Coming soon: Multilingual SEO training

February 7, 2018, marks the release of a brand new course in the Yoast Academy: Multilingual SEO. The Multilingual SEO training is for every site owner, developer or SEO who targets people in various locales and languages. The time-limited introductory price will be $169. After a week, it will go to its regular price of $199. Don’t miss this great Multilingual SEO course!

Loads of sites target consumers from other countries. Sometimes these consumers even speak another language. Targeting these customers with a well-thought-out SEO strategy takes some work, and many sites fail to deliver. Wouldn’t it be great to get some help reaching those customers in other countries? We know it can be a struggle setting everything up correctly so we’d like to help you. That’s why, on February 7, we’re launching the Multilingual SEO course.

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According to Yoast founder and CEO Joost de Valk, many sites make mistakes when implementing the hreflang standard. The new Multilingual SEO training by Yoast makes hreflang easy to grasp and gives a step-by-step guide to implement hreflang correctly.

We’ll also teach you how to set up and maintain a multilingual keyword research strategy. Also, users get practical tips to transfer original content from one language to the next and to pick the domain name that fits their goals best.

The Multilingual SEO course will have an introductory price of $169. The regular price will be $199.

The Multilingual SEO training has over 2 hours of video, loads of reading material and interactive quizzes to educate users on every major issue surrounding multilingual and multiregional SEO. It will take about 12 hours to complete the full training program.

What will you learn in the Multilingual SEO training?

• How to make sure you use the keywords that your audience is searching for in a specific language.
• To write and adapt SEO optimized copy for various languages.
• How to target specific audiences in specific regions and countries
• To pick the optimal domain structure for your situation
• Tell Google what variation of a page people from which country should be directed to.

Who is the Multilingual SEO course for?

• Everyone who is operating – or looking to operate – a multilingual site
• You maintain sites, blogs or online shops for clients or you have your own
• You have a technical background, or you don’t – doesn’t matter!
• It also doesn’t matter if you use WordPress or another CMS

And here’s a brief overview of the contents:

1. Introduction

• What does Google do
• Holistic SEO

2. Keywords and content

• Keyword research, international keyword research.
• Copywriting, multilingual copywriting, transcreating content

3. Domain structure

• TLDs
• Subdirectories and subdomains
• Targeting multiple languages within a country

4. Hreflang

• Hreflang basics
• Implementation elements converning hreflang
• Hreflang implementation choices
• Hreflang risks & maintenance

The Multilingual SEO training will be launched on February 7, 2018. Sign up for our newsletter and receive a message when it is available to buy.

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What is multilingual SEO?

If your online business is doing well in your country, you might consider expanding to international markets. To be successful in new markets requires some extra investments in SEO though. You’d better start thinking about multilingual SEO, if you want to be sure your website will be found and used well in other countries! Here, I’ll explain what multilingual SEO is, why it’s important and which elements it consists of.

What is multilingual SEO?

Multilingual SEO deals with offering optimized content for multiple languages or multiple locations. Let’s explain this with an example. Imagine you have an online shop: you sell WordPress plugins in many countries. To increase your sales in Germany, you’ve decided to translate your content into German and create a German site. Now, you have two variations of the same page: an English and German version. Pretty straight-forward, you’d say? Well, there’s more.

Especially if you want to target countries with similar languages or countries where multiple languages are used, this will pose some challenges. Let’s explore the situation displayed in the image below. This is a simplified example; there are obviously many more potential audiences than we’ve included, like British users.

Multilingual SEO scenario: targeting audiences with German and English content

Obviously, you want people who search in German to be directed to the German site. Maybe you even want to have a specific site for German speakers in Switzerland. It would be even better to have a French alternative for speakers of French in Switzerland as well, of course. Let’s assume for now that you don’t have the required resources for that, though. In that case, it’s probably best to send users from Switzerland who speak French to the English site. On top of that, you need to make sure that you send all other users to your English site, as they are more likely to speak English than German. In a scenario like this, you need to set up and implement a multilingual SEO strategy.

Because it’s not easy to get the right website ranking in the right market we decided to set up a Multilingual SEO training, which will be available soon! In this course we’ll guide you step by step through all important multilingual SEO elements. Don’t miss the launch, subscribe to our newsletter now!

Why is multilingual SEO a thing?

You want your website to be found with Google. In a standard SEO strategy, you optimize your content for one language: the language your website is written in.  Sometimes, however, you want to target audiences in multiple countries and regions. These audiences are probably similar, but there are always differences. This presents you with an opportunity. By targeting your audiences specifically, it is easier to address their needs. One of these differences is the language they speak. When you make your site available in several languages and target specific regions, you achieve two things:

• You expand your potential audience;
• You improve your chances of ranking for a specific region and in several languages.

Let’s revisit the example we discussed before in light of this. By making a German variation of your original English site, you’ve made it possible for users searching in German to find your product. In the end, multilingual SEO is all about addressing the needs of your users.

It all sounds rather clear-cut, but multilingual SEO can be hard. A lot can go wrong, and a bad multilingual implementation can hurt your rankings. This means that you need to know what you’re doing.

One of the biggest risks of multilingual SEO is duplicate content. If you present very similar content on your website on multiple pages, Google won’t know which content to show in the search engines. Duplicate pages compete with each other, so the individual rankings of the pages will go down. You can avoid this particular issue with hreflang, an element of your multilingual SEO strategy. But there’s more to multilingual SEO. Let’s discuss the main aspects below.

Multilingual SEO: content, domains and hreflang Content for international sites

Content is a very important aspect of your multilingual SEO strategy. If you want to write content in different languages, you’ll need to adapt existing content or create new content. Adapting your content while maintaining good SEO can be a challenge.

Your content strategy should always start with keyword research for the region and language you’re targeting. You can’t just translate your keywords using Google Translate. You’ll have to get inside the heads of your new audience. You need to know which words they are using. Same words can have different meanings in languages used in multiple countries, as my colleague Jesse explained before.

Translating content is a challenge as well. Take into account the cultural differences that exist between countries. Otherwise, your copy won’t be appealing to your new audience. If possible, you should have native speakers translate or at least check your translated content to prevent your from making awkward mistakes. If you want a complete list of what to consider when translating content read Marieke’s post on how to create SEO-friendly copy in a foreign language.

Domain structure for international sites

To successfully target your audiences, you need to consider which pages you want them to land on. There are several options as to what domain structure you’re going to use. Do you need to get the ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain) like example.de for Germany? Or could you create subdirectories for countries like example.com/de? Or, will you use a subdomain like de.example.com? And what about countries where multiple languages are spoken? How do you set up a domain structure for those countries?

There’s a lot you have to consider to take these decisions. This is where domain authority, but also the size of your business and marketing capacities in your target countries come into play. If you want to really dive into this, you should check out our Multilingual SEO training, that we’ll launch February 7!

Hreflang

Hreflang is the technical implementation you’ll need to put in place if you’re offering your content in multiple languages. Simply put, you’ll tell Google which result to show to whom in the search engines. It’s not as easy as it might sound though and this is something that often goes wrong, even on the big sites. Joost wrote an extensive post on how to implement hreflang the right way.

International ambitions? Get your multilingual SEO right!

Multilingual SEO focuses on optimizing content for different languages for the search engines. With a proper multilingual SEO strategy, people in different countries will be able to find your website for their market, in their native language. Multilingual SEO can be hard though and you need to know what you’re doing. It touches on a lot of different aspects of website optimization. If you really want to get it right, take our Multilingual SEO training!

Read more: ‘How to create SEO friendly copy in a foreign language’ »

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Game On: The Best SEO Strategies for Gaming Sites

Video games have become one of the most popular forms of media over the past few decades, with videogame consoles becoming a household staple. One of the factors that affected its rapid growth was the emergence of the internet. In fact, gaming searches account for a good amount of search queries on a regular basis. With search engines playing a big part in gaming, utilizing SEO strategies for gaming sites is one of the most effective ways to improve visibility and authority.

SEO strategies for gaming sites vary differently from other websites and requires a good amount of research and planning before implementing them. Here is a guide to some of the best SEO strategies that you can use on your gaming site, along with some important steps that will help you reach your target audience.

Major Factors to Consider

The world of gaming is massive, and with numerous gaming-related content available on the internet, it is a highly competitive world that would see you struggle without proper preparation. With that in mind, here are factors to consider when creating your gaming site.

Know What Gaming Site You Want to Be

Gaming consists of different genres and systems, and it is important to know what kind of gaming site you would want to be. Gaming sites consist of online magazines that focus on gaming-related articles, gaming portals, online retail and distribution, and gaming blogs. Gamers are particular with what content they want to access, which means that defining what your site is would ensure you get the right audience.

Analyze the Competition

With the abundance of established gaming sites present on the internet, it is best to do some competitor analysis and research about the most popular sites and the latest trends in gaming to keep your site up to date. A few search queries on Google would help you see what are the latest trending topics gamers are looking at. This will help you see what most gaming sites have to offer, and how they present their content to their audience. You would also be able to find out how to stand out and know your audience better.

Know the Community

Gaming has grown to what it is today thanks to its highly supportive and passionate community. This community helped gamers from across the world to interact with one another and create a massive network. This massive fanbase promotes a supportive environment which fellow gamers ask for help or create healthy discussions about their favorite games. Understanding how this community works is key to your SEO strategy.

Best SEO Strategies for Gaming Sites

Now that you have these factors considered, it is now time to know which SEO strategies are the most effective when it comes to building up traffic for your gaming site. Here are some of the strategies that you should use when doing SEO for your gaming site.

Create Video Content

Some of the most viewed websites for gaming-related content are YouTube and Twitch, both of which are streaming sites that boast hours of videos. The amount of video content that has been accessed regularly over the past few years have steadily increased, making video content an invaluable part of any SEO or social media campaign.

Gamers want to see how videogames are played to either learn from fellow gamers, or see if the game is worth buying. When it comes to creating videogame content, it is best to stick with a specific format, as that helps gamers identify your site. One of the things that gamers look for when watching their videos is personality and character, as it makes the content relatable and approachable. Adding links to your video content is also one of the best ways to boost traffic to your gaming site, and it helps when your videos are optimized for SEO. For that matter, you can access our YouTube SEO guide, which would help make your channel gain more traffic.

Build Links by Going to Gaming Forums

Gaming forums and discussions boards are very active on the internet, as it gives gamers a platform for deep discussions related to different kinds of gaming topics and news. Forums are ways gamers interact with one another, like talk about tips and tricks on certain games, or debate which games are better.

Popular gaming forums and discussion boards include NeoGAF, Gamefaqs, and Reddit. These forums are great ways to build solid backlinks that would lead gamers to your site. Providing them links with content that is relevant to their discussion would help bring in more traffic to your site. Gamers always look for content related to their favorite games and genres, and forums are platforms in which they discover most of this content.

Engage in Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to reach out to your audience, as it helps make communication more convenient by allowing comments and messages. Gamers across the world use Facebook as one of their main social media platforms, and it is highly evident when you see how many likes, shares, and views gaming-related content receive on a daily basis.

Establishing a Facebook page for your gaming site would help increase internet traffic, as a lot of gamers check Facebook for the latest gaming updates. Twitter is another platform where gamers receive updates, which makes it effective in generating traffic, and creating viral content through the use of hashtags.

Add character to your content

As with video content, adding personality, character, and quality to your written content will make it more compelling, and would pique the interest of gamers. These kinds of articles resonate better with your audience, which helps you get better internet traffic. Game reviews, news, and analyses are some of the most popular articles in gaming sites, and are guaranteed to get you traffic, given that it is high quality. It is best to look for some excellent examples of video game writing, and find a writing style that would match your branding, and make you stand out from the rest.

Key Takeaway

Gaming has taken the world by storm and will continue to do so in the near future. This makes gaming sites an important avenue for gaming-related content. These SEO strategies are sure to help you create a top gaming site that provides quality content to gamers across the world.

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

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Why SEOs Will Always Have Jobs…

The chatter amongst the SEOratti is that Voice Search, AI, Machine Learning and SkyNet are a-coming and you better either get ready or prepare for extinction.

If it pleases Twitter, in rebuttal, may I present Exhibit #532 in the case for Shotland’s Law (“The better something looks on the surface, the worse it looks underneath”).

Google only surfaces the best people for your money or your life. H/t @LennyPham pic.twitter.com/ipJ8JRLnIA

— Dan Leibson (@DanLeibson) January 29, 2018

Even those slick Japanese Blade Runner toilets inevitably get clogged and need a plumber…

Search “I need a financial advisor” on mobile Safari.

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7 Mobile-Friendly Navigation Best Practices

7 Mobile-Friendly Navigation Best Practices was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

It’s now 2018, and we are officially living in a mobile-first world. In fact, Google has begun the switch to a mobile-first index — which means Google will rank your website based on your mobile content, relevance and UX.

Your mobile navigation (menus and internal links) contribute to all three.

Good mobile navigation makes it easy for people to find what they need, without bogging down page speed or cluttering the screen. It also needs to keep PageRank flowing to the important pages that you want to rank well in search.

Site navigations historically included everything on a site in huge, multi-tiered lists. On mobile, that approach doesn’t work. It looks cluttered. It requires scrolling. And it causes your visitors to bounce away.

Here I’ll lay out seven mobile-friendly navigation best practices that make life easier for people visiting your business site on a mobile device:

1. Keep mobile navigation short and sweet.
2. List the most important pages first.
3. Think of search as part of your navigation.
4. Make your navigation intuitive.
5. Be thoughtful about fonts and contrast.
6. Design for touch.
7. Design for the multi-screen mobile user.

Note: All of the mobile navigation tips mentioned in this article are equally applicable to separate mobile sites, responsive design sites, and sites that dynamically serve web pages. If you’re not sure what that means, or which mobile platform is best for you, read our Cheat Sheet for Mobile Design.

7 Mobile Navigation Best Practices for UX & SEO

1. Keep Mobile Navigation Short and Sweet

Many mobile phone screens are only 720 pixels wide in portrait mode.

Designing mobile navigation means designing for a small screen size. With limited real estate available, there’s no room for clutter. Get right to the point then cut the fat.

Ask yourself, what links need to be included to help your user complete priority tasks? What elements from the desktop navigation aren’t relevant in the mobile environment?

To save your user from decision paralysis, we recommend you limit your mobile navigation to four to eight items on the top level. Your mobile navigation menu is not the place to link to every page in your site.

To keep it short and sweet, you may even consider adding a top-of-page logo that navigates to the homepage and leaving the Home button out of your navigation all together (as on the BCI website, below).

Comparison of BCI’s desktop and mobile navigation

Some mobile navigations require multi-level navigation to aid user experience. This is more common with ecommerce websites. If you must go there, keep it as simple as possible. Don’t add more than one sublevel of dropdown functionality.

If your navigation must include more items, a vertically oriented navigation activated from a menu icon is the best option.

If your mobile user’s typical needs are very limited, consider using a static navigation that runs across the top of your design, like we see on the GameStop mobile site:

GameStop uses static navigation across the top of its mobile-friendly view.

A navigation that requires horizontal scrolling probably won’t be mobile-friendly. Some sites have the resources to design a sleek image-based carousel type of interface, such as what Google uses for certain search results. That might be an exception, but consider your audience.

2. List the Most Important Pages First

Your website users don’t have a lot of time — or patience. How can you help them get to the right place faster?

To design your mobile site navigation, first think about:

• What are your most important pages?
• What are the top category pages outlined in your siloing strategy?
• What are the most common actions taken by site visitors using smartphones?
• What pages of your website most effectively satisfy a mobile user’s needs?

The answers to these questions influence not just which items go in your main menu, but also which links and calls to action you should put on each page.

You’ll want to keep your main navigation menu consistent throughout the site. It should point to the top four to eight landing pages (such as main category pages).

A short-and-sweet mobile nav is a win-win for SEO and your users. It preserves the flow of link equity to your most important pages while also helping users get around.

Once users arrive on a page, contextual links can move them to wherever makes sense. These links can be added within the body content of each page in a comfortable way.

For instance, a long blog post may have multiple sections and thousands of words. Have mercy on your mobile users — don’t make them scroll to find what may be pertinent to them. Some ideas:

• Show a TL;DR summary at the top of a long article. If readers want more detail, they’ll scroll down.
• Give anchor links at the top that jump a reader to the different sections below (as I did at the top of this article).
• Include useful calls to action and links to related pages within the body copy where they make sense.

The mobile navigation model I’m describing — a short, consistent main menu coupled with contextual links that vary per page — actually supports siloing better than the massive structured menus of old. A parent only links to its children, maintaining a clear hierarchy and intuitive flow. Internal links allow PageRank to flow to topically related pages naturally.

When it comes to mobile users, quicker is always better! It will take some work for you to make each page deliver the most appropriate navigation options. But you’ll improve user experience and no doubt your ROI by giving visitors a more direct path to what they need.

While we’re on the topic of “quicker,” remember that fast mobile pages make for a better user experience. Google announced that page load speed can factor into your Google search rankings, so a streamlined navigation helps with mobile SEO.

You can test your mobile page speed with Google’s mobile speed test (or use our SEOToolSet).

3. Think of Search as Part of Your Navigation

Mobile users look at search as navigation, and you should too.

Consider Amazon.com. On mobile, Amazon doesn’t even bother with the category dropdown (although it’s there under “Departments” if someone wants it). What’s prominent at the top of the mobile view is a simple “Search” box.

Even with its massive catalog, Amazon doesn’t expect users to navigate through menus to find what they need. Most of the time, customers just type in a product name and go directly to buy it.

The Search box is Amazon’s most mobile-friendly navigation option.

On mobile, your search box is often the most direct route to what a user needs.

Set it up and make sure it works well!

4. Make your Navigation Intuitive

Your customers work hard enough; navigating your site should not be work.

To make your navigation intuitive, menu language should always be written in a way that lets the user know what to expect. It should be clear what the item does if it’s a dropdown, and exactly where it goes if it’s a link.

If you are using symbols to convey information to your users, make sure they are clear, conventional symbols. For instance, if your menu items drop down, use an intuitive symbol like a plus sign (+) or an arrow (>) to let your users know a click will reveal more options.

Another best practice example would be using a magnifying glass to indicate a search feature.

If you are using a toggle menu, use three stacked lines — the icon highlighted in the example below — to help the user locate and access your main nav.

REI’s menu opens from a hamburger icon.

TIP: A hamburger-style menu icon like this often gets more clicks if it also has the word “menu” below it (according to A/B testing. If your design has room, you might test this to see if it makes your mobile site more intuitive and increases clicks/conversions.

The goal is for your mobile navigation to make life easier by limiting thinking, scrolling and clicking.

About Breadcrumbs in SERPs
It’s worth noting that since 2015, Google has displayed URLs in its mobile search results differently than it does in desktop SERPs. The change replaces a web page’s URL with a description of the page’s location in a breadcrumbs-like format. If this doesn’t scream of the importance of siloing and clear hierarchy, nothing does!

Now, rather than showing a page URL, Google’s mobile search results display a breadcrumb path beneath each title.

For example, mobile search results for “history of Google” include a Wikipedia result showing how the URL appeared in the past versus the current breadcrumb style:

How Google’s mobile search result URLs have changed

TIP: You can control how your breadcrumb URLs appear if you add schema markup to the HTML on your pages. Refer to Schema.org’s breadcrumbs structured data for details and Google’s help file on breadcrumbs. (For more on this update and what it means, see our post Google’s New Mobile Breadcrumb URLs: Making the Most of Your Site Name & URL Structure.)

5. Be Thoughtful about Fonts and Contrast

Your website users shouldn’t have to zoom to read any of the text on your mobile website, including the text within your navigation.

Tiny text that requires zooming creates a bad user experience, and neither your website users nor Google or Bing like poor user experiences.

All of the text on your mobile site needs to be large enough to be read on a variety of devices without zooming. This principle needs to be a top priority that you consider as you build your mobile-friendly CSS (cascading style sheets) to control the appearance of text on various devices.

To make your navigation text easy to read, choose a font that naturally adds enough space to distinguish between letters and is tall enough to be clearly read in a menu.

Your font size and style also depend on your brand’s style guide and what fits your unique demographic. For instance, a young audience may not struggle with smaller or condensed fonts as much as an older demographic would. The way you handle formatting such as bullet styles, capitalization, margins, captioning, and so on should also reflect what’s attractive to your audience and comfortable for them to read.

Once you decide, set up your CSS and create a written style guide to keep your content consistent.

For designing the look of your mobile navigation, best practices can’t give you a one-size-fits-all recommendation. What’s important is that every word on your mobile site can be read easily without zooming. I recommend you perform user testing to see first-hand whether your font is tripping up users.

Also, make sure there’s sufficient contrast between your text and its background. WebAIM guidelines offer rules for color contrast (recommending a minimum ratio of 4.5 to 1). You can try their contrast checker tool to see how your text treatment measures up.

Google gives a few examples of what different contrast ratios look like:

Text needs contrast against the background for readability on a phone. (Per Google)

In addition, Google points out that “classic readability theory suggests that an ideal column should contain 70 to 80 characters per line (about 8 to 10 words in English). Thus, each time the width of a text block grows past about 10 words, consider adding a breakpoint.”

This tip applies to body text; consider a shorter maximum length for your menu options.

Not sure if your text is easy to read? Run your site through Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tool.

6. Design for Touch

Tablet and smartphone users rely on touchscreens to get them around websites. While a pointy mouse arrow allows users to precisely select items in tight spaces, the average finger requires a larger target to press. Many users don’t hit a touchscreen exactly where they are aiming.

Google recommends building mobile pages with a minimum touch target size of 48 pixels with a properly set viewport (more on that later). And touch targets should be spaced about 32 pixels apart, both horizontally and vertically.

Buttons and touch targets should be big enough to be mobile friendly. (Per Google)

Build navigation buttons with a target smaller than 40 pixels and your user experience plummets. Visitors end up sloppily navigating to the category above or below the one they want.

Don’t frustrate your users!

Since people are so bad at hitting their tap mark much of the time, it can also help to incorporate touch feedback into your navigation. Your feedback could be a color change, a blink of color, a font change or another visual cue.

Even if it’s subtle, this feedback can improve user experience by helping to reassure users that they’ve selected the right item. Take a look at the example below from Search Engine Land:

Color changes show which menu item is touched on SearchEngineLand.com.

If you are using multi-tier navigation, it’s also important that you make sure your dropdowns are activated by touch — not mouse over. Clearly, hover navigations work just fine in the desktop experience, where hovering is a possibility, but they leave mobile users stuck.

Another touch-friendly option is to design a supplementary navigation that uses images and exaggerated graphic buttons. This type of navigation can be a great homepage asset that gets your visitor headed in the right direction quickly.

Vintage clothing site RustyZipper.com uses large graphic “button” with text labels for mobile-friendly navigation.

It’s important to note that graphic buttons like these should only be a supplemental option used alongside a toggle navigation or a static top navigation. You need to have a consistent navigation that the user can access at the top of every page.

While you may be able to include this graphic navigation at the bottom of your mobile pages, it’s not optimal or practical to use these big graphic buttons as your primary navigation. And always consider the load-time performance impact of images and buttons.

Be Careful with Popups
You also want to avoid intrusive interstitials — those popups that monopolize the screen when a visitor clicks through from a search result. In January 2017, Google rolled out an intrusive interstitial penalty for mobile search.

Per Google, “Since screen real-estate on mobile devices is limited, any interstitial negatively impacts the user’s experience.”

Example of an intrusive interstitial popup (credit: Google)

Be careful to use interactive forms and popups courteously. Some best practices for these include:

• Apply a delay or time interval between views so you don’t annoy your visitors.
• Reduce the amount of screen space your element covers.
• Try a bar or box that scrolls in from the bottom or side.
• Avoid covering the middle of the mobile screen or obstructing your navigation elements at the top.
• Let no be no. If a user closes a form, don’t display it again within a reasonable period of time (perhaps a week later).

7. Design for the Multi-Screen Mobile User

Chances are good that interested website visitors come to your website using multiple devices over a short period of time.

To help them feel confident they’re in the right place, it’s smart to give your mobile and desktop sites a consistent visual theme.

Your mobile and desktop navigation, however, do not have to be — and sometimes should not be — identical twins.

While the colors, fonts and themes you use for your mobile and desktop navigation need to be consistent to reinforce your branding, the similarity may end there.

Your mobile navigation needs to help users navigate around your website and accomplish tasks. Consider the content your smartphone users need and the tasks they are looking to accomplish, and then build your mobile navigation specifically for a smartphone user.

• What mobile-specific calls to action need to be built into your navigation to aid user experience?
• Does it make sense to include a “Call” button or a store locator?
• Can a..

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“Yoast SEO hates my writing style!”

This is just one of the many misconceptions about the Yoast SEO readability feedback we’re happy to set straight. We’ve often been telling you to go chase those green bullets. The bullets are a key part of the Yoast SEO plugin. The Yoast SEO bullets serve to give intuitive feedback on your text and gamify the Yoast SEO experience. Trying to get all green bullets can become an addiction, but it isn’t necessarily the best way of creating great copy. Over the years, we’ve seen all kinds of misconceptions about the green bullets on social media and in our support channels. Let’s discuss some of them to get a feel for how to approach the bullets feedback.

1. I have some red and orange bullets, so I will never rank!

Generally, the more green bullets, the more SEO fit your text is, as we’ve told you in other post on this site. But not every bullet has to be green. The bullets indicate strengths and weaknesses in your text. They can help you easily identify some elements you could improve on. Don’t take them as gospel. They are tools, not commandments.

Also, and this is most important: never try to cheat the game by tinkering with your text until your red and amber bullets turn green. Use the plugin feedback to your advantage, and use common sense to determine whether you can make improvements to your text. Therefore, we always advise you to write the text first, and only check the feedback once you feel the text is finished. 

Learn how to write awesome and SEO friendly articles in our SEO Copywriting training »

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Info 2. All my bullets are green, but I still don’t rank!

It goes the other way around as well: if all your bullets are green, that doesn’t mean you’ll rank. First of all, green bullets don’t equal a great text. If your text has great readability but doesn’t have good information, you won’t be the best result. Moreover, if you base your text too much on the bullets feedback, your text may actually even be worse than it may have been otherwise.

Don’t become a slave of the green bullet. Of course, it’s also perfectly possible that you’ve written a great text but your competition is stiff and all of them have also written great texts. Or you may have SEO issues in other areas.

3. Every post should be optimized!

Not all posts have to be optimized. You have to consider whether your post will be part of your SEO strategy. Some posts will suffer if you optimize them. Others, like announcements, don’t make sense to optimize for. Consider whether your post fits your SEO strategy and make a conscious decision of whether to optimize it.

4. If I paste Hemingway into the readability analysis, all I see is red and orange, so you can’t trust the Yoast SEO feedback!

The Yoast SEO readability analysis is aimed at optimizing for online content. Hemingway wasn’t looking to sell pens, or maintain a mom blog, or anything like that. Most online authors are not trying to write the Great American Novel, and they shouldn’t. They should write readable online content. That’s the goal, so that’s what the plugin measures.

5. Yoast SEO hates my writing style!

We don’t hate your writing style, so the Yoast SEO plugin doesn’t either. It merely provides you with readability feedback. Your writing style may not fit the guidelines for good SEO copy.

Research has shown that overusing passive voice leads to worse readability. Research has shown that using too many long sentences makes your text difficult to read. This is especially important when it comes to online copy. We don’t think that’s a question of style. You can decide for yourself whether you agree. If you don’t, ignore the feedback at your own risk!

6. Yoast SEO wants me to dumb down my text!

We want your text to be as clear as possible. And you should aim to write as clearly as possible. Most of you are trying to reach a broad audience. Many of you are trying to reach non-native speakers. Using simple vocab and short sentences does not equal dumbing down your text. It’s the other way around: it opens your copy up to a broader audience. This is especially important when writing online copy.

The longer it takes for your audience to grasp what you are trying to say, the bigger the chances of them bouncing. Attention spans are short, so cater to them. And of course, sometimes you have to use jargon in a technical text. But generally, you should keep things simple. Writing clearly and concisely is an art, not a shortcoming.

Read more: ‘Readability ranks!’ »

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Google’s Mobile Location History

If you use Google Maps to navigate from place to place, or if you have agreed to be a local guide for Google Maps, there is a chance that you have seen Google Mobile Location history information. There is a Google Account Help page about how to Manage or delete your Location History. The location history page starts off by telling us:

Your Location History helps you get better results and recommendations on Google products. For example, you can see recommendations based on places you’ve visited with signed-in devices or traffic predictions for your daily commute.

You may see this history as your timeline, and there is a Google Help page to View or edit your timeline. This page starts out by telling us:

Your timeline in Google Maps helps you find the places you’ve been and the routes you’ve traveled. Your timeline is private, so only you can see it.

Mobile Location history has been around for a while, and I’ve seen it mentioned in a few Google patents. It may be referred to as a “Mobile location history” because it appears to contain information collected by your mobile device. Here are three posts I’ve written about patents that mention location history and describe processes that depend upon Mobile Location history.

• Google to Use Distance from Mobile Location History for Ranking in Local Search
• Google Giving Less Weight to Reviews of Places You Stop Visiting?
• Google Tracking How Busy Places are by Looking at Location Histories

An interesting article that hints at some possible aspects of location history just came out on January 24th, in the post, If you’re using an Android phone, Google may be tracking every move you make.

The timing of the article about location history is interesting given that Google was granted a patent on user location histories the day before that article was published. It focuses upon telling us how location history works:

The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for generating a user location history. In particular, the present disclosure is directed to systems and methods for analyzing raw location reports received from one or more devices associated with a user to identify one or more real-world location entities visited by the user.

Techniques that could be used to attempt to determine a location associated with a device can include GPS, IP Addresses, Cell-phone triangulation, Proximity to Wifi Access points, and maybe even power line mapping using device magnetometers.

The patent has an interesting way of looking at location history, which sounds reasonable. I don’t know the latitudes and longitudes of places I visit:

Thus, human perceptions of location history are generally based on time spent at particular locations associated with human experiences and a sense of place, rather than a stream of latitudes and longitudes collected periodically. Therefore, one challenge in creating and maintaining a user location history that is accessible for enhancing one or more services (e.g. search, social, or an API) is to correctly identify particular location entities visited by a user based on raw location reports.

The location history process looks like it involves collecting data from mobile devices in a way that allows it to gather information about places visited, with scores for each of those locations. I have had Google Maps ask me to verify some of the places that I have visited, as if the score it had for those places may not have been sufficient (not high enough of a level of confidence) for it to believe that I had actually been at those places.

The location history patent is:

Systems and methods for generating a user location history
Inventors: Daniel Mark Wyatt, Renaud Bourassa-Denis, Alexander Fabrikant, Tanmay Sanjay Khirwadkar, Prathab Murugesan, Galen Pickard, Jesse Rosenstock, Rob Schonberger, and Anna Teytelman
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 9,877,162
Granted: January 23, 2018
Filed: October 11, 2016

Abstract

Systems and methods for generating a user location history are provided. One example method includes obtaining a plurality of location reports from one or more devices associated with the user. The method includes clustering the plurality of location reports to form a plurality of segments. The method includes identifying a plurality of location entities for each of the plurality of segments. The method includes determining, for each of the plurality of segments, one or more feature values associated with each of the location entities identified for such segment. The method includes determining, for each of the plurality of segments, a score for each of the plurality of location entities based at least in part on a scoring formula. The method includes selecting one of plurality of locations entities for each of the plurality of segments.

Why generate a location history?

A couple of reasons stand out in the patent’s extended description.

1) The generated user location history can be stored and then later accessed to provide personalized location-influenced search results.
2) As another example, a system implementing the present disclosure can provide the location history to the user via an interactive user interface that allows the user to view, edit, and otherwise interact with a graphical representation of her mobile location history.

I like the interactive user Interface that shows times and distances traveled.

This statement from the patent was interesting, too:

According to another aspect of the present disclosure, a plurality of location entities can be identified for each of the plurality of segments. As an example, map data can be analyzed to identify all location entities that are within a threshold distance from a segment location associated with the segment. Thus, for example, all businesses or other points of interest within 1000 feet of the mean location of all location reports included in a segment can be identified.

Google may track information about locations that appear in that history, such as popularity features, which may include, “a number of social media mentions associated with the location entity being valued; a number of check-ins associated with the location entity being valued; a number of requests for directions to the location entity being valued; and/or and a global popularity rank associated with the location entity being valued.”

Personalization features may also be collected which described previous interactions between the user and the location entity, such as:

1) a number of instances in which the user performed a map click with respect to the location entity being valued;
2) a number of instances in which the user requested directions to the location entity being valued;
3) a number of instances in which the user has checked-in to the location entity being valued;
4) a number of instances in which the user has transacted with the location entity as evidenced by data obtained from a mobile payment system or virtual wallet;
5) a number of instances in which the user has performed a web search query with respect to the location entity being valued.

Other benefits of location history

This next potential feature was one that I tested to see if it was working, querying location history. It didn’t seem to be active at this point:

For example, a user may enter a search query that references the user’s historical location (e.g. “Thai restaurant I ate at last Thursday”). When it is recognized that the search query references the user’s location history, then the user’s location history can be analyzed in light of the search query. Thus, for example, the user location history can be analyzed to identify any Thai restaurants visited on a certain date and then provide such restaurants as results in response to the search query.

The patent refers to a graphical representation of mobile location history, which is available:

As an example, in some implementations, a user reviewing a graphical representation of her location history can indicate that one of the location entities included in her location history is erroneous (e.g. that she did not visit such location). In response, the user can be presented with one or more of the location entities that were identified for the segment for which the incorrect location entity was selected and can be given an opportunity to select a replacement location.

A Location History Timeline Interface

In addition to the timeline interface, you can also see a map of places you may have visited:

Map Interface

You can see in my screenshot of my timeline, I took a photo of a Kumquat tree I bought yesterday. It gives me a chance to see the photos I took, so that I can edit them, if I would like. The patent tells us this about the user interface:

In other implementations, opportunities to perform other edits, such as deleting, annotating, uploading photographs, providing reviews, etc., can be provided in the interactive user interface. In such fashion, the user can be provided with an interactive tool to explore, control, share, and contribute to her location history.

The patent tells us that it tracks activities that you may have engaged in at specific locations:

In further embodiments of the present disclosure, a location entity can be associated with a user action within the context of a location history. For example, the user action can be making a purchase (e.g. with a digital wallet) or taking a photograph. In particular, in some embodiments, the user action or an item of content generated by the user action (e.g. the photograph or receipt) can be analyzed to assist in identifying the location entity associated with such user action. For example, the analysis of the user action or item of content can contribute to the score determined for each location entity identified for a segment.

I have had the Google Maps application ask me if I would like to contribute photos that I have taken at specific locations, such as at the sunset at Solana Beach. I haven’t used a digital wallet, so I don’t know if that is potentially part of my location history.

The patent describes the timeline feature and the Map feature that I included screenshots from above.

The patent interestingly tells us that location entities may be referred to by the common names of the places they are called, and refers to those as “Semantic Identifiers:

Each location entity can be designated by a semantic identifier (e.g. the common “name” of restaurant, store, monument, etc.), as distinguished from a coordinate-based or location-based identifier. However, in addition to a name, the data associated with a particular location entity can further include the location of the location entity, such as longitude, latitude, and altitude coordinates associated with the location entity.

It’s looking like location history could get smarter:

As an example, an interaction evidenced by search data can include a search query inputted by a user that references a particular location entity. As another example, an interaction evidenced by map data 218 can include a request for directions to a particular location entity or a selection of an icon representing the particular location entity within a mapping application. As yet another example, an interaction evidenced by email data 220 can include flight or hotel reservations to a particular city or lodging or reservations for dinner at a particular restaurant. As another example, an interaction evidenced by social media data 222 can include a check-in, a like, a comment, a follow, a review, or other social media action performed by the user with respect to a particular location entity.

Tracking these interactions is being done under the name “user/location entity interaction extraction,” and it may calculate statistics about such interactions:

Thus, user/location entity interaction extraction module 212 can analyze available data to extract interactions between a user and a location entity. Further, interaction extraction module 212 can maintain statistics regarding aggregate interactions for a location entity with respect to all users for which data is available.

It appears that to get the benefit of being able to access information such as this, you would need to give Google the ability to collect such data.

The patent provides more details about location history, and popularity and other features, and even a little more about personalization. Many aspects of location history have been implemented, while there are some that look like they might have yet to be developed. As can be seen from the three posts I have written about that describes patents that use information from location history, it is possible that location history may be used in other processes used by Google.

How do you feel about mobile location history from Google?

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The Definitive Guide to Adobe Report Builder

In the world of digital analytics, automation is one the biggest keys to ensuring you obtain maximum value from how and where you spend your time.

Automation is the mindset of spending time upfront to save you time in the future.

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Does Google Use Latent Semantic Indexing?

Technology evolves and changes over time.

There was a park in the town in Virginia where I used to live that had been a railroad track that was turned into a walking path. At one place near that track was a historic turntable where cargo trains might be unloaded so that they could be added to later trains or trains headed in the opposite direction. This is a technology that is no longer used but it is an example of how technology changes and evolves over time.

There are people who write about SEO who have insisted that Google uses a technology called Latent Semantic Indexing to index content on the Web, but make those claims without any proof to back them up. I thought it might be helpful to explore that technology and its sources in more detail. It is a technology that was invented before the Web was around, to index the contents of document collections that don’t change much. LSI might be like the railroad turntables that used to be used on railroad lines.

There is also a website which offers “LSI keywords” to searchers but doesn’t provide any information about how they generate those keywords or use LSI technology to generate them, or provide any proof that they make a difference in how a search engine such as Google might index content that contains those keywords. How is using “LSI Keywords” different from keyword stuffing that Google tells us not to do. Google tells us that we should:

Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Where does LSI come from

One of Microsoft’s researchers and search engineers, Susan Dumais was an inventor behind a technology referred to as Latent Semantic Indexing which she worked on developing at Bell Labs. There are links on her home page that provide access to many of the technologies that she worked upon while performing research at Microsoft which are very informative and provide many insights into how search engines perform different tasks. Spending time with them is highly recommended.

She performed earlier research before joining Microsoft at Bell Labs, including writing about Indexing by Latent Semantic Analysis. She was also granted a patent as a co-inventor on the process. Note that this patent was filed in April of 1989, and was published in August of 1992. The World Wide Web didn’t go live until August 1991. The LSI patent is:

Computer information retrieval using latent semantic structure
Inventors: Scott C. Deerwester, Susan T. Dumais, George W. Furnas, Richard A. Harshman, Thomas K. Landauer, Karen E. Lochbaum, and Lynn A. Streeter
Assigned to: Bell Communications Research, Inc.
US Patent: 4,839,853
Granted: June 13, 1989
Filed: September 15, 1988

Abstract

A methodology for retrieving textual data objects is disclosed. The information is treated in the statistical domain by presuming that there is an underlying, latent semantic structure in the usage of words in the data objects. Estimates to this latent structure are utilized to represent and retrieve objects. A user query is recouched in the new statistical domain and then processed in the computer system to extract the underlying meaning to respond to the query.

The problem that LSI was intended to solve:

Because human word use is characterized by extensive synonymy and polysemy, straightforward term-matching schemes have serious shortcomings–relevant materials will be missed because different people describe the same topic using different words and, because the same word can have different meanings, irrelevant material will be retrieved. The basic problem may be simply summarized by stating that people want to access information based on meaning, but the words they select do not adequately express intended meaning. Previous attempts to improve standard word searching and overcome the diversity in human word usage have involved: restricting the allowable vocabulary and training intermediaries to generate indexing and search keys; hand-crafting thesauri to provide synonyms; or constructing explicit models of the relevant domain knowledge. Not only are these methods expert-labor intensive, but they are often not very successful.

The summary section of the patent tells us that there is a potential solution to this problem. Keep in mind that this was developed before the world wide web grew to become the very large source of information that it is, today:

These shortcomings, as well as other deficiencies and limitations of information retrieval, are obviated, in accordance with the present invention, by automatically constructing a semantic space for retrieval. This is effected by treating the unreliability of observed word-to-text object association data as a statistical problem. The basic postulate is that there is an underlying latent semantic structure in word usage data that is partially hidden or obscured by the variability of word choice. A statistical approach is utilized to estimate this latent structure and uncover the latent meaning. Words, the text objects and, later, user queries are processed to extract this underlying meaning and the new, latent semantic structure domain is then used to represent and retrieve information.

To illustrate how LSI works, the patent provides a simple example, using a set of 9 documents (much smaller than the web as it exists today). The example includes documents that are about human/computer interaction topics. It really doesn’t discuss how a process such as this could handle something the size of the Web because nothing that size had quite existed yet at that point in time. The Web contains a lot of information and goes through changes frequently, so an approach that was created to index a known document collection might not be ideal. The patent tells us that an analysis of terms needs to take place, “each time there is a significant update in the storage files.”

There has been a lot of research and a lot of development of technology that can be applied to a set of documents the size of the Web. We learned, from Google that they are using a Word Vector approach developed by the Google Brain team, which was described in a patent that was granted in 2017. I wrote about that patent and linked to resources that it used in the post: Citations behind the Google Brain Word Vector Approach. If you want to get a sense of the technologies that Google may be using to index content and understand words in that content, it has advanced a lot since the days just before the Web started. There are links to papers cited by the inventors of that patent within it. Some of those may be related in some ways to Latent Semantic Indexing since it could be called their ancestor. The LSI technology that was invented in 1988 contains some interesting approaches, and if you want to learn a lot more about it, this paper is really insightful: A Solution to Plato’s Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction and Representation of Knowledge. There are mentions of Latent Semantic Indexing in Patents from Google, where it is used as an example indexing method:

Text classification techniques can be used to classify text into one or more subject matter categories. Text classification/categorization is a research area in information science that is concerned with assigning text to one or more categories based on its contents. Typical text classification techniques are based on naive Bayes classifiers, tf-idf, latent semantic indexing, support vector machines and artificial neural networks, for example.

~ Classifying text into hierarchical categories

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Google Targeted Advertising, Part 1

One of the inventors of the newly granted patent I am writing about was behind one of the most visited Google patents I’ve written about, from Ross Koningstein, which I posted about under the title, The Google Rank-Modifying Spammers Patent It described a social engineering approach to stop site owners from using spammy tactics to raise the ranking of pages.

This new patent is about targeted advertising at Google in paid search, which I haven’t written too much about here. I did write one post about paid search, which I called, Google’s Second Most Important Algorithm? Before Google’s Panda, there was Phil I started that post with a quote from Steven Levy, the author of the book In the Plex, which goes like this:

They named the project Phil because it sounded friendly. (For those who required an acronym, they had one handy: Probabilistic Hierarchical Inferential Learner.) That was bad news for a Google Engineer named Phil who kept getting emails about the system. He begged Harik to change the name, but Phil it was.

What this showed us was that Google did not use the AdSense algorithm from the company they acquired in 2003 named Applied Semantics to build paid search. But, it’s been interesting seeing Google achieve so much based on a business model that relies upon advertising because they seemed so dead set against advertising when then first started out the search engine. For instance, there is a passage in an early paper about the search engine they developed that has an appendix about advertising.

If you read through The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, you learn a lot about how the search engine was intended to work. But the section about advertising is really interesting. There, they tell us:

Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine, one of the top results for cellular phone is “The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention”, a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.

So, when Google was granted a patent on December 26, 2017, that provides more depth on how targeted advertising might work at Google, it made interesting reading. This is a continuation patent, which means the description ideally should be approximately the same as the original patent, but the claims should be updated to reflect how the search engine might be using the processes described in a newer manner. The older version of the patent was filed on December 30, 2004, but it wasn’t granted under the earlier claims. It may be possble to dig up those earlier claims, but it is interesting looking at the description that accompanies the newest version of the patent to get a sense of how it works. Here is a link to the newest version of the patent with claims that were updated in 2015:

Associating features with entities, such as categories of web page documents, and/or weighting such features
Inventors: Ross Koningstein, Stephen Lawrence, and Valentin Spitkovsky
Assignee: Google Inc.
US Patent: 9,852,225
Granted: December 26, 2017
Filed: April 23, 2015

Abstract

Features that may be used to represent relevance information (e.g., properties, characteristics, etc.) of an entity, such as a document or concept for example, may be associated with the document by accepting an identifier that identifies a document; obtaining search query information (and/or other serving parameter information) related to the document using the document identifier, determining features using the obtained query information (and/or other serving parameter information), and associating the features determined with the document. Weights of such features may be similarly determined. The weights may be determined using scores. The scores may be a function of one or more of whether the document was selected, a user dwell time on a selected document, whether or not a conversion occurred with respect to the document, etc. The document may be a Web page. The features may be n-grams. The relevance information of the document may be used to target the serving of advertisements with the document.

I will continue with details about how this patent describes how they might target advertising at Google in a part 2 of this post.

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Ask Yoast: Switching the TLD of your website

There could be a reason why you’d want to switch your top level domain (TLD) at some point. Perhaps you want to use it in your brand name, or maybe you just want something that catches the eye a bit more. But what if your site isn’t performing as well as you thought it would after you’ve made the switch? Is the new TLD you picked to blame? Or could there be another reason for that drop in traffic?

Whatever your reasons for changing, there are some things to keep in mind before concluding that your rankings have dropped permanently. Let’s get into that in this Ask Yoast!

Manolo Macchetta emailed us his question from Milan:

I had a .info domain but I changed it to a .xyz domain. Traffic is much lower now. Do you know if new TLDs rank as well as others?

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

Things to keep in mind when changing your TLD

“Well, your question leads to many more questions in my head. First of all, did you 301 redirect the old domain to the new domain, and every individual page on the old domain to the new one? And if yes, did you wait for about six months for your traffic to recover? Because that’s about how long it can take for traffic to completely come back when you do a site migration like that. If you didn’t do either of those, then do them and wait. If you did both, well, then something else is probably wrong. 

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Info

Rankings are not tied to top level domains, so it doesn’t really matter if you have a .info, a .xyz, a .com, a .travel, whatever: what matters is the quality of your content and whether you’ve properly redirected all the old links to your new domain. 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: ‘Domain names and their influence on SEO’ »

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SEO basics: What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO is about everything that doesn’t happen directly on your website. Optimizing your website is called on-page SEO and includes things like site structure, content and speed optimizations. Off-page SEO is about, among other things, link building, social media and local SEO. Or in other words, generating traffic to your site and making your business appear like the real deal it is. In this post, we answer the question: What is off-page SEO?

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Info Creating exposure, trust and brand awareness

When focusing on on-page SEO, you’re doing everything in your power to make your site awesome. You write great content, have a solid site structure and your mobile site loads in just a couple of seconds. All is well in the world. Off-page SEO on the other hand, helps you to bring in those hordes of visitors and potential customers. Both are important pieces of the puzzle.

By writing quality content you can rank in search engines, but by getting a few great, relevant sites to link to that content, you’re increasing the chance that you’ll end up a couple of spots higher. The same goes for building your brand and creating trust. This doesn’t just happen on your site, but mostly off-site. Take reviews for instance, these can make or break your company. You need them, but they most often appear on external sites. These are all factors that contribute to your rankings.

It’s not only important for you to rank high for your search term, but also to create trust and a sense of authority. You must appear to be the best search result, not just in technical and content sense, but also in reality. Popularity, quality and relevance are everything.

A lot of it comes down to link building

Links are the glue that keeps the web together. Search engines use links to determine how valuable a piece of content or a particular site is. Getting quality links has always been a great tactic if you’re serious about ranking. And who isn’t? Recently, however, some people seem to debate the relevance of links. We firmly believe in the importance of links. Of course, you need the good ones. Don’t buy stuff, and keep a close eye on where and how you’re being linked to. We’ve written several guides on how to get quality links for your site and what you shouldn’t do when link building.

Social media helps to a certain extent

By itself social media is not essential for ranking well in search engines. It does, however, give you a unique opportunity to get in touch with customers and potential visitors.

As David Mhim wrote in his epic Ranking your local business post series: “”Being active” on social media isn’t really going to help with your local search visibility. And even if you’re wildly popular on social media, it’s unlikely that popularity will translate directly into higher local search rankings. You should primarily focus your social media efforts on engaging your customers with interesting content, promotions (if relevant), and polls and conversations that will increase their affinity for your brand. You can promote your website to a degree, but generally speaking, improvements in your local rankings will come from other factors.”

Local SEO is also off-page SEO

Local SEO is essential if you’re business is locally oriented. For local businesses, part of the off-page SEO is really in-person SEO. Word-of-mouth marketing plays a big role in getting people to your business. Not just that, happy customers can leave reviews online that Google – and potential other customers – can use to see how well you are doing.

Off-page SEO is an integral part of your SEO strategy

As we’ve shown, off-page SEO supplements on-page SEO. Both go hand in hand. You need to focus on your link building, branding and appearance efforts to make the most of your SEO. You can optimize your site all you want, but if isn’t perceived as a quality destination for people, you won’t do well.

Read more: ‘The ultimate guide to content SEO’ »

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Why Virtual Tours Matter and How to Make One for your Business

We have previously discussed how Google My Business helps improve local SEO for businesses and makes it visible in search results pages. One of the important points that was discussed was how adding a virtual tour would be beneficial in increasing audience interest.

Virtual tours give your audience a visual idea of how your business looks like before they even visit their, and that makes for one big first impression what can be a deciding factor on whether or not they would like your service.

Adding a virtual tour on your Google My Business page may look simple at a glance, but it would take good effort to take some attractive 360-degree images that presents your business well. Here is a short guide on how to create your own virtual tour, along with reasons why you should do this for your business.

The first thing that you need to know before even taking pictures for your Google My Business Virtual Tour is to make sure that you get to comply with the image requirements. This consist of the following:

• Images must be at least 7.5 Megapixels (MP) with 2:1 aspect ratio
• Images should not be more than 75 megabytes (MB)

Basically, this means that you need high quality images to be able to have your shots posted on your Google My Business listing. High quality images allow your audience to see each part of your business better and would give off a good impression.

Shoot Your Photos

Now that you have the image requirements, the next thing that you need to do before setting up your virtual tour is taking the pictures themselves. You would need a good camera that allows you to take panoramic 360-degree shots.

Some of the top of the line smartphones are equipped with cameras that have around 8-12 megapixels, which mean that you can take high-quality photos straight from your pocket. To allow these phones to have the ability to take 360-degree shots, you have to download applications such as 360 Panorama. After taking the shot, you can instantly share it on social media sites like Facebook, or even directly to Google Street View.

While smartphones are indeed convenient and inexpensive, the best way to take these panoramic shots is through the use of a 360-degree camera. It is best to make sure that you have the right height through the use of a tripod, along with the best location to be able to capture your ideal images.

Posting Photos

After capturing your ideal images for your Virtual Tour, the next step is to have them posted on your Google My Business page. On the home page, click “Photos” to begin.

On the Photos bar, click “360”, which will be the location of all of your 360-degree shots for your business. There are also a myriad of image and video options that you can use as well, such as interior and exterior images, and even images of your team at work.

Upon entering the 360 section, you would be able to see all of the 360-degree images of your business made by you and the customers themselves. To add your panoramic photos, click the blue plus icon on the right side.

Upon clicking, you would be at the upload section, where you would be able to post your photos. It is best to take note that you images must pass the guidelines set by Google. This simply means that all photos that are posted on your Google My Business page must be appropriate.

After posting your photos, you can now view them on your Google My Business Page, and even add these images on Street View. Adding your images on Street View allows more users to be able to see your business, and it can be done through the Google Street View app. After downloading it on the Google Play Store, the next step is to upload your image. Click the camera icon on the bottom right corner, and then select “Import 360 photos to upload your image.

After picking the option, the next step is to select the image on the album. You have the option to select multiple images if you want to feature more than one part of your business.

The next step is to pin the location on the map to your business, which means moving the red icon to the right location.

Once your location has been set, you can finally publish your image for your users to see. This is a quick and easy process that will take you a few minutes to accomplish but would give your potential clients a good look at your business.

Why Virtual Tours Matter

Now that you have set up your virtual tour, here are some important reasons why you should have one to help your business.

Get Noticed Better

The main purpose of the virtual tour is to give a good visual idea of your business to your potential clients. With technology and the abundance of businesses everywhere you go, people today have so many choices that being able to find a way to stand out would always give you a competitive edge.

A lot of businesses still do not use virtual tours on their Google My Business profile, and this can affect the number of customers they attract. With first impressions counting the most, giving your potential clients a glimpse of what you have to offer makes a big difference. This also does wonders for your local SEO, especially with how businesses are highly competitive today.

Efficient and Inexpensive

Being able to pull off high quality panoramic shots on your phone through the use of simple apps means that adding virtual tours on your business can be done quickly, with only a few editing and refinements needed. In fact, the apps that you need to install on your phone are mostly free, making it one of the most efficient ways of promoting your business.

Key Takeaway

Having a virtual tour may sound like just another fancy feature that would not do much. But in reality, users access these kinds of features to get to know more about your business. If you haven’t added your virtual tour into your Google My Business page, this guide will surely prove useful.

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

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