Google - Express Writers

Why Google Killed Doorway Pages & How To Make Sure You’re In the Clear

December 31, 2020April 26, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you use the web to surf, purchase, play, or read, it’s likely you’ve come across a “doorway” page. They’re bad news all around. How so? Doorway pages are web pages designed for the sole purpose of helping websites improve their traffic. They’re designed to rank well for particular phrases or keywords and often feature spammy, keyword-stuffed content and little to no user value. In addition to clogging up the Internet, doorway pages are obnoxious and frustrating for users. Imagine coming across a piece you thought was “a thorough DIY guide on grooming your dog” just to find it was a landing page selling you dog food with a tiny blurb that wasn’t really helpful titled “how to groom your dog.” Yeah, bad news. Fortunately, Google is trying to fix the issue. Last year, the search engine released an algorithm update meant specifically to kill doorway pages across the web. Here’s what you need to know–and keep reading for five ways to make sure you aren’t hosting any so-called “doorway page,” unbeknownst to you. Why Doorway Pages Are Bad There are dozens of SEO tactics designed to boost search results, but doorway pages are a particularly frustrating one. Doorway pages often masquerade as a single page on a site or as a selection of distinct domains. They’re a problem because, when a Google user enters a search query, it’s possible that he or she will receive a complete list of results that all point to the same site. This creates a negative experience for Google users and makes it difficult for them to find the information they need. Short Answer: If You Are Investing in High Quality Content, You Won’t Have to Worry Remember, in 2015, Google released a massive Search Quality Evaluator guide. They have real people who evaluate every site based on these standards. We talked about these standards here, in a massive 3,000-word blog. And this ties into doorway pages. I know this sounds simple, but it really matters: overall, things boil down to the quality of content you have. If it’s high; you’re in the clear. If it’s low; you’re not. Is your site messy? In both design and content? Poor in wording? An empty page or two? You probably have doorway pages and Google isn’t going to like you. Or is your site and written content on it really good? You’d be proud to read it off to your newest client? That kind of quality. Per Google’s guidelines, things boiled down to these two standards: Key Ways to Instantly Recognize Telltale Doorway Pages If you’re still unsure whether you might host a doorway page or not, luckily, Google offers several pretty clear guidelines on how users can identify doorway pages, so you’ll never create them or let someone else create them for you. Website owners beware of these key following telltale signs of a doorway page: If the purpose of a page is to rank for a search term or funnel visitors to a particular portion of a site, the page is probably a doorway page. If the page is targeting generic search terms, but is filled with specific body content, it’s likely a doorway page. If the page collects and aggregates things that can be found on the website, such as locations and product descriptions, it’s likely a doorway page. If the page exists for the sole purpose of funneling users or harvesting affiliate traffic without offering valuable content or functional design, it’s likely a doorway page. If the page makes it impossible to navigate to other portions of the site, it’s likely a doorway page. What Google’s Anti-Doorway Update Actually Does The update Google put out, which currently doesn’t have a name, categorizes doorway pages as possessing three traits: Doorway pages often have multiple domain names or funnel users to a specific page Doorway pages are pages that seek to funnel visitors to relevant or usable portions of the site Doorway pages are similar pages that run parallel to search results rather than a “browse-able hierarchy.” Within its press release surrounding the topic of the update, Google states that “doorway pages that are created solely for search engines can harm the quality of the user’s search experience” and goes on to say that large sites that use doorway campaigns are likely to be impacted by the impending algorithm change. In addition to helping Google users get a feel for what doorway pages are, these guidelines can also help webmasters determine if they have doorway pages on their sites and remove them in order to avoid being penalized by Google. 5 Ways to Protect Your Site from The Worst of Google Doorway Penalties If you’ve been using doorway campaigns on your site, there are several things you can do to avoid Google penalties. 1. Destroy empty pages If you’ve got empty pages sitting around on your site, it’s time to take them down. Because these pages don’t add what Google calls “clear, unique value,” they’re likely to be interpreted as doorway pages and can harm your site’s overall ranking. With this in mind, only publish new pages when you have content available for them. This ties into the overall theme of “is your content good? is it high quality? does it help people?” Empty pages obviously don’t! 2. Improve your site navigation This plays into design. Work on both the appearance and navigation abilities of your site. One trait of doorway pages is that they make it difficult or virtually impossible to navigate to other portions of the website. If you’ve got a page that isn’t integrated into the navigation of your site, consider improving your navigation so that the page in question is easier for users to find and to navigate away from. 3. Pay attention to customer-generated content pages Pages that get most of their content from customers or staff are at a high risk of sitting idle and damaging your site’s ranking. These pages include things like open-to-contributors review pages and galleries. To avoid getting dinged by Google’s recent update, be … Read more

RIP: Google Says Farewell to Right-Hand Sponsored Ads & What It Means for Marketers

December 31, 2020March 16, 2016 by Adam Oakley

If you’ve been paying attention to the news in SEO lately, you’d have noticed news stories like “Four Ads on Top: the Wait is Over.” These headlines are referring to Google’s recent decision to alter its SERPs to display four ads at the top of the page, and remove sponsored ads in the space adjacent to the search results on the right-hand side. While it may not seem like this is big news in the world of SEO, it is. The new SERP layout is much more inbound-friendly and much less welcoming for traditional, cold advertisements. This creates a better user experience and produces SERPs that are more useful, relevant, and easy to navigate than they’ve ever been before! To see exactly where the ads used to be, refer to the below screenshot, question mark referring to the empty space where sponsored ads were: Google Says Goodbye to Right-Hand Sponsored Ads: What This Means for Marketers So what’s this “Huzzah!” attitude all about? How does this change affect marketers and their rankings in the SERPs? How will it affect you and your content? Here’s what you need to know about this new change. What the New SERPs Look Like If you’ve searched for a high-volume keyword lately, you’ll notice that the SERPs look a bit different. Before this recent Google update, ads appeared at the top, bottom, and right side of organic search results. Now, however, they look like this for competitive search terms, with a clean slate on the right side. Cheers, Google – you look so tidy! While the change didn’t affect the ads that appear below the search results, it did do away with those to the sponsored ads to the right of the search results. This leaves more room for organic search rankings and throws inbound marketing into a whole new world of importance. Why Google Made the Change As far as most content marketer experts can guess, the primary reason behind this new feature is user convenience. Displaying ads in two places rather than tree creates a simplified user experience and makes mobile search easier than ever, which is something Google now sees as a major priority (As evidenced by recent algorithm changes). Additionally, top-placed ads seem to simply perform better in terms of clicks and traffic than side-placed ads. In light of this, Google’s new change streamlines a page and focuses traffic while also enhancing user experience. How The New Ad Placement Will Affect Organic Search The introduction of four ads above SERPs will have an effect on search, but primarily for marketers who are paying for sponsored ads rather than creating valuable content. Because the new ad structure places more importance on organic search, it stands to reason that marketers who focus their attention on creating quality content and optimizing their material for organic search success will perform better in the new environment. While this new change has shocked many content marketers, it’s clear that it is simply one in a series of Google changes (including Knowledge Graph and Featured Snippet) that are meant to provide users with relevant, quality results without intrusive advertising. 4 Ways Content Marketers Can Cope With Google’s Sponsored Ad Changes Again, Google’s most recent changes really only present a challenge to people who have been relying heavily on sponsored ads. For everyone else, it’s more of a pivot than a change. In light of Google’s new ad placements, the importance of organic, quality content is going to be more important than ever. Here are a few steps you can take to ensure that you appear prominently in the new SERP layout. 1. Review your sponsored ads now If you’re a content marketer that has invested in Google’s sponsored ads, and you’ve got live campaigns going on, check on their position and appearance from your dashboard. If your ads aren’t where you want them to be, it’s important to consider how you can alter them to perform better. While you can do this a few different ways (increasing your bid, boosting your position for the keywords you’re targeting, or increasing your quality score), the best way to go about it is to take a comprehensive approach to increase your ad’s performance. Don’t jump to increase your bid first thing. Instead, seek to make changes that will improve your quality score. This means making your text more relevant and helpful and ensuring that you’re targeting keywords properly. 2. Shift your focus to content Google has made it painfully clear over the last several years that content is the king of the game and that’s especially true with this recent change. While sponsored ads used to rank on the same level as organic ads, the tables have turned and sponsored ads have left the building. In light of this, it’s important to shift your company’s focus to how you can create quality content Google will want to rank well. Content marketers focusing on just that–content marketing–will do well to boost and improve the quality of that focus. A Little Case Study From Moi Yours truly, Julia from Express Writers speaking here: we’ve been in business for five years and we’ve never used a sponsored ad. Instead, we’ve taken all of the money we could have poured into purchasing ad space and we’ve allocated it to creating content. By hiring quality writers, focusing on publishing relevant, long-form content on our blog, and creating guidelines that genuinely answer our reader’s questions, we’ve gained more than 300 positions in Google rankings through organic content alone. We’re proof that it is possible, and you can get there, too! If you’re a little unsettled by Google’s new SERP structure, consider how you can re-allocate your resources. If you’ve been purchasing sponsored ads with the majority of your marketing budget, focus on creating content instead. Guides, in-depth, long-form, how-to content, and relevant blog posts are all sure-fire ways to draw more readers to your content and gain SERP prominence without spending money on sponsored ads. Because the new layout of Google’s SERPs is much more … Read more

Does Social Media Really Matter to Your SEO Rankings?

January 1, 2021January 14, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Trying to find out how social media affects SEO is a little bit like staring through a really dirty window: it’s unclear and often frustrating. While business owners know that social media is important for many things, including building and maintaining visibility on the web and driving customer engagement, it can be tough to tell just how much (if at all) social media affects SEO ranking. This is justified, of course, as in 2010 Google’s Matt Cutts released a video saying that social signals were a SEO ranking factor. In 2014, however, Cutts released another video saying that social signals weren’t actually a ranking factor. (This was addressed late 2015 in a Stone Temple article: “Does Social Media Effect SEO? Matt Cutts answers”. I’d definitely recommend this read: it addresses this topic well from an SEO standpoint.) In the new version of the video, Cutts clarifies some of the ambiguity that’s plagued SEO for years and gives us a final (if not drastically more clear) answer to the question: does social matter for SEO rankings? I’m going to take a look. Keep reading. How Social Factors Play into SEO: 3 Key Points There’s been hot debate over whether or not social signals matter for SEO rankings. Here’s what we know: 1) Social signals on Facebook and Twitter are treated like web pages in SEO When a search engine crawler looks through Facebook and Twitter feeds, it can pull out individual pieces of content and select the ones that are valuable. This does two things: first, it helps Google cut down on the unimportant social signals out there, of which there are many considering the fact that Twitter users generate more than 500 million tweets per day. Secondly, this helps Google be more selective in what it indexes and where that content is indexed, which can be a good or a bad thing for marketers depending upon the strength of the social factors that do matter (more on this later). 2) Google’s crawlers can’t cover the entire social universe While they may be studious, even Google’s crawler bots aren’t capable of evaluating every social page on the web. Part of this is because the bots sometimes get blocked from doing this work, as Barry Schwartz claims they were from Twitter. While Google’s crawler bots can still see every Tweet that is posted on the platform, they are inherently limited in their ability to index every Tweet. According to a study released earlier this year, Google actually indexes less than 4% of all Tweets issued. That said, Google doesn’t appreciate social signals it can’t fully index and, because of this, it’s possible that signals like individual Tweets don’t influence SEO as much as one may think. 3) Drumroll please… Google says it does not use Facebook or Twitter followers to rank pages This has been a long-debated topic and one that has been fraught with misunderstanding and confusion. According to Matt Cutts, though, Google doesn’t use signals like Facebook or Twitter fans or followers simply because they don’t have “a high confidence in the meaning” of those signals. This is because Google’s bots are simply incapable of crawling all of Facebook and Twitter, which means that there is no way they can glean all of the connections and signals they would need to make a complete and well-rounded assumption about the content on those sites. Additionally, Facebook and Twitter followers are fluid and ever-changing and it’s possible that a bot that visits a page in the early stages of its existence, for example, may not visit it again for a very long time, which may inappropriately skew the page’s rankings. Similarly, a page that has a huge number of followers when a crawler bot visits may then lose a huge number of followers (this is far from impossible and it actually happened to many high-profile Instagram users when the site destroyed millions of spammy profiles in what is now known as “The Instagram Rapture”), but since the crawler bot will not reflect that loss, it’s impossible for the bot to make these social signals an accurate representation of the site itself. Cutts also put to bed the Moz and SearchMetrics studies that claimed Facebook likes were one of the most important factors for sites that rank well in Google’s SERPs. While many people believed that these studies proved that social signals in fact caused high-level search rankings, Cutts explained that this was simply due to the fact the the sites which produce high levels of fan engagement are also the sites that attract a high number of inbound links and other authority metrics that do have a direct effect on SEO ranking. What this Means for Social and SEO: 3 Things Marketers Need to Know So – what’s the answer? Does social matter for your SEO? The answer is complicated and two-fold: it does and it doesn’t. We’ve just addressed the reasons it doesn’t – some social signals are too instable to be reliable ranking metrics and others are simply impossible for Google to attain. But what about the ways in which social signals do affect your SEO? Right now, one of the most important things in the world of great SEO rankings is content that meets search user needs. Despite the confusing back-and-forth of “SEO or no SEO?” some social signals are indeed important for SEO and, moreover, sites that pay attention to the following things are more likely to rank higher in SERPs. 1) Social links matter While we’ve established that social signals don’t matter for SEO, social links might. Consider the following: when a post goes viral on Facebook or Twitter (As Mark Manson’s “7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose” blog post did, for example) and thousands of people are sharing and searching for it, does that affect search rankings? Many marketers believe that it does. We know that Bing pays attention to viral posts and, according to the 2014 Cutts video, Google treats individual … Read more

How Express Writers Gained Over 300 Keyword Positions In One Day in Google (Case Study)

December 31, 2020November 9, 2015 by Adam Oakley

The other day, I was poking around in my favorite SEO analytic software of choice, SEMrush, checking on our rankings. My team at Express Writers has a Guru subscription there that allows us to see detailed analytics of our site–and I mean detailed. We see a ton of keyword position data down to the most recent keyword ranking change of our site in Google, as of just an hour ago. (If you haven’t already, go check out SEMrush here.) Well, a couple days ago I was doing my biweekly SEO audit of all of our keyword positions and pulling keyword data for new content. I was shocked to see that the positions changes mapped a huge spike: as of October 28, 302 new keyword gains. In 24 hours. And our traffic had spiked up to the most I’d ever seen: 1,251 people on one day. What Exactly Are We Doing In Google? Let me give you a little look at exactly how we’re getting and maintaining our positions with Google before I delve into the recent major keyword growth. 1. Content We write and publish about 3-4 blogs on our site a week, ranging from 1,000-3,000 words each. So since 2011, we have 642 blogs published on our WordPress site (this one makes 643): This isn’t counting the hundreds of guest blogs I’ve placed on places like SiteProNews, Search Engine Journal, Social Media Examiner, and more. Also, we have about 50-80 website pages, maybe 400-800 words each. 2. Traffic So, with that insight into just how much we publish, now it’s time to see what the results are. We have some serious organic traffic. I’ve never placed a Google paid ad in all my four years of business; and never will. I believe in great content brainstorming, writing and publishing, and it is what is keeping us strong. And sometimes just this process can take me 40 hours a week. It isn’t easy, but it is thoroughly worth it. SEMrush puts our traffic at a value of $6,800 (what we would pay if we were paying for ad clicks). We have 3,000 keywords indexed in Google, with over 100 in the top 5 positions of Google. We’re outranking a large number of our competitors in the content creation niche. Let’s look at the graph on the right a little deeper: Whoa! This month we have the most site traffic we’ve ever had, with 1,251 people visiting in a single day the first week of November. 3. How We Gained 300+ Rankings In One Day Here’s what I saw that stopped me in my tracks the other day. I clicked on Position Changes under Organic Research, in SEMrush: See that? 302 new rankings in a single day! Clicking on what was “new,” some of these showed we were position 11 for “modern copywriter,” #3 for “copywriting companies”, and #19 for “website content”: The orange bar below showed we’d lost 200 keywords. But clicking on that, I saw they were mostly unrelated keywords—like “express for her,” “sprinkles icing,” and more. Except for a few pivotal ones we’d lost a few positions on (looks like I need to refresh some old SEO content), the “lost” weren’t too bad. How The Heck Did We Get 300+ Keywords In One Day? I have a couple theories. First, Google RankBrain is out. It came out two days before our rankings showed a major spike. Read my blog on RankBrain here. RankBrain is an AI system that basically could be replacing Google’s old way of doing its algorithm, and it exposed 15% of the web that Google hadn’t shed light on before. I’m sure RankBrain is showing a lot more website owners rankings they didn’t know they ever had. RankBrain means we’ll all be able to see a whopping 15% more in analytics and positions online that our sites and content are ranking for—all the more reason to start publishing great content! Secondly, Google has still been rolling out Panda, AND, topical trust flow has recently been making big waves (it’s replacing PageRank and focuses on reporting relevant content in higher rankings). Topical trust flow weight could be mostly likely why we lost our unrelated rankings, too. All this is probably tied into the quality of the RankBrain AI. Lastly, we’ve been working hard on our content. Over the past month, I’ve revamped and improved our blogging and content publishing quality. Here are just a few of the changes: SEO audit of our blogs (I just corrected 35 “bad SEO” blogs, rewrote their meta descriptions and edited the copy, over the last 3 weeks, and took them to green SEO on the Yoast plugin) More SEO research and keyword planning with SEMrush for each post Heavier research and analyzing of topics and what goes into each post Custom drawings and illustrations, like this one, for many of our posts At least one infographic written, designed and published per month Re-purposing of infographics into SlideShares, RSS content to pull guest traffic Email marketing bi-weekly that sends a blog roundup to our subscriber list We Know What It Takes To Help You To end this post, I’d like to emphasize that any one of our clients can see these results. We’re not only writers with pens over here. My team not only writes great SEO optimized content, but we plan it, too—and we use SEMrush! Our team includes strategists that map out monthly editorial calendars for our clients, audit websites to remove anything that could be hurting websites, and similar services. We’ve seen content success truly happen for us – this post proves that – and we know exactly what it takes to get even a brand new website client onboard with publishing great content that gets both the eye of a reader and Google (albeit if Google, a robotic eye). If you’re ready to get serious about content and thus, your rankings and readers, check out our Content Shop!

Google RankBrain Launches, 15% of New Keyword Searches Come to Light

December 31, 2020November 6, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Big news in the Interwebz! Officially on October 26, 2015, Google released news that it has begun using an artificial intelligence page ranking system called “RankBrain.” This AI (Artificial Intelligence) system is designed to help Google organize and categorize all of its search results and news of it is currently breaking the Internet. For those of you who are unfamiliar, here’s the skinny on the new RankBrain technology. What is Google RankBrain? Google RankBrain is an AI system that Google designed to assist in processing search results. The system operates by teaching itself how to complete a task and is currently being used to search the billions of pages in Google’s ranking indexes in order to find the ones that are most relevant and most valuable for a given search query. Because the release is so new, it’s still a little unclear whether or not RankBrain is a part of the entire Google Algorithm known as Hummingbird, but sources like Search Engine Land believe that it is. There are dozens of components that make up Hummingbird and many SEOs believe that RankBrain is simply the latest. This is fueled by the fact that Bloomberg Business reported that Google RankBrain won’t handle all searches as the algorithm would, and is only responsible for a portion of them. According to Google, RankBrain has been live since early in the year and has been fully rolled-out for several months now. RankBrain will affect a huge number of queries and, as queries continue to roll in, the AI system will continue to become more advanced and learn to make predictions about certain search patterns. In fact, RankBrain is already beginning to get better at predicting a page’s rank than its human counterparts: according to recent information, engineers involved in developing the software were asked to guess where various pages would be ranked according to Google’s ranking signals. While the engineers guessed correctly 70% of the time, RankBrain got it right 80% of the time. (Better than human?) People who want to learn more about exactly how the AI properties of RankBrain function can consult this blog post (although the technology is not called RankBrain in the post). How Does Google RankBrain Work? The details on this are still foggy but right now the best guess is that RankBrain is used to interpret searches that are submitted to Google and to match them with pages that may not feature the exact keyword phrase that was searched for, but which are relevant nonetheless. This is an expansion on previous Google technologies that allowed the search engine to present pages that didn’t feature the exact search terms entered – so that people searching for “running shoes” would also see pages that targeted the keyword “sneakers” and so on and so forth. Right now, Google receives over 3 billion searches on a daily basis and, in 2007, the search engine giant reported that 20-25% of those search terms were totally unfamiliar. In 2013, that number scaled down to 15%, which was still significant for such a huge machine (it amounts to about 450 million search terms each day that Google has never seen). The 15% estimation holds true today and, presumably, RankBrain is a way to refine and categorize those queries in order to deliver better results for Google users. How RankBrain Is Involved in Google’s Ranking Signals When it comes time to rank a webpage, Google uses a wide variety of so-called “signals” to determine how to rank the page in the index. Things like bolded words, mobile-friendly pages, and local listings are all signals that Google uses to rank a page. These signals are processed by various parts of the algorithm in order to determine which pages show up in SERPs and which do not. According to Google, there are more than 200 big-time ranking signals used when ranking each page. Many people believe that these 200 signals then give way for up to 10,000 sub-signals. This is important to know because, seemingly out of the blue, Google is now saying that RankBrain is the third-most important ranking signal in existence right now. Although we know that this is a huge development, since we don’t know exactly how RankBrain will look in the coming months, it’s hard to tailor content to this development as it stands now. The Future of Google RankBrain Right now, many SEO experts believe that the presence of RankBrain may indicate a future trend toward voice searches. Because people don’t issue voice searches the same way they issue text-based searches, search engines and marketers alike need to start adapting now. For example, a person who wants to issue a voice search may ask “Where can I get a bagel in NYC?” while a text search may look more like “bagels NYC.” The fact that RankBrain is capable of learning, adapting to, and predicting a variety of new search queries indicates that the Google engineers may be predicting an AI system that can eventually answer basic questions and even complete easy puzzles. This, ultimately, is an extension of a program called The Knowledge Graph, which Google released in 2012. The Knowledge Graph was Google’s way to reach toward becoming more intelligent about the connections between words. With the inception of this program, Google moved toward doing what it called searching for “things not strings.” This meant that Google went beyond searching only for information that matched a string of letters and began, instead, searching for pages that provided answers to the questions a person was probably asking through their search queries. For example, The Knowledge Graph allows searchers to enter a term like “when was Nixon born?” and get an answer complete with maps without ever specifying that you mean President Nixon. As RankBrain becomes more established, it seems evident that the service will combine with other Google technologies, such as rich answers (more on these in a moment) to create an intuitive search experience that allows the search engine to see … Read more

Google & Twitter Team Up On A New Content Delivery Platform

June 19, 2024October 9, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Getting content and getting it fast is important in the world of the Internet, isn’t it? When you see an interesting article, you want to click and read without having to wait for several seconds. Facebook knew this way back in May, creating a new content delivery platform called Instant Articles. And now it looks like Google and Twitter are teaming up for something similar. What is this new content delivery platform? And how can you use it for your content? Avengers, Assemble: Google and Twitter Teaming Up for a Content Delivery Platform Back in May, Facebook announced a new content delivery platform called Instant Articles. The plan on Facebook’s part was to offer original content from companies directly on Facebook instead of third party sites. They’ve continued this with the revamp of Notes, creating a powerful long-form content platform. And Google and Twitter did not want to be left out. Recode reports that many Twitter users are noticing that articles load instantaneously now, instead of waiting for a few seconds for it to load. Are you seeing the similarity with Instant Articles? Once you get passed that similarity, you’ll notice a few interesting differences. This isn’t necessarily being hosted directly on Google and Twitter; in fact, both channels want to make this an open source service. This gives several tech companies the opportunity to use this and build on it for their own needs. This is a great opportunity for websites, and since this is based on cached websites instead of an individual content platform, it is open to everyone. And, you won’t lose out on ad revenue either. How is this Going to Compete With Facebook’s Instant Articles? The biggest way Google and Twitter’s new delivery platform is going to compete with Instant Articles is simply that it is open source. Instant Articles is only for Facebook and isn’t available for everyone yet. However, with this platform, every single publisher will benefit. When it comes to using Facebook, Mashable points out that it really is a difficult position for publishers. Instant Articles shows that people need to jump on the Facebook bandwagon or they could lose out. However, it could also get to the point where people rely too heavily on Facebook and forget other channels. This isn’t so with Google and Twitter, which is making this new option immediately attractive to many publishers both large and small. Is This Going to Drastically Changes Online Content Delivery? Thankfully, this new change isn’t going to be a drastic change. It just means that you need to focus heavily on content creation. And really, you should already be focusing on it. Creating excellent content pieces that people will click on is the biggest way that you can take advantage of this excellent opportunity. Content creation is an incredible way to deliver content your clients want to see, providing them with value. This can definitely help you stand out from all of your competitors, making you someone people will trust quicker. 7 Ways to Prepare for Google and Twitter’s Content Delivery Platform When it comes to creating excellent content and preparing to utilize Google and Twitter’s new setup, there are a few things you can do. I am going to take a look and help you create some awesome long-form content pieces that people will click on and love to read ASAP. 1. Prepare to Write More Long-Form Content for Social Media The biggest thing you need to do to prepare for the majority of recent changes, including Google and Twitter, is to make sure you are focusing on long-form content. Long-form content can drastically increase your website traffic, as well as making sure people stay, return, and share. Just take a look at this graph from Wordstream after they began to implement long-form content: When they began to create long-form content, they saw that more readers stayed on their site longer. This is great because it then opens it up to encourage people to go around your site and look at your products and services. Sujan Patel says that long-form content also gives you the ability to reach a wider audience base, helps you to talk about more topics, and helps you generate more leads. 2.Hire Not Only Social Media Managers but Copywriters As Well One of the best ways to prepare and get awesome content is to not only hire social media managers but copywriters as well. This will help you create great content consistently, helping encourage people to click the links on Twitter and read your article. Just imagine what the combined efforts of Google and Twitter with the power of a copywriter can do for your site. You’ll see some absolutely incredible results. Including, but not limited to, people sharing your content, engaging with it, and staying on your site longer. 3. Know How to Tailor Your Content for the Channel You should also know the tone you want to use when it comes to reaching Twitter. You may need to create some great blog pieces that capture that tone, and help you reach out to a wider demographic. It is vital to know, however, the difference between your brand’s voice and the tone you use. Your voice must always stay the same to help promote consistency. Buffer’s Kevan Lee powerfully states that, “Voice is a mission statement. Tone is the application of that mission.” You should already know the voice you want to have for your brand so use it when crafting content. And change up your multitude of tones to reach out to the right audience on Twitter. 4. Keep Up Your Business Site’s Blog With Facebook’s Instant Articles, you might start believing you don’t need to keep up your site’s blog. As I stated earlier, this is exactly what Mashable is afraid of. And you shouldn’t fall into this easy trap. With the new change between Google and Twitter, you will absolutely need to keep up your business’s blog. Don’t neglect it for … Read more

What Happened to Google’s Local Search Content? Big Ranking Changes

December 31, 2020August 27, 2015 by Adam Oakley

For people familiar with Google’s local search content & overall algorithms, it’s clear that things are changing (again). In the lingo of SEOs, earlier this month, people began to notice that the 7-packs that typically showed up in the business search results had been replaced by 3-packs. Although many marketers were initially alarmed, the trend continued and it soon became clear that the presentation of local searches had changed. Google’s Local Search Content: What Does the Pack Thing Mean? Before we go any further, I better define what the heck this “pack” thing is. (This is what Google refers to it as.) 7-pack vs. 3-pack simply means that Google is showing 7 locations instead of 3 when you search for a location. See example screenshot when I searched for “restaurants Austin” on my mobile Android device. It only gives me 3 results before the More button. Back to the News Story So within hours of the first 3-pack’s appearance, 3-packs had completely replaced all 7-packs across all vertical search rankings in every country. People were shocked. Although Google is known for rapid-fire updates, they had previously tested local changes and then rolled them out only to certain countries. Needless to say, the rapid change to local search results has left many people wondering what happened and what comes next. Local Search Results Optimized for Mobile One of the reasons that Google changed the face of their local searches is to accommodate the ever-growing number of mobile searches. By optimizing their search results for mobile devices, they cater to the wide selection of their users who prefer accessing the web via smartphone. Now, when desktop users view their search results, they will notice that it looks quite similar to the search results a mobile user would see: the 3-pack has been designed to fit perfectly onto the screen of mobile users and desktop users are along for the ride. In light of these recent changes, the top 3 search engine spaces are hot real estate for content marketers everywhere. Although mobile users have been accustomed to 3-packs for quite some time, desktop users are just now getting the swing of things and there is a high probability that content that doesn’t make the cut of the top 3 will be forgotten by users. How Did the 3-Pack Changes Affect Traffic? As you can imagine, Google’s local search content doesn’t just change willy-nilly. For all of Google’s algo updates, each proposed change goes through a heavy regiment of testing and, historically, SEO’S have noticed these tests as they take place. A few SEO’s predicted the 3-pack change and local businesses with more than two competitors have begun to feel the heat. Many SEO’s speculate that Google made the change to 3-packs because the search results in the top three spaces of Google’s presentation were getting the most traffic. These results probably garnered more clicks and more attention, but this can probably be attributed to positioning more than anything else. Even if mobile rankings operated on the 7-pack system, the top 3 fit perfectly on a mobile screen, making them far more visible to a mobile user. Unless the mobile user scrolls down, results4-7 are all but invisible. That said, it’s likely that Google made the change because results 4-7 were simply not getting enough clicks and they wanted to streamline user experience. Many local companies, however, don’t appreciate being booted from the first page because, even if they weren’t in the top 3, being in results 4-7 still offered ample branding opportunities and provided companies with a way to get their company out there for added exposure and notability. Changes to Addresses In the new 3-pack results, searchers will notice that Google has made some important changes to the addresses that appear in the 3-pack queries: they’ve removed specific, numerical addresses in favor of street names and not all local businesses love it. Although this change may promote people clicking through, which is a great thing for businesses that don’t land a spot in the top 3, even clicking through doesn’t show an address on the left side of the page. Additionally, searchers no longer see phone numbers, Google+ links or flyouts. Store hours, however, have been added. Ability to Search for Ratings With the new 3-pack changes, Google users can now search for businesses based solely on their ratings. This is especially crucial for restaurant-related businesses. Now that users can search based on star-ratings (two stars, three stars or four stars), it’s obvious that companies are going to find themselves competing for increased ratings. When given the chance to search only for four-star companies, it stands to reason that Google users might not be all that interested in two or three stars. This is big news for small businesses with local competitors. What Google’s Local Search Content Change Means for SEO All of the changes implicit in the new 3-pack structure spell some big competition for SEO’s. Now that Google has essentially lopped four spots off of prime results page real estate, the competition for the top three has become fierce. Even companies that currently have a spot in the top three local search results can’t afford to get too relaxed: a spot today does not guarantee a spot tomorrow, especially because the competition for those spots just got fierce. This new climate calls for companies to optimize their content for local SEO by taking steps like researching keywords, creating high-quality content and developing a highly visible home page that includes the company’s name, address and phone number as well as an embedded geo sitemap. Additionally, companies that can garner additional positive customer reviews will stand a better chance of sitting pretty in the search results. Conclusion Although these steps aren’t shocking to those familiar with SEO, they are new for local businesses that have never done any local SEO before. In the changing climate of Google’s local searches, though, it’s obvious that companies with more than two competitors now … Read more

The SEO Basics of 2015 (It’s Hard, Here’s How You Win) Q&A With Jeff Deutsch

December 31, 2020August 25, 2015 by Jeff Deutsch

We sat down – virtually, of course – with acclaimed author and SEO marketer Jeff Deutsch, author of the viral Inbound post Confessions of a Google Spammer (which hit over 160,000 views and 90k+ Facebook shares). He gave us some awesome, original insights on SEO basics for current marketers in 2015 (and beyond). It’s a read any online marketer should take the time to make. Tell us a little about how and why you got started in SEO. I’ve always dreamed of changing the world through mind control. As an introvert, SEO seemed like the best way to approach it. I probably got the dream from my dad. He was a pretty prolific writer. When I was 8 years old, he taught me how to hypnotize people. He used to proudly tell me stories about how, in college at Columbia in the 1950s, he would make his (pretty, female) subjects regress to memories from the womb—and beyond. I thought that was pretty cool. In college, I majored in political science. Because I thought they were going to teach me how to do mind control on a mass scale. (Spoiler alert: They didn’t.) So I tried doing it on my own. My first experiment came in 2003. At the time, the debate was raging on the need for war in Iraq. I was fervently against it. I had carefully collated all the projections on how many lives would be lost and money spent. Then I put up a website with the facts. Then I advertised the website by stapling and taping hundreds of bright lemon yellow flyers all over the conservative, war-hungry streets of New Orleans. The next day, I saw most of my flyers had been torn down during the night. My anti-war website got no traffic. That was the first time it dawned on me how important it is to have a reliable source of traffic that other people can’t easily take down. I wish I could say I started doing SEO back then, because man! It was easy back then. Unfortunately, I only started to figure it out in 2008, when I was doing marketing for a company in Beijing that had virtually no budget. By 2010, I had started my own little SEO company in Plainsboro, New Jersey, in an attempt to escape the Beijing pollution and relocate myself and my then-pregnant wife to the U.S. The relocation failed, but the SEO succeeded in a big way. How big have SEO basics changed since the day you started out in SEO compared to today? Nowadays, it takes a LOT more money, charisma, or tech skills to start an SEO agency. Today’s SEO basics are a lot different that yesterday’s. Back in 2010, anyone with limited tech skills and the right cheat-sheet could easily start a successful SEO agency on a $1200 budget. I even wrote a post about it on backlinksforum.com if you want to know the details. But the basic concept was building parasite backlinks using spun content and force indexing them. If you don’t recognize those terms, never mind. They’re not going to help with SEO for the big money keywords these days anyway. However, I talked to some guys at one SEO agency at Opticon and according to them—amazingly—these methods STILL work for very low competition keywords. They use them to rank for reputation management clients’ names. But they are the exception to the rule. Most successful agencies these days have the money, charisma, or tech skills to have a comparative advantage over you and me. They gobble up all the keywords (and clients… and money…) by combining that advantage with the scaling power of automation and social media to force the Gini coefficient of SEO ever upwards closer to 1.0. Money SEO agencies These guys just buy links on high PR guest blogs like HuffingtonPost, or buy whole sites on Flippa to turn into pumpers or feeders, or pay to build a big ole PBN. They have the resources to reverse engineer their competitors’ backlink profiles and outbid them on quality link placement. Profile: Think in-house link buyers for online casinos. Zodiac sign: Taurus. Star Wars equivalent: Think Senator Lott Dod, Minister of the Trade Federation. D&D counterpart: A NEUTRAL EVIL human rogue. Charisma SEO Agencies These people know how to network, be popular and get tight with high traffic sites. And get them to link to their creative content. Which they know people will like because they extrovertedly talk talk talk to everyone. Profile: Think inbound marketers like Dharmesh Shah, Neil Patel, Joel Klettke. Zodiac sign: Libra. Star Wars equivalent: Queen Padmé Amidala. D&D counterpart: A LAWFUL GOOD half-elf bard. Tech Skill SEO Agencies These folks know how to automate outreach and find loopholes to rank and bank. Mostly these guys are pretty agnostic about the method, and only care about the result, so it’s hard to label them “white hat” or “black hat.” If, for example, they develop a WP plugin that gets them cloaked links, and they only rank reputable sites, who are they hurting really? Or maybe they develop the scripts to find high value expired domains with aged backlinks to build PBNs or 3BNs. The main thing is that they are mavericks who zig when everyone else zags, and they almost assuredly rock the pants off PHP, Python, Ruby, or all three. Profile: Think Justin Mares from ProgrammingForMarketers.com and any SEOs on StackExchange.com. Zodiac sign: Aquarius. Star Wars equivalent: Han Solo. D&D counterpart: A CHAOTIC NEUTRAL halfling swashbuckler. By the way, as you can see from my $1200 guide above, back in 2010 people like me used to hand out actionable, effective SEO basics advice on forums for free all the time. Those days are over. Nobody does that anymore for The Three Reasons People Don’t Publicly Share Effective SEO Tactics Anymore. The Three Reasons People Don’t Publicly Share Effective SEO Tactics Anymore Google’s anti-spam team reads the forums to find and close loopholes the way agents in the … Read more

Google’s Portuguese Blog & The Link-Building Fiasco

December 31, 2020July 20, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Have you seen Google’s recent blog post about link-building? Well, SEOs and web masters alike have been tearing their hair over it. Well, maybe not that extreme, but close. According to the Portuguese piece, ANY asking for a link is actually unnatural link building and you could be facing manual fines. We had our translator translate the words of the article to get to the bottom of things. Here’s what she came up with: “Artificial link schemes, PageRank manipulation, and unnatural positioning techniques in search results directly jeopardizes our capacity to measure a websites’ reputation. Employing artificial link schemes leads to a negative impact on a website’s search results positioning. We take manual action on individual websites that destructively and intentionally violate our Webmaster Quality Guidelines…Our stance regarding links that point to your site has not changed. Link schemes and purchasing links that pass PageRank with the purpose of distorting organic search results are still considered in violation of our Webmaster Quality Guidelines.” So, here’s what it really says, in English. What we take away from this is that if you ask for links, you could be hit with penalties. There’s also reference to buying and selling links which Google have spoken about previously. Not the same thing as no-linking. Google has since clarified that link building isn’t all-together an archaic no-no. Just have a look at their Link Schemes section. There’s no talk about not being able to ask for links at all. There is, however, reference to buying, selling and exchanging of links. Google & Their Link Building Statement: Let’s Talk About That Buying, selling and exchanging links refers to valid, authoritative links that pass PageRank. This even includes exchanging cash, goods or services for links or sending a blogger a free product to mention and link to. So it might be safe to say that not asking for links is actually aimed at people who try to use other ways of acquiring links. Case in point: Thumbtack. In this instance, points were given for links that were thought to be neither bought nor sold and were therefore acceptable. Is It a Good Idea Not To Ask For Links? It probably is if you’re a newbie to SEO and web antics. Especially if you’re not quite familiar with the difference between a dodgy and legitimate link. Google’s post, if you look a little closer, is aimed more at those who have already been slapped with penalties. For the experienced SEOs out there, well, you know the nuances of link building and you know you should only be asking for quality links for the very best sources without any worry of harming the site. Where to From Here? 2015 and Further The rules to link building are dynamic. So what exactly is considered safe and what isn’t? And is it worth just “having a go and hoping for the best?” You might as well be no-linking. You’d be forgiven for thinking Google webmaster trend analyst, John Mueller, was as confused as many an SEO. But check out his recent Google+ live hangout. It’s here that he tackles the question of whether or not link building serves any good. He mentions that he tries to avoid link building. That’s a bombshell. And we’re left thinking, again, that Google is rather anti-link building. But Mueller goes on to elaborate. He says the web giant do still take links into account as part of their ranking algorithm. He expands on that by mentioning that building links directly isn’t the best way to go about it. Instead, the goal should be to ensure content can stand on its own and is easy for readers to share on their own platforms. It all comes down to that old adage of “content is king”. During the chat, Mr. Mueller downplays the importance of links. He insists that the ranking algorithm in fact takes several factors into account. That Means Link Building Can Do More Harm Than Good For ages Google has thought of link building as soft link manipulation. Instead, they find the most pertinent pages for a query and then rank them on quality and authority. Any inorganically acquired signals of quality or authority, including links, may inhibit the accuracy of the rankings. And it’s in this context that Mueller dismisses link building. Look at Google Penguin. This updated ranking algorithm sorts out what it thinks is spammy or low-quality links. Results with too many links or links from irrelevant source can result in a penalty. So we start to understand why link building could do more harm than good. However, just because this old practice could be dangerous, doesn’t mean it is. If it’s approached properly and with care along with an understanding of what will be a success and what will get a penalty slapped on you, then you can carry on happily. Actually, There’s a Right Way to Do This Link Building You can do link building “right”. It just requires a bit of extra time and resources. If Google considers you trustworthy, credible and authoritative, then your links will be considered valuable. When another site links to yours, it shows you have something valuable to offer and in turn you become more valuable. But if you’re building links on your own, your chances of credibility are low. Google doesn’t want to see you voting for yourself. Rather work on coming up with top notch content that is more likely to be shared on the web. The main types of content that are shared most frequently include detailed blogs, infographics and videos. The higher the quality of your content, the more links it will attract with very little effort. Once you’ve got that down, syndicate the content via social media and watch the rest take care of itself. Another way to build links is through guest blogging. Go ahead and establish relationships with other bloggers who will invite you to contribute to their sites and get you link building without having … Read more

Should We Create Shorter Content For Google’s Mobile Update (Or Not)?

December 31, 2020April 21, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Today is the big day: Google’s mobile algorithm update is rolling out! Or, D-Day this week—for webmasters to have their sites up to par with accepted mobile optimization standards. Since this announcement from Google came out in February 2015, professionals that use the internet have been trying to figure out exactly how much of a change we’re likely to see here. Whilst the regular desktop users won’t notice any difference in the way they see the world, this mobile update makes it easier for mobile users to access content on the internet and read it comfortably in miniature screens. The Mobile Content Update: What’s The Extent of Change? The last time Google announced algorithm changes so openly was when the first anti-content-farm update (nicknamed “Panda”) came out and changed the game for SEO in general. Based on the amount of time Google gave before their scheduled algorithm change, we can be fairly certain that we’re going to see some pretty major changes as far as internet-based business is concerned. Google has realized that vast numbers of users have forgone the traditional method of access through browsers and are now looking at web-pages on miniature screens such as tablets and mobile phones. In order to help these users out, Google has instituted a checking system that will determine whether the page is mobile-friendly or not (there is no grey area here, it’s either-or) and let the user know beforehand. What The Google Update Means for Content The crux of the matter for content production teams and content marketing professionals is that we need to rethink our content game when it comes to Google’s mobile update. A few of us already have mobile-friendly sites (You can check if yours conforms here), but there are many of us that aren’t mobile-friendly and don’t create content for that audience. It’s about time we changed that. With the burgeoning mobile internet market entering the big leagues with this update, we would be making a serious misstep to overlook these users. How can we go about creating content that meshes with this new update? Make it Short and Snappy: The key thing to keep in mind here is that mobile users will most likely be consuming much more bite-sized content than regular web users. Short, sweet and concise are what you’re aiming for. Long content (such as a few thousand words of length) still has its place on a web page, but not one geared towards mobile users. Just like how regular web users are daunted with walls of text, mobile users will probably take one look at a massive post and run for the hills. Keeping it concise and to the point is important to maintain your reader’s interest. Build your Home Page Differently: Home pages usually have a large amount of copy to go with them because they aim to draw the user in and make them click on to other linked pages. With the new mobile update, we’re going to have to start considering our home page differently. Typically, we’re going to have to revamp the homepage to make it more suitable for viewing on a small screen by getting the copy more concise than it currently is. For a mobile user, you should be considering your homepage as ad copy in a limited space. Your mobile-search compatibility will not affect your regular desktop rankings (according to Google). Consider the Look & Feel of your Email Campaigns: The sheer amount of users that check email on their phones has gone up tremendously since the early 2000’s. I, personally, check email on a bi-hourly basis and many other professionals do it far more often than that. Google’s integration of Gmail with the Android operating system makes it even easier for users to stay connected via their phones. To this end, when we design our email marketing campaigns, we should give a thought to those users that are accessing our emails through the phone and develop the look and feel for our marketing content around that. Hard-Hitting Headlines: Writing content for a web browser means you have a whole lot of screen real estate to work with. For a mobile platform, that screen real estate comes down to nearly nothing and you’re going to have to be creative about how you fill that space. Your headlines have to attract and tease, but they only have a handful of characters in which to pique the readers’ interest. Professionals that use Twitter will shine here since they are already used to getting their message across in one hundred and forty characters. This just gives them an extension of that particular skill, shortening headlines down to the very minimum so that they can be easily transferred to a mobile platform for viewing. Don’t Sacrifice Quality for Space: Probably the largest challenge we will have as content creators is maintaining the value of our message despite having to deliver it to our audience in a reduced space. This is where the true marketing professionals will shine. Someone who truly understands the audience will be able to explain to them in the least amount of words possible the things that the audience needs to know. Concise explanation is exactly what we want for our post-mobile content, because it gives us value without sacrificing content for it. At the end of the day, content drives our business and for it to do so with success, it must be good content. A Changing Paradigm of Digital Content Now would be a good time to batten down the hatches and perform a mobile content audit to determine if your site will be able to survive the oncoming algorithm change. We won’t know for certain exactly how significant a hit sites will take until the algorithm goes live, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. One thing we know for sure is that the face of content marketing is changing yet again, undergoing an evolution that ensures that our field of expertise … Read more