing.How to creating a plan to rank for the Featured Snippet (if your query is info based)To figure out if you're already ranking in the Featured Snippet (or to track your progress), you would need an SEO Tool like GetStat, SEMRush, RankRanger, and/or Ahrefs.If your ranking already on Google page one and want to shoot for that #1 slot, you need to ask yourself: Do I have enough EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) to rank #1 for YMYL queries? Does my content answer the searcher's intent? Does my content match the format Google is displaying? Are my pages loading fast enough? For this you can measure your page using tools like GtMetrix and Google Lighthouse.Creating a plan to improve your brand's Knowledge Graph presence. Google and Bing's Knowledge Graph are entity databases that are used in each algorithm. Getting your brand in the search engine's Knowledge Graph involves ensuring that your brand and products are appropriately mentioned in databases that the search engine uses for the Knowledge Graph like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Google Scholar/Microsoft Academic, Google My Business/Bing Maps, Wikinews, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Crunchbase, etc. as well as adding structured data to your pages that will help the search engine understand the entities associated with your brand.When you add schema.org markup to your site, you'll want to add links out (using sameas markup)  to your Google database references. Both search engines use schema.org markup, but Bing also uses plain HTML markup as a part of its process of understanding your site's pages. A note about editing Wikipedia...I would recommend you DON'T try to edit Wikipedia pages. If you do, they will lock you out and revert your edits. I recommend working with a Wikipedia coach (I have one that I recommend) which will help you have conversations with editors on the talk pages in a way in which you might be able to implement changes to the pages you care about. Continue reading here. . .

Page Experience Google update We now have a deadline around when the Core Web Vitals measurements impact rankings – May of 2021. Let s talk about how to prepare. Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today. Google has announced that the metrics measured in their Core Web vitals report data will impact rankings in [...]

Page Experience Google updateWe now have a deadline around when the Core Web Vitals measurements impact rankings - May of 2021. Let's talk about how to prepare.Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.Google has announced that the metrics measured in their Core Web vitals report data will impact rankings in May 2021, as well as previous metrics like web usability, web safety,  and interstitials.It will be an aggregated ranking signal. Here's the announcement:The new page experience ranking factor will include: Load Speed (‘Largest Contentful Paint' factor from Core Web Vitals)Responsiveness (‘First Input Delay' from Core Web Vitals)Visual Layout Stability (‘Cumulative Layout Shift' from Core Web Vitals)Whether URLs are mobile-friendlySafe and Clean Website Code (Safe Browsing with no Malware)Use of HTTPS EncryptionNo Intrusive InterstitialsWhat are the metrics, and what are good measurements?The three core elements are a part of Google Lighthouse and include:Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures the time it takes for a page's primary content to load. According to Google, load times under 2.5 seconds are good, and over 4 seconds is poor.First Input Delay (FID): This metric measures the amount of time it takes after loading the page for a user to be able to interact with the page. According to Google, 100 milliseconds or less is good, and anything over 300 milliseconds is poor.Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This metric measures whether items shift while loading, and the lower the CLS, the better - Google says that .1 is good and higher than .25 is poor. How do you go about benchmarking your existing site?You can find these metrics in:Google Search Console's Core Web Vitals reportAnd in that report, you can find recommendations for improvement using Page Speed Insights and Chrome Lighthouse.  It's essential to keep in mind that while the report shows you a range for “good” URLs, reports have demonstrated that URLs ranking #1 in Google search had average mobile page load times of 1.10 seconds. And how about new sites?And if you're working on a new site and need to measure Core Web Vitals before launch, I recommend the following:Screaming Frog with the Pagespeed APIOr DeepcrawlBoth of which run off of lab data.And if your site allows for crawling from unknown IPs, there are a bunch of other tools that can assist and let you check in bulk, including:Continue reading here. . .

The power of an SEO strategy for academic journals Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today. Over the past few years, I ve been working with professional journals who are in Google Scholar but need to improve their Google Search visibility. My focus has been to ensure that I don t recommend changes that impact [...]

Learn more about how academic journals can drive more traffic from organic search in today's SEO tip.

Checking for Mobile Usability Issues Across a Large Site Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today. With desktop-only content being dropped from Google's index by March 2021, and the fact that web core vitals will be a ranking factor in 2021, the SEO community is working hard to benchmark their site s mobile usability [...]

Checking for Mobile Usability Issues Across a Large Site. Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips todayWith desktop-only content being dropped from Google's index by March 2021, and the fact that web core vitals will be a ranking factor in 2021, the SEO community is working hard to benchmark their site's mobile usability and performance and create a plan for improvement. Now you can check your site's mobile usability issues inside Google Search Console in the mobile usability report and there are plenty of tools on the market that will let you check mobile site speed, including tools like the new site speed comparison tool at Sandbox Web. It allows you to view the top results for a given query to see if you can see any patterns with page load speed for top ranking URLs. Super handy!However, I'm interested in tools that can check sites for mobile usability issues in bulk. I've found a set that will let you check 50 - a couple hundred URLs or so, and that shortlist I've created includes: https://www.experte.com/pagespeedhttps://batchspeed.comhttps://dashdash.comhttps://technicalseo.com/tools/mobile-friendlySo how about larger sites?You can also look at the mobile rendered version of your site if you turn on JS rendering in Screaming Frog prior to your crawl, but it doesn' export any sort of report that is helpful. You can use Deepcrawl, which will check to see if a mobile viewport is set, and that will find *some* of the issues, but I've seen clients just re-size their desktop into a mobile viewport and the text is still set for desktop - so too small to see and *not* clickable via a thumb. So IF you know of a tool that addresses this issue, please let me know.However, your tip for today is to make sure that you don't have any mobile usability issues - check inside Google Search Console and spot check using some of the tools above. Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.

Interesting Cloudflare resources Hello, and thanks for listening to SEO tips today. I stumbled upon a few interesting SEO resources from Cloudflare that I thought I would share. They seem like an interesting effort by Cloudflare to market to the SEO community to me, but both of these are free tools that provide insights that [...]