UX Checklist Series: Form Design

From lead generation to online purchases, forms are everywhere. Unfortunately, nobody ever really wants to fill out a form, despite them being such a basic part of our online experience.

A well-designed form helps to reduce the friction that stands between the user and what they want.

…

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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.…

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Domain Properties Update Now Available on Google Search Console

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 to navigate and track domains. Going around each domain can mean using the Search Property feature frequently just to find what you need. With the new Domain Properties update, your domain listings are now more organized than before.

Each domain property within the same set of domains would be organized under one set in your list, making sure that each website that you own or handle would be accounted for. The best part is that Google Search Console will be able to automatically create new domain properties once you have DNS verification.

This allows you to segment your domain to specific sections, which is much easier to view and navigate. You also have the option to filter and change which domains would be tracked based on your preferences.

A Complete View

This update offers users with a complete view of their website data, whether it be from mobile domains, sites that have yet to migrate to HTTPS, and subdomains. This comes in handy when it comes to analyzing and reporting your data, as you no longer have to go through the long process of tracking manually.

Our Google Search Console contains a high number of domains that we track on a regular basis, making it an essential tool in our arsenal. Before the update, tracking individual subdomains and properties tend to be a real issue, as sending reports mean tracking specific parts of data that our clientele wishes to see.

Thanks to the Domain Properties update, this process is much more efficient, allowing us to save even more time to perform more SEO tasks. The process is also easy to perform, as you only need to add a domain and have it verified.

Filtering can be done by going to Performance and add page filters that would prevent or allow the tracking of data you would need.

With this being a new update, user feedback from our end would help bring in more improvements for this feature and help make Search Console an even more effective tracking tool. Efficiency is the key to SEO success, and features like these are a welcoming sigh of relief that helps us make what we do that much better.

Key Takeaway

Domain Properties is a handy feature that makes Google Search Console more accessible and provides ways to maximize its functionality. Like many Google tools and platforms, Search Console will continue to receive a fair share of updates in the upcoming months, helping it become an even more effective SEO tool.

If you have questions and inquiries about Google Search Console or SEO in General, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

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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 like to get a backlink from. Send them a polite email requesting to place a link to your content, if it’s relevant to their audience as well. Please note that often, you will not get a reply at all. To improve your chances of getting a link to your website, your content should really be unique. Trying to get a link for a blogpost that is extremely basic and could’ve been written by anyone, is less likely to succeed than when you provide some very good content: content people can only find on your website. If you, for example, are a planner guru or the nation’s funniest mom blogger, it’s way easier to get a link to your website than if you just started out.

Facebook Groups

Do your hands get sweaty by the idea of having to email your fellow bloggers to ask for links? Fear not! Luckily, there are a lot of Facebook Groups, where bloggers post they might be working on a blog post that, for example, collects the best recipes for Easter, the best bullet journal tips or something different. You can often drop your link in the comments if you’ve written about the topic requested and with a little bit of luck, you’ll be featured in a blog post. It depends on your country which Facebook groups could be suitable, so ask your fellow bloggers or look around on Facebook.

Guest blogging

Another option to get links to your website, is through guest blogging for other blogs. Often, blogs are looking for input from fellow bloggers and in return will let you link to your own content. You’ll not only get a link to your website from a relevant website, you’ll get attention from the readers of that particular blog as well. Visit your favorite blogs and check to see if they accept guest submissions. They’ll usually mention this on their contact page or their collaboration page. Please note that a website could have certain guidelines before they accept your guest blog. It has to be unique content, but it also has to be in line with that website.

Do your thing

Link building for bloggers can be hard. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When you’re already working on optimizing your posts, finding your voice and creating original blog posts, you might not want to add another massive project to your list. Because that is what link building is: it is not something you do just once. That’s why I’ve decided to quit my attempts at link building. I find it removes the focus from my blog entirely and turns into a popularity contest, at least in my mind. Not only that, I am not someone who finds it easy to reach out to other bloggers to request links in their content.

Instead, I’ve decided to focus on my own website and on helping others. I’ve found that I’ve received backlinks whenever I give a talk at a conference or after I helped someone with their website. This is not something that I take for granted, but when it happens, I realize why I’ve spent a few hours helping a blogger out with a bug on her website. For me, this means that I stay true to my own beliefs without having to focus on an entire strategy that is not my thing. And I found out that this is a link building strategy in itself: it helps my reputation as a blogger in the Dutch community. Find whatever works for you. And if you are actively building links, could you tell me your strategy?

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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?…

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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 providing better feedback for the cornerstone assessment that checks the length of your most important articles. In our never-ending quest for a product that’s accessible for everyone, we’ve improved the accessibility and focus management for the How-To and FAQ structured data blocks. We’ve also improved the headers for the Internal Links feature on the post overview to allow for better translations and accessibility.

Turns out we were using inch marks around the search term in the breadcrumbs, we’ve now replaced these with smart quotes. We’ve also added a description of the SEO and Readability score to the posts and taxonomies overview in mobile view.

Bug fixes in Yoast SEO 9.7

In this release, we’ve fixed some specific bugs. For one, there was a bug where a Flesch Reading Ease score of exactly ninety would trigger incorrect feedback, so we fixed that. Here are some of the other bugs we fixed — you can find all changes in the changelog.

There were instances where the taxonomy sitemap provider would not handle private taxonomies as expected, which meant that sitemaps would not be accessible in specific situations. We fixed that. There were also bugs related to empty Twitter descriptions, and an ‘undefined index’ warning when saving a Facebook image. Also, some people reported the Recalibration Beta not loading on specific server configurations. All fixed!

Coming up soon: Yoast SEO 10.0!

As you can see, this is a regular bug fix release with nothing too spectacular. We’re saving the spectacular stuff for our next release. As I said, Yoast SEO 10.0 is around the corner. You can expect to hear about that real soon. We’re very excited!

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Introducing Google Merchant Center and Google Manufacturer Center

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 Center, and here’s what we know so far about these newly-introduced platforms, and how they can impact your SEO strategy.

What’s the difference?

Google Merchant Center and Google Manufacturer are two different platforms that both aim to enhance the e-commerce experience and connect users to products. However, knowing which one of your business needs is crucial when it comes to maximizing these platforms.

Google Merchant Center is a platform that allows businesses to manage their website and be able to upload their product information in an efficient manner. The options that Google Merchant Center offers include Adwords and Analytics Support, product reviews, more accurate listings on Google Shopping, direct website listings, and local search support.

When it comes to promoting your products and uploading them into Google Shopping listings, the Merchant Center is the platform you should be using. Another benefit included is the ability to create shopping campaigns that can help promote specific products to the right audience, which is definitely a feature that will surely be highly utilized soon.

On the other hand, Google Manufacturer Center is a platform that allows companies to provide detailed product information to Google. Information quality and accuracy have become one of the most important concerns by Google over the past few years, with numerous websites experiencing ranking fluctuations due to low-quality content.

Manufacturer center allows you to input information such as Product description and name, measurements and statistics, and even production and legal codes. These pieces of information allow Google and users to know that you are providing them with trustworthy information that they can use to make a purchasing decision. The information will also be shown on other Google platforms, such as Google Shopping.

While these two platforms may be similar at a glance, both of them allow businesses to provide accurate information about their products and listings, which is not only a big plus for Google but also establish customer trust.

How it can help your SEO

As we have stated before, quality content is a big factor that drives in organic traffic to a well-optimized website. Google Merchant Center and Google Manufacturer Center both provide you with the platform to optimize your product listings, which not only show up in search results but also contain quality content. If Google My Business ensures that your business information and location is accurate and updated, Merchant Center and Manufacturer Center make sure that your products contain the right information and is presented well when searched.

These factors allow your business to be more searchable, allowing more organic traffic flowing into your website. Showing up on other Google platforms is also very beneficial, as it expands your online presence significantly. Overall, the main purpose of these platforms is to make sure that your products are presented in an organized manner, making it easier to search, providing users with the key elements that want to know about. The ability to create campaigns is also a definite plus, as it helps target the right audience, and gives you a promotion platform that is cost-effective.

Integration with other Google platforms also makes it very user-friendly and seamless when it comes to optimization. This ensures that you would be less likely to experience any compatibility issues, along with being able to monitor traffic and other activities.

Key Takeaway

While these two Google platforms are relatively new, both of them have the potential to help your business have a significant online presence through optimizing your product listings. This also helps level the playing field and allow smaller businesses to be able to promote and create campaigns that would help generate sales and meaningful connections. Brand loyalty and trust can also be improved, as you are sure that people looking at your products are receiving correct information that is beneficial for their decision as a buyer. When it comes to establishing your business online, utilizing these platforms will surely boost your SEO.

If you have questions and inquiries about business SEO and SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

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