Podcasts about search console

As a business owner, knowing what your site is getting found for and its performance, is important. However, not many people know how to review their site's traffic and performance, to reach the right audience. I have coached numerous business owners, who've had their site for many years, but did not know what they were showing up for on Google. Now, I know a lot of people are familiar with Google Analytics, but I have something even better that can provide you with data you need.  It's time to share the underrated secret tool of SEO, Google Search Console. Google Search Console is a FREE tool, that allows you to review and make necessary corrections to your site to optimize your visibility in Google search results. You can get data on, the words your site is getting found for, backlinking for your site, how well your page is doing in search and even how many pages Google is seeing from your site. This episode walks through five ways to use Google Search Console to your benefit. Whether it is to track your performance or measure your growth, if you are serious about SEO and how Google sees your site, search console is your next tool to use.  In this episode you'll learn: ·         Why Google Search Console is important for your site? ·         What indexing and video indexing is? ·         How to track performance and measure growth using Google Console? ·         Why detecting issues early on is easy with Google Console? ·         What ways you can use Google Search Console to find topics? Let's get started! Want to know how to set up your Search Console account and Site Map? Find a quick tutorial on how to do just that, by going to https://youtu.be/zaiWODRTHpc   Resources ·        Join our SEO WorkClub by going to girlgetvisible.com/joinus. Applications are officially open! ·        Join SEO Growth Mob, our free community where we provide insightful information around all things SEO, including more information on the Search Console. You can join at https://www.facebook.com/groups/SEOGoodyMob            

Tips this week include: • Celebrating my first sale of AI generated images • How AI is spawning new business opportunities • Yoast SEO global settings and Google Search Console tutorials have been updated in the DIY SEO course • Why you need to opt out of Google switching you to GA4, even if you've already set up your GA4 property • Testing a possible trigger for Update Failed and JSON error with ModSecurity • ChatGPT hits 100 million users and what being the fastest growing app in history means for you • ChatGPT Plus launches as an intermediate paid version • The new AI Success Club I just joined and how you can join too • Preview of ChatGPT in Bing • Google's Sparrow AI chatbot is coming to Google search • Why Google invested $300 million into AI startup Anthropic • Microsoft launches new Teams Premium with ChatGPT support • How AI can make you far more productive and save you time

Geoff Atkinson, Founder and CEO of Huckabuy, looks into how Google's speed update will impact your website. To ensure that your website is performing well, it's important to regularly monitor your page speed and other important metrics related to your website's performance. Thankfully, Google's Search Console has evolved to allow you to identify page speed and other core web vitals issues. Today, Geoff discusses how to react to search console alerts. Show NotesConnect With: Geoff Atkinson: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Each week, Greg and Ben answer your questions on digital marketing for local businesses … local search engine optimization (SEO), Google Business Profile, social media, email marketing, websites, online advertising and more.Updates and QuestionsGoogle has added UGC content restrictions.New Apple Business Connect.State of Local Search event in 2023.GBP posts are gone.Rising stars in SEO.Companies scamming Local Services Ads PSA.Can you have multiple GBPs for the same business?How do I change my profile picture on GBP?Is call tracking good to use?How do I verify my GBP with Search Console?What part will ChatGPT play in creating content for local businesses?Why am I not receiving my verification postcard?Where do I go to get the block removed for reviews?Why cant I add my website to my GBP?Links mentioned in this session are available on our website at https://localmarketinginstitute.com

This week we had two unconfirmed updates from Google rollout after the helpful content...

In this episode of Search Off the Record, Josh Cohen, a Tech Writer on the Search Console Team, joins John and Lizzi to chat about the Search Console Help Center. They dive into who drives changes in Search Console, tips for writing feedback, and questions to ask when deciding the right level of information to give in a document. Learn the differences between product and doc issues, not being able to remove content from a website you don't own, and more! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr053-transcript  Search Console Help Center → https://goo.gle/3k34NU5    Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast

במדריך זה, אני מראה לכם איך אפשר לחבר את גוגל אנליטיקס עם Google Search Console בקלות, דרך הממשק של אנליטיקס. דבר זה, יאפשר לכם לראות את השאילתות שמחפשים בגוגל ומגיעים אליכם דרכן, בממשק של גוגל אנליטיקס. תוכלו לחבר דטא ולהסיק מסקנות טוב יותר. המדריך המלא על איך לחבר את אנליטיקס ביחד עם Search Console בשביל לקבל נתונים מדויקים יותר: https://itayverchik.co.il/connect-google-analytics-to-search-console/ הצטרפו עכשיו לקהילה של בוני ומקדמי האתרים הטובים בישראל בחינם לגמרי: https://www.facebook.com/groups/israelwp --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/itay-verchik/message

In this guide, I show you how to connect Google Analytics with Google Search Console easily, through the Analytics interface. This will allow you to see the queries that are searched on Google and the users that reach you through them, in the Google Analytics interface. You will be able to connect data and draw conclusions better. The Video On How To Connect Analytics Together With Search Console To Get More Accurate Data: https://itayverchik.com/connect-google-analytics-to-google-search-console/ Join now the community of builders and promoters of the best websites in Israel completely free: https://www.facebook.com/groups/itayverchik/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/itay-verchik/message

Ponemos punto final al 2022. Es época de hacer balance, repasar los principales hitos y novedades del SEO en este año que despedimos. Unos cuantos updates, novedades en Search Console, EAT, cambios en las SERPs... uf. Un año muy movido que he intentando resumir o mejor posible en 20 minutos. ¡Nos escuchamos en el 2023 con mucho más contenido sobre SEO! ¡Feliz fin de año!

In this short news update, John Mueller is just stating it louder for those in the back. Even though you might be finding information in regards to user's time spent on site within Google Analytics or the Search Console, the conclusion is clear. Google does NOT use that as a search engine results ranking factor. Sign up for a consultation https://www.a1contentservices.com Click To Support My Podcast - start your Amazon shopping with my link, it's FREE and helps support my PODCAST Thanks for listening. https://www.twitter.com/a1content - continue the conversation with #a1content https://www.tiktok.com/@a1content *using my affiliate links will earn me a small commission without costing you anything additional while shopping. Thank you for supporting! More Info: https://twitter.com/Pechnet/status/1600935255862837248 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/a1content-marketing-seo/message

FastLetter - Una fonte buona dalla quale aggiornarsia cura di Giorgio TavernitiN. 30 - 19 Dicembre 2022Di cosa parliamo* AI per la Creazione dei Contenuti: ecco lo Tsunami!* AI per la Ricerca: il competitor di Google* Google SpamBrain contro i Link Artificiali* L'EAT diventa EEAT* Non mi iscriverò né a Mastodon né ad altre: mi sono rotto le scatole* Strumenti* Da leggere* Interviste* SalutiPremessa: siamo quasi a 5.000 iscritti alla FastLetter. È una bella soddisfazione. Negli ultimi mesi è cresciuta molto nonostante siamo solo a 3 pubblicazioni da dopo l'estate ad oggi. Questo è un segno molto importante. Io sono da sempre contrario a stabilire una frequenza a piori. Per alcuni periodi ho anche testato varie frequenze a seconda degli ambienti. Non dico che non funziona, dico che dipende. Dipende da te, ovvero da come ti trovi meglio come Content Creator e dalla qualità di quello che pubblichi.Certo che la quantità ha la sua importanza. Ma se pubblichi cose di alta qualità ed interesse, la frequenza passa in secondo piano. Poi se gli obiettivi sono altri, il discorso cambia.Auguro a tutte le persone che stanno leggendo o ascoltando la FastLetter delle buone feste. Io rientrerò a metà Gennaio con una nuova edizione, la numero 31.Grazie per tutto.AI per la Creazione dei Contenuti: ecco lo Tsunami!Finalmente sta diventando un tema comune, lo vedo nelle mie bacheche social che apro sempre meno. Vedo facce e testi creati con l'AI. È bello vederlo, specialmente per noi che in qualsiasi evento ne parliamo da tanto tempo. È arrivata.E nello stesso tempo Google inizia a mettere delle linee guida che vanno sempre più nella direzione di premiare l'esperienza, la qualità, la fonte.Non è un caso. Il dado è tratto.Chi ha venduto la SEO con la keyword density, con lo stuffing e con quelle minchiate là ne verrà travolto. Il problema è che l'Intelligenza Artificiale scrive meglio di quei testi, non perché è più brava nella scrittura, ma perché avete inondato Internet di testi che fanno schifo.Scusate se per la prima volta non dico “abbiamo inondato Internet”. Non me la sento di mettermi in mezzo a questa affermazione, forse per la prima volta. L'ho fatto sempre. Ma questa volta no. È una battaglia che porto avanti da sempre. Le persone non leggono su Internet? Certo, non leggono quando il testo fa schifo. È dura da digerire, ma è così. Scrivere, sapere scrivere, è arte. I SEO che in questi anni hanno frantumato i cosiddetti alle persone che scrivono mettendo la SEO al primo posto sono finiti.Ma c'è un problema: chi ha commissionato un lavoro di pessima qualità perché comunque andava bene? Secondo voi quelle stesse persone quanto ci metteranno a sostituire la scrittura fatta da persone con dei semplici copia&revisiona&incolla? E questa è solo la superficie. Usare gli strumenti che abbiamo attualmente a disposizione per far scrivere dei testi è un po' da stupidi. È come comprarsi una automobile per girare il mondo per poi restare nel proprio paesino di 3.000 anime e fare avanti e indietro dalla casa al bar.Questo tipo di strumenti è utilissimo per fare tanto altro e ovviamente più si è preparati su un tema più possiamo tirarci fuori il meglio che c'è. È uno strumento che entra nel proprio processo creativo.So che ancora pochi la vedono in questo modo, ma fidatevi, sarà così. Così come abbiamo inserito la Search Console nel nostro flusso di lavoro, inseriremo l'AI.A parte farmi fare qualche riga di codice per risparmiare tempo l'ho usata per:* farmi tirar fuori tutti i temi principali e tutti i temi secondari di come dovrebbe essere strutturato un corso che farò in futuro. L'ho letto, rivisto, mi sono fatto la mappa mentale e mi sono aggiunto tutto quello che mancava. È stato come un confronto con una collega. A tutte le persone che in questo momento stanno sghignazzando consiglio di smettere di sentirsi superiori, mettersi in gioco e provare.* gli ho dato in pasto la trascrizione dei video di YouTube (che già fa YouTube, ho fatto un copia incolla del testo). Ho preso anche il Corso di HTML per SEO eh. Mi sono fatto fare il riassunto. Mi sono fatto fare i riassunti di alcune parti. * mi sono fatto aiutare nella keyword e nella topic research* gli ho dato in pasto degli articoli e gli ho chiesto cosa potevo approfondire o se mi sfuggiva qualcosa.E siamo solo all'inizio. Ed è molto limitata attualmente. Appena potrà uscire fuori dal suo contesto di conoscenza e potremo dargli in pasto cose più facilmente ci sarà da divertirsi (ci sono estensioni, ma non intendo solo questo). Attenzione però, non mi ha SOLO fatto risparmiare tempo, ma Energie Mentali che ho impiegato in altro, ovvero nella verifica di quanto mi proponeva, nel miglioramento, nel confronto con quello che pensavo prima.Nella Creazione di Contenuti è come avere qualcuno al tuo fianco che potenzia il tuo modo di ragionare, ti amplia le vedute. Ti stimola la creatività. Può aumentare di molto la quantità e la qualità dei contenuti che si creano perché può essere molto stimolante anche quando le nostre finestre creative sono spente. Certo, deve essere usato bene. Quando arriverà alla massa prenderà una piega peggiore, tanto oramai siamo grandi. Lo abbiamo capito qual è l'evoluzione delle cose no? Dai, abbiamo troppa esperienza per credere ancora alle favole.L'AI darà una grossa mano a chi la SEO la fa bene e a chi crea Contenuti. Avremo un periodo di assestamento, ma tra gli “smanettoni della domenica” e chi la farà a livello professionale ci sarà un gap mostruoso. Anche perché collegare le API e iniziare a far processare informazioni nell'attuale flusso di lavoro SEO può fare la differenza: basta che sia il nostro cervello a guidare l'AI e non il contrario.E probabilmente l'AI scatenerà un grande dibattito sull'attribuzione della fonte. Chissà che non ci dia una mano a trovare una soluzione su questo fronte.Di sicuro Alessio Pomaro, Enrico Altavilla, Paolo dello Vicario ne parleranno ancora ai nostri eventi. E di sicuro a inizio 2023 farò qualche live sul tema, mi piacerebbe proprio farvi vedere come la uso con un esempio concreto. AI PER LA RICERCA: IL COMPETITOR DI GOOGLEAd oggi c'è molta eccitazione verso l'applicazione dell'Intelligenza Artificiale nella creazione di contenuti. Ovviamente c'è eccitazione nella mia bolla, perché nel nostro settore sta esplodendo ora limitatamente agli usi che possiamo farne noi.Non chiudiamo la mente: già in altri settori l'eccitazione c'è da un po' e per cose ben più importanti, come quello della salute. Quindi, diamoci un contegno, ridimensioniamoci e riportiamo a terra ciò che stiamo mettendo in cielo.Rivoluzione ok, ma nel nostro piccolo.Comunque sia, in merito a Google che alla fine la spunta sempre, Gianluca Diegoli scrive:Anche se con ChatGPT e altre AI potrebbe essere nato un modello di ricerca che mina alla radice il suo unico modello di business davvero profittevole, molto più che “la ricerca su TikTok”. Sarà interessante lo scontro di intelligenze artificiali: contenuti creati artificialmente contro algoritmi di ricerca che si scontrano con algoritmi AI che non ti rimbalzano a siti ma ti danno le risposte. Popcorn!E poi aggiunge che io sono LA fonte. Gianluca ti ringrazio per la stima.Secondo me è proprio così: il modello di ricerca di questo tipo è proprio una modalità attualmente mancante per Google. E in alcuni ambiti di ricerca è potenzialmente rivoluzionario. Devo ammettere che io la uso più per lo studio che per la creazione di contenuti.Una modalità di ricerca di questo tipo, integrata ad una serie di aggiunte che Google può fare, porterebbe la ricerca ad un altro livello.Ma Google ad oggi non può permetterselo. Tramite Marino Lagattola ho scoperto questo articolo di HD Blog che in fondo riporta la fonte originaria della notizia che è CNBS. Sunder Pichai parla di reputazione. E in effetti almeno il 90% delle ricerche che ho fatto con ChatGPT mi ha sempre detto frasi il cui succo era: attenzione, potrei sbagliarmi, cerca informazioni più precise sui motori di ricerca. E molte volte sbagliava.Google ha fatto della sua affidabilità un valore troppo forte. L'Intelligenza Artificiale sbaglia cose clamorose e imprevedibili. Se nella nostra mente passiamo da “l'ho trovato su Google” a “me l'ho ha detto Google” il rischio reputazionale è così alto per il brand che non vale la pena correrlo. Almeno da oggi.Insomma, se ChatGPT è razzista oppure pericoloso, ad oggi non importa a nessuno. “È agli inizi”, “deve migliorare”, “è l'algoritmo”. Se lo fa Google è un casino.Sono convinto che per competere con Google non lo si farà direttamente, ma in alcune tipologie di ricerca è possibile. Questa è una di quelle. Tuttavia ritengo che Google sia molto attenta a questa tendenza che ovviamente ha già sviluppato internamente.Non mi stupirebbe in futuro, limitatamente ad alcune ricerche, avere un'altra icona nel widget della ricerca di Google, così come è per il microfono che porta ad Assistant o la macchina fotografica per Lens. Dove con un brand diverso, con miliardi di disclaimer, con centinaia di cose che non si possono chiedere, ci aiuta a scoprire di più.Sull'AI non è finita. Anche il prossimo capitolo della FastLetter ne parla, ma prima:GOOGLE: SPAMBRAIN CONTRO I LINK ARTIFICIALIÈ dal 2015 che porto avanti un mantra: guardate che la direzione di Google è individuare i link di bassa qualità e ignorarli senza dircelo, quindi mi raccomando, non investite in attività di link a caso, puntate tutto sulla qualità.Eccallà. È arrivato l'update di SpamBrain. Il sistema basato sull'Intelligenza Artificiale riesce a identificare i siti che fanno spam e che concentra questo update sui link, mettendo un peso maggiore sull'acquisto e vendita dei link.Mettiamo a fuoco i 4 punti chiave rilevanti:* SpamBrain lavora in tutte le lingue. L'update è valido anche per il mercato Italiano.* Individua lo spam tramite i link andando a individuare sia chi compra che chi vende. È bidirezionale. * Attenzione che lo spam non lo individua solo tramite i link, ma

Merry Content-mas! New "Content Ideas" are present in Search Console #googlesearchconsole #contentideas This week on Marketing O'Clock, discontent with your content? A rumored new Google Search Console feature is here to help. Twitter is making a change that feels out of character (count). Google Ads' budget increase requests are no longer “limited” to the UI. Plus, I'm with the brand! We might have an answer to how much Pmax volume is branded search. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intro - 00:00 NEWS - 4:15 Take of the Week - 14:20 ICYMI - 17:01 Lightning Round Paid - 20:02 Lightning Round Organic - 27:54 Lightning Round Social - 35:02 Working Hard or Hardly Working - 43:37 Cool Tool - 45:30 Must Read Marketing Article of the Week - 46:39 Shooting the Heck - 49:14

Steve Toth, CEO and Lead Strategist at SEO Notebook, talks about Google Search Console API and Python. While Google Search Console is an invaluable tool for SEOs when it comes to providing data about users and diagnosing traffic and other SEO issues. While a lot of the data is not accessible from the UI, the API can be used to access this hidden data and extract all that valuable search data that is available. Today, Steve discusses why users should be diving into Search Console via API and using Python to automate the things they're using from it. Show NotesConnect With: Steve Toth: Website // LinkedInThe Voices of Search Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week on Marketing O'Clock, a new Search Console feature keeps tabs on Google Shopping listings, Google wants you to know your (suggested) audiences in Google Analytics 4, and a rumored new feature would help Google advertisers Bid repeat customers adieu. Plus, Apple is searching for a new Web Search chief. **************************************************** Intro - 00:00 NEWS - 8:52 Take of the Week - 23:58 ICYMI - 25:03 Lightning Round Paid - 28:09 Lightning Round Organic - 35:16 Lightning Round Social - 44:55 Working Hard or Hardly Working - 52:11 Cool Tool - 53:48 Must Read Marketing Article of the Week - 54:46 Shooting the Heck - 57:32

We had yet another biggish unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update on November 4th and 5th. Google also removed the annotation about the search features bug and added a Discover performance report bug to the list. The Google Search Console API is delayed a bit...

1. YouTube #golivetogether Feature Update - YouTube has announced that it's opening up its ‘Go Live Together (#golivetogether)' option to more users from next week, which will provide more creative considerations for your live-streams in the app.Go Live Together enables you to invite another YouTube user to your stream, with the video then displayed in vertical split-screen, providing new engagement and interaction options during a YouTube live broadcast. That could open up new opportunities for brands to run live interviews or internal spotlight sessions on their YouTube channel, while also facilitating Q and A sessions and other options to build engagement among your YouTube community. Hosts will be able to rotate the guest on their live-stream, but only one guest at a time will be able to take part in the broadcast.YouTube will also allow pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads on Go Live Together streams, which will be attributed to the host channel of the broadcast. YouTube says that all channels with at least 50 subscribers will soon be able to launch Live Together streams, with the roll-out beginning next week – though YouTube does note that it may take a few weeks to become available to all users.2. Instagram Subscriptions - Launched as a limited test back in January, subscriptions on Instagram are now available to all eligible US creators. Subscriptions allow creators to offer exclusive content in exchange for a recurring monthly payment from their followers. To see if you're eligible for Instagram Subscriptions, open the Instagram app and go to your professional dashboard. If you're eligible, you'll see an option to set up subscriptions for your account. With this feature activated, you can start posting subscriber-only: Live Streams  Stories  Badges  Posts  Reels  Group chats  Broadcast channels You can promote subscriptions in your Instagram stories with a dedicated sticker. When users tap on the sticker, they're taken to the subscription page. In addition to exclusive content, subscribers also get a special badge next to their name when commenting on posts.3. Facebook Professional Profile Is Now Available To All Users - Facebook's professional profile mode is now available to users worldwide, allowing everyone to showcase their skills and abilities. Facebook's “Professional Mode” is a profile setting that removes the need to create a Facebook Page to get your content in front of a larger audience. Also, you can now earn money from your Reels, or by enabling ads before, during, and after longer videos. Lastly, you can allow your fans to increase their support for you with a monthly subscription and share subscriber-only content. To learn more about Professional profile, click here.4. New UET Tag Dashboard In Microsoft Clarity - Understanding both user behavior and customer journey is crucial for successful marketing. To empower you with richer insights in a seamless experience, Microsoft launched Microsoft Clarity offering insights for Microsoft Advertising on Oct 18, 2021.  In hindsight, this is something I should have covered in Episode#79 and now regret skipping over the launch announcement.Anyways, Microsoft Clarity helps you better understand post-click user behavior and engagement on your landing pages because it's powered by the Universal Event Tracking (UET) tag that you place across your website. Now there's also a new UET tag dashboard which can help you monitor tag data and fix any issues that arise. This is a one-stop shop for all things UET, including real-time insights into the data that gets sent via UET tags and troubleshooting action recommendations.5. Microsoft Rolls Out Import Tool For Google Ads Performance Max - To simplify duplicating your efforts across platforms when using Google Ad's Performance Max campaigns, Microsoft Advertising has rolled out an update in their Google Import tool that allows advertisers to duplicate their Google Ads Performance Max campaigns.  Currently they only support Performance Max campaigns that use a Merchant center and will import the campaigns as Smart Shopping Campaigns and Local Inventory Ads. They have also started a pilot solution for importing your other Performance Max campaigns that aren't using the Merchant Center, starting with an experience that will import these campaigns as Search campaigns and create Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).Click here to learn more about on how to import your Performance Max campaigns in to Microsoft.6. Microsoft Ads Expands Availability Of ‘Similar Audiences' - If you're looking to expand your reach and find new potential customers, Similar Audiences automatically find new customers for you by looking for people who are similar to those in your remarketing lists. These audiences are generated automatically by Microsoft Advertising once you have a remarketing list in place. Similar Audiences can be used in the US and Canada, and the great news is that they're now generally available in more markets 7. Similar Audiences Is Going Away In Google Ads - Starting May 1, 2023, Google Ads will no longer generate similar audiences (also referred to as “similar segments”) for targeting and reporting. If you have active campaigns with similar segments, those will remain with your campaigns until August 1, 2023. After August 1, similar segments will be removed from all ad groups and campaigns. You'll continue to have access to historical reporting for similar segments from past campaigns. According to Google, In place of similar segments, different campaign types will offer different solutions to help you leverage your first-party data, reach the right audience, and improve campaign performance so that you can optimize directly for your business goals.If you have been using similar segments on Display, Discovery, or Video Action campaigns, and haven't yet turned on optimized targeting, you should turn on optimized targeting to reach additional relevant and expanded audiences and optimize for your conversion goals.If you have been using similar segments on Awareness and Reach video or Consideration video campaigns, you should include your first-party data segments in your ad groups, and turn on audience expansion to reach people similar to those in your first-party data.If you have been using similar segments on Search or Shopping campaigns and are not using Smart Bidding, you should use Smart Bidding with your campaigns. If you're using Smart Bidding already, or running Performance Max campaigns, you don't need to take any action, since Performance Max campaigns automatically leverage signals from your first-party data.8. Google Introduces New Search Labels For Coupons & Promos - According to a recent survey by Google, among Americans planning to shop for the holidays, 43% are planning to look for deals and sales more than last year. And Google is a central part of the shopping experience for US customers. On average, 60% say they've used Google properties for shopping in the past two days. To help searchers find the items they want at the best available prices, Google is updating shopping search results with new labels highlighting coupons and promotions and the ability to compare prices from multiple retailers.The promotion badge in search results on items that offer a discount using a coupon code, such as “15% off with coupon code HOLIDAYS.” Furthermore, a new coupon clipping feature lets searchers save promo codes for when they're ready to buy. This is similar to what Bing already has in-place for a while. A new deal comparison tool in Google search results makes it easier to view deals across retailers. For example, if you search for “women's puffer coat,” Google will display a side-by-side comparison of available deals in the SERPs.Lastly, Google's price insights feature is coming to search results to help shoppers make more informed buying decisions. Price insights allow you to see prices across merchants and whether the price is low or high based on historical values.If you are looking to tap into all the good things mentioned above then you need to make sure you are using structured data and Google Merchant Center. And don't forget you can always see how your deals are performing and review your business' promotions as well through Google Merchant Center. 9. Google: Search Console Verified Sites Do Not Get Crawled More - Google's John Mueller was asked if sites that are verified with Google Search Console get crawled more often or at a higher priority. The answer is no, "crawling is independent of Search Console," John said.Yes, you can use the URL Inspection tool to manually push URLs to be crawled faster but that is on a URL by URL basis and must be done mostly manually. Otherwise, just having a Search Console account won't lead to expedited crawling.10. Google: Don't Rely Only On Backlinks For Rankings - Backlinks (also known as “inbound links”, “incoming links” or “one way links”) are links from one website to a page on another website. Google and other major search engines consider backlinks “votes” for a specific page. Pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings. And back in March 2016 during a Q&A session, Google's Andrey Lipattsev revealed that backlinks, content and RankBrain are the top three ranking signals in Google's search algorithm. Now Google's John Mueller says that in the future he can see a Google Search ranking algorithm where links are not as important in the overall algorithm as they are today. He also hinted that links are not weighted as much as they were in the history of the Google ranking algorithm. Here is what he had to say when asked about backlinks:“Well, it's something where I imagine, over time, the weight on the links. At some point, will drop off a little bit as we can't figure out a little bit better how the content fits in within the context of the whole web. And to some extent, links will always be something that we care about because we have to find pages somehow. It's like how do you find a page on the web without some reference to it? But my guess is over time, it won't be such a big factor as sometimes it is today. I think already, that's something that's been changing quite a bit”This is a similar message to what Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said in a 2014 video that backlinks, over time, will become a little less important.My advice is that focus on writing better content and do not just rely on backlinks or else you will be in for a big surprise down the road.11. Google: Header Fonts Size Is Irrelevant For SEO - Google's John Mueller was asked "would google deem huge heading font size as a sign of "overdoing it", thus lower quality?" He said that the size of your header tags, i.e. H1s, H2s, etc, does not matter for SEO or ranking purposes. John said it might matter for users and conversions but for SEO, nope. Another SEO myth busted.12. Google: Stop Focusing On Writing Content Solely Based On Search Volume - Google's John Mueller said that if you make your content creation decisions based off of keyword search volume lists, then those pieces of content will be mediocre, at best. What John is saying is that if you are looking for content ideas and use base them on a list of keywords that show high search volume, then the content likely won't be good enough to rank well in Google Search. In short, write content that you can write something awesome about, and do not force your writing based on what people are searching for - especially if you don't know the topic super well.John added, "seeing a list like that as a target for content makes me worry that you're not going to get a lot out of your work, or that your work is going to be quite superficial." He said "I'd look for topics that match your expertise & passion. Where can you contribute that isn't already covered by lots of others, and do so in ways that provide something new & useful? Don't focus on keywords & "search volume" lists like this, they'll lead you into mediocracy."In my opinion, writing content solely on keyword volume is ridiculous. You should be writing your content on what your product, subject, or the market needs are and make it superior to your competitors.Also, if you peruse the Search Essentials document, you will find that Google advices you to: "Use words that people would use to look for your content, and place those words in prominent locations on the page, such as the title and main heading of a page, and other descriptive locations such as alt text and link text." To an untrained eye, it may come across as an implicit advice that you need to write content using keyword lists or research. However, what this means is that instead of creating content on those highly searched keywords, make content about topics you are an expert in and then sprinkle those highly searched keywords.Great Educational and Informative content -- not keywords -- always wins.13. Google: Your Website Doesn't Need 200k+Words To Be Authoritative - A Twitter user @natmiletic claimed that "You need around 200,000 words on your website to be considered authoritative by Google." John replied, "I don't know who made up that 200,000-word number, it's definitely not from Google."I'm including the screenshots just in case the user deletes his tweets.Remember that in 2019, John said word count is not a ranking factor and in 2018 John said word count is not indicative of quality. Google won't penalize you for short articles and Google said short articles can rank well and then again in 2014 said short articles are not low quality. Google has been recently advocating to avoid fluff . In addition, word count is not a sign of thin or how helpful content is or is not. In fact, Google even removed the reference to word count in the Search Console document recently.This goes to show that how much crap & myth is out there. Aren't you glad that you follow the #TWiMshow?

In this episode Cord & Einar review the best of "SEO Twitter" discussing topics like Facebook's profit nightmare (and why you should do SEO instead of Facebook ads), Google Search Console's new messages on max-image-preview, the 4th edition of "The Art of SEO," the new 2022 Web Almanac, how "Early Hints" can improve your Core Web Vitals, measuring E-A-T, 8 confirmed Google ranking factors, content hubs, and measuring topical authority. Sources Cited:@antoniogm  cites The New York Post: Meta's profits plunge more than 50% as ad revenue dwindles@rustybrick  tweets about Google Search Console Notices For max-image-preview@LeeFootSEO  shouts out  The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization 4th Edition@HTTPArchive  hightlights the new  2022 Web Almanac@alonkochba show how Early Hints can boost Core Web Vitals@creativetrnd spreads the word about @lilyraynyc's Measuring E-A-T Whiteboard Friday talk for @Moz@ahrefs on  8 confirmed Google ranking factors@aleyda links to a @sistrix list of Content Hubs Performance Leaders@jsvxc links to an Ahrefs study that uses a topical authority measurement method from @Kevin_Indig

1. Facebook Retires ‘Instant Articles' - Originally launched in 2015, Instant Articles were designed to provide publishers with a more engaging, fast-loading way to present their articles on Facebook, helping to maximize reader engagement within the app. As reported by Axios, Meta's ending support for Instant Articles as it works to better align with user preferences, which, increasingly, see video being its most engaging content format.2. TikTok Adds Photo Mode - Now TikTok has copied Instagram (perhaps in retaliation for IG copying all of its stuff) and launched  a new ‘Photo Mode' for still images in the app. Photo Mode looks exactly like Instagram, with users able to post carousels of still images that users can scroll through in the app. Per TikTok:“Photo Mode allows you to share carousel posts of still images that automatically display one after another. You can add music to soundtrack the images, which viewers can swipe through at their own pace.”3. YouTube Launches @handles For Channels - YouTube's moving more into line with other social networks with the addition of @handles for channels, which will make it easier to drive traffic to your profile, and promote your channel in the app.“Handles are a new unique identifier (example @youtubecreators) & ALL YouTube channels will have one. Your unique @handle will help people find & interact with you & your YouTube channel. And because handles are unique (unlike channel names), it's easy to confirm if you're engaging with the right person or not.”Your @handle, which will be unique to your channel (unlike Channel names), will directly connect people to your content, like it does on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, etc. @handles will also function as a unique channel URL, providing another branding opportunity. Up till now, custom channel URLs have only been available to creators with 100 subscriptions, but now, YouTube's making the option available to all users in the app. @handles will also make it easier and faster to mention channels in comments, community posts and video descriptions.“For example, creators can be shouted out in a mention in comments or tagged in the title of a recent collab, helping them increase visibility and reach with new audiences.”Part of the idea here is to better promote channels, in alignment with habitual trends, with a key consideration likely being Shorts and helping to maximize Shorts channel growth by making it easier to follow creators. Another element that YouTube's looking to tackle is the rise of copycat channels, where scammers create channels that look similar to popular YouTubers', often by using the same channel name. By ensuring that each channel has a unique @handle, which they can promote direct, that will make it harder to create replica channels, and trick users with uploads and scams.4. Google Data Studio Is Now Looker Studio - Google launched Data Studio in March 2016 as part of the enterprise Google Analytics 360 suite, with a free version that lets you turn your data into informative, easy-to-read, easy-to-share, and fully customizable dashboards and reports. There are easy-to-use drag-and-drop features to customize reports from various data sources, including Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and much more. Now Google has renamed the popular analytics and data platform from Google Data Studio to Looker Studio. Google wrote “starting today, Data Studio is now Looker Studio.” “With this complete enterprise business intelligence suite, we will help you go beyond dashboards and infuse your workflows and applications with the intelligence needed to help make data-driven decisions,” Google added.Google also announced a Pro, paid, version of Looker Studio named Looker Studio Pro. Google said that the Pro version will get new enterprise management features, team collaboration capabilities, and SLAs. Google said that is just the first release and the company has “developed a roadmap of capabilities, starting with Dataplex integration for data lineage and metadata visibility, that our enterprise customers have been asking for.”You can learn more about this change on the Google blog.5. Google Swaps Title Tags With Site Names For Mobile Homepage Results - Google is now only showing the generic site name in mobile search results that are for the entire website, such as for the home page. Google is using site names in order to make it easier for users to identify the specific website in the search results. Here is what Google published in the official announcement:  “Today, Search is introducing site names on mobile search results to make it easier to identify the website that's associated with each result…”This new feature is available in the English, French, Japanese, and German languages and will begin showing up in other languages over the next few months. Google is recommending the use of the WebSite structured data type because Google is using the WebSite structured data type, specifically the “name” property, to understand what the site name of a website is. So it is best that your site has the following: WebSite structured data Title tag Headings (H1, H2, etc.) Open Graph Protocol meta data, specifically the og:site_name You can read the official announcement here and the Search Central Documentation here. 6. Google Renames Webmaster Guidelines To Search Essentials & Some Changes - Google has renamed the Google Webmaster Guidelines to Google Search Essentials. The name change is Google's ongoing efforts to remove the term "webmaster" so that these tools and documentation do not narrow the focus to just "webmasters," but expands it to publishers, site owners, developers, creators, and so on. Google also changed the overall format, added clearer terms and examples and also tried to simplify them for easier consumption. Google explained they updated the: Technical requirements: It is a new section to help people understand how to publish content in a format that Google can index and access.  Spam policies: Google updated its guidance for its policies against spam, to help site owners avoid creating content that isn't helpful for people using Google Search. Google explained that most of the content in these spam policies has already existed on Google Search Central in the "Quality Guidelines", Google did make a few additions to provide clearer guidance and concrete examples for issues like deceptive behavior, link spam, online harassment, and scam and fraud.  Key best practices: Google published new guidance with key best practices that people can consider when creating sites, to create content that serves people and will help a site be more easily found through Google Search. 7. Google Announces Search Central Live Conference - Google announced live conference series called Search Central Live previously known as Webmaster Conference. The conference is scheduled for November 24, 2022 in Singapore. Registration for a limited amount of seats is currently open until November 15th, with ticket confirmation set to begin on November 17. Admission to the event is free. Per Google:“Before you buy your transcontinental plane ticket, keep in mind that we do plan to have more of these events in the future, and some might be closer to your base. Stay tuned for these updates on the Search Central Live event page or on Twitter.”Here is the official announcement.8. Microsoft Bing Launches Image Creator - An AI Image Generator - Microsoft has launched Image Creator - an AI image generator to its Bing search engine, which enables users to create digital art from text input. Let's say a picture of a Shiba Inu as an astronaut would go perfectly with a blog post you're writing. You turn to the search engines for a free-to-use image, but you can't find one that matches your criteria. With the new Image Creator tool coming to Microsoft Bing, you can generate the exact image you need by inputting descriptive text.Image Creator is powered by DALL-E 2 image generator technology developed by OpenAI. Microsoft says Image Creator can assist searchers with creating images that don't exist yet.9. Google's Stance On The Use Of AI Images - Google's John Mueller and Lizzi Sassman discussed the topic of using AI Images on your site in Episode 48 of the Search Off The Record podcast. Although autogenerated text content is prohibited/limited for ranking in Google Search, surprisingly there was no similar prohibition or caveat discussed about AI generated images and ranking in Google Images.10. Google Updates Image Structured Data - Google has added three new structured data properties to be used with the ImageObject type in order to add support for credit, copyright and image creator information via structured data. Google's developer support changelog states:“Added support for image credits to the Image Metadata structured data documentation. Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata. When you specify image metadata, Google Images can show more details about the image, such as who the creator is, how people can use an image, and credit information. ”This is what the new structured data types are for, according to Schema.org: creditText - Text that can be used to credit person(s) and/or organization(s) associated with a published Creative Work. creator - The creator/author of this CreativeWork. This is the same as the Author property for CreativeWork. copyrightNotice - Text of a notice appropriate for describing the copyright aspects of this Creative Work, ideally indicating the owner of the copyright for the Work.” 11. Google's Advice On How to Write Good Alt Text - The purpose of alternative text (alt text) in images is to provide audiences with screen readers a way to understand the images. In Episode 48 of the Search Off The Record podcast, John Muller and Lizzi Sassman gave the following advice on how to write Good Alt text:“Imagine that you're reading the web page aloud over the phone to someone who needs to understand the page. This should help you decide what (if any) information or function the images have. If they appear to have no informative value and aren't links or buttons, it's probably safe to treat them as decorative.From an SEO point of view, my recommendation is always to provide context for the image as well in the alt text. So if you have a picture of a beach, don't just be like, ‘Oh, this is a photo of a beach.' But rather like, ‘This is the beach before the chemical spill happened.' And… Because it's very different context if someone is searching for a beach for a holiday, it's like, ‘Oh, I want to see a beautiful beach. I'll go there on vacation.' And if you notice, well actually, this is before the chemical spill happened, then it's like, ‘Well, maybe like that would lend itself to different kinds of Search queries.'Because ultimately, when you're talking about Image Search, it's not that people want an image, but rather they want information which is attached to that image. They want kind of to understand a specific topic to find some information. And that additional context is something that you can provide in the alt text. And that's something that they might be searching for. And if they're searching for it, then make it easy for them to find that.”12. 3 New Examples From Google On How To Write Product Reviews - There has been a lot of confusion about the types of sites that may be impacted by the product reviews algorithm updates. This algorithm was designed to look at sites that offer product reviews, not necessarily e-commerce sites that have reviews on the product listing pages. So Google has added three new examples to the top of the “how to write product reviews” help document, clarifying more types of sites that may be impacted by the product reviews algorithm updates. The 3 example are: An expert staff member of a merchant that guides shoppers between competing products. A blogger that provides independent opinions of products. An editorial staff member at a news or other publishing site. These examples provide additional guidance on what types of sites may be impacted by this set of algorithm updates. In short, it is about content where someone is doing a review of a product, either as a comparison or a deeper dive into a specific product. This can include merchant sites, shopper guides, bloggers that share their opinion, news or publishing sites doing reviews, and more.As Alan Kent of Google recently said on Twitter “a merchant's product page with user reviews is not considered a “product review page” in this context.”Google also recently clarified that structured data may help Google identify product review-type content, but it is one of many ways Google identifies such content. Danny Sullivan wrote, “as for structured data, it might help us better identify if something is a product review, but we do not solely depend on it.”13. Google Still Does Not Use HTML Lang Attribute - Google's John Mueller https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1577945097693532166re-confirmed that Google Search does not use the HTML lang attribute. He said many screen readers do and Microsoft Bing might use it as well, but Google Search still does not.This is a similar statement to what he said several years ago in a video response - “We don't use that at all. So we use the hreflang links if you have that if you have different language versions. But the language attribute within the HTML markup is something we don't use at all. We've found that this language markup is something that is almost always wrong. So we tend to ignore that.”14. Google: SEO Is A Long Game - We all know that ranking well for competitive terms in Google Search is not as easy, or even a fraction as easy, as it was two decades ago. This is because of many variables including but not limited to Google's algorithms getting better and there being a lot more competition.John Mueller of Google responded to a complaint about SEO being too hard for news businesses to even bother trying. The question was "is SEO dead? I mean, starting with a new website these days it is basically impossible to outrank high authority websites. So many high DA showing up in the SERP. What can we do with a new website?"John's response was solid, he said "If you mean it should be trivial to out-rank long-existing, legitimate businesses with some SEO tricks, then yes, that kind of SEO is long dead. It's not enough to throw some keywords on a page to make it useful to users."But that does not mean SEO is dead or you should give up and not try to start a competing business with others. You just need to take the time and effort to compete. The same logic applies to offline success as it does with online success. You can't just start a new brand of soda and expect to compete with Pepsi or Cola overnight, it takes time, resources, marketing and a good product.15. Google: Do This To Get New Content Indexed Quickly - Google's John Mueller said that pinging Google that your sitemap file has been updated can help Google index your new content quickly. He said it is simply Google practice to ping Google with when your sitemap file is updated.Of course, this does not guarantee indexing. Google still does not index everything, so just because you might ping Google about a new URL, it does not mean Google will index it.John Mueller wrote on Twitter "Pinging a sitemap is a bit different than just providing it in the robots.txt -- by pinging, you're actively flagging a change in the sitemap file. If you're keen on having new content indexed quickly, that's a good practice."According to Google developers guide "Google doesn't check a sitemap every time a site is crawled; a sitemap is checked only the first time that we notice it, and thereafter only when you ping us to let us know that it's changed. Alert Google about a sitemap only when it's new or updated; don't submit or ping unchanged sitemaps multiple times."To use the ping tool, send a GET request in your browser or the command line to google.com, specifying the full URL of the sitemap. Make sure that the sitemap file is accessible. E.g: https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=FULL_URL_OF_SITEMAP16. Google Ads Launches Content Suitability Center - Google has launched a new content suitability center in Google Ads where you can manage your suitability settings for all campaigns on YouTube and the Google Display Network.Google wrote, “previously, managing suitability settings was done in multiple, segregated sections of Google Ads and the experience differed across Google platforms.” “This led to a time-consuming and cumbersome implementation process, along with misconceptions and misuse of the controls. While exclusions can be helpful tools, brands also want to be mindful of the types of content they choose to exclude. Over-exclusion can negatively impact your cost and reach. It can also unintentionally exclude great, brand-safe content or content relevant to diverse communities,” Google added.When you enter the new suitability center in Google Ads, you can now select one of the three inventory modes. Inventory modes “cater to your preferences for various sensitive themes, such as profanity, sexual suggestiveness and violence,” Google explained. You can fine-tune additional exclusions from that point. Once you have designated your preferences at the account level, Google Ads will now automatically apply these settings to your future campaigns.17. Google Ads Will Remove Some Content Targeting In YouTube Conversion Campaigns In 2023 - A major benefit of YouTube ads has been the powerful targeting options, many of which will now be removed early next year according to a Google Ads help article. The help article, “Optimize your Video campaign for more conversions” contains a content targeting section that recommends avoiding the addition of content targeting (by keywords, topics or placements) in campaigns.These content targeting options are beloved by many advertisers due to the granularity they provide. Placements could target YouTube Channels, specific videos, video lineups, URLs, Apps, or collections.With the current targeting, advertisers could match ads to channels/videos to deliver more customized messages to audiences. This change will effectively put an end to the hyper-targeting that made YouTube so appealing for ad dollars.Another major blow is the loss of keyword targeting on the self-proclaimed 2nd largest search engine in the world. The removal of query targeting on a (video) search engine hurts.While keywords on YouTube haven't historically been as powerful as traditional search, it has been a way for advertisers to help answer queries with their video content. There is no doubt that advertisers will need to get more creative in order to hit their target audience.Advertisers running YouTube content targeting campaigns that leverage keywords, topics or placements will have the targeting removed.If you are running ads using content targeting options, you should stay tuned to updates as those targeting settings will be automatically removed from your campaigns. With less targeting, you'll reach a larger audience and may spend more on less qualified users.

This week, I posted the monthly Google webmaster report, an excellent place to catch up on the past month in SEO. Glenn Gabe shared some wild charts showing how Google's various search algorithms can't make up its mind about on-site quality. Google Search...

Today, we're finally graduating from SEO 101! We're moving beyond the advice we discussed throughout our SEO series and getting into some more advanced territory. Certainly, this puts us into the “taking your law firm to the next level” category, at least when it comes to SEO. Before you get overwhelmed, these strategies on city pages can be implemented by anyone. They are more advanced but you don't need to outsource all of it to an agency. We'll teach you exactly how to set up city pages yourself in this episode. Tune in to learn the basics of city pages, why you need them to enhance your local search engine optimization, and the step-by-step to successfully creating them. Show Highlights: What city pages are. How city pages can benefit your firm. The prerequisite to creating a city page. How to leverage your competition to create great city pages. How to create your city pages. Why cross-linking on city pages is important. A bonus way to use city pages to find prospects where there's little to no competition. An example of a client who had success using city pages. Subscribe and Review We'd appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what Law Firm Next is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot! Supporting Resources: Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Follow us on Facebook GNGF Free Law Firm Marketing Consultation How to Create An FAQ Page Action Steps: The action steps for today are to decide if City Pages are right for you.  If you are ranking on the first page in maps for the area right around your office, look to see how you are ranking. Type in Practice Area / City Name (i.e. Estate Planning Attorney, Cincinnati Ohio). Look at the competition and identify which areas containing your ideal client would be the easiest to rank for (refer back to our SEO series about looking at the competition). Get a baseline of your traffic from your Google Analytics and look at Search Console for the impressions by keywords. Create one or two unique city pages with FAQs and Schema makeup and link to them from your main practice area pages. After 3 months, look at your Google Analytics and impressions by keywords. If you are seeing some success, rinse and repeat on more cities every 3 months. *** Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.

In this episode of The Private Practice Elevation podcast, you're going to learn about the 4 Mountains of Successful SEO for private practice websites.   “What do you mean by ‘the 4 mountains of SEO'”, you ask?   The 4 Mountains are the main pillars or categories that make up a holistic SEO (search engine optimization) strategy for your website.   Most people, when they think about “doing SEO”, focus solely on making sure they have some keywords in a few places on a page.   Or they may put keywords in page titles and meta descriptions and hope that may move the needle of their ranking results.   But there's actually much more that can and should be done in order to make sure your SEO efforts are truly effective.   It's when all 4 Mountains are working together that we see exponential growth in organic traffic, bringing more of your ideal clients to your website.   So let's break down these 4 Mountains of Successful SEO and what goes into each of them. In This Episode, You'll Learn: The four main pillars that need to be in place to have a greater impact on your SEO efforts The tasks that you'll focus on within each of the 4 mountains to help you rank your website better for keywords How to think holistically about your search engine optimization strategy so that you can grow your website traffic month after month Coming Soon: Live SEO Class with Daniel We've been refining our SEO process over the last couple of years and we're super excited with the results our clients are getting. For some time now I've wanted to share that process with a small group of private practice owners so that they can learn how to implement their own SEO strategy. So we're putting together an SEO mastermind group/training program. It will consist of live classes, content templates, an SEO workbook, and private online community to give you a step by step process to create and implement a holistic SEO strategy for your business.   If you're interested in more information and want to be notified when we launch, please click here. Subscribe & Review in Apple Podcasts If you're not yet subscribed to the podcast I want to encourage you to do that today. This is the best way to make sure you don't miss an episode! Click here to subscribe on iTunes.   And if you're feeling extra generous, I'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. Reviews help others find the podcast plus I'd really love to hear what you think! Click here to leave a review. Just click on “Ratings & Reviews” then “Write a review.” Let me know what you like best about the podcast. Thank you!   Episode Transcript:   0:00   Well, hello there, and welcome to episode number 118 of the private practice elevation podcast. I am your host, Daniel fava. And I'm excited to have another solo episode. So here I am, it's been it's been a long summer, it's been a fun summer, it's been a full summer. But one thing I did at the beginning of summer is I started interviewing some great people, and I really hope that you've been enjoying those conversations that I've had. But one of the purposes of doing that was to Yes, connect with people bring you great content, but also for me to kind of pull back just a little bit and just enjoy the summer.    0:35   So that is really what I've been doing, we dropped down to every other week on this podcast. And that was just it was really helpful, just to have a little bit of time off and not worry about, you know, having content all the time. And, you know, even for myself, it can be, it can be hard to keep up with everything. And I know that some of you kind of feel that if you have a podcast, or if you're trying to create consistent content for your blog, to get it ranking for SEO and all that stuff. You know, a lot of people will recommend you got to have a blog post every week, you got to get your website full of content.    1:10   And while that stuff is helpful, I believe it doesn't really serve your life, if it's going to cause you more stress, and kind of suck your productivity and your creativity, then something needs to change. So that's one thing that I really just love about having my own business is that I can make those changes when needed and will likely pick up I believe in the new year with with more frequent episodes. I'm even thinking about maybe working on some sort of quick tip episodes that could be you know, just really digestible tips for you to apply to your online. Your online marketing your website, SEO, you know, stuff like that. So if you're thinking about doing that in the new year, but for now this every other week deal has been working really great. So yeah, it's been a it's been a long summer.   2:00   So we have two boys, five year old Samuel, and our one and a half year old Caleb. So it's been it's been a blast. But it's been you know, hard to, to keep them busy sometimes and juggle, you know, work life balance and all that sort of stuff. So we had, we had the kids and camps when when they were available. We had babysitters over here and babysitters over there and then we lost our babysitter because she went back to school before our kids preschool and kindergarten started. So we had to find a new person and we got a new person. Then we took a couple trips here and there went to North Carolina.    2:36   And actually, as I'm recording this now planning to go on our last trip of the summer to Cape sandblast in Florida, and I'm really looking forward to that. Because our our North Carolina trip was really great. It was fun got to see my brother and his wife and four kids. They live in Virginia, so we don't see them a lot. So our kids just had a blast playing with the cousins doing that whole thing and, and also my parents came down we met North Carolina and Wilmington, and just had fun going to the beach and just hanging out. There was lots of rain. So there was it was it was a little bit tricky trying to manage, you know, just having fun with the kids and all that sort of stuff. But it was it was a full house. There was a packed house. It wasn't on the beach. So you know me as an introvert that was it was hard at times to find that time to get away and escape. So I'm really looking forward to this trip in Florida because we're going to Cape Sand Blas, which is like Old Florida from what I hear. I haven't been yet but it's you know, white sand beaches, not a lot of stores, restaurants. And just there's a state park there. So really just looking forward to some downtime, you know, before the school year starts.    3:45   And our kids still go to school and preschool for another two weeks. For some reason their school starts pretty late. Everyone else, you know, all the public schools have been back. Oh, that two weeks now? Pretty much.    3:57   So yeah, we're just hanging on to summer here. So. So yeah, so that's, that's where I'm at. That's where my summers been. One thing that has kept me just kind of sane or just kind of excited over the summer sounds funny to say, but if you've been reading my emails, you know that I'm very into bourbon. So I've been I've been enjoying bourbon for years and years. But back in June, my brother and I went to Kentucky and we took a trip toward the distilleries, a handful of distilleries, obviously not all of them, but really just started loving just the history and learning about it and just how the different processes can change how bourbon tastes and so yeah, I've just been really just enjoying trying new bottles and even have a geeky spreadsheet where I keep track of which ones I want to try next. And you know what's hard to find and all that stuff.    4:47   So that's been just kind of fun. And in my wife, Liz, she doesn't enjoy it as much as I do. And she'll say that I'm completely obsessed and kind of just geeking out over this. This is just kind of what I do with hobbies. I get really into stuff especially at the beginning.   5:00   So I've kind of been in that phase right now. But Liz does enjoy a good old fashion with me. So it's been, it's been fun to have her taste some of the stuff that I've been enjoying. So that's, that's been a nutshell, that's where, where I've been what I've been doing.    5:14   And we've just been rocking and rolling in private practice elevation, just working with some really great clients lately. And, you know, over over the last year or so, our SEO services have really, really grown a lot, we've really refined how we work with folks on SEO, because people are at different stages in in their journey with SEO. Some people, they know a little bit about it, or they've done their research. So they've created content, that's for it. So their websites, optimized to a degree, but they don't know what to do next, you know, so we've been providing SEO assessments as a great starting point for our clients that we can come in and understand, Okay, what's been done? Where do your opportunities lie?    5:56   And what should you focus on. And then from there, we work on our SEO base camp service, which is a foundational service, it's a two month project pretty quick. But it's really doing the heavy lifting and making sure that your website is optimized, you know, those main service pages, but also, you got to understand which keywords to use in order to optimize the website.    6:16   So we'll do the keyword research, we'll come up with that content plan on which pages are your biggest opportunities, and then we'll optimize those pages, and fill in some gaps like optimize your Google business profile to go along with this work that we're doing just really give you that foundation give you that base camp for your SEO. And then we have had for a long time our monthly SEO service, which is more of an SEO maintenance, you know, once you have that foundation in place, that is the hard work the heavy lifting, but then you have to maintain that.    6:49   And so we take that content calendar, that content strategy, plan, those keywords that we researched in SEO Basecamp project, and then we apply that long term on a monthly basis and continue optimizing the website, creating blog content, that sort of thing. So in a nutshell, that's what SEO looks like. So what we're talking about today, we're talking about the four mountains of successful SEO. So these are the four main pillars, the main things that are going to really hold up your SEO, campaign or SEO strategy, so to speak.    7:23   And so when we do an assessment, or when we work on any website for SEO, these are the four main categories that our work is going to fall under. A lot of the times people have one or two of these in place, or maybe none of these in place, but they just don't know where to begin. So what I'm going to do is just kind of outline these pieces, these are the things that you're going to want to have in place in order to have a successful SEO strategy working for you in your practice.   7:51   So as always, I want to make this digestible. And so you know, if you're new to this idea of search engine optimization, SEO, and that's what it stands for, like, Yeah, let's start at the very beginning here, if you're not familiar, SEO stands for search engine optimization.    8:04   So it's all the things that you can do on your website. And as you'll learn here to also off of your website to help Google and search engines understand what your content is about, and then serve that content up to a user, you know, searching on those search engines.    8:21   So basically, how it works is search engine will crawl through your website pages, it's going to create an index, almost like a Rolodex, you know, it's going to look at those pages and say, oh, there's a page about EMDR therapy, there's a page about trauma therapy on this page are anxiety therapy in Atlanta, and it creates that index, and then it's going to deliver those results in an order of what it feels like the user is going to be most useful to the user. And so you know, when we talk about rankings and ranking on Google, that's what the algorithm does, the algorithm takes that index of pages, and it says, oh, this person typed this into Google, I believe that this page is going to be the most useful for what they are searching for.    9:06   And so if your website is optimized well, when somebody searches for those specific terms, such as anxiety therapy in Atlanta, you hope to be at the top of that list, because of all the different factors that are at play here. And so when we talk about these four mountains of successful SEO, that is where you spend your time on those optimization pieces in order to help your website rank better. So I'm going to outline these, these four mountains of successful SEO here and then we're going to kind of dive in a little bit, just to give you a little more context on each one here. Alright, so these four mountains of successful SEO, these are the categories that we focus on.    9:48   So if we're going to assess your website, if you come to us and say hey, how can I not ranking? What can I do? We are going to grade you and assess you on each of these and so they are technical SEO   10:00   Your content, and on site SEO, and off site SEO. So again, that's technical SEO, there's your content. There's your on site optimization, and off site optimization.    10:15   Alright, so now that you know what these four categories are, let's dive in here. Let's pick these apart a little bit. So you can understand what goes into each category. So you can help get your website ranking a little bit better for the keywords that are important for you.    10:29   Alright, so technical SEO for for a web page to appear in search results, the search engines must be able to crawl it, and index that they must be able to access those pages in order to understand what those pages are about, so that it can create that Rolodex of content.    10:46   So solid technical SEO makes this a seamless process. And there are a few components that go into your technical SEO that you want in place for it to for Google to be able to crawl it really well. And so some of these might sound pretty confusing, or pretty geeky. Most of these pieces are already in place. You know, if you have a Squarespace website, or if you have a WordPress website, and just kind of straight out of the box, a lot of this stuff is in place. There's some aspects of it that might require a little more tweaking. But sometimes those those things, you know, those situations arise when No, they aren't in place or something isn't set up, right. So that's where it becomes important to be aware of these different pieces. So the first thing is your robots dot txt file. So that obviously sounds geeky robots.    11:37   What the heck is that about? So a robots dot txt is a file that lives on your hosting server that has a couple of different like commands in there that says, hey, Google index this, Hey, Google, don't index that every once in a while. It's very rare. It hasn't happened with any of the clients that we assess their websites or worked on SEO for every once in a while, it might have something in there that shouldn't be there that basically says, Hey, don't crawl through these important pages that I want to rank.    12:05   So that's your robots file.    12:07   The next is your XML sitemap. So this is super important. So a sitemap, you've probably heard that term before. This is what Google will look for, to see all the different pages on your website. If you are on WordPress, we recommend using Yoast SEO, if you install that plugin is automatically going to create a sitemap for you. Other platforms like Squarespace, they also will just include a sitemap that's part of it. But the next step is making sure that Google actually knows where that Sitemap is.    12:36   And so that's why we use Google Search Console, which is a free service, you can get on there. And you can let them know where your Sitemap is located, to nudge it to crawl through that, and then Google over time will continue to crawl through through those pages. The next component of technical SEO, SEO is your speed. This is a big one. So making sure that your website loads fast is very important. And Google has said over the last few years, that this becomes increasingly more important, especially as more people are viewing the your website on their mobile phone.    13:11   So they want to make sure that your page loads quickly. We can't really get into all the details about speed optimization here. But there's something to be aware of if your website loads slow. And somebody else has very similar content on their website, but it loads fast, Google is going to consider that a better experience. And another aspect of this is also mobile usability. So that's another technical SEO component, you want to make sure that your website is accessible on mobile phones, because Google considers mobile now before it considers the desktop. So a Google search console will also give you errors if your website doesn't appear well on mobile, it'll tell you some things you got to fix for that. Another thing is security.    13:53   So that's your SSL certificate, making sure that your website has some encryption, especially if you have forms on the website. That's something that's just super easy to get through your hosting company, something we include when we host websites at private practice elevation, have an SSL security certificate installed on your website. And the other aspect of technical SEO is just errors, errors that appear.    14:16   And again, Search Console is helpful here. It'll tell you if there are broken links on the website 404 errors, which means page not found errors, those types of errors, you want to be able to understand where they are and how to fix those. So that is technical SEO in a nutshell, you know, in each of those, we can really break down things that you can do in that but you know, we're really just trying to give you the overall view of these four mountains of successful SEO.   14:46   All right, the next mountain that we're going to talk about is your content. So content has been the absolute backbone of SEO since its inception. It's really It's how you share your expertise, which is what the search engines value because that content   15:00   It really provides insight into your services, and just the value that you provide to visitors to your website and potential clients. So let's dive into content and kind of what we are looking for in order to make   15:14   your content successful. So for search engines, so your content should have four qualities, that kind of sets, that's kind of funny, because it kind of sets up the first one is quality that your content needs to have. It's got to be quality, quality content. So if you have similar services to somebody in your area, but they have just great content on their website quality content, meaning it goes into depth, it's not just 300 words on a page with a couple of bullet points about your services, but they've got landing pages for each service.    15:47   That's quality, you also want to have photos on there, just you know, all the information that somebody would need in order to consider your service. So that's number one quality, it's got to have keywords. So that's kind of an obvious thing for search engine optimization is to make sure that you're using the right keywords, and those keywords should appear on the pages that you want to rank for those services.    16:10   So anxiety therapy, and Atlanta. If that is an important keyword for you, you want to have a landing page devoted to anxiety therapy in Atlanta and make sure that that keyword appears throughout that page. recency is another factor, Google likes websites that are up to date, that are recent that are growing in content, in the fourth quality that you want to have in your content is relevancy.    16:34   So it is relevant for your ideal clients, for your potential clients. That is kind of it kind of goes along with keywords, you know, if you're focused on the right keywords, it should stand to say it's probably relevant to the service that you're providing. It's when you start adding content that is maybe more like you're using your blog, like a journal and has a random thoughts and stuff like that.    16:56   That's not really relevant for your ideal client. But if you're focused on, you know, 10 ways to decrease your anxiety this week, stuff like that, that goes along with those service pages that you're that you're writing, you know, that is relevant.   17:15   So when we're assessing websites, we're taking a look at those service pages, we want to make sure that it's got all of these all these aspects in place, we want to make sure it's using keywords, there's images and text on the pages. And also that has got a nice structure to the content itself. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in the on site optimization piece.    17:35   Another thing too, those service pages, a great way to get more of those keywords and more of that great content is to have an FAQ section on your service pages, you know, so if you feel like you're having trouble getting that content on those service pages, you can include an FAQ section on each and every service page. And that will help you there. Alright, so let's get on to the third mountain of successful SEO. And this is likely where you've probably spent most of your time if you've done any search engine optimization. This is really what comes to mind when people think about SEO and how to improve their rankings of their website. And that is on site optimization. So on site SEO, is how we add context to that content. So we've created that great content. So how do we break that page into sections and optimize headers, you know, and make it easier for search engines to really understand what those pages are all about.    18:31   We use on site SEO to do that. And there are four main factors or four main places that we're gonna spend our time when it comes to on site SEO, and that is number one, your page Titles and Meta descriptions, your headers on the page itself, alternative tax that goes along with images, and then internal links. So for your page titles, and meta descriptions, this is this one carries probably probably the most weight, I would say. And making sure that you've got an optimized title for the page, and a meta description. And so these are the things that show up in search engines when you type in, I always use this as an example. It's just easy anxiety therapy in Atlanta and you see those search results.    19:14   The page title is what you see, you know, is that larger text and then the meta description is going to be that little intro deck intro text, you know that that kind of entices you to click gives you a little more context about what the page is about. So once you know which keywords you want to optimize a page for, you want to make sure that you're using those keywords in the page title and in the meta descriptions. So that just makes it easier for Google to understand what that's about.    19:41   The next step is your headers. Now, I would say that this has probably been one of the biggest trouble areas for most people that come to us and they want us to do that SEO base camp where we optimize their their current website, is their headers are just they're all out of whack.   20:00   So I want you to think about Wikipedia. If you've ever been to Wikipedia, and you're searching for information on a specific subject, the first thing that they show on Wikipedia, when you come to a landing page is you'll see that nice outline. And you'll see, you know, just that, the those headers, and this is kind of just how they operate, they organize it so well. It's just, it's a page outline.    20:24   And so you'll see that sort of top level subject. And then underneath that main subject, you'll see a couple other subjects, but then under that you've got, you know, ABCD under that, and it just the content follows a very nice flow. And a lot of the times when we look at these pages that you know, that people want optimize, we can see that they've got just different headers all over the place. So a lot of times people use headers, because, you know, especially in like Squarespace, if you're building the website, yourself, if you highlight text, and you choose h1, or h2, and that's what we're talking about, like the header code there. A lot of the times in the styles of the website, it will be styled differently, you know, so you sometimes you just want to give more emphasis to a sentence on your web page.    21:11   So if you're not aware of this, you might just highlight something and choose h1, well, h1 should, there should only be one h1 on your on any landing page on your website. And that is really where your main keyword should be. And then under that you've got a hierarchy. So h2 are the next top level subjects that go along with that content. And so you can break up your text into these headers and sub headers so that Google can can see just the different your keywords, and you just see the different topics that fall underneath the main topic. And this is another great way that FAQs on service pages works really well.    21:50   Because you can have those h2 sub headers for those different questions such as How much does anxiety therapy cost? How do I know if I'm a good fit for anxiety therapy, you know all those things. So that helps Google read through the content, and understand what the page is about and also helps users skim through the content because people don't read people will skim through, they'll see those headers, and then they'll decide what to dig into and read further. So that's headers.    22:19   Next is alternative text. So that is a little bit of code that goes along with your images. So that's why it's really good to have some images throughout your landing pages. Because you can insert some alternative text that basically is really designed for people visually impaired, to understand what text what images, sorry, which images, you're what they're about. But you can also put some keywords in there, you don't want to just stuff it with keywords you can describe the images about but try to work in the keywords. And that's another way that we optimize your your on site, how you do your on site optimization.    22:55   The other part of on site optimization is internal links. And so this helps Google actually crawl through your website quicker. When you create new content, it can help it get indexed a little bit quicker, it can also help people just find more related content throughout the website. So things that you can do anytime you write a blog post, you want that blog post to really serve those service landing pages that you have. So you can always just put related content, you know, and link over to your service landing page.    23:26   So you know, you can mention in that blog post, if you're considering anxiety therapy, you know, check out this page here and link over to that. Likewise, on those service landing pages, you can have a related blog post about anxiety therapy, and then have links to those blog posts. And that just creates this this interlinking web that Google can crawl through and see that related content.   23:49   All right, our fourth and final mountain of successful SEO is your off site SEO. So off site SEO is everything that happens outside of your website makes sense off of your site. The search engines look for external signals such as backlinks, Google Maps, social media, as a gauge of your online authority and trustworthiness.    24:11   The way I kind of like to describe this as that it's kind of like a resume when you have you're applying for a job and you have those referrals. You know, please reach out to my former employer, you know, and get some recommendations. You know, it is a vote for your website, having a great referral network to your website tells Google that okay people trust you people are linking to you. And so if you have more backlinks and also quality backlinks from other websites that have good authority, all of that is really that pours a lot of fuel on the SEO fire and that can be a real catalyst for growth of your SEO.    24:51   It's also one of the steps that most people overlook because it does take time to build backlinks into to build relationships with people to get those backlinks. And so it can often be overlooked in an SEO strategy. But as I mentioned, the main factors of offer off site SEO are backlinks, your social media presence, and also local search. So you want to have all of those in place, local search is probably the easiest place to begin. So that's your Google business profile.    25:23   Starting there, if you don't have a Google business profile, which is a free listing of your business, definitely get that set up. If you are online, only, I really encourage you to still set up a Google business profile. And you're allowed to list your service areas.    25:39   So you don't necessarily need to list a physical address, you can list your service areas, you know, if you work in multiple states, or you're trying to get you know, all of one state, that's where your license, do that it can help you show up at when people are still searching near you, for your services, you want to be able to show up. And so definitely get a get a Google business profile set up on the other aspect of local search is having other business profiles set up.    26:07   So having your business listed on other business directories can be helpful for a local search as well. So Google sees that your business is listed repeatedly, in a certain area, certain physical address, if you are, you know, working with people who you have a physical office, you know, that you can list, you know, go for that do that. The other aspect, as I mentioned, is backlinks, you know, so things that you can do for backlinks, you could you can sponsor some events in your local area, you could get listed on different business websites in your community. If you have other people who are referring to you see if you can have a place on their website to be listed as a referral source. Another thing that you can do that's great is guest guest blogging, guest blogging on other websites, or writing articles for other websites.    27:00   And those articles, you know, list you as an author, and they link back to your website. Podcasts are also great too, if you mean you have expertise to share, so there's likely a handful of podcasts that you could do a little research, follow the the host of those podcasts on social media and learn a little bit about them, and then offer your expertise as an episode for their for their podcast, and then you will likely be linked from their website to your website, building that authority.    27:31   And so it's great for traffic building, as well as just building that backlink SEO stuff. And then the other piece is social media. And that's just another part of building authority is just Google wants to see that, okay, this business is established, they've also got social media channels.    27:48   And if you're not really active on social media, that's okay. If you're writing a blog post, maybe like once a month, you can always just use that blog post to share on social media, you don't have to answer comments, you don't have to, you know, get all in with a with a social strategy. And all that, I kind of say that, because that's kind of,   28:09   I'm kind of preaching to the choir here, because I have that love hate relationship with social media, I mostly spend my time on Instagram, just because it's simpler for me. But sometimes you get, it can be so easy to get overwhelmed with social media and like, you know, trying to get likes and followers and all that stuff.    28:25   But at least as a starting point, you can always just list your business on the different channels, and then share a couple blog posts here and there to show that you're active. And all of that can help Google just see that you are, you know, you're a legit business, you're active, that sort of thing. Another thing too, you can share your blog post on your Google business profile as well, which is another another great thing to do, which can link back over to your website.    28:49   So it's a way of showing Google Hey, my profiles active, and I'm contributing. So those are the four mountains of successful SEO. So just to review, we had technical SEO, content, on site optimization, and off site optimization. So those are the four main mountains that we look into when we work with our clients. And we have aspects of all of the all of those mountains, it baked into the services that we provide, because we really, really want to take that holistic approach to SEO, in order to make sure that all of these mountains are being tended to to really create a great strategy for your online visibility. So I hope that this has been helpful for you.    29:34   And if you are feeling like all of this stuff is pretty overwhelming. You're not really sure you know how to go from point A to point B. There's something that I've been working on, it's been just kind of just in my brain for a while and you know, now that we're getting back into the school year, I'm focusing a little bit more on this idea. And so what it is, is I'm calling it SEO base camp live. So as I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, we have our SEO base camp service, which really takes our clients through the keyword optimization, content planning content calendar, and on site optimization of their website.    Transcribed by https://otter.ai

1. Recommendations In Google Analytics - Google Analytics now has tailored recommendations to help users become aware of new features by reviewing your property's history, settings, and trends across Analytics. The recommendations appear in the Insights and Recommendations section of the homepage, as well as throughout Analytics wherever they're relevant.Going forward, you should check you Google Analytics accounts regularly for outages, updates, and, now, recommendations. As always, we discourage enabling auto-apply recommendations.2. HTTPS Report In Google Search Console - Google has announced it will begin rolling out a new HTTPS report in Search Console.  The announcement came via Google's Search Central Blog and indicated the search engine expects the launch process to take a few months. This new report will show how many indexed URLs on your site are HTTP and how many are HTTPS. With the ability to check a page's HTTP/HTTPS status from Search Console, Google can help us  address the issues that are causing the HTTPS URL indexing failure.3. Hey Google!, Can I Use STOP Words In My URL? - Stop Words are common words like “a”, “and”, and “the.” In the early days of search, those kinds of words used to not be considered important for SEO because they weren't considered important for search engines.Now someone asked John Muller of Google, “In Short, when using words from a page title in the URL, should I include stop words, too? For example, should I call a page why-is-the-sky-blue.html or why-sky-blue.html?”To this question, Muller answered “Words in URLs only play a tiny role for Google Search. I would recommend not overthinking it. Use the URLs that can last over time, avoid changing them too often and try to make them useful for users. Whether you include stop words in them or not, decide to use numeric IDs, that's totally up to you.”4. Hey Google!, Is It A Good Idea To Target Keywords With Zero Search Volume? - During a recent Google Search Office hour, someone asked whether or not they should try ranking for zero search volume (targeting long tail search queries) keyword. Lizi Harvey from Google responded that “…You can optimize for whatever keywords you want. And it's not always about the keywords that have the most volume. I would think about how people should find your page and target those keywords.”Lizzi's answer is similar to what's written in Google's documentation in the SEO Starter Guide. The SEO starter guide document also recommends thinking about how users might find a webpage. What's interesting is that they suggest thinking of how different readers might search depending on their knowledge or experience level. Someone who's new to a topic might search with unconventional phrases while someone who's experienced will use the jargon that is commonly used. For example, someone new to saltwater fishing might search for saltwater fishing lures. Someone who is more experienced might search for a pikie metal lip plug (which is a handmade wooden lure that swims with a puppy tail wagging motion).5. Hey Google!, Will You Penalize Sites That Look The Same? - Google's John Mueller answered the question if Google penalizes sites that are nearly identical. Mueller used examples of different levels of similarity between sites and suggested which one to avoid.“First off, there's no penalty or web spam manual action for having two almost identical websites. That said, if the URLs and the page content is the same across these two websites, then what can happen for identical pages is that our systems may pick one of the pages as a canonical page. This means we would focus our crawling, indexing and ranking on that canonical page. For pages that aren't identical, we generally index both of them. For example, if you have the same document on both websites, we'd pick one and only show that one in search. In practice, that's often fine. If you need both pages to be shown in search, just make sure they're significantly different, not just with a modified logo or color scheme.”John's answer is interesting because it provides an insight into how Google deals with actual duplicate content where the entire content is identical. In this case he says that it will canonicalize one version of the content, which means that it will choose one version of the content for ranking purposes. This can pose a problem for sites that syndicate their website content, which is why it's important for websites to require the publisher of the syndicated content to use a cross-domain canonical.6. Hey Google!, Is There A Benefit To Publishing Content Daily? - During a recent SEO Office hour, someone asked if adding content on a regular basis was helpful for ranking.The answer that was given from Google: “No. Posting daily or at any specific frequency for that matter doesn't help with ranking better in Google search results. However, the more pages you have in the Google index, the more your content may show up in search results.”It's been noted over the past few years that Google does not crawl all content. And if the content isn't crawled then it's not going to be indexed, which is important for ranking. Part of the reason why Google might not crawl that content is the overall quality of a website. “The other big reason why we don't crawl a lot from websites is because we're not convinced about the quality overall. So that's something where, especially with newer sites, I see us sometimes struggle with that. And I also see sometimes people saying well, it's technically possible to create a website with a million pages because we have a database and we just put it online. And just by doing that, essentially from one day to the next we'll find a lot of these pages but we'll be like, we're not sure about the quality of these pages yet. And we'll be a bit more cautious about crawling and indexing them until we're sure that the quality is actually good.”Getting crawled then is the first hurdle to ranking. Getting that crawled content indexed is the next step, which seems increasingly difficult for some publishers. In the past. John Muller has offered the recommendations for helping web pages get indexed: The first tip was to make sure the pages can be crawled and that there isn't a technical reason why a site can't be crawled. He suggested crawling your site to check how easily pages can be crawled. A site crawler like Screaming Frog will show 500 errors if the server is unable to serve the web pages. Similarly, check your Search Console for 500 errors because that is the classic indicator that the web host is having trouble serving web pages.  Promote the web pages that are having trouble getting indexed.”…So that when our systems look at your website, they say, oh this is actually a legitimate small business. We should try to index everything. Because especially if you're talking about a smaller website with a couple hundred pages, that feels like something where if we have a little bit of a hint then we'll go off and get all of that. If you're talking about an e-commerce site that has 500,000 pages then obviously (like) if we get all of those pages or not, that's a totally different story.” Use internal linking to help Google determine which content is important. “for example, that are linked from the home page are usually a sign that you care about these pages, so maybe we should care about them more.” Focus less on quantity and more on the quality of content.  7. Non Google Merchant Center feeds Are Eligible For Product Rich Results - Merchant Center feeds are no longer necessary to be eligible for product rich results. Google expanded eligibility for Merchant Listing search experiences and product snippets through the use of structured data. This change affects merchants, product review sites and product information aggregator sites. In the announcement, Google stated“Initially, product snippets in Google search results were primarily powered by schema.org Product structured data, and merchant listing experiences were primarily powered by product details supplied via a Google Merchant Center feed. Now merchants can be eligible for merchant listing experiences by providing product data on web pages without a Google Merchant Center account. This improved eligibility has in part been made possible by recent extensions to product-related properties and types in schema.org for areas such as apparel sizing and energy efficiency ratings.”Google also announced that it is removing from Search Console the Product structured data report and replacing it with two new reports. The new reports that are viewable within Search Console are: Merchant listings report - Merchants that sell products should use the merchant listing report. This report shows structured data issues related to the free listing experiences. Product snippets report - Sites that publish product reviews or don't sell products but use product structured data should use this report. This report shows structured data problems related to product snippets in search. The product snippets report absorbs the old product structured data report. The data from the old report is now available within this new report. 8. Google Now Supports Performance Max Campaigns In Ad Scripts - Ad scripts let you automate specific actions in your ad account, saving time and making management of large or multiple accounts much easier. Advertisers and developers using Google Ad scripts now have support for Performance Max campaigns. You can pause and enable the campaign, and modify most asset types. However, you won't be able to modify text assets or create new campaigns or asset groups. Furthermore, listing groups cannot be managed via Scripts. If you're interested in setting up your Performance Max campaign script, you can visit the AdsApp here. You can read the announcement from Google here.9. Google Ads Introduces “Manage” Tab In Recommendations - Google has added a “Manage” tab to give advertisers more control and flexibility over how recommendations are applied.  Maintain your ads - This option includes recommendations to improve your responsive search ads, remove redundant keywords, and update your conversion tracking Grow your business - This option helps with advanced recommendation optimizations such as upgrading keywords to broad match, maximizing conversions with auto bids, and adding store visits as conversions. Google says these new bundled recommendations give advertisers more flexibility, but this seems to do the opposite. You can select and deselect the options you want, but the options are broad and don't provide any details on what's being changed. If you don't know specifically what updates are being made, then the element of control is lost and Google gets the upper hand in terms of how "flexible" they can really be. Like any new Google feature, always make sure auto-apply is turned off until you've had the chance to test it for yourself.You can read the update from Google here.10. Google Rebrands Ad Extensions & Adds Features To Create Engaging Ads - Google has renamed the Google Ads extensions to "assets" plus it has released new workflows, tools and reports to "make it easy for you to deliver more engaging ads and provide you with helpful, actionable information about their performance."First off, Google's now referring to 'ad extensions' – like sitelinks, callouts and additional images - as ‘ad assets', which aligns the broader scope of Google's new approach to your various add-on elements. And with the shift to these being viewed as additional assets, Google's looking to make it easier to manage them as well, by providing a broader overview of the assets that you can include within your campaigns. Per Google:“As you create assets and apply them to your campaign, the preview tool will automatically update so you can see them in the context of your ad. In addition, Google Ads will now recommend assets based on your chosen campaign goal. For example, if you've selected “Leads” as your campaign objective, we'll automatically recommend that you add a lead form asset.”Google's also added a new ‘Ads & assets' menu, where it will display stats for all of the assets across your account, providing more context on which elements to include.There's also a new ‘Combinations' report, which will display sitelinks, callouts, and images alongside your headlines and descriptions, making it easier to review your ad approaches from a higher viewpoint.In combination, the new reporting tools will provide much more oversight of your Google campaigns, and their related elements, which could help to uncover new opportunities and options to optimize your results.Google says that unified reporting in the ‘Assets' page will roll out over the coming weeks for all campaign types that previously supported ad extensions, while the updated combinations report will roll out ‘in the next few months'.11. Microsoft Launches Multimedia Ads - Microsoft has announced new ad formats to be shown at the top of search results in Bing Search, Windows 11, and Microsoft Start. The new ad formats are collages of videos and images shown at the top of search results. On the right side, the search result is expanded and opens to a bigger window so the user never needs to click off the page. Here are the best practices and general guidelines for those thinking about taking advantage of the new formats: The responsive ad format uses Microsoft machine learning to combine images, headlines, and descriptions to create relevant visual ads To ensure your ad stands out, there will only be one Multimedia Ad per page. (This could also mean much higher costs.)  The ads leverage Creator tools which are available in the Ads platform. The tools allow you to extract images from your website, edit the images, crop, and add colors and filters  Use the Bulk API and Editor tool to create or modify Multimedia Ads in bulk  The new ad formats are available immediately where Bing Search is available. Soon, Microsoft will expand to new surfaces and experiences such as DSA and retail You can read the full announcement from Microsoft as well as review their case studies here.

This week, I posted the large Google webmaster report a bit late but then dug into the Google helpful content in a lot more detail...

Do You Want More Organic (FREE) Traffic From Google?Increase Your Website Sales & Leads Using SEO At https://seooptimizers.com/reviewsGetting Started With Search Engine Optimization: The Guiding Voice Guest AppearanceEpisode Timestamp:0:00:00 Introduction And Context Setting0:03:12: History Of SEO, How Does It Work?0:07:18 Why One Should Focus On SEO, And How Does It Help Businesses?0:10:34 What Are Google's Most Important Ranking Factors?0:13:12 How To Create SEO-friendly Content?0:16:00 Is SEO Ranking Different On Google Vs Youtube And Other Social Platforms?0:19:00 Career Opportunities In The SEO Space, Where Someone Should Start?0:20:30 Witty Answers To The Rapid-fire Questions0:22:45 One Piece Of Advice To Those Aspiring To Make Big In Their Careers0:23:30 Trivia About SEO Optimization TechniquesSupport the show

In this week's episode we discuss Google's announced "Helpful Content" update and why our clients don't have to worry about it. We also talk about Search Console's new Video Pages report, the diminishing power of AMP, dynamic rendering, and why perfectionism in SEO is a losing game.Sources cited:Search Engine Land: Google's new helpful content update targets sites creating content for search engines firstAleyda Solis: Google's Content Quality & Helpfulness QuestionsGoogle Search Central: Announcing the new Search Console Video index reportBarry Adams & Dave Smart on Twitter: https://twitter.com/badams/status/1561756159505272833Search Engine Land: Perfectionism in SEO: A route to self-destruction

Google hat mit dem Rollout des Helpful Content Updates begonnen. Obwohl das Update zunächst einmal nur für englischsprachige Suchanfragen wirkt, stellt sich auch hierzulande die Frage, wie man sich am besten auf das Update einstellen kann. Weitere Meldungen in dieser Ausgabe: Wie das Helfpul Content Updates und weitere Google-Updates zusammenhängen, kein internationales Targeting mehr per Google Search Console, Google entfernt Verweise auf AMP aus Dokumentation zur Article Markup und: Google hat den Bericht zu den Core Web Vitals in der Search Console angepasst.

This week: Google will release another black-hat busting algorithm, Search Console now includes more granular Core Web Vitals data, and Twitter offers a few ad tips. Here's what happened this week in digital marketing.

Google has begun rolling out the helpful content update on Thursday...

In this podcast episode you will discover:What Is SEO?How Does Google Work?How To Build Trust In 2022What Are Google SEO Backlink StrategiesHow Do You Research Keywords?How Do You Turn Traffic Into Clients?Our guest expert, Brandon Leibowitz explains in this podcast episode how to use SEO to increase your sales and leads.  Brandon talks about how you can achieve the first page of google and be top of minds with easy organic search.   It isn't necessary to spend a lot of money on Google Ads if you follow Brandon's secrets to understanding how Google actually works.Support the show

This week we covered the new big Google update that is coming next week named the helpful content update, I dig deep into it. Google has been talking about content issues for a while, so it is not surprising. Google will then launch its fifth product reviews update...

Do You Want More Organic (FREE) Traffic From Google?Increase Your Website Sales & Leads Using SEO At https://seooptimizers.com/reviewsSEO, Social Media & Google Ads: Affordable Bookkeeping & Payroll Service Guest Appearance Learn with us about SEO strategies that work in 2022 to get more free traffic. Brandon will explain how to optimize your website to get the traffic to convert and other marketing strategies such as remarketing or social media.Support the show

Google schreibt die Mehrzahl der Texte aus dem Title Tag für die Suchergebnisse um. In meiner Studie hat sich außerdem gezeigt, dass Google den Title Link nur noch selten abschneidet. Welche Empfehlungen lassen sich daraus ableiten? Weitere Meldungen in dieser Ausgabe: Googles neuer Index Coverage Report in der Search Console ist live. Dort wird jetzt angegeben, ob eine URL wegen Problemen auf der Website nicht indexiert wurde, oder ob Google sich gegen die URL entschieden hat. Und: Google hat aufgrund eines Fehlers viele Seiten als indexiert gemeldet, die gar nicht indexiert waren.

1. Wix Site Inspection Tool Integrates Google Search Console - Knowing whether your pages have been crawled (discovered by Google) or indexed (stored in Google's index), or whether your structured data markup is valid, for example, can help you fine-tune your online presence and make large leaps in search visibility. Google has always provided this information via Search Console, its platform for measuring search traffic and performance. To make those insights and tools more accessible to all business owners and SEO professionals, Wix now offers an approachable way to monitor and understand your site's issues and indexing status at scale. The Wix Site Inspection tool enables you to keep an eye on your site's technical health, mobile usability, rich result eligibility, and more, without having to pull the data manually or leave the Wix dashboard.“The tool will report any index status that Google is reporting, sometimes with easier language to understand. For example, it could be “crawled but not indexed” or “blocked by robots.txt” etc. Each index status detail will have a “learn more” link to an article explaining it and mentioning the common reasons why it could happen, with links to more relevant explanations. We also tell the users exactly what app and type of page each URL is so they can easily know where they need to take action.With this tool, users can debug any issue that they would get if they manually used Search Console's inspect URL tool. Users can understand the index status of their pages in Google and the specific reason for it. For each issue, we have additional resources to help guide users. These articles provide in depth explanations about each response, the possible reasons for it and how to fix it. Users will also be able to debug their mobile readiness and their structure data status.”The value of Wix is that it enables businesses to focus on doing business without having to deal with the underlying technology.Click here to learn more on how to get started with Wix Site Inspection tool.2. Google: Duplicate Content In Business Profile Posts Is Spam - Google added a line to its Business Profile posts content policy section cautioning users to avoid posting duplicate content.According to the update, duplicate content in posts published by Google Business Profiles is now considered spam. Google is sending a clear message that it wants businesses to post unique content.In addition, it sounds like Google wants businesses to limit their use of logos. Putting a logo on every photo, for example, may get you in trouble. The best way to stay within the new guidelines is to ensure every post published by your Google Business Profile is unique.Click here to read the complete content policy.3. LinkedIn Lets You Add Clickable Links To Photo Posts - LinkedIn rolled out a new feature that allows users to add external links to photos shared in posts as stickers. You can add link stickers to your photos and videos via the post creation tools in the LinkedIn mobile app. You cannot add link stickers through the desktop interface. However, users on any platform can see and click on the links when they see the posts in their feed. Link stickers are rolling out to users in phases, which means some people will have access to it before others. When you're eligible to use it, you'll see a chain link icon button when creating a post in the LinkedIn mobile app.4. IndexNow attributed for 7% URL Clicks On Bing - Fabrice Canel, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft Bing  told Search Engine Land that 7-percent of all the new URLs clicked in Bing Search in the past month were sourced from the IndexNow protocol. And more than 16 million websites are using IndexNow, publishing over 1.2 billion URLs per day to the IndexNow API.IndexNow provides a method for website owners to instantly inform the supported search engines about the latest content changes on their website. The IndexNow plugin was released by Microsoft back on Jan 5, 2022 and was covered in Episode#90. It was also covered in Episode#91 when it added support for Yandex - the russian search engine. It is unclear if IndexNow still sends data to Yandex now that there is a sanction on Russia since the Ukraine invasion.5. Google: Clicking On Your Site In Google Search Won't Change Your Rankings - One of the oldest myths in the Google SEO-verse is that clicking on your search results in Google Search will help you rank better. However, Google does not and has never used click data for ranking purposes. So someone asked John Mueller of Google the other day if clicking on my own link doesn't help but does it hurt? What if I get an army of people clicking on your site in Google Search daily, will that lead to some Google penalty?The answer is no, it does not hurt either. It does not hurt or help to have people clicking on your site in Google Search to try to manipulate Google's rankings in a positive or negative manner for that site. Google has said it countless times, CTR does not impact rankings and bot clicks don't either.6. Google Now Officially Supports GTIN12 Property - Even though the GTIN12 property was always supported but Google, it was not clearly mentioned in the documentation until now. Google also clarified that you can also use the generic gtin property for all GTINs, but they recommend that you use the most specific one if possible.So what is GTIN? GTIN, or a Global Trade Item Number, is an internationally recognized system for identifying products. It brought together several systems to ensure they all adhere to a common structure. GTINs can be 8, 12, 13, or 14 digits long. They are a numerical representation of the product's barcode. Different types of GTIN exist depending on where in the world the product comes from and the type of product.  The four different types of GTIN in use are: GTIN-8 - used mostly for EAN-8 barcodes GTIN-12 - used mostly for UPC barcodes GTIN-13 - used mostly for ISBN, JAN, and EAN-13 barcodes GTIN-14 - this is for wholesale or multipack products All GTINs, regardless of the number of digits, have a similar structure. The structure is Company Prefix, Item Reference, and a Check Digit. In GTIN-14 there is an additional packaging level indicator to indicate whether the product is an item or a case.Where GTIN-8, GTIN-12, and GTIN-13 numbers are represented as GTIN-14 (the main data structure), left-justified zeros pad out the number.For example, the GTIN-12 number 012345678905 becomes 00012345678905 in GTIN-14 format. Two additional zeros are added to the left of the number to bring it from 12 characters up to 14.Many comparison shopping engines, including Google and Amazon, use GTINs. They keep large databases containing almost all the GTINs that exist in the world.When you upload a product to one of these platforms through your data feed, the product must have a GTIN.If you don't include a GTIN or you include the wrong one, the platform is likely to reject the product.Shopping platforms like Google Shopping and Amazon Marketplace benefit from GTINs in several ways: GTINs help make more relevant matches between a user's search and the products available GTIN's also help search engines and shopping comparison platforms to compare products They can also offer the user a more feature rich shopping experience, as GTINs enable them to use product data in ad visuals Consumers also benefit when vendors, search engines, and comparison shopping engines use GTINs: They get better product comparisons to help them find the right product, the right seller, and the right price They see more relevant results when searching for a product They see more relevant ads in non-shopping environments like Facebook (Facebook and other platforms use the browsing habits of users to determine the best products to display in ads) As a seller, you also get benefits from using GTINs. Finding the right GTINs can sometimes be tricky, but it is worth the effort. The reasons for this include: You will be able to submit your product feed to a higher number of platforms You should see conversions increase because your products will appear in more relevant search results and ads You can compete more effectively as your products will be in the comparison mix In some cases, you may have a product that does not have a GTIN. Examples include one-off products like artwork, handicrafts, or vintage products. Most platforms have procedures in place to deal with these situations. On Google Shopping, for example, there is an Identifier Exists field. You can set this to false if there is no GTIN.7. TikTok Launches New Ad Targeting Transparency Tools - TikTok is giving users more understanding of how their personal data is being used for ad targeting in the app through the 'About this Ad' info panel. This info panel lists all of the different targeting factors that TikTok has used to display each ad to each user.  You'll also be able to switch off ad personalization based on third-party data - though whether it's on or off, TikTok will still be able to use your in-app activity in its ad targeting process.This update moves TikTok more into line with other social apps, which offer similar ad transparency features - though it's also worth noting that TikTok has been working to continue utilizing personalized ad tracking, in various ways, despite regulations and restrictions around such getting tighter in certain regions.Last month, TikTok was forced to suspend a planned change to its privacy policy relating to the use of user insights for targeted advertising, amid questions over whether the change is actually legal under the latest EU provisions for data protection and control.The planned update would have seen the app do away with asking users for their consent to run personalized ads, with TikTok seeking to process such data under what's essentially a legal loophole in this respect, via the provision for ‘legitimate interest'. By implying that personalized ads fall under legitimate interest grounds, TikTok was seeking to circumvent the EU ePrivacy Directive, but authorities called for a review of the process before it could go into effect.In other words, while on one hand TikTok's looking to be more upfront about how your personal information is being used for ad targeting, on the other, it's seeking to avoid restrictions on such, through questionable means.8. TikTok Is Rolling Out ‘Order Center' eCommerce Tracking Hub - TikTok is a bigger push on in-app shopping, with some users now seeing a new ‘Order Center' panel in the app, which tracks any products that you've purchased, looked at, or even, potentially, may be interested in, in the app.The new ‘Order Center' is now appearing for some users alongside their ‘Edit Profile' option in the app. Tap on it and you'll be taken through to a dedicated eCommerce display, where you can track all aspects of your TikTok shopping experience, including payment details, items you've tagged, recommendations, order status, etc.TikTok continues to find ways to make their user experience better, Facebook on the other hand had to kill their live shopping experience last week since it never took off. 9. Instagram Is Adding A Native Post Scheduling Option Within The App - Instagram is developing a native post scheduling process within the app, which will eventually enable users to schedule all of their posts, including Reels and Stories, to go out at set times. Up until now, the ability to schedule a post in Instagram was available via the Creator Studio, and now Instagram is slowly rolling out this feature natively on the app. This means, you no longer need to jump hoops (create a post and then send it to your desktop, login to Creator Studio and schedule posts).10. Instagram Shared “How Instagram Suggests New Content” - So how does Instagram select which additional content to show you in your Home feed? Instagram's post recommendations fall into two categories – ‘Connected' and ‘Unconnected', with the latter being the posts that Instagram's systems find and highlight, based on your interests.In both cases, Instagram is looking at the engagement data (Like & Save) for ranking. While this is not anything new, however it is good to see that Instagram is officially admitting that they use engagement data for ranking.If you want to geek out on all the other technical details then click here.11. Meta Advantage Ad Suite Now Supports All Businesses & Launches Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns  - As per the announcement posted on Meta's website, Small businesses can now use Advantage+ creative and Advantage audience to create ads through their Facebook page. When using Advantage+ creative, ads will automatically adjust for each person who views them. Meta will show individual users the version of the ad they're most likely to respond to. Advantage audience allows businesses to target ads to relevant people more effectively. Meta will create personalized audiences for serving ads using details on the business's Facebook page.Meta also announced the launch of Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. Per Meta “Advantage+ shopping campaigns help advertisers get smarter, faster on which campaigns are converting. It eliminates the manual steps of ad creation and automates up to 150 creative combinations at once. This helps advertisers more quickly learn what ads are working, while making the most of their advertising budget.”Click here if you are not familiar with “Meta Advantage.” The rollout of Meta Advantage was covered in Episode#101. 

1. Shopify Lays Off 10% Of Workforce - Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify, announced that it is letting go of ten percent of its workforce. He blamed himself for misjudging trends, resulting in too many employees. What was anticipated at Shopify was that the rapid Covid-era increase in E-commerce shopping would continue as a trend, hastening a greater adoption of online shopping.Unfortunately, the forecasted boom in post-Covid shopping failed to materialize. The CEO said that he decided to scale up hiring to meet the increased demand and that now that the projections are falling short, he was forced to make a difficult decision. Shopify employees face a layoff in recruiting, support roles, and sales.2. Instagram Backtracks And Rethinking Instagram Forward Strategy - In a new interview with Casey Newton, Adam Mosseri explained that Instagram will actually take a step back from recommended content, as well as its experiment with a full-screen, TikTok-like viewing experience.“For the new feed designs, people are frustrated and the usage data isn't great. So there I think that we need to take a big step back, regroup, and figure out how we want to move forward. When you discover something in your field that you didn't follow before, there should be a high bar - it should just be great. You should be delighted to see it, and I don't think that's happening enough right now. So I think we need to take a step back, in terms of the percentage of feed that are recommendations, get better at ranking and recommendations, and then - if and when we do - we can start to grow again.”3. Revenue Roundup: Microsoft, Google & Meta - Here are some key takeaways: Microsoft ad revenue decreased by about $100 million due to reductions in advertising spend LinkedIn revenue increased 26%, while user sessions grew 22%. Total Alphabet revenue 13% increase YoY to $69.7 billion (from $61.9 billion by the end of Q2 in 2021) Google Ad revenue $56.3 billion (up from $50.4 in 2021) YouTube revenue $7.3 billion (up 5% from $7 billion in 2021), which missed analysts' predictions of $7.5 billion Meta's ad revenue dropped one percent in Q2 2022 compared to last year's period. They brought in $28.82 billion from ads, though it expected to earn $28.94 billion. One positive trend to note is Facebook's daily active users are up three percent. There are now 1.97 billion people logging in every day. Meta's apps aren't declining in popularity by any means. The audience is there. The problem is that advertisers have smaller budgets, and they're not getting the same value from ads as they used to. To remedy the issue of declining ad revenue, Meta has plans to offer new types of monetization. More specifically, the company is working on ways to make money from Reels. 4. LinkedIn Launches Native Carousel Posts - LinkedIn users have been posting makeshift carousel posts for some time, using its PDF attachment option to create individual frames. And now, LinkedIn has decided to make it a fully-fledged functionality, with a new ‘Carousel' post option being added to your update tools.5. Pinterest Launches Real-Time Analytics - Pinterest has now officially launched real-time analytics elements within Pin Analytics on mobile, which will provide more data on exactly how your Pins are performing at any given time. Real-time insights are also available in the web Analytics platform, but now, you'll also be able to access much of the same data on the go, which is likely where many more people are looking to check in.Real-time insights are not available for audience metrics, like ‘Total Engaged Monthly Audience' and age and gender filters. But you will be able to see overall data on response to your Pins, whenever you check in, which could be a helpful guide for your Pin strategy.6. Google Extends Deadline For Third-Party (Tracking) Cookies To 2024 - Google is now expanding the testing window for its Privacy Sandbox APIs before it moves to disable third-party cookies in Chrome. They announced that it's expanding the testing period for its Privacy Sandbox, and its alternative tracking tools, in order to give the industry more time to provide feedback and adjust to the coming shift. “The most consistent feedback we've received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome. This feedback aligns with our commitment to the CMA to ensure that the Privacy Sandbox provides effective, privacy-preserving technologies and the industry has sufficient time to adopt these new solutions. This deliberate approach to transitioning from third-party cookies ensures that the web can continue to thrive, without relying on cross-site tracking identifiers or covert techniques like fingerprinting.We now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024. As always, you can find up-to-date timelines and milestones on the Privacy Sandbox website.”7. The Reason Why The Search Console CWV Report & PageSpeed Insights Differ - Google's John Mueller explained that  the two scores are different because the method for calculations is different.“... there's a difference between so-called field data and the lab data. Field data is what users have actually seen when they go to your website. And this is what we use in Search Console. That's what we use for search as well. Whereas lab data is kind of a theoretical view of your website, like where our systems have certain assumptions where they think, well the average user is probably like this, using this kind of device and with this kind of a connection perhaps. And based on those assumptions, we will estimate what those numbers might be for an average user. And obviously you can imagine those estimations will never be a hundred percent correct.”So what Mueller is saying then is that Search Console scores reflect what actual site visitors saw. The way Google measures those actual numbers is through visitors who have opted in to allowing Chrome to provide anonymized core web vitals data. Google doesn't measure every site visitor, only those who have opted in to sending that data to Google. Contrasting with Search Console's field data, PageSpeed Insights is creating a simulation of what a user might experience. The purpose of Search Console data is to show what real site visitors are experiencing. The purpose of PageSpeed Insights data is to provide an estimate of what's going on in order to provide diagnostic feedback on what may be causing poor webpage speed performance.“And similarly, the data that users have seen, that will change over time as well, where some users might have a really fast connection or a fast device and everything goes really fast on their website, or when they visit your website. And others might not have that. And because of that, this variation can always result in different numbers. Our recommendation is generally to use the field data, the data you would see in Search Console, as a way of understanding what is kind of the current situation for a website. And then to use the lab data, namely the individual tests that you can run directly yourself, to optimize your website and try to improve things. And when you are pretty happy with the lab data that you're getting with your new version of your website, then over time you can collect the field data, which happens automatically and double-check that users actually see it as being faster or more responsive as well. So in short, again, there is no absolutely correct number when it comes to any of these metrics. There is no kind of like absolutely correct answer where you'd say, this is what it should actually be. But rather, there's different assumptions and different ways of collecting data and each of these are subtly different.” The purpose of the Search Console tool is to provide granular snapshots of real-world site performance. The purpose of PageSpeed Insights is diagnostic, to identify problems and offer suggestions for improvement. 8. Google Wants You To Replace HTTP Links With HTTPS - Several years ago, Google's Gary Illyes said replacing links isn't worth it when proper redirects are in place. Now, Google's Search Advocate John Mueller says you should always try to replace internal links pointing to HTTP URLs with the newer HTTP versions. Here are the reasons why replacing old HTTP internal links with https is a good idea: First, it's cleaner than having a bunch of redirects. And, unlike external links, you have complete control over the URL visitors are sent to. Anyone clicking on a link that redirects to HTTPS has to go through the HTTP version first. Getting rid of the extra ‘hop' means visitors get to the content faster.  Relying on redirects for internal links is a fool's errand. Many things can go wrong, such as redirect chains, redirect loops, and broken links. If a site loads images with HTTP URLs, it can cause browsers to give visitors a “not secure” error message, deterring them from staying on your site. Redirects eat your crawl budget because every redirect counts as a page crawled. Google can potentially crawl more pages per session without the redirects in place. Lastly, you can't depend on redirects working indefinitely. Redirects can break or get deleted while replacing the links ensures they're changed forever. 9. The 411 On Google Search Quality Rater Guidelines Update - Google has made a variety of significant updates to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines. The most significant overhauls were to Google's definitions of YMYL (Your Money, Your Life), and the extent to which E-A-T matters as a matter of page quality.Google defines YMYL topics as either being inherently dangerous (violent extremism), or harmful because presenting misinformation related to the topic can be harmful. For example, providing bad advice related to heart attacks, investments or earthquakes could cause harm to the user.Google also revamped its definition of what it means to be a low-quality page. In a previous version, Google claimed a page may be low quality, in part, because the creator of the main content may lack sufficient expertise for the purpose of the page. This statement was deleted. Google now expands upon the role of E-A-T in determining whether a page is low-quality.You can download the full 167-page PDF raters guidelines over here. 10. Google Ads Will Now Automatically Update Conversion Attribution Models - Google has sent an email letting advertisers know that if their account qualifies then their ad accounts would be switched to data-driven attribution. Advertisers have until August 24 to cancel the auto-switch.Google announced in September that data-driven attribution would become the default model, but advertisers would still have access to the five other rule-based models. Data-driven attribution uses advanced machine learning techniques to more accurately understand how each marketing touchpoint contributed to a conversion. According to Google, data-driven attribution takes multiple signals into account including ad format and time between the ad and interaction and conversion.11. Google Merchant Center Now Accepts Gated Product Listings - Google has updated its Merchant Center policy to no longer automatically disapproved free listings for products that have login required and/or restricted purchase access. Google said it now will list these products as active but with the caveat that they may “have limited visibility on Google.”Google explained “Login required” issue status means that customers visiting your store website need to provide account access information, such as entering a username and password or installing a program, before being able to view your products.Google explained “Restricted purchase” issue status means that the ability to buy products on your store website is limited to certain customers as defined by location, device type, information provided, or some other exclusive criteria. Fields like business information should be optional and content should be consistent and available to visitors in all locations.12. Google Publishes 6 Tips For E-Commerce Sites - Google published a new video offering six tips for how to make ecommerce sites eligible for special presentations in the search results.  Title Tags - If the title element doesn't adequately describe what the webpage is about that Google will rewrite it, using content from the heading at the top of the page or even the anchor text from links to the webpage. Take extra care with automated product title tags to ensure there is no duplicate content or missing information. Avoid dynamically generated title tags to add availability or price data to the title tag because there's a lag between when the title tag is updated and when Google eventually shows the updated title link in the SERPs. By this time, the information may be outdated. Include High Quality Images - High quality images are a user experience consideration in that they help potential customers make up their minds about a product. Audit your site for low quality images and replacing them with higher quality photos. Checking the Max Image Preview meta data because it guides Google on how to show those images in the SERPs. Lastly, use product structured data to help Google identify the correct images to show in the search results. Many businesses consider things like images in terms of how they may help their webpage rank better in the search results. But it's more productive to consider product images in terms of how they help users decide to purchase a product. Share Rich Product Data - Structured data helps Google better understand webpages and makes them eligible to be displayed as rich results, what he referred to as “special presentation treatments” in the search results. The following are essential elements for product structured data to include:  Product title  Description  Images  Ratings  Price  Availability Share Price Drop Data - Sharing pricing information with Google can make the product page eligible for a special price drop presentation in the search results, which may call attention to it. Appearing in the search results with a special price drop presentation isn't guaranteed. To make a page eligible for price drop rich results, you must include the Offer property in the product structured data that is a specific price point and not a price range. Identify Products You Sell - This tip advises using accurate product identifiers such as GTIN identifiers, using a combination of Google Merchant Center feed and product structured data. Following this advice can make a product eligible for listings such as the product carousels. Create a Business Profile - Creating a Google Business Profile if the business has a physical presence. This makes a site eligible for a special listing alongside the search results. This type of listing is only available for businesses with a physical store presence or a covered service area. Watch the Google YouTube Video - How to Make Your Ecommerce Website Stand Out in Google Search (6 Tips)13. YouTube's New Feature Will Help You To Turn Your Long Form Videos Into Shorts - YouTube is looking to encourage more short clips via a new option that will enable creators to convert segments of their existing long-form content into minute-long Shorts variations. The new ‘Edit into a Short' option will enable you to select a section of your regular video uploads to then cut into a bite-sized version.14. YouTube Answers Common Questions On YT Shorts - YouTube demystifies the Shorts algorithm in a Q&A video that addresses several of the most common questions creators have about gaining visibility with short-form content. Here's a recap of each question and answer in the video. Should I Mix Long And Short-Form Content On The Same Channel? - “We've done some analysis recently where we looked at audience growth for channels that only made long-form videos, and channels that made both long-form and short videos. Channels that made Shorts actually seemed to be growing faster. We anticipate that audience demand for short-form content is here to stay. This is a format that's becoming increasingly popular, and the very reason we've been testing so much in more mobile-first creation tools and Shorts discovery.” Will YouTube Recommend More Long-Form Videos If People Watch My Shorts? - “Viewers watching Shorts aren't always the same viewers watching longer-form content… For this reason, we separate Shorts and long-form content from watch history. So when someone discovers a new channel via Shorts, we're not currently using that to inform what longer videos are recommended to them outside of the Shorts experience.” Is There A Benefit To Starting A Separate Channel For Shorts? - “Try to group your channels around similar audiences who enjoy the same or similar content. Separate them out when your viewers have totally different interests… If you start building up different audiences with different interests then consider making a separate channel.” How Many Shorts Do I Need To Upload Before The Algorithm Recommends My Content? - “Every Short is given a chance to succeed no matter the channel or the number of videos on the channel. Performance of a Short is dictated by whether or not people are choosing to watch and not skip a video in the Shorts feed. That audience engagement is often built over time as opposed to happening instantaneously.”

In this Marketing Over Coffee: In this episode learn about Accessibility, Disinformation, Skimpflation and more! Direct Link to File Brought to you by our sponsors: Superside and LinkedIn Now in streaming video! Accessibility – Search Console, W3C, A11y, IBM’s Able 7:20 You need a video or design ad for your next campaign, and you need […] The post Now with More Accessibility and Less Like The Gas Guys appeared first on Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast.

Hello listeners! I'm Caroline Schafer, the Podcast Producer for the AMSE Agency.  August is the final month of summer. It's time to begin back-to-school shopping while grabbing those last days of hanging out by the pool and enjoying those long summer days. While we are saying goodbye to summer, it's time to say hello to all of the events AMSE has coming up this month.  We start off the month on August 4th at 12 pm EST with our monthly Facebook Live where we share everything happening at AMSE plus all of the upcoming events.  Following the Facebook Live at 1:30 pm EST is our monthly Member Orientation. Whether you're a new member or have been around for a while, this is a great time to get up to date on all the benefits your AMSE membership offers.     August 9th at 1:30 pm EST is our first Masterclass of the month. Join your other AMSE members as Maria Elena Duron teaches a class titled, “Reach Customers Online - Grow Your Business with Google.” Maria will explain how Google Search works for your business to be found by improving your website's visibility with SEO. Plus, you'll learn about Google Business Profile, Google Trends, Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Ads, and more! Sign up for this class on your member dashboard today!  August 11th at 1:30 pm EST is our monthly Group Coaching with AMSE Group Coach Jayla Rae Ardelean. This hour is made especially for you and to help you as you navigate the entrepreneurial life. Make sure and email your questions ahead of time so the AMSE Coach can be prepared to give you the best advice on your business.  August 16th at 1:30 pm EST is our monthly Co-working event. Ever feel kind of stuck or just need some feedback from another entrepreneur? Then this is one event you'll want to attend. Join other AMSE members during this time to bounce ideas off, ask for feedback, and make connections.  August 17th at 10 am EST is our monthly Coffee Chat. This is when you'll want to grab your favorite beverage and enjoy an hour of chatting about life with other AMSE members.  August 25th at 1:30 pm EST is our last Masterclass of the month with AMSE's Customer Success Specialist Sara Copp who will be teaching about Building and Growing Your Email List. In this class, you will learn the role of an email list as a creative marketing strategy, how to creatively build email contacts, and how to successfully engage those contacts into relationships.  Remember, your AMSE Member dashboard has all you need to register for events, connect with other members, and share your wins! You can find all you need to start, grow, and elevate your business!  If you're new to Owning Up, make sure to subscribe to know when a new episode drops. You can also join our Facebook group to see what other milspouse entrepreneurs are up to and receive the latest AMSE news. If you're a milspouse, who has a business or is thinking of starting one, join us here at AMSE Membership. As always, check out our previous episodes for encouragement, connection, and information.  We'd love to have you join our fantastic community! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Follow Moni Jefferson on Instagram. Visit our website to become a member: AMSE Email us at hello@amseagency.com

1. Removing Unwanted Mentions In Twitter - With the help of a brand-new feature called unmentioning, Twitter now lets users remove their own tags from messages.Unmentioning enables individuals to disengage from a conversation they do not wish to be a part of.It's an improvement over muting a conversation because it takes away the reference to the specified person's account and stops others from bringing up the subject again.Here's more information on how unmentioning functions and what happens after you do it on Twitter. It removes the link to your Twitter profile from the original tweet and all replies.  It stops people from mentioning you again in the same conversation.  It stops any further notifications about the conversation you were tagged in. To unmention yourself, tap the three-dot menu at the top right of the tweet and select “leave this conversation.” Confirm your decision, and all tags will be removed.2. Twitter Now Prompts You To Add Alt Text Descriptions To Images - Hey, are you adding alt text captions to your images? You should be, and now, Twitter's going to prompt you to do exactly that, with new pop-ups being shown to some users alerting them to the benefits of alternative text summaries within tweets. Text descriptions are a key tool for visually impaired users, with screen readers able to communicate these descriptions to add relevant context.FYI: Facebook introduced a new technology called automatic alternative text (AAT) in 2016, that generates descriptions of photos on demand so that blind or visually impaired individuals can more fully enjoy their News Feed.3. Netflix Partners With Microsoft For Ad Supported Tier - FYI: On Wednesday, July 13th, 2022 Microsoft announced that they had been selected as the new partner to help bring an ad-supported subscription plan to Netflix. Last month the media speculated that Google & NBCUniversal were  frontrunners, but it makes sense for Netflix to partner up with Microsoft - they do not have competing products aka streaming service.  The details of the partnership are scanty and we will bring you additional information as it is released to the public.4. YouTube Explains The Appeals Process For Community Guidelines Violation - A product manager at YouTube answered commonly asked questions about submitting appeals for community guidelines violation strikes. So what is a community guidelines violation? When a YouTube creator publishes content that violates the website's community guidelines, they receive a strike against their channel.We are publishing a blog on Tuesday (7/19/22) that will go in depth on this topic. 5. Video Index Report Is Now Available In Google Search Console - Google is adding a new report to Search Console that will help you understand how your videos perform in search results. The Video Indexing report makes it easy to identify and fix issues preventing your videos from surfacing in Google Search. FYI: If Google detects videos on your site, the Video indexing report will appear on the left navigation bar in the coverage section. If Google has not detected a video on your website, you will not see the report. The report will help you answer the following questions: In how many pages has Google identified a video? Which videos were indexed successfully? What are the issues preventing videos from being indexed? In addition, if you fix an existing issue, you can use the report to validate the fix and track how your fixed video pages are updated in the Google index. 6. Not All Search Queries Show Up In Google Search Console - A couple of weeks ago, Ahrefs released a report showing that on average about 50% of queries in Search Console are hidden, i.e. classified as anonymized. The Ahrefs study looked at 146,741 websites and about nine billion total clicks and it compared the total clicks by URL compared to the clicks by query reported in Google Search Console. It found that Google hid 46.08% of all query data, or as Google calls it, classified them as anonymized queries. Now Google has updated their help document from saying "Very rare queries (called anonymized queries) are not shown in these results to protect the privacy of the user making the query" to saying "Some queries (called anonymized queries) are not shown in these results to protect the privacy of the user making the query."Google also added a section about "other limits on queries" that says "due to internal limitations, Search Console stores top data rows and not all data rows. As a result, not all queries beyond anonymized queries will be shown. Instead, the focus is on showing you the most important ones for your entire property."7. Google Proposes Splitting Ads Business To Prevent Antitrust Suit - Last year, Google's advertising revenue was more than $209 billion. The US Justice Department has been investigating allegations that Google has abused its power as a digital advertising broker and auctioneer for some time. As recently as October 2020, it sued the company over claims it was illegally using its power to hamstring competitors. Now according to the Wall Street Journal, Google has proposed separating parts of its ad-tech business to prevent an antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department. Google proposes restructuring the company's division that auctions and places web advertising into a separate company under Alphabet, Inc, the search engine's parent company.8. Google AdsBot Mobile Web Crawler Gets New ID - Google has updated the Google crawler documentation stating that user agent string for the AdsBot Mobile Web crawler has changed.The new user agent string for Google AdsBot Mobile Web is:Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 14_7_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.1.2 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1 (compatible; AdsBot-Google-Mobile; +http://www.google.com/mobile/adsbot.html)The old user agent string for Google AdsBot Mobile Web was:Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 9_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/601.1.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0 Mobile/13B143 Safari/601.1 (compatible; AdsBot-Google-Mobile; +http://www.google.com/mobile/adsbot.html)You need to update the user string if the user agent string is hard-coded anywhere on your site.9. Now You Can Hide Your Address In Google Business Profile - There is now a toggle to "show business address to customers" in Google Business Profile. So if you are a small business and you use your home address, you can toggle that off to hide your address from showing in Google Maps or Google Search.10. Hey Google! Is CMS A Ranking Factor? - It's common to hear that WordPress is the best CMS for SEO, which may lead a person to believe they're at a disadvantage if they choose anything else. However, John Mueller confirms there's no difference from one CMS to another when it comes to ranking signals. Google isn't concerned with what's going on in the back end of a website. What matters is the final result shown to visitors.Read his complete response below:“As far as I know, our search systems don't look for any particular content management system to treat it differently. For us, a CMS is just one way of creating webpages. Google systems don't focus on how the page was created. Instead, they focus on the final result. Hand-created web pages can be just as good as those generated by WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or similar. As far as I can tell, all mainstream CMS systems can create pages that work well in search. For the most part, SEO is not magic. It's well documented, and there are many testing tools so all providers can include SEO elements if they choose to do so. There are slight differences across systems, just like all webpages are slightly different. For the average site owner, they either all work well for search out of the box, or can easily be tuned to do so with a few settings or plugins.”11. Hey Google! Is It Bad to Link to HTTP Pages? - HTTP is the  protocol for transferring data from a server to a browser. And HTTPS is a secure version that verifies and encrypts the communication between the server and browser. Furthermore, Google announced in 2014 that HTTPS is a ranking signal. And when someone asked John Muller if there will be any side effects from linking to an external insecure website, he said the following:“And from our point of view, it's perfectly fine. If these pages are on HTTP, then that's what you would link to. That's kind of what users would expect to find. There's nothing against linking to sites like that. There is no kind of downside for your website to kind of like avoid linking to HTTP pages because they're kind of old or crusty and not as cool as on HTTPS. I would not worry about that.”12. Hey Google! Is It OK To Delete The Disavow File? - The disavow tool was introduced in 2012 by Google in response to the overwhelming demand of the SEO community, who wanted an easier way to deal with the thousands of sites suffering from the Penguin algorithm. The disavow tool provided SEOs an easy way to deal with links they couldn't remove.When asked if there are any risks, upside or downside to just deleting the disavow file, Google's John Mueller stated it's okay to stop disavowing random links and to delete the disavow list if it wasn't done to deal with manipulative links, especially ones that caused a manual action penalty. “So this is a good question, it comes up every now and then. And disavowing links is always kind of one of those tricky topics because it feels like Google is probably not telling you the full information. But from our point of view, it's actually like, we do work really hard to avoid taking these kinds of links into account. And we do that because we know that the disavow links tool is somewhat a niche tool. …SEOs know about it, but the average person who runs a website has no idea about it. And all of those links that you mentioned there are kind of links that any websites gets over the years. And our systems understand that these are not things that you're trying to do to kind of like game our algorithms.…our systems understand that these are not things that you're trying to do to kind of like game our algorithms.So from that point of view, if you're really sure that there's nothing around like a manual action that you had to resolve with regards to these links, I would just delete the disavow file and move on with life and kind of leave all of that aside. One thing I would personally do is just download it and make a copy so that you have kind of a record of what you deleted. But otherwise, if you're sure these are just kind of the normal crufty things from the Internet, I would just delete it and move on. There's much more to spend your time on when it comes to websites than just disavowing these random things that happen to any website on the web.”13. Google Adds 3 New Metrics To GA-4 - Google Analytics 4 is introducing three new metrics to the platform this week. The metrics will be available to view across explorations, segments, audience, reports, and the Google Analytics data API. The new metrics added are: Bounce rate - Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that were not completed due to a user exiting the landing page. These sessions are the opposite of the engagement rate. The Bounce rate metric is available in the Explorations and Reporting Customization. In GA4, the Bounce rate is calculated differently than in Universal Analytics. You can learn how the new metric is calculated in the help doc. UTM term and UTM ad content - These metrics are available in the Explorations, Reporting, and Audience Builder. Google has added both a user scope and a session scope dimension. For the UTM content parameter, you'll be able to see the value assigned to first user manual ad content as well as session manual ad content. For the UTM term parameter, you'll be able to view the first user manual term and session manual term. Conversion rate - GA4 is now reporting on the conversion rate for any event. This includes both the user conversion as well as the session conversion rate. You can review the release announcement from Google here.14. Google Ads & GA-4 Integration Is Now Available In Ads Manager - Google announced that web data reporting will be supported within the Ad Manager publisher networks. Now when you link a Google Analytics 4 property to your Google ads account, data from that property is available to view in your Ad Manager reports. To view the technical requirements for linking Google Analytics 4 to Ad Manager, you can read the help doc here.15. 4 New Features In Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns - Last week Google announced two new features ( advanced location targeting controls and diagnostic insights) to Performance Max campaigns and this week Google added four new features to Performance Max campaign. They are: Seasonality adjustments are intended to allow advertisers to adjust the bid strategy based on anticipated changes in conversion rates for events such as holiday sales. Because Smart Bidding already exists for predicted seasonal events, advertisers should only use the adjustments for changes that are otherwise atypical. The adjustments should be used for long weekend promos or sales that typically last between 1-7 days. Data exclusions will tell Smart Bidding to ignore data from dates where you may have encountered issues with conversion tracking which may have impacted the accuracy of your data. An example of this would be website outages, bugs or tagging issues. Explanations will make it easier for advertisers to identify performance fluctuations and diagnose issues. The feature will also provide recommendations to help improve performance. If you have a product feed, the explanations will analyze the product status as well as top moving products, groups and types. This will become available for PMax campaigns in the coming weeks. Optimization Score allows advertisers to see where the campaign has room for improvement and finds recommendations to help you take action to try and drive better results. You can understand more about Performance Max campaigns here.16. Did You Know There Is An Asset Library In Google Ads? - The asset library works as a gallery for all of your assets that you'll need to create an ad for your campaign. Initially, the asset library will support images, with more asset types to follow in the future. The asset library is an account-level feature in Google Ads that allows you to access all your assets, which are required to create an ad, in one place. This feature lets you search and select assets in your account more efficiently while creating ads. Benefits of the asset library are: All assets in one place Easily find all your assets within the asset library by using their name, type, content, etc Organize, name, and sort all your assets according to your preference in folders and sub-folders Upload your assets for current or future campaigns with a single click Reuse your assets for as many ads as you want without uploading them every time 17. Google Launches Ad Creative Studio (ACS) - The Ads Creative Studio is now available globally. In the ACS, advertisers or creators can create multiple versions of a single display or video ad. The ads can be customized for different audiences, locations, languages, or contexts. To make the changes, creators select the changes they want to make and provide the different versions of that particular element based on the rules you set. The feature is now available for video and will soon be launched for display as well.Google is now allowing advertisers to export images from the ACS asset library to the Google Ads asset library of any linked account. This means that when you're assembling creatives for display or Performance Max campaigns, you'll be able to easily find the images you want to use.ACS will be an interesting feature for advertisers to test. If you're running campaigns aimed at multiple audiences, the ACS seems like a helpful tool to quickly manage and make dynamic changes to video ads when you're trying to reach multiple demographics, without creating additional campaigns or ad types. While we haven't tried ACS ourselves, we'll be interested to see how this works in comparison to just creating new ad setsYou can learn more about Ads Creative Studio here.

We had more volatility from Google Search on July 10th. Google shows half the number of people also ask boxes in the search results. Google Search Console anonymizes many queries...