Category: SEO Technicals

A business and its website are distinct entities, but they are closely interconnected and influence each other. Another way to look at this is that a search engine, Google Search (for example), delves deep when ranking a commercial website. It is not just about the website in and of itself. The business behind the website is examined. Questions like “who runs the website?” and “where is the business located?” are a couple of questions that Google might ask when trying to assess the rank value of the site.

Business Influence on SEO:

The business influences SEO in different ways.

Branding and reputation: The business’s reputation, brand awareness, and online presence play a crucial role in SEO. Positive reviews, social media presence, and backlinks from reputable sources enhance the website’s authority and visibility in search engine rankings.

Business profile: Does the business have a Google Business or Microsoft Bing profile listed in search? Revealing the physical entity through these profiles can positively affect SEO.

Website Influence on SEO:

The website itself has a significant impact on SEO performance.

Technical optimization: The website’s technical aspects, such as site speed, mobile responsiveness, URL structure, sitemap, and metadata, affect SEO rankings. Ensuring a well-optimized website helps search engines crawl and index the content effectively.

On-page optimization: The website’s on-page elements, including title tags, headings, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and internal linking, contribute to SEO. Proper optimization of these elements with relevant keywords improves search engine visibility and click-through rates.

Keywords and target audience: The business determines the target audience and relevant keywords that align with its products or services. This information helps shape the SEO strategy and content optimization on the website.

Content creation: The business creates valuable and relevant content that meets the needs of its target audience. This content, such as blog posts, articles, or product descriptions, provides opportunities for SEO optimization, including keyword integration and attracting organic traffic.

User experience: User experience factors, such as intuitive navigation, clear site structure, easy-to-read content, and fast-loading pages, are essential for SEO. Search engines prioritize websites that provide a positive user experience, leading to higher rankings.

Content quality and relevance: The website’s content, including text, images, videos, and downloadable resources, should be valuable, unique, and relevant to the target audience. High-quality content improves user engagement, encourages sharing, and attracts natural backlinks, all of which positively impact SEO.

In conclusion, while a business and its website are distinct, they are interconnected in terms of SEO.

The business provides the foundation for SEO strategies, including defining the target audience, keywords, and content creation. The website itself acts as the digital platform where SEO techniques are implemented, focusing on technical optimization, on-page elements, user experience, and content quality to improve search engine rankings and drive organic traffic.

Doing the following with greatly multiply your web traffic:

Keyword-rich bios: Craft compelling bios that include the right keywords. Keywords that deliver real traffic that brings in real business. related to your business, industry, or niche. This helps search engines understand your profile’s purpose and improves your visibility in search results.

Optimized profile descriptions: Write captivating descriptions that include key terms and phrases your target audience may search for. This enhances your profile’s visibility and attracts organic traffic.
Backlinks: A social media profile is essentially a webpage. Webpages rank in Google Search. Adding backlink to your profiles give them more potential to rank in organic search.

Optimize image alt text: When uploading images to your social media profiles, add descriptive and keyword-rich alt text to improve accessibility and provide context to search engines.

Cross-promote your profiles: Promote your social media profiles across different platforms to increase their visibility and reach. Link your profiles to each other to create a network of interconnected online presence. Keep in mind that most links derived from social pages will contain the attribute and not pass rank that could otherwise help with increasing existing rank of a webpage in Google Search.

Regularly update and engage: Stay active on your social media profiles by posting high-quality content, responding to comments, and engaging with your audience. This signals to search engines that your profile is active and relevant.

By implementing these optimization techniques, you can enhance the visibility of your social media profiles, attract more targeted audience, and improve your overall SEO efforts.

A website redesign makes sense from time to time for a variety of reasons such as increasing on-site conversion ratios and making a site faster and more accessible to search engines. However, redesigning a website can damage organic search presence if SEO is not taken into consideration when changes are made to the following:

H1-H6 Tags

Page titles and headings. Valuable keywords can be placed here so, if changing the design includes changing the keywords, it could be a problem.

Images

Alt tags as well as image placement.

Internal Linking

This affects the flow of any given site’s PageRank, Google’s official metric used for ranking.

URL Structure

Similar to internal linking, how your site’s URL structure can affect it’s ranking performance (silo structured website).

John Mueller of Google went into a little more detail on this via twitter recently:

“If you change design, you generally change the content: headings, titles, images, internal linking, URL structure, accessibility, speed, etc – they’re all critical parts of a site and I’d consider them as content too.” (source)

In conclusion, with any changes being made during a website redesign, it is important to note the organic rank consequences of these changes so that it can be properly determined if the changes should be made at all.

“Pop-ups and User Experience” – new cartoon and post on the tricky design balance of “annoying” and “effective” https://t.co/MJucUSiyH0#marketing #cartoon #marketoon pic.twitter.com/cZAnbt4Waw

— Tom Fishburne (@tomfishburne) January 24, 2021

Mobile sites can display pop-ups on a temporary basis without being penalized in search results, according to Google’s John Mueller.

First brought to my attention by Search Engine Journal, it is good to see a clear answer on a type of marketing that, although can be annoying, is proven to be effective under the right circumstances.

However, if you hate coming across pop-ups when you visit websites then check out Google Chrome’s pop-up blocker for a way to turn them off completely . It’s good to point out though the average perception of pop-ups seem to be negative when a major Internet browser defaults to blocking pop-ups.

According to Mueller, pop-ups don’t negatively affect a website’s rankings. If there is useful content on the page then the page will still get a good ranking. It’s more of a “subtle ranking factor” so, in this case, even if the pop up may slow down the user experience for a brief moment Google won’t take any disciplinary action against the page simply for having the pop up.

I personally don’t use pop-ups but I have used them before for affiliate marketing campaigns and they are effective.

English Google SEO office-hours from January 22, 2021:

“There are two aspects that could come into play. On one hand we have, on mobile, the policy of the intrusive interstitials, so that might be something to watch out for that you don’t keep it too long or show it to everyone all the time.

With that policy it’s more of a subtle ranking factor that we use to adjust the ranking slightly if we see that there’s no useful content on the page when we load it. That’s something that could come into play, but it’s more something that would be a temporary thing.”

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It’s important to know which links to use and when to use them when you are linking out to other sites as not to cause a disruption in your site’s ranks.

Links pass PageRank , Google’s official page rank metric (“link juice,” “authority,” etc.). Passing PageRank to a site for the wrong reasons can be a problem.

Here are the link types every websmaster with SEO in mind should be using:

rel=”nofollow”

The ol’ PageRank blocker. Any links with this attribute do not pass PageRank and will not conribute to a page ranking. If there is no rel=”nofollow” attribute in the HTML link code then Google will consider it a followed link and will pass PageRank.

Interestingly, back in 2019 Google reps said that they started treating each of the nofollow attributes as “hints” rather than ignoring them completely. They likely won’t impact ranking, but Google may choose to use nofollow links for rankings in the future.

rel=”ugc”

A link attribute Google wants you to use for non-branded pages. For example, user generated content where there is no monetary incentive.

rel=”sponsored”

Affiliate links should be sponsored because their in monetary incentive. Another good example is a blog that reviews products. The blog’s webmaster should use rel=”sponsored” when linking out because there is incentive coming from the company that sends the blog webmaster the products to review in the first place.

An interesting thing about these links is that they can be combined in some cases (i.e. rel=”nofollow sponsored”) but it’s not necessary to do so.

Follow these outbound link rules to ensure your ranking in Google stays high.

Speed will be more of a factor than it ever was when Google’s Core Web Vitals update goes live in May this year. Webpages loading as fast as they can have an advantage in search.

Martin Splitt (Google’s Developer’s Relations team) recently spoke on upcoming changes to Google’s ranking factors in response to a question about blocking certain countries to speed up sites, one of many techniques SEOs use to increase page load speed. Splitt made it clear that even if a site has blocked users from certain countries, they could still use a VPN to access it. This would then actually hurt a site’s Core Web Vitals as using a VPN limits a users’ bandwidth and reduces the speed of their internet connection.

Ways To Increase Website Page Loading Speed

If you want to try to increase the speed of your website without going overboard to the point that you might cause some damage try the following instead:

• Use reduced image count and size specifications since big images can slow a site’s loading time down considerably.
• Object caching.
• Content delivery networks (Cloudfare) can speed up load times a great deal.

The Best Way To Check Your Page Load Speed For Google Ranking Improvements?

The answer: Google PageSpeed Insights

✔️ Google Page Experience Update In May 2021

Come May 2021 Google is rolling out the Core Web Vitals update (Page Experience update). Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics related to 3 factors:

⦁ speed – does the site load fast?

⦁ responsiveness – does the site respond well to different devices? (mobile friendliness)

⦁ visual stability – does the page viewing “break” (elements on page move around while loading causing a bad user experience {mis-clicks, etc.})

The purpose of this update is to help site owners measure user experience on the web.

✔️ Structured Data Format

Sites that are technically better with technical SEO have an advantage. For example, a listing with site links gets more clicks.

Technical SEO in general is harder so get help

Learning structured data from Google itself will help with this update.

✔️ Content Is STILL King

If you have been active in SEO for quite sometime than the phrase “content is king” is probably familiar to you. Confirmation came recently with John Mueller of Google stating that Google wants “fresh” and “relative” content so content creation is definitely going into overdrive in 2021, especially with recent core update changes shifting more signal weight in Google Search to content instead of links (links are still one of Google’s main ranking signals).

Over the years, Google Ads might have changed in style (yellow boxes, green tags, etc.) and even name (formerly Google Adwords) but, when it comes to Google’s policy on advertising and search, Google claims “Google Ads doesn’t have the same results as SEO, and won’t improve your organic search rankings.” – ads.google.com, and this has never changed.

There has been a subtle standoff between SEO experts and PPC experts arguing the pros and cons of each but for search engine marketers who seek ascension in search strategy, an understanding on the use of both is the goal.

Search Estate

The first place of search engines is a valuable place for businesses. Maximizing a business’ visibility in search will increase revenue so running both a strong PPC campaign and a strong organic traffic campaign through SEO is the smart decision.

There is a lot more search traffic online than people realize. Not everyone clicks on the same listing. By running both a PPC campaign and a strong organic traffic campaign through SEO a business can “cover their bases” and extend their search reach by securing a constant stream of high converting search traffic.

Brand Recognition In Ad = More Trust For Organic Clicks

When people search in Google for a product or a service they usually see ads first. Most people don’t click on ads but, to state it again, they usually see ads first. Seeing an ad for a business followed by the organic listing for the same business can have a powerful effect on searchers.

Research proves messages are more effective when repeated. Clearly the business is established to some degree or another. Or, at the very least, it’s digital marketing campaign is. Either way, this process helps establish trust and many times can lead to a click on the organic listing, saving money on the ad click while still gaining the benefit of the presence of the ad.

Although Google Ads are not used in organic rankings they can work alongside them and increase a website’s traffic significantly.

Thanks to John Mueller of Google for clearing up some confusion about GMB listings. Early today John replied in a tweet when asked by an SEO if GMB (Google My Business) is required for a website to search results to show:

“No, it’s not a requirement.”

Of course, there are plenty of websites in Google that don’t have a GMB page but that should not deter any business owner who is serious about maximum online exposure from having a GMB page.

SEM expert Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable, a leading SEM news site, further expanded on the value of GMB pages:

“The two are really separate and are not dependent on each other. Although, if you are a business, it is highly recommended that you have a Google My Business listing so customers can find you in the local results.”

So, there is the final verdict on GMB pages. Not required but recommended for maximum local web traffic exposure.

There is a lot of talent out there among SEO professionals.

Here are 3 games created by SEO experts that can actually help strengthen one’s SEO knowledge base. The majority of them cover everything from basic SEO all the way to advanced structured data formats.

SEMrush Games

SEMrush created several SEO mini-quiz games based around various themes. A lot of popular movie and game references make these quizzes extra fun (Keyword Kombat, Nightmare on SEO Street, etc.)

Don’t be fooled by the cartoon look of these games. There are plenty of high level technical questions and trick questions on blackhat tactics.

SEO RPG Game: The Search

Alexis Sanders really outdid herself with this SEO RPG game (built on RPG maker). A literal RPG adventure where the player’s SEO knowledge is the only thing that can advance them through certain puzzles and obstacles in the game.

There are an amazing amount of SEO reference seemingly blended into the game making it both fun and educational.

If you like RPG games and SEO there is literally no reason for you to not try this game.

Hidden Keywords

Just a warning: This game is hard to finish.

A cool, technical SEO puzzle game from Propellernet. Follow the clues and guess what the keywords are. Again, this is not like the previous games mentioned. It’s quite challenging and players will most likely get stuck along the way.

Looking for something on the fun side that can also help boost your SEO knowledge? These SEO games may do the trick.