Misc

Remember back when Google focused on the user? Back before organic results were overtaken with PPC ads and knowledge graphs – and back before ads triggered by last night’s searches? It was a simpler time. Apple’s bold new moves hearken back to this simpler time, and their emphasis on user experience is likely to be a big win. 1. Ad blocking As mobile has exploded, the rise of mobile advertising has meant big profits for Google. Ads have made the mobile experience somewhat undesirable, with bandwidth usage and speed being the primary factors. It’s no wonder that one of the new “Ad blockers” allowed by Apple was named Peace. Click-through-rates on mobile have long been suspiciously high, thanks to the fingers of users navigating free apps filled with advertisements. We once audited a manufacturing company’s PPC account to find the amazing clickthrough in their app ads were simply toddlers playing a construction game. This abuse is what prompted change. With one fell swoop, Apple allowed ad blockers at a level that both apps and browsers can be cleansed of ads. Early feedback is that mobile browsing is quite pleasant, and ad blocking is likely to go mainstream. This isn’t just a big shift for mobile ads, but also for remarketing/retargeting ads. With remarketing, ads can be displayed based on sites you’ve visited, shopping carts you’ve abandoned, or even searches you’ve made. It’s a great way to stay in front of – or even annoy – your audience. With one fell swoop, ad blocking apps are likely to snuff out remarketing opportunities as well. 2. Spotlight “Apple’s spotlight is the stealth search engine you’ve been using,” says Jason Calacanis. Spotlight is fueled by Bing, and provides search as part of the operating system. No need to even visit a website to search. And app results are often prioritized above web results! There are also no ads in Spotlight, and no privacy concerns. It’s hard to say how Spotlight will evolve, but “Applebot” has been crawling the web since Spring 2015. It even follows directives in robots.txt specifically for Googlebot! This is likely to make a small dent in Google’s business, regardless.   Reactions from the advertising industry are across the entire spectrum of responses: Some say users won’t go to the trouble of setting up ad blocking, others see this as an ad-pocalypse. But with change always comes opportunity. And without ads everywhere, where to spend ad dollars? SEO (search engine optimization): As long as machines are trying to rank content, there will be place for SEO. Merchants will want their products to come up first on Amazon, Google, Etsy, and everywhere else buyers are searching. PPC (pay per click): Most ad blockers are likely not going to block PPC ads. But aren’t Google and Facebook just giant ad networks with search/social features?! ASO: App search optimization to get those deeplinks in apps in front of Spotlight. App developers will always want to outrank competitors in app stores, as well. Native Ads: Native ads look like content on the site itself. Advertorials, featured and sponsored content can be hard for both humans and software to pick out. A brave new world lies ahead!

With Hyper Dog Media turning 11 this month, we having been looking back at the most common SEOproblems created by website redesigns. On some website redesigns, we’ve been on the team preventingthese SEO killers from happening. But in the vast majority of cases, we are brought in after a web redesign kills organic – and sometimes referral – traffic. Here are four potential problems we see time and again 1. 301 redirects of old pages As website technologies have evolved, so have URLs. An oft forgotten part of website redesigns is the 301 redirecting of old page locations. Traffic can shrink instantly, but the conventional point of view was that Google will figure it out. I’m not sure if that approach ever worked – for anyone – but especially now it is absolutely vital to 301 redirect old page locations to their new equivalents. Not only should URLs be redirected from the previous version of the site, but of ALL previous versions of a site. Doing so helps these key visitor groups stay happy: Visitors that have bookmarked a page: Don’t make these folks return to Google when they could stay on your site. Search engines that have ranked a page: If a page is ranking well, you don’t want to lose that! Webmasters that have linked to your page: Dead links tend to get removed. But also, 301 redirects preserve the rankings boost from these inbound links. Visitors to other sites that have followed a link to your page: Referral visitors are notoriously impatient when links are dead. Having dynamic content in various stages of the web’s development has often meant having various suffixes on URLs: .shtml, .pl, .php and/or many different parameters. Have you redirected these? Consider pulling ancient page URLs from analytics, archive.org, and even old backups. We’ve seen rankings boosts among clients that justify this level of obsession with 301 redirects! 2. Handling the development site Blocking During the development phase, Google can sometimes discover new website versions. It is fascinating the many ways Google can discover content… until they find and penalize for duplicate content! Unblocking You blocked the development version? Excellent. Now don’t forget to unblock when you go live! Whether it’s a robots.txt file, password authentication, or robots metatags on the pages, we’ve seen these blocking techniques go live with the new site. Make it part of your launch checklist to remove these. The consequences of lost indexed pages, traffic and rankings are severe and all too easy. Removing In the rush to launch a new website, the development server might be left behind. These old subdomains or subdirectories have a way of showing up, though! Make sure you nuke that old server (from space, it’s the only way to be sure!). Or, just take it offline. 3. 404 error pages With larger web development changes, the 404 error page can disappear. Or it might start returning a 302 redirect! If your site has changed CMS, web server, or scripting languages make sure a friendly 404 error page comes up for missing pages, has analytics code on it, and returns a code 404. 4. Canonical tags Canonical tags are a wonderful way to prevent duplicate content penalties. Unfortunately, some things can go wrong. We’ve seen sites that describe every version of a page as canonical, which is like communicating noise to Googlebot. It’s worse than saying nothing at all. One valid implementation we’ve seen causing trouble is the use of relative canonical tags. We’ve seen a tag such as this: <link rel=”canonical” href=”/services” /> show up on several subdomains/ protocols: http://www.site.com/services http://site.com/services https://www.site.com/services https://site.com/services This can confuse Googlebot, as both pages are describing themselves as the canonical version. It’s best to use an absolute URL, and make sure your server isn’t spitting this out for both http and https: <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.site.com//services” /> 5. Old dirty sitemap.xml files The sitemap.xml file is an excellent way to communicate URLs to Google, along with freshness and priority. But we encounter many sitemap.xml files that are full of these problems: Old, dead, missing pages URLs that redirect URLs that do not match what Google can crawl, or those listed in canonical tags And here are two more problems we can see likely to happen in redesigns this year: 6. HTTPS Implementation HTTPS was added as a small ranking signal in the last year, and many sites have made the switch. Or have they? Often image files, 3rd party scripts, or other elements mean that not all page elements are https. Google has let this slide, but recently Google said last week that may change. 7. Mobile Friendly pages The mobile update ranks pages individually, so it’s important to test your site’s most important landing pages on mobile devices. But also check devices are indeed triggering mobile sites to show: Even big brands such as Noodles & Company can discover their mobile site isn’t being triggered. Websites are meant to be changed. Not only do prospects expect fresh content and design at proper intervals, but search engines do too! With Google’s newest updates, there are more changes happening than ever. Change is good. Embrace change, and redesign that site – but be careful not to make these common mistakes! PSST! Need a Free Link? Get a free link for your agency: Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox?Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE! When you subscribe, each newsletter will contain a link idea for your business!

Google is constantly evolving, as the internet itself has evolved. Some of the many questions Google has asked to keep itself relevant include: How are people searching? How should results be formatted? How many answers does the user want? Are recommendations from friends helpful in this search? Is this a local search? Website QualityGoogle just unveiled a Panda Update the SEO community is calling “Panda version 4.2”. While the update is just beginning a months-long rollout, it is likely to be looking at many of the same technical SEO issues as previous Panda updates. There are likely many more Website Quality criteria being evaluated by Google as well. User ExperienceMetrics such as Click-Through-Rate, Bounce Rate, and “Time On Site” all can give insight as to user experience on a site.  These can be influenced with videos, widgets, and marketing. Do the presence of these mean a high quality site? Not always, but it’s likely possible for Google to understand quite a bit – thanks to human “website quality raters”, big data from analytics, YouTube, so much more. Inbound LinksGoogle has invested blood, sweat and tears into cleaning up the link ecosystem. Their previous policy of ignoring poor quality inbound links meant 10 years of quick-and-dirty link building. But in the last three years, link earning and content marketing have become the best way forward. Google isn’t about to abandon inbound links as a major ranking factor in their algorithm at this point: They have invested too much into it! Recent comments from Googlers have included “I wouldn’t focus on link building just now” and “never ask for a link” are easily misinterpreted. Google treats good quality inbound links as a positive review, and would rather have these happen organically – instead of part of a campaign. Links should happen because of the quality of content, the helpfulness of the site: Seeking undeserved positive reviews, and inbound links without earning them, has been out for some time. Google+ Less ImportantGoogle+ is no longer required on YouTube. This ramping down of Google+ has been happening since last year, with zero user backlash. Google+ usage was too low to provide great social signals data. Many people were forced to get an account, so the numbers were impressive – but engagement was always horribly low. It always seemed to us that SEOs, and other marketers, used it begrudgingly. Social signalsTwitter admitted 5% of it’s users are likely fake, with other source setting the number at 10% instead. That’s still pretty low. And if it’s easy for an independent audit to measure, Google can easily see and disregard that data. In a user’s social feed, they are curating content to help their audience. Links send traffic, and could be a ranking signal at some point. It’s been two years since Google helped debunk a study showing social signals influenced rankings. The future is likely to have social signals as part of the formula for some audiences. PSST! Need a Free Link?  Get a free link for your agency: Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE! When you subscribe, each newsletter will contain a link idea for your business!

Google’s updates have been focused around penalizing bad behavior: low quality links, duplicate or thin content, ad heavy pages, doorway pages, and more. But at the beginning of May, a mysterious Google update was released that looks to be more focused on boosting the right sites. Google officially claimed there was no update, then later admitted to a “quality update” – and to the core algorithm! 1. Good Design  Structure of your site:  Websites structured around their main audiences tend to be structured (with “silos”) around their main keywords. This site structure makes it easy for both prospects and Googlebot to understand your site. With breadcrumb navigation, it’s very easy to communicate site structure. And with schema support, it’s an even better idea. Variety of content: Are you mixing in photos, videos, infographics, slides and the many other kinds of content? Consider this a quiz (which is another piece of content). Which of the types of content are on your site? 2. Good Content Original content/not syndicated: Syndication is more confusing than ever, despite the existence of the canonical tag. Sharing on your site first is vital. For authority sites such as linkedin.com, business2community.com and others, the best results come with rewriting a unique shortened version of your content. Links to related content on your site:  When a site visitor is reading about one topic, it’s a great idea to showcase related articles. This too can have an effect, as you are linking to other articles about your main keyword or concept. Hummingbird can understand concepts, but it’s always been valuable to talk around your main keywords. Having good content all around a certain topic makes a site the authority on that topic. Not too many ads, no deceptive ads:  SEO Glen Gabe noticed sites with ads hidden in the content sunk in this Quality Update. Some sites were hiding ads in with their content, making ad links look very similar to links to content on the site. Gabe points this out in his excellent analysis of sites hit by the Quality Update stating, “I also saw deceiving ads that blended way too much with the content”. Not thin: Thin content such as tag pages or short articles won’t make the cut. It’s ironic that tweets are now at the top of many Google search engine result pages, but that Google also abhors thin content. Don’t be fooled by Google’s new-found love for those 160 characters: Good articles tend to be fully thought out pieces of 1000 WORDS or more! You might get by with 450 words, but really try to make your content deeper articles of 650 words plus. Numbers are nearly as important as the quality of the piece though. No low quality user generated content:  User generated content sounds like a dream come true for many site owners, but policing the quality of comments, uploads, and topics can become quite a task. Sites such as answers.com and wikihow.com were hit in the Quality Update, and, have begun cleanup as well. Want to learn more about the update? Visit Glenn Gabe’s analysis or this great article at SEMPost. PSST! Need a Free Link?  Get a free link for your agency: Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE! When you subscribe, each newsletter will contain a link idea for your business!

One of Google’s largest updates in years happened last month. Did your mobile rankings survive what many were hailing as the end times for mobile traffic? It may not be as bad as expected for your site – but certainly beaware of the risks and rewards to make an informed decision. Here are some questions to ask yourself: 1. Are you indeed mobile friendly? If you see a “Mobile friendly” label next to your site in Google’s mobile search results, you are definitely mobile friendly. If not, Google’s tools may tell you what to fix. First, try Google’s “Mobile Friendly Tool”: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ But there are caveats: If resources such as CSS or JS are blocked, the tool could give a false positive. And if you aren’t seeing those labels next to your site in Google’s mobile search results, there must be a reason. So to be sure, run this tool on your site as well: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/?hl=en For people that pass the mobile friendly test – and even those that have the label – this tool will give the next items you should be working on. Because staying ahead of Google’s algorithm is a good investment of time and energy. 2. What percentage of organic traffic is on a “mobile device?” Everyone should know the percentage of their traffic on mobile. Many assume that tablets are included in the “mobile device” designation, but that isn’t true. Google count tablets more like desktop users, and expects the desktop version of your design towork for many of them. To find the your site’s mobile traffic percentage, click on Audience > Mobile > Overview in the left sidebar of Google Analytics. While you are in there, compare the percentage to last year: Your mobile traffic has likely grown greatly! 3. How soon can you fix the problem? If you missed the deadline, no worries: The update is ongoing. You can fix anytime, and google will notice shortly after. Unlike Penguin, no waiting a year on this update. Use Google Webmaster Tools to request a recrawl of fixed pages quickly. PSST! Need a Free Link? Get a free link for your agency: Would you like our monthly take on the changing world of SEO delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to the Hyper Dog Media SEO Newsletter HERE! When you subscribe, each newsletter will contain a link idea for your business!