Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Measuring mobile site speed with Google Lighthouse

Two words you often hear together are mobile and site speed. And that’s not without reason because these two go hand in hand. Mobile-friendliness and site speed are some of the most pressing matters we have to deal with as SEOs, developers, and site owners. Measuring page speed has always been something of a dark art. The site speed tools we use today are fairly adequate, but a new tool is trying to come at it from a different, more realistic angle: Google Lighthouse. Here, I’ll take a closer look at how to measure mobile site speed with Google Lighthouse.

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Technical SEO 1 training Info What is Google Lighthouse?

Lighthouse is a tool built by Google and was originally meant to audit Progressive Web Apps (PWA). The tool executes four audits for accessibility, performance, Progressive Web Apps and an extended list of best practices. Together, these give you an excellent overview of the quality and performance of your website or web app.

Site speed is all about perception and user experience. Speed in numbers means nothing if your site still feels slow. Loads of users around the world are on rather crappy mobile connections of 3G or less. Even with lightning-fast 4G connections, a site can simply feel laggy and slow. And we all know what a devastating effect a slow site can have on your conversion. Shaving milliseconds of the time needed to load your site could make a world of difference.

While testing, Google Lighthouse simulates visiting your mobile site via a flaky 3G connection on a slightly underpowered device. Packets are lost in an attempt to simulate real-world conditions as authentically as possible. After running the test, you’ll get a report with a score and actionable advice with issues to tackle. Granted, the recently updated and redesigned Test My Site by Google is infinitely more beautiful, but also a lot less comprehensive.Yoast Lighthouse Chrome plugin

PageSpeed Insights vs. Google Lighthouse

PageSpeed Insights is probably the most used site speed analysis tool out there. While it gives you a nice score and a list of possible improvements, it hardly gives you an idea of the perceived loading speed of your site. It brutally states that your site doesn’t follow the rules and it should, therefore, be slow for everyone. In addition, PageSpeed Insights gives recommendations that are hard, if not impossible to implement. Getting a 100/100 is a pipe dream for most sites.

The two most important things PageSpeed Insights looks at:

  • Time to above-the-fold load: This is the time that it takes to fully render the above-the-fold content of a page from the moment a user requests your page.
  • Time to full page load: This is the time that it takes to fully render the complete content of a page from the moment a user requests your page.

Lighthouse takes a much more practical approach and puts user experience front and center. It visits your site over a throttled 3G connection so it can emulate what a real visitor in the real world would experience. Instead of just loading your site like PageSpeed Insights does, Lighthouse checks how and when it responds to input. It finds the exact moment when your content is ready to use, so you can try and optimize that when it feels too slow.

What to look for in Lighthouse results

The whole concept of speeding up your mobile site is two-pronged; your site must be fast and it must feel fast. You, therefore, need to get your content on screen as fast as possible. Don’t let people wait. In addition, users must be able to interact with your content as soon as possible. Since Google announced that page speed is a ranking factor for SEO, you need to fix these issues.

What should your priority be? Load your content first. Awesome graphics and killer animations can wait. Your message – and what people are looking for – is most likely in the content. You can load the rest of the content in the background and ease it on the screen later on.

Metrics used

While measuring the performance of your mobile site, Lighthouse uses the following metrics:

  • First meaningful paint: This determines how long it takes for the first meaningful content to appear onscreen. The lower the score, the faster that page appears.
  • First interactive: This measures when a page is minimally interactive. This determines if most UI elements are interactive and if the screen responds in a reasonable manner to user input.
  • Consistently interactive: This measures when a page is fully interactive.
  • Perceptual speed index: This speed index shows how quickly the contents of a page are visibly populated. It also comes with a target loading time of <1,250 ms.
  • Estimated latency input: This measures how long it takes for your page to respond to user input. A high latency will result in a page that feels sluggish or laggy. The target here is <50 ms.
  • Critical requests chain: This network waterfall shows what resources are needed to initially render this page. Prioritize asset loading in the critical rendering path to speed up the page.

The Lighthouse report also features a number of opportunities to improve the site speed of your mobile site, including how much loading time they will save. These include reducing render-blocking stylesheets, render-blocking scripts, properly sizing images and fixing offscreen images.

All in all, Lighthouse gives you a tremendous amount of insight into the performance of your page. Use these insights to your advantage.

How to install Google Lighthouse

Getting started with Google Lighthouse is very easy as it is built into Chrome’s Developer Tools Audit panel (Mac: Shift+Cmd+I. Win: Ctrl+Shift+J or F12). From there, you can run the test and get the full report. In addition, there is a separate Chrome add-on for Lighthouse that adds a button to your toolbar, though using it stays the same.

You can also run Lighthouse as a Node package. This way, you can incorporate the test into your build process. When using the Node package, you will also see that there are a couple of audits that only work in a Node environment and not in the Audits panel of the DevTools.

To install Lighthouse globally from the command line use:

npm install -g lighthouse

If you want to run a test for https://example.com use:

lighthouse https://example.com

The full results of the audit will be available in the terminal, but also in a separate HTML file.

yoast lighthouse devtools audits

Testing Yoast.com in Lighthouse

It’s time to put Lighthouse through its paces. Let’s see what happens when I shine the spotlight of the lighthouse on yoast.com. Some of the audits are most useful for Progressive Web Apps. Now, Yoast.com isn’t available as web app yet, so we’re only focussing on the Performance tab here. This tab shows how your site or app performs currently and shows you ways to improve it.

In the screenshot below, you can see the results for yoast.com. The initial loading of the site is visualized by a bar showing when the content first appears onscreen. It shows how many milliseconds it takes for the content to become visible. The faster, the better.

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Boost Your Conversion Rate Through Effective Social Media Marketing

Social Media is one of the most widely used networks in world, with over billions of users worldwide. With this large number, it is crucial to tap into the power of social media for your SEO campaign and expect to get a good conversion rate. Social media marketing is as complicated as it is large, and the trends and interests of the users change on a daily basis. Getting things right would mean that your reward will be immensely high, while doing the opposite would mean more difficulties for your team and your brand.

Social media is an important element for a successful SEO campaign, as engagement is necessary to be able to get a good amount of conversions. A solid strategy would make all the difference, and guarantee that you would be able to bring your conversion rates up. Here are some effective and powerful strategies you can use to get the results you need.

Ensure your Links Point to Relevant Landing Pages

Take your users to where they want to go, which means you should ensure that your links should arrive to the landing pages that are relevant. Taking people to where they want to go would help foster trust, and improve the overall user experience. Place all the necessary social media channels on your website as well to improve your visibility, and for your users to be able to share your content conveniently.

Constantly Assess your Data

Since social media trends change on an almost day-to-day basis, it is important to do regular assessments on the content that you are posting. You would be able to see what works and what does not, which can help you optimize your content quickly. Social Media Marketing teams should use data and analytics constantly, as these will help you know the results, and where are they coming from.

Create Informative Content

Quality content is one of the main keys for an effective SEO campaign, and people will always look for meaningful and helpful content that would be able to answer questions or tackle certain topics. Having concise, yet informative content would make people become engaged, and see you as a legitimate source that they can rely on. Give them the right answers to their questions and go straight to the point.

Use Interesting Headlines

One of the best ways to get the attention of your users is by using interesting and eye-catching headlines. This will be the first thing that social media users will see, and it is a way for them to assess if the article is worth the read. Think creatively when crafting out headlines, and you will be getting better conversion rates, which is good news for your social media marketing strategy.

Optimize Your Posts for Each Network

Each social media network has a different way of presenting their content to their users. For example, Twitter only allows 140 characters in each post, which means that you would have to rely on images to attract the user. Having a specialized post for each network would help you know the strengths of each of them, and assess how your posts would look like.

Schedule Your Posts and Interactions

Interaction is the bread and butter of social media, and you would like to interact with as many people as possible. This can be a challenge, especially if the users come from different parts of the world, as the different time zones come in as a major factor. Having a proper schedule would do wonders for your social media marketing campaign. There are social media tools that you can use to do so, which can also help you post on different accounts at the same time.

Reshare and Repurpose

If you have a post that has received a high number of interactions, that means you can still use it in the future. Sharing is not an effective strategy as it is, which means that you would have to reshape your content. This can be in the form of simple tweaks, like adding an image, or a new quote. This would prevent spamming, and will help give more visibility to your previous content.

Key Takeaway

The world of social media is vast, and being able to stand out helps bring about better results for your social media marketing campaign. With these effective strategies, you are guaranteed that you would have the upper hand when it comes to having quality content.

If you have questions regarding social media marketing, or SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

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Monday, October 30, 2017

High-speed keyword research

If you want to do high-quality keyword research, you’ll need a lot of time. Or a lot of people. Keyword research is a process which requires you to get inside the heads of your audience. You want to find out which words they are using. After that, you’ll need to analyze which keywords you should go after first. That’s difficult, as well as time-consuming. So, what to do if you don’t have that much time? Are there any shortcuts? In this post, I’ll talk you through the process of accelerating your keyword research.

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SEO copywriting training Info What is high-speed keyword research?

High-speed keyword research is keyword research that’s focused on quickly assessing which words are most viable to optimize website texts for. Without doing proper keyword research, your content SEO strategy could well be completely worthless. But high-speed keyword research allows for some shortcuts, without making too many concessions to the quality of your keyword research. You can save time on two aspects; firstly:  finding your keywords and secondly: evaluating which keywords to go after (first).

Quickly finding your keywords

You can use some practical tools that’ll make it much easier to find keywords. You will still have to make a short list yourself (no corners to cut there), but once you have ten to twenty proper keywords, you can use several tools to find similar keywords. Using these tools will significantly speed up the process of coming up with long lists of keywords.

Tools like Übersuggest offer clusters of keywords. If you fill in a keyword your audience uses, Übersuggest will give you keywords they’ll probably also be searching for. In other words, this tool generates keywords that are similar to the keyword you’ve come up with. Such a tool will easily supply you with many alternatives, once you’ve come up with a few good keywords.

There are many tools like Übersuggest. We particularly like Yoast Suggest Expander. Yoast Suggest uses the Google Suggest Keyword expander. It’s a helpful tool to come up with many (long tail) keywords.

Tools are incredibly useful, and we actively use them at Yoast as well, but you should never lose track of what you’re doing. Keyword research always has to do with trying to make sense of the search questions of your audience. Getting inside the heads of your audience usually involves talking to that audience. No app or tool can ever replace that process entirely.

Quickly assessing viability of keywords

Assessing which keywords to go after first is a crucial second step in your keyword research. This is difficult: not everyone is good at estimating which keywords their site will be able to rank for. If your niche is very competitive, you probably shouldn’t go after the most competitive head terms. It will be really hard to rank for those.

Moz has a very nice tool which gauges how competitive your keyword is. Keywords that are very difficult to rank for, are probably not the ones you want to go after (unless you have a very authoritative, high-ranking website already). The Moz tool will probably help you speed up your keyword research. It does come with a little price tag, however.

If you don’t want to spend any money on a keyword tool, you can simply google the keyword you want to rank for. Does your site ‘fit in’ with the results Google shows you? Or are the sites on the results pages much larger or more well-established than your website? Go after more long tail and less competitive search terms if your website is too small to compete with the websites in the search results.

Read more: ‘Why focus on long tail keywords’ »

Conclusion

Keyword research is something that needs focus and attention. It’s something you should take seriously. Without proper keyword research, you could well be optimizing your texts for the wrong search terms. Even though keyword research is the first and most important step in your SEO strategy, there are a few corners to cut. Using tools to make a long list of potential keywords is a great way to speed up your keyword research. When deciding which keywords to go after, you could also use a tool, but simply googling your keywords will also give you insight into the difficulty to rank for a certain search term.

Keep reading: ‘Keyword Research: Ultimate guide’ »

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Saturday, October 28, 2017

Microsoft and McDonalds Change Core Tenets. Why People Cosplay. The Brief for 10.28.17

Here are the notes from the Chris Brogan Media broadcast for 10/28/17. (You can watch this on my Facebook account).

The goal of these posts is that there are trends and ideas here that might impact your business now or soon. Think on the stories here and look for ways to adjust your business accordingly. If ever you’re stuck, get in touch with me and I can help.

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Friday, October 27, 2017

Gutenberg: Concepts for integrating Yoast SEO

Gutenberg is the new editing experience coming to WordPress. We’ve talked about it before. While we have some hesitations, we do see Gutenberg as a major step forward and are thinking about how we will integrate Yoast SEO into Gutenberg. In this post, we’ll share some of the ideas we’re excited about.

Gutenberg introduces new concepts, like blocks, and new places where we could potentially integrate. The premise behind our integration is that we need to give you feedback as soon as we can, in the right spot. Feedback is most helpful when you can actually do something with it immediately.

Inline is where it’s happening

We started by breaking down all our features, and seeing where we could integrate them into Gutenberg. We don’t think holding on to a single, massive box below the editor will best serve our customers. We’d much rather integrate right where the action happens, and Gutenberg offers us that chance. Let’s take a closer look at what we mean.

For instance, if you don’t fill out an alt text for an image you included, we don’t want to show that bullet point way down below in our metabox, in a long list of possible improvements. No, we want to show it to you right below the field where you can input the alt text.

Same for the featured image. Say you upload an image that is too small for Facebook to accept – you don’t want to have to find out about that when the whole post is finished, and you happen to wander into our social media preview editor. No, we tell you right then and there.

Connecting cause and effect

By working inline as much as we can, we’ll create a tighter connection between what you do and what effect that has on SEO. You’ll get actionable feedback in context. You don’t have to scroll down to a meta box to see the advice and scroll up again to the place where you should implement it. If we give feedback per block, you will get a better understanding of all the factors that influence SEO. And you’ll be able to anticipate them in advance once you’ve been working this way for a while.

Here’s another example: our primary category selection, of course, will be right there in the categories meta box.

The primary category, from Yoast SEO, integrated into Gutenberg

And another: the readability analysis, at the block level – just another section in the paragraph block settings, naturally.


The concept of blocks, in general, will allow us to give much more fine-grained feedback. For instance, you won’t have to look for the best place to add a link; we can scan all the blocks for you and let you know exactly which one is best for a certain link. Link suggestions don’t even have to live in a separate meta box. We can just insert them in the inline suggestions that the link UI offers.

Internal linking suggestion in the link popup

But what if we dream a little bigger?

Some people are working on bringing collaboration to Gutenberg. If it pans out, you won’t need Google Docs or something else to draft articles and leave editorial feedback; you can do it all from within WordPress. Of course, an essential part of a collaborative workflow is a commenting system. But we’d like to think that not all comments have to come from humans, per se.

Something we’ve been exploring is adding our SEO and readability feedback as comments to text. That would put our biggest feature inline as well, right where you need it. You can immediately identify problem areas, respond to feedback with your own comments, or dismiss the ones you don’t want to fix. It becomes an interactive and fun process. We won’t have to use sweeping statements like “50% of your sentences are too long”, no, we can break it down for you block per block.

We know you may not always want instant feedback on every word you type, so you could filter out the comments that Yoast SEO generates. This way, you can keep the writing and editing processes separate.

Working off of that idea, we might even build a full SEO mode into Gutenberg. What it will do exactly is something we are still thinking about, but it could take the shape of a site-wide wizard that guides you through all the relevant SEO optimization steps in an actionable and customizable way. More on that soon.

Yoast SEO + Gutenberg = ?

Gutenberg offers lots of opportunities to take our plugins to the next level. The great thing is: all WordPress plugin developers will be able to do that too. It’s a brave new frontier for all of us, and we’re very much looking forward to it!

What sort of features would you love to see us make for Gutenberg, or for an SEO mode in general? Let us know in the comments.

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Ask Yoast: Avoiding duplicate content for multi-regional sites

If you’re a bit familiar with the ways of SEO, you’ll be aware that duplicate content is a problem that can happen to anyone and could seriously harm your rankings. But in some cases, it’s difficult to know where you stand. For example: if you translate your existing content into a different language, it isn’t considered duplicate content. But when you have a website in English, one for the UK and one for the US, this can cause issues, if you don’t tell Google what’s going on. So how do you deal with that? How do you avoid duplicate content for your multi-regional site? We’ll get into that in this Ask Yoast!

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Technical SEO 1 training Info

Jay Zijp-Koolmees emailed us this question:

I’m creating a site for the Netherlands and Belgium. If I create the same site on .nl and .be, do I get a duplicate content problem? And would geotargeting in Google Webmaster tools help?

Watch the video or read the transcript further down the page for my answer!

Avoiding duplicate content with hreflang

Well first of all: yes, you will have a duplicate content problem. Geotargeting in Google Search Console or formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools would absolutely help, but I would honestly also suggest that you use hreflang to tell Google which page to use what for.

Hreflang is not an easy thing, we have a very long article about hreflang. So look that up, look at what you need to do and implement that. Good luck!

Ask Yoast

In the series Ask Yoast we answer SEO questions from our readers. Have an SEO-related question? Let us help you out! Send an email to ask@yoast.com.
(note: please check our blog and knowledge base first, the answer to your question may already be out there! For urgent questions, for example about our plugin not working properly, we’d like to refer you to our support page.)

Read more: ‘Ask Yoast: When should you use hreflang’ »

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Thursday, October 26, 2017

Click-Through-Rate, Rankings & SEO

In case you had any doubts that CTR has a direct impact on Google rankings, feast your eyes on this Search Analytics data:
CTR Rankings SEO 2017-10-25 at 9.38.04 PM

On October 8th, a client relaunched their website and changed the title tag on one of the templates from to “Search”. They wanted to know why the organic traffic to those pages was tanking. It’s quite possible that Google saw the page as less relevant due to the title tag change but the Search Analytics graph for a sample query above implies that CTR suffered before rankings did. The updated page title was indexed within 24 hours of the launch. Google immediately changed the display of the title in the blue link to be less targeted. It didn’t say “Search” but it took some important context out of the displayed title. For example, if previously the displayed title was “Local SEO Pleasanton”, it now read “Pleasanton”.

Of course one should be wary of one-off anecdotes, but if you are looking for a simple way to show your clients/teams that CTR matters, feel free to cut and paste!

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Drones Everywhere, Medical Records on Blockchain, and Hijab-Friendly Cosplay – The Brief for 10.26.17

Here are the notes from the Chris Brogan Media broadcast for 10/26/17. (You can watch this on my Facebook account).

The goal of these posts is that there are trends and ideas here that might impact your business now or soon. Think on the stories here and look for ways to adjust your business accordingly. If ever you’re stuck, get in touch with me and I can help.

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How to get featured snippets

Did you notice Google is offering fewer options for your search results to shine? It seems like Google regularly adds a new box to the search result pages that answers searchers’ questions immediately, without them having to click on anything. For instance, type in [Blade Runner 2049] and you’ll be bombarded by four ads, a full knowledge graph panel, showtimes for the movie, top stories and Twitter feeds until you finally reach the first organic result. Google’s push to rich results not only brings challenges but also opportunities: featured snippets can make you an instant star in the search results. Find out how to get featured snippets.

Want rich snippets for your site? Try our Structured data training »

Structured data training Info What are featured snippets

A featured snippet is a highlighted search box that answers the question you type in the Google search bar. Since this featured snippet box is situated above the regular organic search results, everybody is bound to notice this. So, you can imagine the effect that might have. Having your content as a featured snippet not only brings in a lot of traffic, but it also proves your authority on the subject – Google picked you, right?

Featured snippets often appear as a paragraph or a bulleted list, accompanied by an image. The image does not necessarily have to come from the article itself. Google seems to pick it, sometimes even from the site of a competitor, although that doesn’t happen that much anymore.

Take the search result [improve mobile site] or [how to improve mobile site]; both yield a featured snippets with eight tips to improve your mobile site. I wrote and structured that article with featured snippets in mind and it paid off. By structuring the information in an easy to understand way and by giving great suggestions, Google put two and two together and found this post to provide the best answer to the question above. You can do this too.

Featured snippets let you jump to the top of the charts

Now to understand the value of featured snippets, it’s important to see how they live within the search results page. The search results page consists of several parts, among others, the organic search results, ads, and one or more dynamic search blocks. Google is increasingly trying to keep as many clicks as they can to themselves or send them to ad partners. Ads and inline search results like answer boxes, featured snippets, knowledge graph items et cetera increasingly obfuscate organic search results. For certain searches and industries, that leaves a lot less room to shine with your organic results.

Take that Blade Runner 2049 example I mentioned in the intro. Check the screenshot below (click to enlarge), and you’ll see what I mean. Yes, this is an extreme example, but it does prove my point. Luckily, we can try to get featured snippets to bring us an additional stream of traffic. Not to mention that answering questions is an excellent way to get your content ready for voice search.

How to write content for featured snippets

There are several ways to try and aim for featured snippets. In the list below, I’ve listed some things you need to keep in mind when writing for featured snippets:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Find out what people ask about your keywords/brand/product/service
  • Look at the ‘People also ask’ boxes for ideas
  • Use Answer the Public the find questions to answer
  • Check several current answers to see how it works
  • Find out where you could improve
  • Determine how to structure your content
  • Make your content super helpful and easy to understand
  • Keep your answers short and snappy, at a maximum of 50 words
  • Make the article easy for Google to digest, so use lists, subheadings, etc.
  • Mark up your article with structured data (although you don’t always need it)
  • Watch out that your content doesn’t become/feel unnatural
  • Not every search will yield a featured snippet (there are even regional variations)

To top it off, find a way to get people to click on the featured snippet. You don’t want people to read the featured snippet and move on. In the end, you want them on your site. Don’t give away all the answers immediately, but try to trigger people to come to your site so they can get the full picture.

Featured snippets and structured data

There’s a common misconception that you must always markup your articles with structured data if you want to get features snippets. That’s not true. The article I mentioned above doesn’t have structured data attached to it, and it still got a featured snippet. In some cases, however, it is very helpful to add structured data to your content. Case in point: recipes.

If you have content like recipes, or any type of the content types listed by Google, adding the correct structured data will improve your chances of getting a featured snippet. It’s like telling Google what your page is about by shouting it in a megaphone. Now, Google instantly understands content that has been enhanced with structured data and will use it to show it in all kinds of cool search features. If you want to learn how to apply structured data to your site so you can be rewarded the highly valued rich snippets, you should try our Structured data training.

The old ‘Google determines everything’ adagio

As always, Google and only Google will pick the answers it shows in its search results if it shows them at all. In the end, there’s no magic formula for featured snippets. Google says the science behind it is very much in flux. Even the way Google finds and presents featured snippets is continually changing. For instance, Google is almost certainly looking at engagement and CTR when determining which answer to award a featured snippet box. But there are also instances where Google picks an answer from a site on the second page of the results, or even further down the list. In the end, it always boils down to the simple question: “Does my answer deliver?”

Yes, you can do it too!

Aiming for featured snippets can be good fun. It’s hard to predict whether it will work, but once you get one, it’s a blast. You can easily incorporate this when you are writing new content for featured snippets, but updating old posts is worth a shot too. If you have particular pieces of content, like recipes, for instance, structuring your content for featured snippets is almost a must. And while you’re at it, please add structured data for this type of content as it is very important as well. Now, get to it!

Read more: ‘Rich snippets everywhere’ »

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The Right Tools to Track your Local SEO and SEM

Tracking Local SEO and SEM Using the Right Tools

Tracking your local SEO and SEM is highly important for your SEO and link building strategies. Being able to track these would help determine what strategy works and what does not, which can help you assess and look for other strategies that can be used. While most businesses and companies focus on increasing their internet traffic by using analytics trackers, it does not mean that you are getting the right results that you would want. Traffic can only get you so far, and what you would really need are tangible results that would benefit you.

This is why tracking matters, and using the right tools and steps would ensure that you have the right kind of set-up that you can access easily, which helps you see all the results you need.

Use Google Analytics

One of the most effective tools to track your Local SEO and SEM is by using Google Analytics. There are many tracking tools available in the market that you can purchase, but Google Analytics provides these functions for free. Once you have your account logged in and ready to go, it is now time to set it all up.

Local SEO Google Analytic

The first thing you have to do is to add your account and your website, and then install the tracking code on the website’s template. The best practice is to use a Google account of your own, and not from any developer agency. Instead of letting them create the account for your tracker, simply share it with their accounts.

Once that is done, the next step is to set up your time zone, currency, and the right website filters. This would help you view all the right data you need.

Setting up your Goals

Local SEO Goal

One of the things that you need, instead of online traffic, are conversions. These conversions are the tangible results that would benefit your business. The best way to get these conversions is by establishing the right goals. Here’s how you can establish goals using Google Analytics:

Local SEO New Goals

  • First, go to the Admin screen, and select Goals. Under Goals, you’ll be able to see + New Goal.
  • There are Goal templates that you can use if you are able to fit them with what you need. You can also create your own template, which is simple and very convenient.
  • The next step is to select a goal type and give your goal a name.
  • Keep it in mind that you can add actual monetary values to your goals, which would make it a very important metric for you to evaluate how well you are doing, and help assess your overall strategy.
Call and Form Tracking

One of the best ways to track conversions is by using call tracking tools, some of these tools can be integrated with Google Analytics, and converts phone numbers into tracking numbers. This form of dynamic number insertion will be helpful for your SEO campaign, as you would be getting conversions that lead to high traffic, while not even having to spend too much.

Another popular tracking method is form tracking, which is already being used by various companies and businesses. This can be done through WordPress plugins like Ninja Forms and Gravity forms. These plugins would generate thank you pages that allows you to track the click of the form submission button, and have proof that a form was accomplished.

These plugins are simple and easy to configure, and you can customize them to your liking. You can also use these thank you pages as ways to recommend other pages or services, which help keep users on your website. You can also use this approach when you are promoting events or during appointment booking and journal/newsletter signups.

Google Search Console

Local SEO Google Search Console dashboard

The Google Search Console is a simple but useful tool that would give you some basic SEO fundamentals and helps you look for problems and diagnostics that can help improve your rankings. You can connect your Search Tool account with your Analytics account and your Adwords account, which would help give you a more seamless view of your data

Google Adwords

Local SEO Google Adwords

Using Google Adwords is one of the main reasons why tracking your local SEO and SEM is very important. This helps you get important conversion data that you need to assess if your overall approach and strategy is working or not. Using Adwords would also help you know the real meaning of why should you be tracking those clicks. One of the best things that you can do with your Google Adwords account is to link it with your Analytics and Search Tools accounts, which gives you a one-stop location to view all of your crucial data.

Viewing your Data

Once that you have all your three tools linked together, you now have a centralized tracking center where you can see all of the relevant statistics and metrics. From this data, you would be able to compile all of it into a single, well-detailed SEO report that you can send to your team, and even to your clients.

Local SEO Analytic Data

To be able to view your data, go to the Analytics page, and select Acquisition. Next, select All Traffic, and then Channels. You can get an overview of the relevant metrics, which include Organic Search, Conversion Rate, Referrals, and much more. Another way of viewing your data is by selecting All Traffic, and then instead of clicking Channels, click Source/Medium. This would help you view all of the URLs that you are currently tracking.

If you want a more concise version of all of these, you can simply view it in the Analytics Dashboard, which you can customize and adjust however you want it to be.

Key Takeaway

Tracking your Local SEO and SEM may seem like a challenging task at first, but overall, it is essential to increase the effectiveness of your SEO campaign. By utilizing a free and powerful tool such as Google Analytics, you are guaranteed that you will track your links and domains in no time.

If you have any questions with regards to Local SEO, or other SEO-related matters, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

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Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Is Content Syndication Spammy?

Imagine this…
The editor of a popular site emails you and says, “I love your work! Can we syndicate your content on our site?”
What should you do?
Celebrate and do the deal right then? After all, syndicating your content puts your writing in front of a brand new audience. One already-written post could result in massive site

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Spending a Bar of Gold, A Million Arab Coders, and More – The Brief for 10.25.17

Here are the notes from the Chris Brogan Media broadcast for 10/25/17. (You can watch this on my Facebook account).

The goal of these posts is that there are trends and ideas here that might impact your business now or soon. Think on the stories here and look for ways to adjust your business accordingly. If ever you’re stuck, get in touch with me and I can help.

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