Having the ability to segment your audience and understand your customers is crucial in the digital marketing world. Most of us are familiar with segmenting by gender, location, or interests through Google Analytics’ built-in reports, but these don’t always give us the insights we want and need.…
https://ift.tt/2Ih9DotSaturday, March 31, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
Ask Yoast: Bad slug for Arabic URLs
Today’s Ask Yoast will discuss a problem that may be familiar to you if your site is in a non-ASCII language, like Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and many other languages. You work hard to write good, SEO-friendly URLs, so people will click to your website. However, when your site is linked to or shared, for instance on social media, the slug doesn’t show the right characters. Instead, it changes into a long string of percent signs, capitals and numbers.
To give you an example: check out this link to an Arabic Wikipedia article on SEO. In the address bar, it looks good:
However, when I try to copy it into this post, it turns into this:
Of course, a slug like that looks weird and a bit unsettling: it doesn’t tempt people to click, and doesn’t reveal much about the content of a page either. So, if you come across this problem with your non-ASCII slugs, what are your options for dealing with this?
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Info
Ahmed Saad emailed us on this subject:
My site’s content is in Arabic and that means that the slug looks very bad when it’s shared on social media. Should I change the URL language to English so it looks better or does that hurt my SEO?
Watch the video or read the transcript further down the page for my answer!
Dealing with bad slugs for Arabic URLs‘I honestly don’t have a good answer to that because this slug is not good for your SEO either. This slug doesn’t really entice people to click. I guess that the best solution would be to get the shortest slug as possible in Arabic, because you can have i18n URLs. But support for that is not always as good across CMSes.
If that doesn’t work then you can certainly fall back to English, or to an English ‘way’ of writing your Arabic strings, which is something that a lot of Indian languages do. Good luck!’
Ask YoastIn the series Ask Yoast, we answer SEO questions from our readers. Have an SEO-related question? Maybe we can 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: ‘How to create SEO-friendly copy in a foreign language’ »
https://ift.tt/2uuOMw8How to do Keyword Research Using Ahrefs
When it comes to keyword research tools, there are few that are as effective and efficient as Ahrefs. It is one of the most frequently used tools in our link building and content management teams, as it has given us the best results that help our clients achieve high search rankings that lead to more traffic.
We have covered Ahrefs in some of our previous posts, such as how to use it to solve keyword cannibalization, along with an in-depth review which takes a look at its features. One of the best features of Ahrefs is the Content and Keyword Explorer, which allows you to find the best keywords and related content that helps generate more traffic to your website.
With that in mind, here is a short guide on how to do keyword research using Ahrefs. If you want to try out Ahrefs for yourself, you can avail of its services by going to their site.
Getting StartedTo get started with doing keyword research, all you have to do is to access the Keyword Explorer. From there, you would be able to enter a certain number of keywords. For this example, I’ll be entering “Google” as my keyword to get things going.
After entering the keyword, you now proceed to a new page that contains all of the data from the keyword that you entered. You get to see important details such as Keyword Difficulty, Search Volume, Clicks, and Global Volume. These help you measure how frequent the keyword is being used, along with the current trend, and countries where the volume is high.
Overview
Along with these statistics, you also get possible alternative keyword ideas that you can use, search suggestions, and newly discovered keywords that are gaining more traffic. Scroll further down and you get to view the SERP position history on websites that use the keyword. This will allow you to see the rankings from a certain period in time.
Along with that, you would also be able to see related links in which the keyword is present. For this example, I used the keyword “laptop for sale”, which brought in a lot of links from e-commerce and shopping websites.
Along with getting the overview of keyword search volume, you also get to look similar keywords and phrase matches even further. Phrase Match allows you to view related keywords, along with important details such as search volume and cost per click.
With the Keyword Explorer, you get a robust research and analysis feature that allows you to find the best performing keyword for your website.
Content ExplorerAfter successfully doing your keyword research, the next step is to look for content related to your keywords. Like Keyword Explorer, all you have to go to get started on Content Explorer is by entering the keyword and click away. You can filter the results per region as well, which helps you focus on region-specific content, which works really well for local SEO.
Upon entering the keyword, you are presented with content that is sorted by relevance on the default setting, although you can change this setting to change your preference. You also have more options to filter your content, with options like date of publishing, content language, number of social media shares, domain rating, referring domains, organic traffic, and even number of words.
Once you have found content that you would like to view and analyze further, clicking the “Details” button allows you to look into more statistics. This section allows you to view backlinks, anchors, referring domains, and organic keywords. You can view each section individually to view more data, which allows you to explore and discover even more content that you can use as a reference.
When it comes to crafting content and keyword research, Ahrefs is an invaluable tool that allows performing these tasks efficiently and be able to find the best keywords and content for your website. This tool has helped us create some of the best content for our clients, and find the best keywords that helped them rank on Google’s first page. If you are looking for a robust keyword research tool, look no further than Ahrefs.
Key TakeawayWhen it comes to value and quality performance, Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tools available. It’s diverse set of features, combined with some of the best and most accurate search data make it a must-have for anyone doing SEO.
If you have questions about Ahrefs, or SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.
https://ift.tt/2GjQndpThursday, March 29, 2018
How to use Yoast SEO to write an awesome meta description
You’d like people to click on your result in Google rather than on the result of one of your competitors. That’s why you need to make sure your search result (a.k.a. your snippet) stands out from all of the other ones. So, how do you do that? How do you write an awesome meta description? How do you make people click your snippet? Here, I’ll tell you all about how to use Yoast SEO to write an awesome meta description.
Info What is a meta description?
A meta description is a description you manually add to your blog post or page. And it tells the reader (and the search engine) what your post is about. It contains up to 320 characters that summarizes a page’s content. Generally, search engines show the meta description in the snippet when the searched phrase is in the description.
Recent changesGoogle changed the rules concerning meta descriptions not that long ago. Nowadays, meta descriptions can be up to 320 characters. We’re currently carrying out research to figure out whether a 320 character meta description or the old fashioned 160 character meta description is the most SEO-friendly.
To be totally fair, Google certainly does not always show the meta description, even if you add one to your article with Yoast SEO. Sometimes Google just decides otherwise and generates something else. Google always wants to show the word people are searching for in the meta description. They usually light up in the snippet. Make sure you’ve done your keyword research properly and use the words people are searching for in your meta description. That’ll increase the chance of Google showing your kick-ass meta description.
Using Yoast SEO for your meta descriptionYou can edit your meta description in the snippet preview in the Yoast meta box, that you’ll find under your post or page. If you want to write one, you should click on the “edit snippet” button. If you do that, the snippet editor will open. You’ll see input fields to edit the SEO title, the slug and the meta description:
If you start typing in the meta description field, the snippet preview at the top of the snippet editor will also immediately show your new text. Underneath the meta description input field, there is a bar. It’s orange when you start typing and will become green when you’ve added enough information.
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What happens if you do not write one?If you do not write a meta description, Google will generate one. That could be the first paragraph of your blog post, but it could be something else as well. We’d advise you to write one because it’ll increase the chances of showing an appealing snippet. This will positively affect the click-through rate (how many people click on your snippet). In many cases, however, Google will decide to show something else.
If you do not do anything with the meta description field in the Yoast SEO plugin, the snippet preview in the Yoast SEO plugin will still show a meta description. This one however, is NOT saved as a meta description by our plugin. It’s just an example for what your snippet could look like.
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Info Don’t forget it!
It is important to create a good meta description. You should definitely make an effort of writing a good one. Google is getting more and more capable of determining the topic of texts. If Google decides to show something else, it’s usually not a very bad description. Still, a properly crafted meta description can increase the chances of people clicking on your snippet. And using Yoast SEO to write a meta description will help you influence that. So you just have to make the effort to write a good one!
https://ift.tt/2J52Tv6Still Using Google’s Keyword Planner? Your Time May Be Up.
Cover Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash
Over the years, I’ve joked that “Google giveth, and Google taketh away.”
Here we go again.
And this time, it may directly affect how you do business.
Here’s what’s happening…
The free ride is over
Years ago, Google’s Keyword Planner was considered a fairly viable keyphrase research tool. Accessing it was easy, the data was decent, and, most
https://ift.tt/2GnpcdFWednesday, March 28, 2018
Yoast SEO & Ryte: Checking your site’s indexability
Your site needs to be up and running if you want to be found in search engines. If you aren’t blocking anything — deliberately or accidentally — search engine spiders can crawl and index it. You probably know that Yoast SEO has lots of options to determine what does and doesn’t need to be indexed, but did you know it also has a check that monitors your site’s indexability? This is the indexability check, provided by our good friends at Ryte.
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Info What does it do?
The indexability check checks regularly if your site is indexable. You can find the Ryte indexability check on your site’s dashboard inside the Yoast SEO Posts Overview box. It is straightforward to use as it is just a colored bullet showing the indexability status of your site:
- Green: All is well, your site is indexable.
- Grey: Yoast SEO hasn’t been able to determine the status of your site.
- Red: Your homepage cannot be indexed, and you should look into this immediately.
Remember, something is up if you should ever get a red bullet. If you do get one, and you are sure your site should be indexable, please check if your site is available by running a Mobile-friendly test by Google. Your site should appear if it is indexable. If it does, it might be that Ryte had the hiccups.
Should Google be unable to run the test, you could hit the ‘Analyze entire site’ button in your WordPress backend and follow the instructions given by Ryte. Sign up with them and give your site the once-over. The phenomenal Ryte suite gives you loads of advice on how to cope with indexability errors and more.
A grey bullet means that your server is unable to connect to the Ryte servers to get the indexability status of your site. There are several reasons why this could be the case. Please see the Indexability check fails post on our knowledge base for more information on how to evaluate and fix this.
What do I have to do to get it?We add this check automatically when you install Yoast SEO. Find it in your WordPress dashboard. If it doesn’t show a green bullet, you can manually run a check by clicking ‘Fetch the current status’ button inside the Yoast SEO Posts Overview box.
If you don’t need the Ryte indexability check, you can always turn it off. Go to General > Features in Yoast SEO and switch the Ryte integration button to off.
Ryte offers a free indexability check for Yoast SEO users. This way, you can quickly see that your site is still reachable for both search engines and visitors. If you need help fixing technical SEO issues or if you are in need of a great suite of SEO tools to help you fix or improve your rankings, you can always sign up for the free Ryte introductory plan. Just hit the purple ‘Analyze entire site’ button and follow the instructions!
https://ift.tt/2pM6VkfWhy we changed so many things in the 7.0 update
On March 6, we released a major update of our Yoast SEO plugin. This update was aimed at making SEO easier and more understandable for our users. We removed quite a few settings and options. In other cases, we changed the names of settings making them easier to understand for non-technical users. All in all, the reactions on this update were rather positive. We received some questions as well, mostly about why we removed certain settings and options. In this post, I’ll explain why we chose to remove those settings.
Info If there’s a button, people want to click it
The main reason why we deleted settings is because in 99% of the cases it should not be altered. But if you give people a toggle or a button, generally they’ll think they have to do something with that toggle or button. Totally understandable. If I have a new watch and it has many fancy buttons, I’d also want to know what they’ll do. By offering all those settings, we gave the impression that our users needed to do something with these settings.
The things we removed were the things people should not worry about: the things that didn’t make much of a difference in their chance of ranking in the search engines. These buttons and toggles were rather useless anyway.
More agreement on proper SEO settingsWorking on our new online Yoast SEO plugin training helped us to make the plugin more understandable for a large audience. We had to really make an effort when explaining the settings in videos and text. And we noticed we had a hard time explaining some of the things. It made us question and reassess our decisions. That process lead to a lot of the changes made in the plugin release of March 6.
On top of that, there was another reason why we decided to remove quite a few settings from our plugin. For a long time, the SEO community had strong and opposing opinions about the need of, for example, XML sitemaps. Because of these different opinions, we always offered different options, allowing people to make their own SEO choices. As the profession of SEO matured, SEOs reached more consensus on what things were important to rank high in the search engines. As those influences are rather clear nowadays, we were able to make those changes in the plugin. Important changes, because now, the ease of use of our plugin is improved.
SEO for everyoneThe mission of Yoast is SEO for everyone. We believe the web will benefit from all people having an equal chance in the search results. Not only those big international companies with large marketing budgets, but also that small online shop with handmade toys. We believe every idea should get a fair chance in the search results.
When developing our plugin, we always keep our mission in mind. And that’s the reason why we recently decided to make some big changes in our plugin. We really hope that more people will be able to benefit from our plugin. If you really want to know all the ins and outs of Yoast SEO, I would strongly advice you to buy and follow our online plugin course. It will help you to get the most out of our plugin. Because, although we deleted quite a few settings, we still have a lot of toggles, settings and choices left :-) Good luck!
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Assessing Site Safety and Page Loading Speed Using Tools From Google
As we have mentioned before, Google is one of the providers of some of best software that can help your website when it comes to SEO. From analysis tools such as Page Analytics, to tools that help you with content management like Google Trends. These tools have helped us bring in more efficient results that enable websites to perform better.
Speaking of website performance, we here at SEO Hacker ensure that we make sure that loading speed and user experience would remain at optimal levels, as these are ranking factors that help get you to the first page of Google’s search results. Every now and then, you would like to quickly know how your website is performing. Thankfully, Google has the tools that would give you a quick, yet detailed look at your website’s performance, from checking the loading speed, to assessing website security.
Google Lighthouse (Chrome Extension)As we have discussed in one of our previous articles, the Google Lighthouse Chrome Extension is one of the most effective website review tools that provide you a detailed report on the website just by entering the URL. The review data that you receive is detailed and concise, offering you some of the best steps to take when it comes to website optimization.
The reviews and analysis are based on Google’s ten major ranking factors, which means that you are getting the best kind of data. The different categories present you with passed and failed audits, along with suggestions on how to improve your website’s performance. These categories include Performance, Progressive Web App, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Each category has a score which shows how well the website is performing, which means getting a 100 means that you are doing good.
All of the data that you receive can also be printed into a .pdf format, which allows you to distribute the reports much quicker. The best part about using the Google Lighthouse extension is that this is all free, which means that you can use it as much as you want. By using this tool, you would be able to utilize the next two tools for further assessment of your website.
Transparency ReportOne of the biggest concerns when it comes to having a website is the possibility that it could be attacked by harmful kinds of software like malware and viruses. This can cause you to lose precious data from your website, or end up having to move to a new domain entirely. In today’s world where it seems that any form of internet security can be breached, it is best to keep it in check and be prepared.
This is where Google’s Transparency Report comes in, Which is a tool that helps you find any form of malicious software in your website to ensure that you would be able to respond to it and find quick and effective solutions. Using the tool is just simple, as you only have to enter the website URL to be able to find out the results.
The tool instantly checks your website and gives you the results as soon as you press enter (or that would be the case if the website is completely safe). As simple as it is, this is a tool that would offer you a first glimpse into your website’s safety.
Test My SiteSite speed is one of the most important ranking factors, as the user experience begins once the website starts loading. Loading speed can spell the difference between a high traffic and reliable website, to a slow and low traffic one. If you want a very quick look at how fast your website loads, Test My Site is a handy little tool that helps you do so.
Upon entering the URL, it will only take a minute (or three) for your website to be reviewed. The results page show you the average loading time of your website, along with the estimated visitor loss in the website that is caused by the loading time.
You also get to see the industry comparison, which compares your loading time to other similar websites. This is an essential indicator to help you see how close or far you are from the best loading speeds.
Lastly, you get to see a list of steps that would help improve your website to reduce your loading time by a significant margin. Along with Google Lighthouse, this helps provide you with solid analysis for your website performance and allows you to take the best steps towards website optimization.
Key TakeawayOnce again, Google has shown that you do not need to shell out too much for SEO tools when you are just having your start. With these three tools, you are able to provide a detailed report that will help you improve you and your client’s websites. Achieving high performance for your website is necessary, and these types of tools will help you lead to that in the long run.
If you have questions and inquiries with regards to SEO, leave a comment below and let’s talk.
https://ift.tt/2J0eQCfTuesday, March 27, 2018
Product Feed Best Practices for Shopping Campaigns
Shopping campaigns are a great way for e-commerce retailers to sell their products online. Many retailers find it easy to set up shopping campaigns, as their product feeds are setup in a way that makes it easy to import to Google (and Bing) Merchant Centers.…
https://ift.tt/2GvBMefWhy we reduced the price of our Yoast SEO for WordPress training
Today we released our new Yoast SEO for WordPress training. This online course will help you use Yoast SEO to its fullest potential. In this course we’ll train you on how to use all of the functionalities of our plugin best. And the most exciting news is, we decided to reduce the price of this online course! The old version was $99 a year and this new course will only be $39. Here I’ll explain why we decided to reduce it so drastically.
Get the Yoast SEO training Now$39 for course, certificate and badge
Info SEO for everyone
The mission of Yoast is SEO for everyone. We believe the web will benefit from all people having an equal chance in the search results. Great ideas don’t always come from large companies but are created everywhere around the world. That’s why we believe that every idea should have a fair chance in the search results.
When developing our products, we always keep our mission in mind. That’s why we recently decided to make some big changes in our plugin. We noticed that some settings in Yoast SEO were hard to explain to a non-tech audience. In the 7.0 update of Yoast SEO we tried to make the plugin more user-friendly for everyone.
Creating high quality SEO coursesThe Yoast SEO plugin covers most of the technical SEO challenges of a website. But to seriously compete with the large players, every website owner still faces numerous challenges. Our online courses are designed to help people conquer those problems. They’ll teach you everything there is to know about SEO and provide practice to improve your skills.
We are currently updating and improving all of our online courses. We’ve hired an amazing team that’s working full time on creating videos, texts and assignments that’ll help you understand SEO. The new course is suitable for everyone. We’ll start out with the very basics of the plugin and gradually explain everything you need to know.
Reduced pricesUsing the Yoast SEO plugin to its full potential will allow everyone to have a fair chance in the search results. That’s what ‘SEO for everyone’ is all about. But not everyone will have enough money to buy an expensive plugin training. That’s the reason why we reduced the price of this one. We hope more people will be able to buy it and profit from it. We would love to give it away for free, but the salaries of our Academy team just need to be paid as well. The training will get regular updates. As the interface of the plugin changes, we’ll record new videos. (We’re already dreading the Gutenberg update, as that’ll really have some impact on the number of videos we’ll need to record).
Get the Yoast SEO training Now$39 for course, certificate and badge
Conclusion
We reduced the price of our plugin training because it will allow more people to use Yoast SEO to its full extent. For the exact same reason, we improved the course, making it suitable for everyone to understand the ins and outs of our plugin.
And we’ve got some more news for you. We’re currently working on a new FREE online course. It will be an introductory course to SEO and we’re planning to release it somewhere in May of this year.
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https://ift.tt/2GtdS3dYoast SEO for WordPress plugin training: Better than ever & reduced in price!
If you want to use the Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin to its full potential, you obviously need to know exactly what it can and can’t do. The release of Yoast SEO 7.0 at the beginning of March introduced many changes to the Yoast SEO plugin. Because of all these changes, we’ve decided to completely rebuild our Yoast SEO for WordPress training from scratch. Check out what’s new and make sure you’re up to speed with the latest developments in our plugin. And, perhaps the best news, we’ve lowered the price. So get it now for only $39!
Get the Yoast SEO training Now$39 for course, certificate and badge
Info
What will you learn?
The new Yoast SEO for WordPress training contains ten modules which follow the same approach we took when improving the plugin itself. We think SEO should be actionable and understandable for everyone. That’s why we start this course with three modules in which we go into SEO and the practical use of our plugin.
We kick off with a thorough discussion of what Google does, and what SEO means to us. Then, we discuss what the plugin can and can’t do. After that, we start exploring the plugin from the perspective of the daily user. Where can you find Yoast SEO in your WordPress backend? What options does the Yoast SEO meta box offer? What nifty and simple tools can you use to make quick progress towards ranking number one?
Only after you have gotten to known the plugin itself will we explore the settings that are the linchpin of our plugin. In modules four to ten, you’ll learn how to make sure what parts of your site are shown in the search results. You’ll learn how make sure you get those nice big Twitter images which catch your audience’s eyes. You’ll learn how to check whether Google has found any errors on your site, and how to fix them! In other words, you’ll learn everything you need to be able to maximize your chances of ranking with the Yoast SEO plugin.
Get the Yoast SEO training Now$39 for course, certificate and badge
New course
We want to make this quite clear: the new Yoast SEO for WordPress course is a completely new course. We’ve recorded sixteen videos which show you exactly how to use the plugin. Moreover, we’ve recorded new screencasts for every single tab of the settings. The videos are also accompanied by brand new reading materials, so you can always go back to quickly check the specifics. What’s more, our recent switch to Learndash has allowed us to devise meaningful questions in which you can actually practice the tips you’ve just received!
Lowered priceIs that all? No, the best is yet to come. Because we want everyone to be able to become a Yoast SEO plugin expert, we’ve made the new and improved Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin training much more affordable to boot! The new course will be available for only $39, or $29 when you bundle it with our Premium plugin.
Get Yoast SEO Premium and our training Now$128 $118 for our Premium plugin and training
Learn why we decided to reduce the price for our course or learn more about this course here.
https://ift.tt/2I7A8wNMonday, March 26, 2018
What to do if traffic from Facebook is decreasing?
Facebook can be a vital source of traffic for your website. Recently, however, Facebook announced that pages of business, brands, and news outlets would become less important in the news feeds of Facebook users. This could lead to a decrease in your views on Facebook and, therefore, in the traffic from Facebook to your website. What should you do if the traffic from your Facebook page is decreasing? Last week, I already mentioned the importance of SEO. But what else could you do? Here, I’ll share another five strategies to deal with decreasing traffic from your Facebook page.
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Info Why would the traffic decrease?
Facebook argues that users want to see the content of their friends and families, rather than news and the content of brands in their news feeds. That’s why Facebook is rolling out a big update in which the posts of friends, family and groups become more important and the content of businesses, brands and media will become less important.
Read more: ‘Changes in Facebook make SEO more important’ »
5 strategies to deal with decreasing Facebook trafficIf you notice a sudden drop in reach of traffic from Facebook to your website, don’t panic. Your competitors will probably notice a similar drop. I really think search will become more important, if Facebook will send less traffic to website. People still want to find that present for their mom, or that skirt to wear to a party. If Facebook does not show those in their timelines, they’ll start to search for it in Google. So reinforcing your SEO strategy will be very important. But what else should you do?
Engaging contentFacebook wants to show users content they care about. Content their friends care about. If your content gets a lot of engagement, it’ll probably do better in the news feeds. You should try and get people to share or comment on your Facebook post. But you shouldn’t go overboard; Facebook does not like it when people are pushed to share or comment. Writing high-quality content, content that people want to share with their friends is a good strategy.
Personal accountsBrands and businesses are not always the most inspiring channels to follow. Lots of people do not want to follow a corporate account. They want to follow real people. Instead of focusing on your corporate Facebook page, you could also focus on spreading the word on the personal Facebook pages of colleagues and employees. Of course, they’ll have to be up for that. And, you should make sure that these personal Facebook pages keep their character.
At Yoast, we have lots of colleagues who are enthusiastic about WordPress and SEO. They often share the SEO posts Yoast publishes on the Yoast Facebook page. That’s a great way to increase both engagement and a bigger audience.
InfluencersAnother way of keeping up the traffic on Facebook is through influencers. Influencers are people who have a lot of followers. They usually post about a specific topic (fashion, celebrities, food). You can reach out to them and ask them to post something about your business on Facebook. For some influencers, you’ll need a budget. For others, offering them your product or service could be enough. Reaching out to (influential) people can be a good way of increasing your reach and traffic on Facebook.
AdvertisingThe changes Facebook is making will affect the organic (that is the non-paid) reach. Advertising on Facebook is of course also a possibility. Advertising isn’t that expensive, and you can choose which audience you want to reach (people who like your page, people who do not know your business). I think advertising is a great way to stay visible on Facebook. For a few dollars, you can increase your reach. Make sure you spend your budget on well written, high-quality posts.
Other platformsIf Facebook is giving you a hard time, you could also focus your energy on alternative platforms. Instagram is a good alternative, especially if you’re focusing on a young(er) audience. Don’t forget to check out snapchat either.
Twitter and Pinterest also remain popular. And what about Reddit? It’s hard to say which social media will be most suitable for your business. That depends largely on your business and the preferences of your audience.
Facebook traffic decreasingBusinesses and brands will probably all notice differences in organic reach on Facebook. How significant these differences will be is hard to say. To make it even more complicated, Facebook also changed the way they measure organic engagement. It’s a good idea to keep looking for alternatives for your Facebook-marketing. Investing in SEO seems like an excellent idea! But advertising, writing engaging posts, influencer marketing or other platforms could be great options as well.
https://ift.tt/2pI7CLaSaturday, March 24, 2018
MRC SEO Consulting - SEO Services - Calgary Alberta
https://ift.tt/2Gk0LRU - https://goo.gl/YgjzBo we are your local calgary alberta seo services provider , helping bsuiensses grow online since 2013. Let us help your business grow through - SEO Services - Web design - Internet Marketing, Pay Per click marketing . Our proven methods will get your site ranking quickly , safely and with transparent ethical methods. Let us help you attain leads through Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmzHPAFWT4A
Friday, March 23, 2018
Ask Yoast: Comment systems and SEO
Allowing people to comment on your content is a great way to increase engagement and get in touch with your audience. So, it pays off to choose a good comment system that works for you. Besides the standard WordPress comment system, there are several other systems out there you can implement on your website so your readers can directly respond to your posts.
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Info
It’s good to keep some things in mind when selecting what comment system you want to use. Do you want integration with social media, for example? Do you want to be able to keep your comments if you ever need to change your comment system, and what features do you need? You may want more functionalities than WordPress’ standard comment system provides and therefore choose another system. But are there really no downsides to that, keeping the importance of site speed in mind? What about comment systems and SEO? Let’s get into this dilemma in this week’s Ask Yoast!
Max sent us his question on comment systems:
There is no question that the Disqus service takes a little while to load on a webpage. So, do these blog commenting services, like Disqus, affect SEO in some way?
Watch the video or read the transcript further down the page for my answer!
The impact of comment systems on SEO“Do they affect SEO? Well, yes, they do. Because, in fact, they’re so slow to load that most of the time, what you see is that Google doesn’t load the content of those comments, and doesn’t use them to rank that page. Which might be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how good your comments are and whether your comments have a lot of content or not.
I personally don’t like these services because they slow down the page load so much and because they make it slower for people to be able to repond to your content, which is why, on yoast.com, we use the plain vanilla WordPress commenting system with some added features that are in the Yoast Comment Hacks plugin, which we’ve released for free on the repository. So that’s why we use that, and not any service like Disqus. But I know there’s a lot of fans of services like Disqus because of all the other features they have. So it’s a trade-off. We made our choice, you have to make yours. Good luck!”
Ask YoastIn the series Ask Yoast, we answer SEO questions from our readers. Have an SEO-related question? Maybe we can 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.
http://ift.tt/2G6NF6WThursday, March 22, 2018
Peace Out To You, Sugar Rae!
When I got into this biz in the previous decade, there weren’t as many of you goofballs out there sharing all of your amazing SEO insights as there are now. As an SEO newbie, I was always on the prowl for the voices of SEO pros who didn’t sound like they were full of shit and who weren’t pushing their “sign up for my ten-step course” squeeze pages and e-books. Mostly I was looking for people who seemed interesting.
I don’t recall how I stumbled upon her – though it was likely via StumbleUpon – but the minute I saw her voice online, SugarRae had me hooked. Rae could have been a nun for all I knew, but the way she presented herself online, she was a total badass, take-no-prisoners, got-no-time-for-your-SEO-guru-bullshit, brutally honest, and funny as hell marketer. I always got the feeling she was great at what she did. I was psyched to be in the same industry as someone like SugarRae.
And she had the best damn logo:
Today, Rae announced that she is leaving the SEO world to build, AudreyMicah Investments, which I fully expect to quickly become the best real estate investors in Katy, Texas. If you are looking to sell a house in Katy, Texas or buy a house in Katy, Texas you should check out her new sites. I certainly hope we don’t pick up any clients who are competing in her markets…
Rae and I only met once or twice in person over the years at conferences, but we had our moments on Twitter:
— Andrew Shotland (@localseoguide) February 28, 2018
Truth.
— Rae Dolan (@sugarrae) February 28, 2018
Peace out to you, SugarRae!
http://ift.tt/2FWjR11International SEO: Things You Need to Know
One of the best aspects of doing SEO is that it is able to take your brand to not only a local audience, but also to an international one as well. Along with working with some of the most well-known and established clients in the Philippines, but also clients from different parts of the world.
SEO has helped branch people of different cultures and backgrounds together, with the goal of doing good business that would benefit both parties. This kind of business just shows how big SEO can be in the near future. When it comes to doing business with international clients, there are some aspects of SEO that you would have to do differently compared to doing local SEO. Here are the things that you need to know if you are thinking of doing international SEO.
Doing your homeworkOne of the first things that you need to do when starting with international SEO is to do some research on your client beforehand. You can take a look at their website and run a website audit and review by using tools like Woorank and Google Lighthouse, which would give you a general idea of how well your client’s website is performing.
The next step is to do some keyword research to look into possible keywords that can bring in traffic to their website. Keep in mind that the language of these keywords will tend to be foreign, so it is best to study up on their language to make sure that you’re getting them right. A look into Google Trends can help you track some of the most popular keyword in the area as well.
One international SEO fundamental that you must do is to acquire a domain from country that your client is from, or planning to do business on. International domains will allow their website to be able to become more visible in their country’s search engines. Of course, another issue here would be domain availability, as there might be a chance that your domain might be taken by another website in that country.
Thankfully, you can use Woorank to look for the available ccTLD’s (Country Code Top Level Domain) which you can register. While using subdomains and subdirectories might be easier to maintain compared to using ccTLD’s, but will not give you the same amount of reach on search engines.
Foreign expansion?When doing international SEO, it can mean different things for your client. Is your client planning to do business in a different country? Or is your client looking to target an audience that speaks a different language? Knowing the answer to these questions would help you know where to go and what to do. There are a lot of business and e-commerce websites that prefer to create translated version within their website, since their brand is already established and well-known in a lot of areas.
This factor is highly dependent on the size of your client, and the scope that they want to cover. Whichever method you decide to choose, this is a process that would help their brand gain more traction in the international market, and gain a bigger presence in the web.
Doing more homeworkOther than researching about the most popular keywords, and doing a website audit, it is also best to do research about the countries themselves to get a grasp on the culture and language. This research can involve famous personalities, notable locations, cultural norms, local music and art, famous cuisine, and much more. You can delve into hours’ worth of content just by studying their culture alone, but this would definitely make your international SEO effort that much stronger.
This kind of research would prove valuable to the content that you are going to create as well. This means tailor-made content and designs that cater to your audience. You can create blogs about popular events in the country, or even create promotional content that features the most famous sights.
This rings true for the website design as well, as using certain colors and imagery would help attract more people from the targeted country. Having a culturally-sensitive touch ensures that you are able to grab the attention of the intended audience, and gain more traffic and leads.
HreflangThe tag that is most associated is the hreflang tag. The hreflang tag helps users indicate that certain website has a foreign language version. A hreflang tag looks like this: rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”. The x refers to the language of the website. The language codes vary, and it is best to identify all of the ones that are contained within the website.
This is for websites that have translated copies, and is important, as it helps your audience get to the version of the website with their language. This helps boost your conversion rate, and makes the user experience that much better.
Geo-targetingJust like local SEO, regional and geographical targeting is very important for international SEO. Optimizing your keywords with locations, along with creating a local SEO presence would help establish a business in that particular area. For example, a simple keyword + location combination like “Jollibee Milan” would instantly bring you results from the country itself. Using the right locations (which you would know from your research) makes it much more convenient for your users.
As usual, the country and the nature of business matters a lot, as this would indicate whether or not you would be targeting a language, location, or even both. Knowing these factors, you would be able to establish a local presence within the country, which brings in leads.
Key TakeawayInternational SEO is a similar SEO ball game with new rules that you should keep in mind. With factors like language, new locations, and culture coming into play, international SEO is an even more colorful world of SEO that opens up more possibilities and bridge diverse cultures.
If you have questions about International SEO, or SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.
http://ift.tt/2IJYwp5Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Optimizing a single page: One page website SEO
One page websites have been popular for some time now. Basically, it’s your entire website on your homepage. It’s fancy, it’s streamlined. By dividing your homepage into multiple sections, and adding a menu that allows visitors to jump to the section they want to visit, you create an entire website experience on that one single page. Having just one single page also means that you probably need to rank that page for multiple keywords. And that’s where one page website SEO differs from regular website SEO: there are just fewer things you can optimize.
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Info Why use a one page website?
Truth be told: I don’t like one page websites. There are a lot of people that like all their content crammed into one page, but I just can’t see the benefit of it. The page loads slower, there is less focus, I detest loading the JavaScript/CSS scripts that make unnecessary visual movements or automatic scrolling possible. Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing against having long pages. I love ’em and write ’em. But I’d like to keep these pages focused on one subject.
One page website SEO tips and tricksIs there anything you can do to optimize your one page website for SEO? Of course, there is. There always is. I’m just not sure you’ll enjoy that single page website for your company in the long run. One page website SEO is tough. I think the only reason you’d want a website like that, is when you need to set up a quick promotional site. Say for a particular product or a temporary collaboration with another brand. In that case, you’ll be driving traffic from flyers, TV ads and the works, and are less dependent on search engines.
If you insist on using a single page website, you need to pay attention to the way you set things up.
Optimize per sectionBefore starting to write your content, you need to do some keyword mapping. As you have only one page to tell your story, group related content. Create a <div> or <section> for each keyword and assign a proper ID to it. If a section is about trimming hairy dogs, use trim-hairy-dogs as the ID, as this will be like the slug of that particular section. Your internal links on that page will link to example.com/#trim-hairy-dogs. Choose that slug wisely.
That section needs content and a heading and as we think of all these sections as “pages”, you should add an <h1> tag to these sections. That indeed means multiple H1s per page, but hey, you wanted an unfocused website.
If you use images, optimize image file names and ALT tags per section as well.
Optimize page speedThis one is vital for your one page website SEO: optimize page speed. It’s even more critical if you have a page like that since you are serving all kinds of different sections with possibly all types of different layouts and design elements, so your page doesn’t look like a Word document, right? Most of these elements simply take time to load, and you want to optimize that. Here are some articles that will help you optimize speed.
You are probably still not convinced that you’d better create multiple pages on your website. But you will understand single page website SEO is pretty hard and limited. You have one page in search result pages, one canonical link, one page that needs to rank for everything you want to rank for. Fresh content, dynamic content, is always a good idea and it is possible on a one page website. Rewrite your sections now and then to align them with current events, for instance. If your website is set up once, and never changes, you have this one static page that needs to do all the work. Changing its content from time to time will certainly help.
One more thing: AnalyticsIt is possible to track internal links on that page: track per section. But that’s fairly hard for the average Google Analytics user. And Google would rather track per page as well, judging from this article. This is yet another reason why I don’t like one page website SEO. It’s harder to implement SEO recommendations and harder to analyze your efforts.
Come to think of it; it’s probably your PR agency or sales department that likes that one page website so much. So please, please reconsider setting up a page like this. It’ll make your SEO so much easier.
http://ift.tt/2IIwdr9As Facebook’s algorithm changes SEO becomes crucial
If you promote your website on Facebook, perhaps you’ve noticed some changes in the last few weeks. Or maybe you read about it online. Facebook changed its algorithm; messages of businesses and news outlets will become less important. In this post, I want to explain the consequences of the changes in Facebook’s algorithm. On top of that, I want to propose some strategies to cope with these changes and perhaps a sudden drop in traffic. My favorite strategy? Invest heavily in SEO.
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Info The Facebook algorithm changed? Why?
Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes on January 11th of this year. He writes:
“Recently we’ve gotten feedback from our community that public content — posts from businesses, brands and media — is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other.”
Zuckerberg states that Facebook users want to see the content of their friends and families in their news feeds, rather than that of news outlets and the content of brands.
It’s one of the reasons why Facebook is rolling out a big update in which the posts of friends, family and groups become more important and the content of businesses, brands and media will become less important. That would imply that brands, businesses and media will have a harder time reaching their followers. Their posts will have fewer views and less reach.
What do we notice so far?It’s hard to say precisely to what extent a drop in organic reach for brands and businesses already took place. It seems like a drop in referrals to media-sites did happen. Media sites seem to get more traffic from Google now than from Facebook.
Blog posts from social media experts (e.g., AgoraPulse; Hootsuite) give the impression that a drop in organic Facebook reach is or will also be happening for brands and businesses. That could well be the case. Reading the announcement of Zuckerberg would imply that especially those brands and companies that have little interaction with their audience will be shown less in the news feeds of their followers.
To make matters more complicated, Facebook also changed the way they measure and report organic reach in the newsfeed. That makes it extra hard to assess whether or not the organic reach of your page has changed.
Read on: ‘How to optimize your Facebook reach’ »
What’s next?For some websites, this could be a big deal. If you get a lot of traffic from Facebook, this algorithm change could decrease the amount of traffic you’ll be able to attract to your website.
But, to reassure you all: don’t panic. Your business is not the only one that’ll encounter this change. We all have to deal with it.
Some coping strategiesInvesting in high-quality and engaging content on Facebook is a good strategy. If your followers reply to your posts and tag their friends, Facebook will probably show your post to many more people. And of course, you can always advertise on Facebook. Advertising on Facebook isn’t that expensive and will allow you to reach your audience, even if your content is not that engaging.
Invest heavily in SEOIn my opinion, the best response to a possible change in the Facebook algorithm is to invest in the SEO of your website. If Facebook is no longer the most important source of traffic to your website, other sources will become (relatively) more important. If people do not see the posts of your business or brand in their news feed, they’ll probably start searching for your products somewhere else. And Google (or another search engine) is the number one candidate for where people will search.
Let me explain how this works by introducing Jane:
Jane is a child psychologist. Her clients come from her local community. She has an active Facebook page. She posts little stories about her clients every day. This Facebook page brought her new clients. People started following Jane; they liked her posts, her tips, and her stories. When their children needed counseling, Jane was the first one to pop into their heads. Her Facebook posts made sure that Jane’s practice was top of mind.
The change in Facebook’s algorithm changes a lot in the way Jane got her clientele. Perhaps her Facebook posts will be shown less to her audience. People are still in need of a child psychologist, though. But if they do not find one in their news feed, what will they do?
When in need of a child psychologist, people start to search for one elsewhere. They could turn to Google and search for ‘Child Psychologist.’ Jane, therefore, needs a kick-ass website with a proper SEO strategy to outrank her competitors.
If businesses and brands get less attention in the news feeds of their users, traffic from Facebook to their websites will decrease, just as it did with the news. Google could become (relatively) more important.
ConclusionI think it’s a bit too early to understand the changes in the Facebook algorithm fully. We’ll need some time to do some proper testing and research. I do think businesses and brands will get less attention in the news feeds. I just don’t know how significant the changes will be. It’s frustrating too. The only thing you CAN do is to make sure your website is awesome. Invest time in writing excellent content and create things people want to come to your website for. While doing that, don’t forget to make sure people can find you in the search engines. Time to set up that impressive new SEO strategy!
http://ift.tt/2FPP2LfInternational sites: the best domain structure for SEO
Making your website rank high can be a challenge. Making your international sites rank high can be an even bigger challenge. There are just a lot more things you have to do for multilingual SEO: create content for different markets, set up sites for those markets and implement hreflang, just to name a few. Plus there are additional choices you have to make. Like this one: on which domains will you publish your internationalized content? Here we’ll list the most common options you have, and we’ll help you decide on the best option for your situation.
Optimizing your site for multiple languages? You need our Multilingual SEO training! »
Info ccTLD, subdomain or subdirectory?
Let’s say you own a site for your business in the US: myepicbusiness.com. You’re expanding to Australia and want to create multiregional websites. In general, you’d say, there are 3 options for your internationalized content to reside:
- on a country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD): myepicbusiness.au
- on a subdomain: au.myepicbusiness.com
- on a subdirectory: myepicbusiness.com/au
All options have pros and cons, and it all depends on your business which one will suit you best.
ccTLDDo you have a large multinational business with lots of resources? Then, a country code domain, like epicbusiness.au is a good option for a multiregional site. It’s the most effective way of telling Google and your audience which country your targeting.
However, it also means you have to acquire the domain and have to build up domain authority from scratch. Domain authority means that Google knows your domain epicbusiness.com and sees it as a trustworthy source. A ccTLD, like .au, will not profit from the domain authority of your .com domain.
Before you choose a ccTLD you should always properly investigate if it’s worth investing a lot in that market. You should only decide to go for the ccTLD if there are enough opportunities for growth in that country and if you have enough resources to exploit them. In general we’d say: if your .com domain ranks high and your marketing budget is limited, choosing one of the others probably is the better choice.
Subdomain or subdirectoryIf the ccTLD isn’t the right choice for your business, you’ll have to choose between a subdomain or subdirectory. In that case, what would be the best choice: myepicbusiness.com/au or au.myepicbusiness.com?
Even though you might suspect differently, Google will not see a subdomain as the exact same domain. It’s not exactly clear how Google sees it, but it’s clear the domain authority of myepicbusiness.com won’t completely flow to a subdomain, like au.myepicbusiness.com. This means you can’t take full advantage of the domain authority you’ve built up for your .com domain. So in this case we’d advise to pick a subdirectory, like: myepicbusiness.com/au.
Countries with multiple languagesThere are countries that have two – or more – official languages. If you want to target audiences speaking multiple languages you’ll have to create multilingual sites. This will force you to make even more choices for your domain structure. In Canada, for instance, there’s a French speaking part and English speaking part. What if you want to show the French and English speaking part of Canada a different website?
ccTLDLet’s say you’ve got a major business and plenty of resources, so you’ve selected the ccTLD. This means that for Canada you’ve chosen myepicbusiness.ca. In that case you can easily add two language variations as a subdirectory to your site:
- myepicbusiness.ca/en
- myepicbusiness.ca/fr
If you’ve chosen to place your Canadian content on subdirectories, you could best create the URLs below. Do remember to refer to the language first and then to the country:
- myepicbusiness.com/en-ca
- myepicbusiness.com/fr-ca
If you want to dive deeper into this matter, we’d advise you to take our Multilingual SEO training. In this course we explain in more detail which pros and cons there are, how you can do your geotargeting well, how to easily create awesome copy in different languages and other important stuff for international SEO, like implementing hreflang. Check it out now!
Multiple countries with the same languageBut what about using one website in the same language for multiple countries? Can’t you just use the same English website for, for instance, Australia and the UK?
Country websites or language websites?If possible, we’d recommend creating different sites for different countries, even if people are speaking the same language. Although it might require more resources, it will be easier to target that specific market with the right content. Things that can differ from country to country are the local vocabulary, contact information, product availability and the currency. If you don’t create different content for the countries you’re targeting, users might get confused about what service and products you deliver in their country.
So this means that, in case of the example above, you’d choose myepicbusinness.com/uk and myepicbusiness.com/au Or, if you have enough marketing capabilities, you could use myepicbusiness.uk and myepicbusiness.au.
Don’t forget hreflang!If you’re targeting multiple countries with websites containing content in the same language you should never forget to implement hreflang! With hreflang you’ll tell Google which of your websites should rank in which country and for which language. On top of that, it will prevent duplicate content issues, which is almost inevitable if you target countries with the same language.
Optimizing your site for multiple languages? You need our Multilingual SEO training! »
Info TL;DR
Choosing domains for internationalized content on your site can be a challenge. If you have a large marketing budget you should choose ccTLDs for every country your target and build strong domains for each country. If you’re not capable of doing that, you should choose subdirectories. In case you target countries with multiple languages, you can create subdirectories for each language in a country. In general, always choose country sites instead of language sites to target your audience with the right content and to prevent confusion. And, don’t forget to implement hreflang!
Read more: ‘How to create SEO friendly copy in a foreign language’ »
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