Digital marketing

It’s a phenomenon that’s probably a bit surprising when you first hear about it: when paying for Google Ads (previously known as Google AdWords), you may just notice your organic rankings going up as well. This may not immediately make sense to you. After all, why would Google give you a ‘free boost’ or something like that? Truth is, investing in Google Ads won’t directly affect your organic rankings. But that doesn’t mean it’s just a coincidence if you notice your organic rankings and/or traffic improve afterwards. So, what’s going on then? What’s the correlation here? Mathias was wondering the same thing, and sent us this question: Since we started paying Google Ads [AdWords] for main keywords, we’ve also doubled organic traffic, mostly with related other keywords (and sites). Does advertising with Google Ads [AdWords] affect organic SERPs? Or do you see any indication for a correlation between paid and organic traffic? Watch the video or read the transcript further down the p...

Facebook is becoming less important as a source of traffic to your site. We wrote about it before, but mid August a lot of internet-sources reported that Facebook “did not care about publishers”. Joshua Benton wrote a nice and nuanced article about the matter, in which he also shared some interesting statistics. Facebook is indeed referring less and less to publishers. In this post, I’ll share what Yoast has noticed in decreasing traffic from Facebook, I’ll share my personal view on the matter and I’ll discuss our current strategy in dealing with it. What have we noticed at Yoast At Yoast, we’ve noticed our traffic from Facebook is going down. We share blogposts on our timeline and the number of visitors we attract to our website has halved in the past year-and-a-half. Overall, our traffic is going up though. We still notice a nice growth in organic search (which is a good thing, considering we’re selling SEO). Optimize for synonyms and related keywords and prevent broken pages on ...

Out SEO toolbox has some of the most versatile and effective SEO tools available, and our goal is to be able to have the best set of SEO and digital marketing tools in order to become a more efficient SEO team . When it comes to getting quality results and findings, these SEO tools are the ones we go to. One of the most important SEO tools is web crawling tools, as they allow us to have an in-depth analysis on our website. This allows us to see if a website contains errors that can be optimized, and also see which parts are working well. These kinds of tools enable us to know the best strategies we can do for different websites and enable us to use more tools in our toolbox, along with adding more tools that allow us to perform more tasks. Speaking of new tools, one of the newest tools that we got to try out was the Netpeak Spider, which is a new web crawling tool. Here’s an in-depth look: Getting Started To begin using Netpeak Spider, all you have to do is to register your email...

Let’s talk about a big SEO secret. Once upon a time, I was sitting around a table with a bunch of other SEO experts. At one point, someone said, “Do you have a hard time keeping up with all the SEO news?” As I looked around the table, I saw everyone was nodding. And, yes, I was https://ift.tt/2MWRVwH

In 2011, Google, Bing & Yahoo announced Schema.org which got SEOs all excited to start marking up website content to turn it into “structured data.” The benefit would be that search engines would be more certain that a text string of numbers was in fact a phone number, or at least they would be more certain that you wanted them to think it was phone number. The search engines could then turn the structured data into eye-catching fripperies designed to seduce searchers into surrendering their clicks and revenue to your fabulously marked-up site (aka “Rich Results). It also could help your fridge talk to your Tesla. So pretty much every SEO marked-up their audits and conference presentations with recommendations to mark up all the things. LSG was no exception. And we have seen it work some nice SEO miracles. There was the ecommerce site that lost all its product review stars until we reconfigured the markup. There was the yellow pages site that got a spammy structured data manual...

Amazon recently released their Q2 earnings report, listing what they’ve accomplished in the last quarter.   At Seer, we’re continually monitoring Amazon to understand how our clients might be impacted by their expansions into new industries. Here, we’ll highlight where Amazon is most focused on expansion: voice, groceries, fashion, and international*.… https://ift.tt/2N2lQDu

Two weeks ago, we launched Yoast SEO 8.0. In it, we shipped the first part of our integration with Gutenberg: the sidebar. That release was the foundation on which we are building the next parts of our integration with the new WordPress editor. In Yoast SEO 8.1, we introduce part 2: a Gutenberg-proof snippet preview. Also, a much better experience in the content analysis thanks to webworkers! Optimize for synonyms and related keywords and prevent broken pages on your site with Yoast SEO Premium! » $89 - Buy now » Info Gutenberg, meet the Yoast SEO snippet preview Yoast SEO 8.0 , unfortunately, had to make do without a snippet preview inside Gutenberg . There were still some kinks to iron out before we could add that snippet preview to our WordPress plugin. The code for that new modal — the pop-up screen — had to be written from the ground up, exclusively for Gutenberg. That code has now been added to Gutenberg’s core so every WordPress developer can make use of the modal inside t...

Google Images is one of the most popular visual search engines and image archives on the internet, with millions upon millions of images available for users to view and download. Over the years, numerous updates have been rolled out to optimize its services, with the most recent ones being the removal of the “View Image” button and the addition of web page titles on images . With the latter update, this helped turn Google Images into a site that helps generate traffic to various websites. This means that users can get a meaningful amount of traffic with the right image optimization. This makes this kind of traffic worth taking a look at Google Analytics , where users can get more information. Until recently, tracking traffic from Google Images using Google Analytics tends to be a challenge, as you would have to go through different referral paths just to find out if your traffic came from Google Images. Thankfully, the latest Google Images update makes tracking traffic much more ef...

I’ve always felt lucky blogging for Yoast.com. As I wrote before , I have an entire blog team that makes sure my post gets scheduled, is free of grammar or spelling errors and they publish it on social media. So I ‘only’ had to come up with an idea, which the team often helped me with, and type the post. I decided that if I ever were to outsource things on my own blog, it would be things like promotion and social media. My struggle with social media And then the inevitable happened. After I finished my previous post, I got a message: “Caroline, from now on, please write your own introduction for Facebook, Twitter, and the newsletter. Here’s some information for you. If you have any questions, let us know!” Hold on! Yes, I have questions! Starting with: “How do I do this?” and: “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to write short messages? There’s a reason I’m not active on Twitter!” And, so began my struggle, and search, for the ultimate social media messages. Optimize your site ...

We’ve said it time and again: site speed is a crucial aspect of your SEO. That’s why we often write about site speed tools , speed optimization , and other things you need to know to make your site lightning fast. One factor in site speed is image optimization: on most sites, images will play a part in loading times. So, giving your image SEO some thought will pay off. Want to bump your SEO to a higher level? Become a technical SEO expert with our Technical SEO training! » $199 - Buy now » Info Besides resizing and compressing your images to improve loading times, there’s the option to implement ‘lazy loading’ on your site. Lazy loading means that an image or object on your site doesn’t load until it appears in your visitor’s browser. For example: if a page has 8 images, only those that appear ‘above the fold’ load right away, while the others load as the user scrolls down. This can significantly improve speed, especially on pages that contain a lot of images. There are several ...

Google’s UI isn’t the only thing that’s changing  – Google is now expanding their text ads to include 3 headlines AND an extra description line, and we’re not mad about it. Tell me more… Currently, Google allows 2 headlines at 30 characters each, with 1 description line at 80 characters for an expanded text ad.… https://ift.tt/2BJSaGN

Two weeks ago a client reset its bot-blocker, unintentionally blocking Googlebot. We had SEORadar monitoring the site so we quickly discovered the problem and alerted the client. Unfortunately, by the time they fixed the bot-blocker settings, they had lost about 100,000 daily visitors from Google. Of course, the first thing they asked was: How Long Will It Take Our Google Traffic To Recover From Blocking Googlebot? While your mileage may vary, in this case the answer is about one week. Here’s my theory on how this process works: You block Googlebot from crawling your site (the most common reasons I see are improper bot-blocking settings or adding a “Disallow: /” rule to the robots.txt file ). Googlebot gets a 403 error when it tries to crawl the site or just stops crawling because of the robots rule. After hitting the home page (or robots.txt) a few times, it gets the message and starts demoting the site’s URLs. Traffic drops dramatically within a few hours. In this case, the s...

As of today, there’s finally an online  Yoast Academy training course on a crucial aspect of SEO: keyword research! We’re so excited! And judging from the comments we got when we announced the training course, so are many of our visitors. And you should be, as well! In the Keyword research training, you’ll find out what keywords are most effective for your site. And how you can rank for those words! You can get the course for $129, but only in the first week, so don’t wait too long! Find out how to rank for your most important keywords with our Keyword research training » $129 - Buy now » Info Get the new Keyword research training Now $149 $129 (ex VAT) for course, certificate and badge Why should I be excited about the Keyword research training? Doing keyword research is not an option, it’s essential. It forms the basis of everything SEO. Without keywords, Google can’t make sense of your copy. Without keywords, there is nothing to build a site structure around. Without ke...

Visual search has been picking up some steam over the past year, with the technology being improved to provide more users with the best search results. Along with voice search , this technology has seen more usage thanks to the emergence of quality apps available on mobile devices. While there have been more reliable visual search apps on mobile, some of the best visual search tools can be found on the browser, with the likes of Google and Bing expanding their search capabilities on their services. Starting from simple reverse image search, visual search has expanded to provide more information and context beyond just finding the images that you want to see. With that in mind, here are some of the best visual search engines you can use right now on your browser. TinEye While Google and Bing are two of the most recognizable visual search engines worldwide, there are a host of other visual search engines that are quite capable at what they can do, and I want to start off with them....

In the week of August 1st Google rolled out a “broad core algorithm update.” We know it was that because they said so on Twitter. There was quite a bit of buzz around this update. Some sites “won”, others “lost”, which is logical because, in the end, this is pretty much a zero-sum game. We’ve been trying to make sense of what happened; this post explains what we know. Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium » $89 - Buy now » Info Why is it called the Medic update? It’s called the Medic update because Barry Schwartz, one of the most prolific writes in the search industry, called it that . It doesn’t mean this update only affected medical sites. What do we know about this update? In reality: not much. Google hasn’t said anything specific, and repeat their standard party line: There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may...

Every now and then, there would be times that you might run out of ideas for new content. This can happen to any of us, and it tends to be troublesome, especially when you’re on a tight publishing schedule. This makes content marketing one of the toughest parts of our job, as keeping relevant and viral content helps generate traffic and conversions. Thankfully, digital marketing offers us the best tools that allow us to look for the best ideas that help give us inspiration for quality content. From search engines , AI assistants, and online forums. This allows you to find interesting topics to explore in just a few clicks away. Here are some of these brainstorming practices that will surely help you craft quality content in a hurry. Look at Competitors Sometimes, the best places for inspiration can come from your competition. This will help you see what kind of content drives more engagement and traffic and find a way to create something much better. This practice is usually called...

This post is for those of you who want to use Google Analytics, but feel a threshold to start with this tool. For everyone that wants to see the fun of Google Analytics, but is having a hard time finding that fun. This is a post for people that are scared to use Google Analytics because they’re afraid to break something. This is a post I needed when I started with Google Analytics. Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium » $89 - Buy now » Info Google Analytics’ Danger zone If you’re afraid of skewing data, removing data, or harming data, if you will, then the following should release you from that stress: as long as you are in the reporting section of Google Analytics, nothing bad can happen. The Admin section is the place where you can do real damage. Here, you can add filters that could harm your data if not used right, here you can adjust time zones. In other words: the Admin section is the pla...

Users can navigate most sites in a nearly infinite set of combinations. If you don’t have a set way to approach this data, trying to tie back how users got from point A to B to Z during their user journey can make you feel like a detective on the hunt for the truth.… https://ift.tt/2MY8G7b

It can be quite a search to find the perfect WordPress theme. One that has a design you like, is nice and fast, and has all the functionalities you need. So, imagine you’ve finally found a theme you like, that answers all your needs, only to realise you’re not happy with the way it generates the category pages. Terribly frustrating, right? A great site structure is a must for both visitors and Google. Learn how to set it up today in our Site structure training! » $99 - Buy now » Info You know that category pages are important for your SEO efforts, so you want them to be to your liking. But what can you do? Is creating a clever workaround a good solution? And how is your SEO affected when you do that? In this Ask Yoast, I’ll discuss what you should consider before you go for a fix like that. Saurabh emailed us a possible workaround for creating a category page: I can’t style my category pages the way I want because they are dynamically generated. I thought of the following wor...

Whether you’re the type of person to binge watch eight episodes of reality TV or the type to stand in line for eight hours for the new iPhone release, we all have strong personal interests that make us who we are.… https://ift.tt/2MkOekZ

Your engineering team just mentioned they are rolling out a new type of product landing page built with REACT or Angular or some other hipster tech name you may have seen out of the corner of your eye on your Twitter SEO feed. Your gut says this could be an SEO problem, and your gut is probably right. You search Google for “React SEO Issues.” etc. and you get a lot of smart bloggers giving you way too much information on how this technology works, when you really just need a few bullet points that you can hand to an engineer so you can move on with making that sweet pitch deck for the C-Suite. This one’s on me*: A lot of modern sites use “Single Page Applications” (SPAs) which have performance/UX benefits SPAs usually return an empty HTML file initially which screws your SEO. Google is getting better at figuring this out, but I wouldn’t trust it. When you render the app on the server first (using pre-rendering/server-side rendering) the user (and bots) get a fully rendered HTML pa...