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Showing posts from February, 2019

Google Ads’ Average Position Metric is Going Away

Earlier this week, Google announced they plan to sunset the average position metric. While this change won’t take place until September 2019, it’s still a major announcement that has a lot of search marketers worried. After all, average position is one of the main metrics that advertisers look at when making manual bid adjustments and assessing visibility and position on the SERP.… The post Google Ads’ Average Position Metric is Going Away appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2GRF1NB

Domain Properties Update Now Available on Google Search Console

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Last updated on February 28, 2019 at 05:46 pm Google Search Console has received a number of updates over the past few months, with these updates giving the tool more functionality and introducing a new interface that is more user-friendly and organized. While an AMP crawl bug hampered the tool for a short time, Google Search Console in 2019 remains an essential SEO tool that works efficiently. Speaking of updates, Search Console has received another update in the form of Domain Properties. Here’s what you need to know about this new update, and how it makes using Search Console much more efficient. Domain Properties One of the best features of Google Search Console is the ability to track and verify every version of your website, which comes in handy when identifying individual page performance and issues that need to be optimized. Despite having this feature, one of the issues was how the domains were organized and presented. Listings were separate, which makes it challenging...

Link building for bloggers

As your blog grows, the situations you’re dealing with seem to become harder. Whoever says blogging is for the lazy, has not dealt with optimization for search engines , the ever-changing algorithms of Facebook and Instagram, the best practices of Pinterest or the ever dreaded link building. What is link building? Link building means, in short, that you’re getting links from other websites to your own blog. It helps your posts to rank. Link building is not an easy task, as you are depending on third parties to link to your website. And not only that, you don’t want a link from every website. Spammy websites or websites that have little to do with your niche, are not valuable at all. I’ve tried link building, the holistic SEO way, and will share my experiences here. If you want to learn more about this, read this article Marieke wrote about link building from a holistic SEO perspective . Asking for relevant links To get relevant backlinks, you should know the websites you would lik...

Forecasting Marketing Data At Scale

Written By Annmarie Stockinger  & Lindsay Stecklein What if we told you that you can make informed decisions using forecasts for the most common business predicaments? And what if we sweetened the deal by saying you could have the answers to these questions constantly at your beck and call?… The post Forecasting Marketing Data At Scale appeared first on Seer Interactive . https://ift.tt/2GPnOES

Yoast SEO 9.7: Fixes and enhancements

Do you know what’s inching closer? The release of Yoast SEO 10.0, featuring a new and improved SEO analysis ! If you’ve participated in our beta test, you know what to expect. If you haven’t, please stay tuned! It’s only a couple of weeks away. In the meantime, we’re keeping up with our two-week release schedule, so now it’s time to present Yoast SEO 9.7. This release mostly concerns bug fixes and enhancements. Enhancements There’s a lot happening behind the scenes at Yoast HQ — we’re hard at work at all kinds of cool stuff. Before we present some of that work, we’re going to do some more cleaning up. So let’s go through some of the improvements in Yoast SEO 9.7. First, something new for Yoast SEO Premium users. If you fill in your related keyphrases for your article, Yoast SEO can now highlight those keyphrases in the text — just click the eye icon. This makes it easier to discover how you use your related words and concepts inside your articles. In both versions, we’re now provi...

Introducing Google Merchant Center and Google Manufacturer Center

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Last updated on February 26, 2019 at 05:44 pm Google has become a solid business and marketing platform over the years, with numerous updates to tools such as Google My Business helping businesses establish their online presence. This has allowed us to optimize local SEO and help promote their brand and products accordingly. Having an updated business profile appearing on search provides users with accurate information appearing on search snippets, thus driving more traffic altogether. Along with business information, products are another way to drive both traffic and sales, with an increasing number of users conducting transactions online. With the emergence of numerous e-commerce platforms and websites, the landscape has become increasingly competitive. With more businesses aiming to promote their products and connect with their customers, Google has introduced two new platforms that allow you to do just that. These two platforms are Google Merchant Center and Google Manufacturer...

What is storytelling and why should you use it?

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Once upon a time, there was a young girl. She was 9 years old and her name was Wende. Wende was incredibly intelligent, yet she had a hard time learning things by heart. No matter how hard she tried, she just could not memorize the planets of the solar system. It just did not stick in her head. One day her teacher told her a story about all the planets. A story about how the sun was lonely and Mercury was his first friend. How Mercury fell madly in love with Venus and how Planet Earth got jealous. After telling her the story, Wende was able to remember all of the planets in the right order. Why? Because of the magic of storytelling. Wende could remember the story and with that, she could remember the planets. In this blogpost, I will tell you what storytelling is and why it is an important tool to use in the texts on your website. This post will be the first of a series of blog posts about storytelling. What is storytelling? The word storytelling pretty much speaks for itself. Storyt...

How to Optimize Keyword Research by Understanding User Intent

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Last updated on February 21, 2019 at 06:02 pm SEO has become increasingly competitive as the years go by, with new techniques, algorithm updates, and tools that help give you an edge over the competition. There are many ways to craft your own winning strategy with the right combination of tools and techniques, and this certainly rings true for keyword research. Keyword research will always be the most crucial element in the success of your SEO efforts, especially at a time where search has become more versatile than before. With voice search gaining a more significant presence, the traditional practice of finding keywords that have high search volume is at times not as effective as before. The factors that we have to consider when looking for the right keywords have increased, with user intent becoming one element that makes a difference in your success in search rankings. When it comes to user intent, there are a number of factors to consider when implementing the right strategy....

Sell Clean

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In July of 2006, I first learned of Humpy Wheeler, one of the foremost promotors of NASCAR. He was a guest on NPR’s news quiz show, “Wait Wait! Don’t Tell Me!” And what he did thrilled me. Sell Clean Humpy talked about running the motor speedway about 12 miles away from the theater where the episode was being filmed. He asked, “You want to come? I’ve got tickets in my pocket.” The post Sell Clean appeared first on chrisbrogan.com . https://ift.tt/2T4avpK

How Named Anchor Links Optimize Your Search Snippets

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Last updated on February 19, 2019 at 05:56 pm As a student of SEO, I’ve learned so many things that can affect your online presence over the years, from algorithm updates to various strategies borne out of experimentation. All of these are done just for our websites to show up on the first page of Google’s search results , along with expanding your presence and brand and generate revenue in the ever-expanding digital landscape. Google’s search snippet has gone through a multitude of changes over the past few years, with the introduction of featured snippets and knowledge graphs providing instant information containing more detailed results. Along with these two features, regular search snippets have also become more versatile as well with the introduction of Named Anchor Links. Here’s what you need to know about Named Anchor Links, how to apply them, and how they can impact your search. What are Named Anchor Links? Named Anchor Links are links that can be viewed below the search s...

How Fraggles Optimize Your Search Snippets

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Last updated on February 19, 2019 at 03:50 pm As a student of SEO, I’ve learned so many things that can affect your online presence over the years, from algorithm updates to various strategies borne out of experimentation. All of these are done just for our websites to show up on the first page of Google’s search results , along with expanding your presence and brand and generate revenue in the ever-expanding digital landscape. Google’s search snippet has gone through a multitude of changes over the past few years, with the introduction of featured snippets and knowledge graphs providing instant information containing more detailed results. Along with these two features, regular search snippets have also become more versatile as well with the introduction of Fraggles, also known as named anchors. Here’s what you need to know about Fraggles, how to apply them, and how they can impact your search. What are “Fraggles”? Named anchors, or Fraggles, are links that can be viewed below th...

Context Clusters in Search Query Suggestions

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unsplash-logoSaketh Garuda Context Clusters and Query Suggestions at Google A new patent application from Google tells us about how the search engine may use context to find query suggestions before a searcher has completed typing in a full query. After seeing this patent, I’ve been thinking about previous patents I’ve seen from Google that have similarities. It’s not the first time I’ve written about a Google Patent involving query suggestions. I’ve written about a couple of other patents that were very informative, in the past: 6/10/2016 – Google Entity Search Suggestions Patent ( Associating an entity with a search query ) 5/26/2010 How a Search Engine Might Identify Possible Query Suggestions ( Generating query suggestions using contextual information ) In both of those, the inclusion of entities in a query impacted the suggestions that were returned. This patent takes a slightly different approach, by also looking at context. Context Clusters in Query Suggestions We’ve b...

WordPress 5.1 is incoming, Gutenberg Phase 2 updates, and bonus links!

We have a big week ahead of us! WordPress 5.1 will be released this week and with it comes a lot of improvements for the Block Editor as well as a whole bunch of other improvements. I’m also updating you on Gutenberg phase 2. And of course, there are some bonus links as well. Let’s dive in! WordPress 5.1 slated for this week It’s only been a little over two months since WordPress 5.0 was released, but the next release, WordPress 5.1, has been progressing very nicely. So well, in fact, that it’s slated for the February 21st. That’s this week! WordPress 5.1 will add a nice set of improvements such as Site Health notices, version 4.8 of the Gutenberg plugin which comes with a lot of improvements to the Block Editor. But, wait, there’s more! It will also have Multisite Support for Site Metadata, Cron improvements, a new JavaScript build process, and updated styles and text strings. Additionally, there are a lot of under the hood improvements. All of which you can find in the WordPress 5...

Visual search: The future is now

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We are a visually oriented species. Humans can understand pictures in the blink of an eye. In comparison, we read terribly slow and understand the text even slower. What’s more, a percentage of the world’s population consists of visual thinkers — people who also think in pictures. Considering this, it is not strange to see search move towards a more visual way. You might just start your next search by opening the camera app on your smartphone. Meet visual search. What is visual search? Visual search consists of every search that uses real-world images like photos or screenshots as a starting point. Every time you point your Google Lens camera at a piece of clothing, you are performing a visual search. Whenever you use Pinterest to do a style match, you are doing a visual search. Visual search answers questions like: “Show me stuff that’s kinda like that but different”, or “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it”. It’s not just style matching that awesome outfit you ...

How to Boost Your Business Using Facebook Local Search

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Last updated on February 14, 2019 at 09:56 pm Ever since Facebook came into the fold during the 2000s, social media sites have become the most widely used internet platforms across the world. Boasting a user base of billions, this is also one of the best places for digital marketers to promote their brands. In the past few articles, we have emphasized the need to optimize your local SEO strategies to boost your traffic and rankings. While Facebook search is no Google, it has gradually developed into a more capable search platform that works best when looking for local businesses near your area. This adds another layer to your social media marketing strategy that you can take advantage of to give your brand that much-needed boost. Here are some strategies that will help you do exactly just that. Keep your business updated In the same way as making sure that your Google My Business listing information is accurate, updating the information in your Facebook page ensures that users w...

We Don’t Want to Fit In. We Want to Belong

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There has been a big shift in how people interact with brands. In the old days, a product or service would show up on the scene, and we’d evaluate whether the product was something we could use. Sure, there were some products and brands where we felt like we wanted to belong (you are either a Coke or Pepsi person, for instance). But most times, when something new came out, the question was whether you could fit yourself into the right category to make that product useful. This has all reversed. People are tired of fitting in. They want to go where they belong. The post We Don’t Want to Fit In. We Want to Belong appeared first on chrisbrogan.com . http://bit.ly/2V1vAyt