Tuesday, July 31, 2018

SEO for boring products

By SEO for boring products, we mean SEO for products that are impossible to write exciting content for. Products that need a thousand words to describe all tiny details and small print, but are, in the end, just car insurances, paper clips or emergency exit signs. We have all had or have been that customer that just could not come up with the right, engaging content. Sometimes it’s just hard to write something that makes sense about a product, from your own perspective. In this article, we’ll explain how to approach SEO for boring products!

Want to learn practical SEO skills to rank higher in Google? Our Basic SEO training is just what you need! »

Basic SEO training Info First: get the basics right

Regardless of what product you’re selling, you always need to make sure that the basics of SEO for your site are right. That means that you’ll have to put some decent effort into:

  • keyword research
  • site structure
  • technical SEO

You’re in luck. At Yoast, we offer SEO courses for every one of those aspects. Or you could start out with our Basic SEO training and take it from there. And if you are using WordPress, install our Yoast SEO plugin and we’ll cover a lot of these basics for you. So far for commercial messages.

Are your products boring, to begin with?

Sometimes we feel like a product is boring, but in the end, it really isn’t.  We’re not selling insurance; we’re selling safety. You’re not selling paper clips; you’re cleaning up or organizing a messy office desk. A hammer isn’t used to drive in a nail; we’re using it to hang a painting.

If you look closely at the goal of your product for the end user, you might find that, even though your technical specs might be boring, there is still an engaging story to tell. SEO for boring products could be less about the product itself, focusing instead on the purpose of the product. That’s just the first step. Don’t be modest about your products, but look at them from your customer’s angle.

The product category, not the product

Even with the purpose of your product in mind, we understand that it’s incredibly hard to write engaging content for every one of your 1,500 types of screws. Yes, some may have other uses than others, but in the end, a screw is a screw. When it’s hard to optimize every single product page (I’m not saying it’s impossible), you could take a closer look at your category page instead. The same rules apply: look at your product category’s purpose, not at the actual products. We’re knitting a scarf, not selling threads of wool here.

Content ideas for boring content

Content used for SEO for boring products could be just informative. But it should also be content that people want to link to and share on social media. So, perhaps you could also think along the lines of more entertaining content, like a funny product video. We see a lot of these nowadays, right? Besides that, keep in mind that your product page isn’t the only place on your website that’s suitable to inform people about your product. You could have general pages about your company that are suitable for product promotion. And what about your blog? Your blog is an excellent spot to talk more in-depth about your products, like we do on our blog about our courses and plugins. A blog is obviously awesome to help with SEO for boring products.

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

SEO copywriting training Info Here are some content ideas

The input for these pages can be found everywhere. And can be quite diverse.

  • Check social media for ideas – what is the competition doing? You are not the only one in your niche or industry, so you’ll probably get some good ideas on what to do and what not to do. See what the competition is doing, see if something similar fits your brand and create your own stories, blog posts, product pages based on that. Learn, but don’t imitate. Improve what your competitor is doing.
  • Talk to your users and get their stories, so people can relate to that. Recognition is always a trigger for me. If I can relate to a story about a product – not necessarily because the product appeals to me, but the person telling the story is someone that I can relate to- the product already becomes more appealing. Think similar social groups, age categories, etcetera. Talk to your users, tell their story about your product. What have they gained by it, what did it bring them? How did their lives become better after purchasing your product or reading your website?
  • Write an extensive how-to or manual – people are always looking for how-tos, right? If you are selling travel insurances, your visitor wants to know what they have to do when they actually need that insurance. Will it be hard to reach you and talk to you? I can imagine a lot of them want to know how to do that upfront. And why not go overboard: how to make an elephant out of a paper clip. I’m sure it can be done. But that’s a whole different angle.
  • Add videos. Perhaps even more than written howtos, people watch videos. When I’m looking for a product that will set me back a certain amount of money, usually certain gadgets and other stuff I think I really need, I watch unboxing videos, people using the product and preferably live reviews. I want to see other people sharing their stories, so feel free to create that video after talking to your users as mentioned before!
  • Create a user story and start storytelling. Storytelling is hot, you see it more and more. ‘Create’ users and share their experiences online. Social media is excellent for this, but your blog also provides a solid base for storytelling. We mentioned before in an article about testimonials that “stories have a positive influence on a customer’s perception of a brand, as well as the willingness to purchase. Stories can affect behavior, given that the story resonates with your visitor.” And you can craft that story to your own needs, as long as you keep it natural. Create a story people can relate to.
  • Top 10 tips and other awesome ideas with your product. I just wanted to mention this separately. The paper clip elephant could easily grow into a top 10 paper clip animals – great for social sharing. Emergency exit signs are boring, but I’m sure a few of those appear in leading roles in Hollywood blockbusters. On a more serious note, in the case of the insurances, the top 10 tips for travels to <insert country> and that travel checklist are great ideas that will attract visitors. Again, check the competition and learn from them.

SEO for boring products is about making a product less boring by focusing less on the product and more on the visitor/customer and the reason they need your product. These stories, combined with a solid SEO base and an engaging social media strategy will help you a lot.

Good luck optimizing

The last thing that I would like to mention, is that there is a real opportunity here. If you manage to make your SEO for boring products work, if you manage to create engaging content for products that you thought were dull and uninteresting, this is going to give you an edge on your competitors. You are not alone in finding it hard to come up with that content. All your competitors are probably struggling as well. Get creative! Good luck optimizing.

Read more: Product page SEO »

https://ift.tt/2NWpQm4

How Visual Search Impacts the Future of SEO

How Visual Search Impacts the Future of SEO

Search in 2018 has become much more diverse than it was a few years ago, with new features such as voice search adding an entirely new dimension to how people explore search engines for answers to their queries. With AI Assistants like Google Assistant becoming more commonplace, search can now be conducted even without having to type a single letter.

Along with voice search, another new method on conducting a search is now being used as well in the form of visual search. If voice search is done through the human voice, visual search is done by simply opening your camera and taking a picture. This new way of conducting search through images might be a relatively new technology, but it has seen a good amount of development, with various apps and services testing the technology out. With this in mind, this is another new feature that aims to impact SEO in the future, and here’s what you need to know so far.

How Visual Search Works

Like voice search and standard search, visual search begins through input, and for this case, taking a picture and cropping it. While some people may compare visual search to Google’s image search feature and find some similarities, visual search offers much more. One of the most prominent apps that utilize visual search is Pinterest and Google, the latter of which offers Google Lens and Google Goggles. Here’s how some of them work:

Pinterest Visual Search

To start a visual search on Pinterest, tap on the camera icon on the search bar, and take a picture of what you want to have searched.

Pinterest Visual Search Camera

The photo will then be scanned for a couple of seconds to a minute, and then the results related to your image would pop up. Along with related images, you also get related tags, which allow you to view more options.

Pinterest Visual Search Results

Pinterest has one of the largest image libraries on the internet, and being able to tap into that database using visual search helps users find more useful images in the platform.

Google Googles

For Google Goggles, starting a visual search is similar, as the app is ready to capture images as soon as you turn it on. Along with taking photos, you can also pick images from your image gallery and have those scanned as well.

Google Googles Results

The process takes a couple of seconds depending on the image. Once scanning has been finished, you would be able to see a couple of results. Since the picture I took contains a logo of a popular brand, I am able to access search results related to the logo itself. Google Goggles also scans lettering on images as well, which allows you to translate various words and phrases into different languages.

While the technology is still relatively new and not many apps support it, visual search is something that works, and also something that users would use regularly in the near future the same way as voice search has become a regular fixture in a lot of places.

The Potential Impact of Visual Search

With the rise in popularity and use of voice search across the world, it would not be surprising to expect visual search to become widely popular as well. While voice search is useful in a way that it enables users to search without having to type anything, visual search helps users instantly identify various locations, items, and terms at a moment’s notice.

Back then, if a person wants to know more about a certain landmark or item, that person must search through a search engine. However, the problem would be that the person knows how the item or landmark looks like but does not know the name. This leads to various search queries that aim to describe what it looks like and leads to inconclusive results.

With visual search, these problems would now be solved, as taking a picture and running it through an app will instantly provide you with the best answers. While the technology still needs a few more improvements, visual search is readily available and can impact how we do search.

When it comes to businesses, visual search can play a huge role in driving sales and creating successful digital marketing campaigns. Imagine this scenario: A friend offered me a new drink that I immediately liked. Wanting to know more about that drink, I take a picture, and see the product itself, and where I could buy it. This could be done to a whole range of products as well, from clothing, furniture, toys, and even property.

E-commerce has become increasingly popular as of late, with more and more users enjoying the benefit of being able to shop items on the go. Adding visual search in the mix would help add another degree of interactivity and accessibility to the users and help drive traffic into websites.

Digital marketing campaigns will be able to benefit greatly from visual search, with brands being able to craft their campaigns around the use of visual search, which introduces people to new products or services in an interactive way. With features such as augmented reality also being utilized, the potential for these campaigns to go viral is also immense, as it would generate more buzz that leads to more conversions in the end.

Key Takeaway

Visual search may still be a very young technology, but it is definitely something to look out for, as it has the potential to positively impact the SEO landscape. With more apps and services making use of this handy feature, it would not be surprising to see it rise and become another integral part of search.

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

https://ift.tt/2AqyqaR

Monday, July 30, 2018

Paid Search Targeting Brand Keywords = SEO Death

For fans of the long-running SEO Death series, this isn’t really a new issue. About two years ago I posited Is Your Adwords Campaign Hijacking Your SEO Traffic?

The answer of course was “yes.” Here’s the graph that illustrated the problem:

Natural v Paid Search Clusterfuck

I am re-upping this because we just got a new client that hired us because their organic traffic had started tanking, but when you looked at the data in Google Search Console, it only showed brand queries were tanking. And said tanking started pretty much when the paid traffic started increasing.

We did some back of the envelope calculations on SEMRush CPC data available for their brand queries and we calculated this client is spending an additional $20,000/day to buy $50,000 in revenue*. This isn’t such a bad deal until one considers that until the increase in paid search traffic, the client was spending ~$0 to achieve that revenue. So their margins just took a 40% haircut.

So, next time your organic traffic tanks, before you panic try this:

  1.  Look at the Performance report in Google Search Console for your site (for all variants)
  2. Filter the report by “Queries containing” a proxy for a brand query. It may not always be easy to do when you have a generic brand name, but try different phrases to see what captures the most traffic that is properly bucketed
  3. If you see the traffic for queries containing your brand term going down while traffic for queries not containing your brand term is flat or going up, move on to step #4
  4. Look over at the paid search team. If they are high-fiving each other, we have a winner…

*Data has been changed to protect the innocent

https://ift.tt/2KfGlHG

Quality Scores for Queries: Structured Data, Synthetic Queries and Augmentation Queries

augmentation queries flowchart

Augmentation Queries

In general, the subject matter of this specification relates to identifying or generating augmentation queries, storing the augmentation queries, and identifying stored augmentation queries for use in augmenting user searches. An augmentation query can be a query that performs well in locating desirable documents identified in the search results. The performance of the query can be determined by user interactions. For example, if many users that enter the same query often select one or more of the search results relevant to the query, that query may be designated an augmentation query.

In addition to actual queries submitted by users, augmentation queries can also include synthetic queries that are machine generated. For example, an augmentation query can be identified by mining a corpus of documents and identifying search terms for which popular documents are relevant. These popular documents can, for example, include documents that are often selected when presented as search results. Yet another way of identifying an augmentation query is mining structured data, e.g., business telephone listings, and identifying queries that include terms of the structured data, e.g., business names.

These augmentation queries can be stored in an augmentation query data store. When a user submits a search query to a search engine, the terms of the submitted query can be evaluated and matched to terms of the stored augmentation queries to select one or more similar augmentation queries. The selected augmentation queries, in turn, can be used by the search engine to augment the search operation, thereby obtaining better search results. For example, search results obtained by a similar augmentation query can be presented to the user along with the search results obtained by the user query.

This past March, Google was granted a patent that involves giving quality scores to queries (the quote above is from that patent). The patent refers to high scoring queries as augmentation queries. Interesting to see that searcher selection is one way that might be used to determine the quality of queries. So, when someone searches. Google may compare the SERPs they receive from the original query to augmentation query results based upon previous searches using the same query terms or synthetic queries. This evaluation against augmentation queries is based upon which search results have received more clicks in the past. Google may decide to add results from an augmentation query to the results for the query searched for to improve the overall search results.

How does Google find augmentation queries? One place to look for those is in query logs and click logs. As the patent tells us:

To obtain augmentation queries, the augmentation query subsystem can examine performance data indicative of user interactions to identify queries that perform well in locating desirable search results. For example, augmentation queries can be identified by mining query logs and click logs. Using the query logs, for example, the augmentation query subsystem can identify common user queries. The click logs can be used to identify which user queries perform best, as indicated by the number of clicks associated with each query. The augmentation query subsystem stores the augmentation queries mined from the query logs and/or the click logs in the augmentation query store.

This doesn’t mean that Google is using clicks to directly determine rankings But it is deciding which augmentation queries might be worth using to provide SERPs that people may be satisfied with.

There are other things that Google may look at to decide which augmentation queries to use in a set of search results. The patent points out some other factors that may be helpful:

In some implementations, a synonym score, an edit distance score, and/or a transformation cost score can be applied to each candidate augmentation query. Similarity scores can also be determined based on the similarity of search results of the candidate augmentation queries to the search query. In other implementations, the synonym scores, edit distance scores, and other types of similarity scores can be applied on a term by term basis for terms in search queries that are being compared. These scores can then be used to compute an overall similarity score between two queries. For example, the scores can be averaged; the scores can be added; or the scores can be weighted according to the word structure (nouns weighted more than adjectives, for example) and averaged. The candidate augmentation queries can then be ranked based upon relative similarity scores.

I’ve seen white papers from Google before mentioning synthetic queries, which are queries performed by the search engine instead of human searchers. It makes sense for Google to be exploring query spaces in a manner like this, to see what results are like, and using information such as structured data as a source of those synthetic queries. I’ve written about synthetic queries before at least a couple of times, and in the post Does Google Search Google? How Google May Create and Use Synthetic Queries.

Implicit Signals of Query Quality

It is an interesting patent in that it talks about things such as long clicks and short clicks, and ranking web pages on the basis of such things. The patent refers to such things as “implicit Signals of query quality.” More about that in the patent here:

In some implementations, implicit signals of query quality are used to determine if a query can be used as an augmentation query. An implicit signal is a signal based on user actions in response to the query. Example implicit signals can include click-through rates (CTR) related to different user queries, long click metrics, and/or click-through reversions, as recorded within the click logs. A click-through for a query can occur, for example, when a user of a user device, selects or “clicks” on a search result returned by a search engine. The CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users that clicked on a search result by the number of times the query was submitted. For example, if a query is input 100 times, and 80 persons click on a search result, then the CTR for that query is 80%.

A long click occurs when a user, after clicking on a search result, dwells on the landing page (i.e., the document to which the search result links) of the search result or clicks on additional links that are present on the landing page. A long click can be interpreted as a signal that the query identified information that the user deemed to be interesting, as the user either spent a certain amount of time on the landing page or found additional items of interest on the landing page.

A click-through reversion (also known as a “short click”) occurs when a user, after clicking on a search result and being provided the referenced document, quickly returns to the search results page from the referenced document. A click-through reversion can be interpreted as a signal that the query did not identify information that the user deemed to be interesting, as the user quickly returned to the search results page.

These example implicit signals can be aggregated for each query, such as by collecting statistics for multiple instances of use of the query in search operations, and can further be used to compute an overall performance score. For example, a query having a high CTR, many long clicks, and few click-through reversions would likely have a high-performance score; conversely, a query having a low CTR, few long clicks, and many click-through reversions would likely have a low-performance score.

The reasons for the process behind the patent are explained in the description section of the patent where we are told:

Often users provide queries that cause a search engine to return results that are not of interest to the users or do not fully satisfy the users’ need for information. Search engines may provide such results for a number of reasons, such as the query including terms having term weights that do not reflect the users’ interest (e.g., in the case when a word in a query that is deemed most important by the users is attributed less weight by the search engine than other words in the query); the queries being a poor expression of the information needed; or the queries including misspelled words or unconventional terminology.

A quality signal for a query term can be defined in this way:

the quality signal being indicative of the performance of the first query in identifying information of interest to users for one or more instances of a first search operation in a search engine; determining whether the quality signal indicates that the first query exceeds a performance threshold; and storing the first query in an augmentation query data store if the quality signal indicates that the first query exceeds the performance threshold.

The patent can be found at:

Query augmentation
Inventors: Anand Shukla, Mark Pearson, Krishna Bharat and Stefan Buettcher
Assignee: Google LLC
US Patent: 9,916,366
Granted: March 13, 2018
Filed: July 28, 2015

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for generating or using augmentation queries. In one aspect, a first query stored in a query log is identified and a quality signal related to the performance of the first query is compared to a performance threshold. The first query is stored in an augmentation query data store if the quality signal indicates that the first query exceeds a performance threshold.

References Cited about Augmentation Queries

These were a number of references cited by the applicants of the patent, which looked interesting, so I looked them up to see if I could find them to read them and share them here.

  1. Boyan, J. et al., A Machine Learning Architecture for Optimizing Web Search Engines,” School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, May 10, 1996, pp. 1-8. cited by applicant.
  2. Brin, S. et al., “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine“, Computer Science Department, 1998. cited by applicant.
  3. Sahami, M. et al., T. D. 2006. A web-based kernel function for measuring the similarity of short text snippets. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on World Wide Web (Edinburgh, Scotland, May 23-26, 2006). WWW ’06. ACM Press, New York, NY, pp. 377-386. cited by applicant.
  4. Ricardo A. Baeza-Yates et al., The Intention Behind Web Queries. SPIRE, 2006, pp. 98-109, 2006. cited by applicant.
  5. Smith et al. Leveraging the structure of the Semantic Web to enhance information retrieval for proteomics” vol. 23, Oct. 7, 2007, 7 pages. cited by applicant.
  6. Robertson, S.E. Documentation Note on Term Selection for Query Expansion J. of Documentation, 46(4): Dec. 1990, pp. 359-364. cited by applicant.
  7. Talel Abdessalem, Bogdan Cautis, and Nora Derouiche. 2010. ObjectRunner: lightweight, targeted extraction and querying of structured web data. Proc. VLDB Endow. 3, 1-2 (Sep. 2010). cited by applicant .
  8. Jane Yung-jen Hsu and Wen-tau Yih. 1997. Template-based information mining from HTML documents. In Proceedings of the fourteenth national conference on artificial intelligence and ninth conference on Innovative application of artificial intelligence (AAAI’97/IAAI’97). AAAI Press, pp. 256-262. cited by applicant .
  9. Ganesh, Agarwal, Govind Kabra, and Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang. 2010. Towards rich query interpretation: walking back and forth for mining query templates. In Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web (WWW ’10). ACM, New York, NY USA, 1-10. DOI=10. 1145/1772690. 1772692 https://ift.tt/2K8Uzdi. cited by applicant.
This is a Second Look at Augmentation Queries

This is a continuation patent, which means that it was granted before, with the same description, and it now has new claims. When that happens, it can be worth looking at the old claims and the new claims to see how they have changed. I like that the new version seems to focus more strongly upon structured data. It tells us that it might use structured data in sites that appear for queries as synthetic queries, and if those meet the performance threshold, they may be added to the search results that appear for the original queries. The claims do seem to focus a little more on structured data as synthetic queries, but it doesn’t really change the claims that much. They haven’t changed enough to publish them side by side and compare them.

What Google Has Said about Structured Data and Rankings

Google spokespeople had been telling us that Structured Data doesn’t impact rankings directly, but what they have been saying does seem to have changed somewhat recently. In the Search Engine Roundtable post, Google: Structured Data Doesn’t Give You A Ranking Boost But Can Help Rankings we are told that just having structured data on a site doesn’t automatically boost the rankings of a page, but if the structured data for a page is used as a synthetic query, and it meets the performance threshold as an augmentation query, it might be shown in rankings, thus helping in rankings (as this patent tells us.)

Note that this isn’t new, and the continuation patent’s claims don’t appear to have changed that much so that structured data is still being used as synthetic queries, and is checked to see if they work as augmented queries. This does seem to be a really good reason to make sure you are using the appropriate structured data for your pages.

Copyright © 2018 SEO by the Sea ⚓. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at may be guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact SEO by the Sea, so we can take appropriate action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana https://ift.tt/2v0knDC

Content maintenance for SEO: research, merge & redirect

As your site grows, you’ll have more and more posts. Some of these posts are going to be about a similar topic. Even if you’ve always categorized it well, your content might be competing with itself: you’re suffering from keyword cannibalization. At the same time, some of your articles might get out of date, and not be entirely correct anymore. To prevent all of this, you need to perform content maintenance.

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

SEO copywriting training Info

In a lot of cases, content maintenance is going to mean deleting and merging content. I’m going to run you through some of that maintenance work as we did it at Yoast, to show you how to do this. In particular, I’m going to show you my thinking around a cluster of keywords around keyword research.

Step 1: Audit your content

The first step in my process was finding all the content we had around keyword research. Now, most of that was simple: we have a keyword research tag, and most of the content was nicely tagged. This was also slightly shocking: we had quite a few posts about the topic.

A site:search in Google gave me the missing articles that Google considered to be about keyword research. I simply searched for site:yoast.com "keyword research" and Google gave me all the posts and pages on the site that mentioned the topic.

I had found a total of 18 articles that were either entirely devoted to keyword research or had large sections that mentioned it. Another 20 or so mentioned it in passing and linked to some of the other articles.

The reason I started auditing the content for this particular group of keywords simple: I wanted to improve our rankings around the cluster of keywords around keyword research. So I needed to analyze which of these pages were ranking, and which weren’t. This content maintenance turned out to be badly needed.

Step 2: Analyze the content performance

I went into Google Search Console (the new beta) and went to the Performance section. In that section I clicked the filter bar:

Search Console Performance section

I clicked Query and then typed “keyword research” into the box like this:

performance filter: keyword research queries

This makes Google Search Console match all queries that contain the words keyword and research. This gives you two very important pieces of data:

  1. A list of the keywords your site had been shown in the search results for and the clicks and click-through rate (CTR) for those keywords;
  2. A list of the pages that were receiving all that traffic and how much traffic each of those pages received.

I started by looking at the total number of clicks we had received for all those queries and then looked at the individual pages. Something was immediately clear: three pages were getting 99% of the traffic. But I knew we had 18 articles that covered this topic. Obviously, it was time to clean up. Of course, we didn’t want to throw away any posts that were getting traffic that was not included in this bucket of traffic. So I had to check each post individually.

I removed the Query filter and used another option that’s in there: the Page filter. This allows you to filter by a group of URLs or a specific URL. On larger sites you might be able to filter by groups of URLs, in this case, I looked at the data for each of those posts individually.

Step 3: Decision time

As I went through each post in this content maintenance process, I decided what we were going to do: keep it, or delete it. If I decided we should delete it (which I did for the majority of the posts), I decided to which post we should redirect it. The more basic posts I decided to redirected to our SEO for Beginners post: what is keyword research?.  The posts about keyword research tools were redirected to our article that helps you select (and understand the value of) a keyword research tool. Most of the other ones I decided to redirect to our ultimate guide to keyword research.

For each of those posts, I evaluated whether they had sections that we needed to merge into another article. Some of those posts had paragraphs or even entire sections that could just be merged into another post.

I found one post that, while it didn’t rank for keyword research, still needed to be kept: it talked about long tail keywords specifically. It had such a clear reach for those terms that deleting it would be a waste, so I decided to redirect the other articles about the topic to that specific article.

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Yoast SEO: the #1 WordPress SEO plugin Info Step 4: Take action

Now it was time to take action! I had a list of action items: content to add to specific articles after which each of the articles that piece of content came from could be deleted. Using Yoast SEO Premium, it’s easy to 301 redirect a post or page when you delete it, so that process was fairly painless.

With that, we’d taken care of the 18 specific articles about the topic, and retained only 4. We still had a list of ~20 articles that mentioned the topic and linked to one of the other articles. We went through all of them and made sure each linked to one or more of the 4 remaining articles in the appropriate section.

Content maintenance is hard work

If you’re thinking: “that’s a lot of work”. Yes, it is. And we don’t write about just keyword research, so this is a process we have to do for quite a few terms, multiple times a year. This is a very repeatable content maintenance strategy though:

  1. Audit, so you know which content you have;
  2. Analyze, so you know how the content performs;
  3. Decide which content to keep and what to throw away;
  4. Act.

Now “all” you have to do is go through that process at least once a year for every important cluster of keywords you want your site to rank for.

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

https://ift.tt/2NVuEYE

Sunday, July 29, 2018

SEO Power BI Data Cleaning Checklist for URLs

SEO Power BI Data Cleaning & Preparation Checklist for URLs

Getting into data visualization for finding new opportunities and accelerating analysis? Me too! But there’s a few best practices I’ve learned along the way when connecting datasets by URLs.

When might you want to connect by URL? 

https://ift.tt/2M0eOeT

Friday, July 27, 2018

The Ultimate Guide to Google Cache Text Strings

We have a client site whose SEO often defies description, along with canonicalization.

We often have to check Google’s cache of various URLs to see what in fact Google is getting, but sometimes when you view the Full Version of the cache it just rapidly reloads like a blinking strobe light. Kind of like this:

And there’s no way to get to the Text-Only or View Source versions of the cached URL as the links don’t stay in place long enough for your cursor to recognize the link and make it clickable.

The good news is there’s a simple way to get the desired view of a cached URL in Google – add text strings to the end of the URL in your browser’s address bar. And here they are in their full Instant Answer/Featured Snippet glory:

How To View The Text-Only Version Of A URL In Google’s Cache
  1. Replace the text string at the end of the Full Version of the cache URL with &num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0. For example, here’s the Full Version cache URL for our homepage using a Safari browser with the text string to be replaced bolded:
    https://ift.tt/2LtJZDf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
  2. To see the Text-Only version, replace the bolded string with &num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0, so https://ift.tt/2LtJZDf&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0.
  3. If you want to see what it looks like in different languages, countries or browsers you can add the following parameters to the string:
    &client=safari (or whichever browser you want):
    &hl=en (or whichever language you want)
    &gl=us (or whichever country you want)
    So it would look like https://ift.tt/2JXzQZO&client=safari&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=
  4. You could also just use our free Text-Only Cache bookmarklet for Chrome.
How To View The View Source Version Of A URL In Google’s Cache
  1. Replace the text string at the end of the Full Version of the cache URL (or the Text-Only version URL) with &num=1&strip=0&vwsrc=1. You can also use the same browser, language and country parameters as mentioned above.
  2. If you want to go back to the Full Version, just replace the text string with &num=1&strip=0&vwsrc=0.

And that’s pretty much it for the basics.

https://ift.tt/2K2faQa

Ask Yoast: How to update images without losing rankings?

Updating ‘big’ things on your site can have quite an impact. You may well be facing (slightly) lower rankings or traffic for a while after changing things like your URL structure, or switching to a different TLD, for example. Sometimes, there’s little you can do to avoid that, other than properly implementing the changes and redirecting when necessary.

So, how about when you update and improve images on your site? Especially if some of your images are ranking well, you want to avoid losing those positions when updating images. How do you do that? You’ll find the answer in today’s Ask Yoast!

Bryan Fly sent us his question about updating images:

We want to make some improvements to the images on our site. The last time we did that we lost a lot of image rankings. My question is how do we update our images without losing organic positions on them?

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

Updating images without losing rankings

“Well, Bryan, if you change them on the spot so you keep the same URL and you don’t change anything around them, you really shouldn’t be losing image rankings.

If you change anything around them, then Google has to index all of that and that will take a lot of time. So keep the same URLs, it’s basically the suggestion. Good luck!”

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Yoast SEO: the #1 WordPress SEO plugin Info Ask Yoast

In the series Ask Yoast, we answer SEO questions from our readers. Do you have an SEO-related question? A pressing SEO conundrum you can’t find the answer to? Send an email to ask@yoast.com, and your question may be featured in one of our weekly Ask Yoast vlogs.

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 the Yoast SEO plugin not working properly, we’d like to refer you to our support page.

Read more: Image SEO: Optimizing images for  search engines »

https://ift.tt/2v6XBZO

Thursday, July 26, 2018

How to optimize WordPress after running a page speed test

If you’re serious about your WordPress website, you have run a page speed test at some point. There are many variations of these tests out there. Some more convenient and true to your target audience than others. But they all will give you a pretty decent idea of where you can still improve your site. 

Certain speed optimizations may come across as “technically challenging” for some of you. Luckily, you have set up a WordPress website. And one of the things that make WordPress so awesome is the availability of WordPress plugins. Some free, some paid, but they all will help you to simplify difficult tasks. In this article, we’ll first show you a couple of page speed tests so you can check your page speed yourself. After that, we’ll go into a number of speed optimization recommendations. And show you how to solve these using just plugins.

Running a page speed test

Running a page speed test is as simple as inserting your website’s URL into a form on a website. That website then analyzes your website and comes up with recommendations. I’d like to mention two of those, but there are much more tests available.

  1. Pingdom provides a tool for speed testing. The nice thing is that you can test from different servers. For instance, from a server that is relatively close to you. Especially if you are targeting a local audience, this is a nice way to see how fast your website for them is.
  2. Google Lighthouse is a performance tool that lives in your browser. Click right on a page, choose Inspect and check the Audits tab in the new window that opens in your browser. Here, you can test speed for mobile device or desktop, and on different bandwidths for example. The test result looks like this:
    Google Lighthouse test result
    Small remark: most sites appear slower in Lighthouse. This is because Lighthouse emulates a number of devices, for instance, a slow mobile/3g connection. (see the second bar in the screenshot above). With mobile first, this is actually a good thing, right?

Before Lighthouse, Google PageSpeed Insights already showed us a lot of speed improvements. They even let you download of optimized images, CSS and JS files. As you are working with WordPress, it might be a hard task to replace your files with these optimized ones though. Luckily, WordPress has plugins.

There are many, many more speed testing tools available online. These are just a few that I wanted to mention before going into WordPress solutions that will help you improve speed.

Optimizing your page speed using WordPress plugins

After running a page speed test, I am pretty sure that most website owners feel they should invest some time into optimizing that speed for their website. You will have a dozen recommendations. These recommendations differ from things you can do yourselves and some things that you might need technical help for.

Image optimization

Your speed test might return this recommendation:image optimization for speed
Images usually play a large part in speed optimization, especially if you use large header images. Or if your site is image-heavy overall. It’s always a good idea to optimize these images. And it can be done with little quality loss these days. One of the things to look for is, like in the page speed test example above, images that are in fact larger than they are shown on your screen. If you have an image that covers your entire screen, and squeeze that into a 300 x 200 pixels spot on your website, you might be using an image of several MB’s. Instead, you could also change the dimensions of your image before uploading. And serve the image in the right dimensions and at a file size of some KB’s instead. By reducing the file size, you are speeding up your website.

Setting image dimensions in WordPress

WordPress comes with a handy default feature, where every image you upload is stored in several dimensions:Settings > Media
So if you want all the images in your posts to be the same width, pick one of the predefined ones or set your custom dimensions here. Images that you upload scale accordingly to these dimensions and the image in the original dimensions will also be available for you.

If you load, for instance, the medium size image instead of the much larger original, this will serve an image in a smaller file size, and this will be faster.

Image optimization plugins

There are also a number of image optimization plugins (paid and free) for WordPress available, like Kraken.io, Smush or Imagify. These might, for instance, remove so-called Exif data from the image. That is data that is really interesting for a photographer and will contain information about what settings the camera used to make that photo. Not really something you need for the image in your blog post, unless perhaps if you are in fact a photographer. Depending on your settings, you could also have these plugins replace your image with an image that is slightly lower in quality, for instance.

Some of these aforementioned plugins can also help you resize your images, by the way. Test these plugins for yourself and see which one is most convenient to work with and minifies your image files the best way. For further reading about image optimization, be sure to check this post about image SEO.

Browser cache

Another issue that comes across a lot in page speed tests is browser cache optimization.
Pingdom browser cache recommendation
Browser cache is about storing website files, like JS and CSS, in your local temporary internet files folder, so that they can be retrieved quickly on your next visit. Or, as Mozilla puts it:

The Firefox cache temporarily stores images, scripts, and other parts of websites you visit in order to speed up your browsing experience.

Caching in WP Super Cache

Most speed optimization plugins help you to optimize this caching. Sometimes as simple as this:
WP Super Cache
The Advanced tab of WP Super Cache here has a lot of more in-depth configuration for that, but starting out with the set defaults of a plugin is usually a good start. After that, start tweaking these advanced settings and see what they do.

Note that WP Super Cache has an option to disable cache for what they call “known users”. These are logged in users (and commenters), which allows for development (or commenting) without caching. That means for every refresh of the website in the browser window, you will get the latest state of that website instead of a cached version. That last one might be older because of that expiration time. If you set that expiration time to say 3600 seconds, a browser will only check for changes of the cached website after an hour. You see how that can be annoying if you want to see, for instance, design changes right away while developing.

Other WordPress caching plugins

I mention WP Super Cache here because it’s free and easy to use for most users. But there are alternatives. WP Fastest Cache is popular as well, with over 600K+ active installs. It has similar features to optimize caching:
WP Fastest Cache
A paid plugin that I also like is WP Rocket. It’s so easy to configure, that you’ll wonder if you have done things right. But your page speed test will tell you that it works pretty much immediately straight out-of-the-box. Let me explain something about compression and show you WP Rockets settings for that.

Compression

Regardless of whether your page speed test tool tells you to:

  • Try to minify your CSS files,
  • minify the JS files of your site,
  • minify your HTML files or
  • enable (GZIP) compression

These recommendations are all compression related. It’s about making your files as small as possible before sending them to a browser. It’s like reducing the file size of your images, but for JavaScript or CSS files, or for instance your HTML file itself. GZIP compression is about sending a zipped file to your browser, that your browser can unzip and read. Recommendations may look like this:
Minify recommendation Lightspeed
In WP Rocket, the settings for compression look like this:
WP Rocket - Compression
Again, a lot is set to the right settings by default, as we do in Yoast SEO, but even more can be configured to your needs. How well compression works, might depend on your server settings as well.

If you feel like the compression optimization that is done with any of the plugins mentioned above fails, contact your hosting company and see if and how they can help you configure compression for your website. They will surely be able to help you out, especially when you are using one of these WordPress hosting companies.

Serving CSS and JS files

One more thing that speed tests will tell you, is to combine (external) CSS or JavaScript files or defer parsing scripts. These recommendations are about the way these files are served to the website.

The combine option for these files is, like you can see in the WP Rocket screenshot above, not recommended for HTTP/2 websites. For these websites, multiple script files can be loaded at the same time. For non-HTTP/2 sites, combining these files will lower the number of server requests, which again makes your site faster.

Deferring scripts or recommendations like “Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content” are about the way these scripts are loaded in your template files. If all of these are served from the top section of your template, your browser will wait to show (certain elements of) your page until these files are fully loaded. Sometimes it pays to transfer less-relevant scripts to the footer of your template, so your browser will first show your website. It can add the enhancements that these JavaScripts or CSS files make later. A plugin that can help you with this is Scripts-to-Footer. Warning: test this carefully. If you change the way that these files load, this can impact your website. Things may all of a sudden stop working or look different.

We have to mention CDNs

A Content Delivery Network caches static content. With static content, we mean files like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and image files. These files don’t change that often, so we can serve them from a CDN with many servers that are located near your visitors, so you can get them to your visitors super fast. It’s like traveling: the shorter the trip, the faster you get to your destination. Common sense, right? The same goes for these files. If the server that is serving the static file is located near your visitor (and servers are equally fast, obviously), the site will load faster for that visitor. Please read this post if you want to know more about CDNs.

There are many ways to optimize page speed in WordPress

Page speed tests will give you even more recommendations. Again, you might not be able to follow up on all of these yourself. Be sure to ask your expert in that case, like your web developer or agency, or your hosting company. But in the end, it’s good that you are using WordPress. There are many decent plugins that can help you optimize the speed of your website after a page speed test!

Read more: Site speed: tools and suggestions »

https://ift.tt/2LQQewQ

A Look Into the Latest Google Algorithm Update (July 2018)

A look into the latest Google Algorithm Update (July 2018)

Google is a search engine that always finds ways to innovate and optimize their services to improve the overall user experience and provide the best search results. This 2018, we have already seen numerous updates, from Google Images removing the ‘View Image’ option to Google launching an algorithm update last March that caused a fluctuation in rankings.

This past month, Google has once again launched a new set of algorithm updates that continue to optimize search. One of the latest updates is the Google Speed Update, which aims to implement mobile loading speed as a search ranking factor. Mobile SEO has been gaining more traction over the past year, which is in line with the growing number of mobile users using search on their devices. We have covered mobile optimization in detail previously, and with the updates rolling in, it is time to re-open the discussion. Here are some of the most important updates during June and July 2018, and how to optimize your website to comply to these changes.

Google Speed Update

The first update we will be discussing is the newly-launched Google Speed update, which adds mobile page loading speed as a ranking factor. Mobile search has seen a rise in the number of users and searches inquiries over the past few years, with more people having a preference for browsing using their mobile devices. This rise saw Google once again adapting to the current trend and crafting new updates that make search work more efficiently.

Page loading speed is an important ranking factor in Google, as it directly affects the user experience. If a website takes too much time to load, users will prefer to view a different website altogether, thus reducing your chances of helping your traffic grow. With the Google Speed update, loading speed is once again in the spotlight, this time on mobile. With mobile loading speed a ranking factor, mobile optimization is the key to making it all work better for your website.

We have covered in detail the important steps that need to be done to prepare for the Google Speed update, and now that it has arrived, your site would be well optimized, having solid load times. One important process that helps boost up your loading speed is by using website audit tools such as Google Lighthouse and Woorank, which allows you to review your website and see how you can improve loading speed. Caching tools also come in very handy, as they help load files much faster, boosting your loading speed significantly. AMP integration is also crucial, as this will

For those concerned with how will this update affect your website, Google stated that only the “slowest” websites will have their search rankings affected. Despite this statement, there is still a good chance that you might lose a good chunk of your traffic if you do not optimize accordingly.

Ranking Fluctuations in July

Along with the launch of Google Speed, there have been instances that rankings have been fluctuating over the course of a month, with a lot of SEO professionals thinking that another algorithm update might be underway and that Google is once again testing the waters. While these fluctuations are normal and have happened earlier in the year, it is still worth a look to make sure that your SERP rankings will not be permanently affected.

Accuranker Grump

It is important to note that a good number of tools are picking up these fluctuations. In Accuranker, the Grump rating for the past few days has ranged between Grumpy and Furious. This means that rankings have been going up and down during the past few weeks.

Accuranker Grump 2

SERPmetrics has also picked up these fluctuations as well, with the graph also bouncing up and down during the past few weeks.

SERPMetrics

This is another interesting development that is worth monitoring in the next few weeks, as Google tends to subtly test out these updates quietly before officially launching it. Whether this is another effect of the Google Speed update, or simply just a test, only Google can confirm our speculations. For the meantime, keeping watch on your rankings is a must this time of the year, as more updates will surely arrive soon.

Key Takeaway

Google algorithm updates are always big news, despite how simple some of these can be, as they have an impact on our rankings, and can be a sign that new strategies and techniques need to be developed in order to keep your rankings up. With Google continuing to push for more mobile-friendly updates, expect more changes in the upcoming weeks.

If you have questions about mobile optimization or SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.

https://ift.tt/2uPDkZA

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Keyword cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization means that you have various blog posts or articles on your site that can rank for the same search query in Google. If you optimize posts or articles for similar search queries, they’re eating away each other’s chances to rank. Here, I’ll explain why keyword cannibalism is bad for your SEO, how you can recognize keyword cannibalization and how to solve it.

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

SEO copywriting training Info What is keyword cannibalization?

If you optimize your articles for similar terms, you might suffer from keyword cannibalization: you’ll be devouring your own chances to rank in Google. Google will only show 1 or 2 results from the same domain in the search results for any specific query. If you’re a high authority domain, you might get away with 3.

Why is keyword cannibalism bad for SEO?

If you cannibalize your own keywords, you’re competing with yourself for ranking in Google. Let’s say you have two posts on the same topic. In that case, Google isn’t able to distinguish which article should rank highest for a certain query. As a result, they’ll probably both rank lower. Therefore our SEO analysis will give a red bullet whenever you optimize a post for a focus keyword you’ve used before.

But, keyword cannibalism can also occur if you optimize posts for focus keywords that are not exactly, but almost the same. For instance, I wrote two posts about whether or not readability is a ranking factor. The first post is optimized for ‘does readability rank’, while the second post is optimized for the focus keyword ‘readability ranking factor’. The posts have a slightly different angle but are still very similar. For Google, it is hard to figure out which of the two article is most important. As a result, you could end up ranking low with both articles.

How to recognize keyword cannibalization?

Checking whether or not your site suffers from keyword cannibalism is rather easy. You should search your site for any specific keyword you suspect might have multiple results. In my case, I’ll google site:yoast.com readability ranks. The first two results are the articles I suspected to suffer from cannibalization.

Googling ‘site:domain.com “keyword” will give you an easy answer to the question whether you’re suffering from keyword cannibalism.

Solve keyword cannibalization with internal linking

You can help Google to figure out which article is most important, by setting up a decent internal linking structure.  You should link from posts that are less important, to posts that are the most important to you. That way, Google can figure out (by following links) which ones you want to pop up highest in the search engines.

Your internal linking structure could solve a part of your keyword cannibalism problems. You should think about which article is most important to you and link from the less important long tail articles, to your most important article. Read more about how to do this in my article about ranking with cornerstone content.

Solve keyword cannibalism by combining articles

In many cases, the best way to solve the keyword cannibalization problem is by combining articles. Find the articles that focus on similar search queries. If two articles are both attracting the same audience and are basically telling the same story, you should combine them. Rewrite the two post into one amazing, kickass article. That’ll really help with your ranking (Google loves lengthy and well-written content) and solve your keyword cannibalization problem. That’s exactly what I should do with my two posts about whether or not readability is a ranking factor. In the end, you’ll delete one of the two articles and adapt the other one. And don’t forget: don’t just press the delete button; always make sure to redirect the post you delete.

Keyword cannibalism will affect growing websites

If your site gets bigger, your chances increase to face keyword cannibalism on your own website. You’ll be writing about your favorite subjects and without even knowing it, you’ll write articles that end up rather similar. That’s what happened to me too. Once in a while, you should check the keywords you want to rank for the most. Make sure to check whether you’re suffering from keyword cannibalism. You’ll probably need to make some changes in your site structure or to rewrite some articles every now and then.

Read more: Keyword research: the ultimate guide »

https://ift.tt/2AaJVmv

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Yoast SEO 7.9: Getting rid of bugs in the summer

Say hi to a brand new version of Yoast SEO! As it’s summertime, our hard-working developers went out on a collective bug hunt. Together with the community – we’re so happy to be part of – they’re giving their all to make our plugin work better for everyone using it. For instance, to make the various sections of all Search Appearance tabs collapsible, so they’re easier to scan and edit. On top of that, we’re preparing for exciting times to come! What about Gutenberg? And further development of our best-known feature, the content analysis? 

Optimize your site for search & social media and keep it optimized with Yoast SEO Premium »

Yoast SEO: the #1 WordPress SEO plugin Info Less scrolling in Search Appearance

The Search Appearance section of Yoast SEO is a true power tool. It allows you to control which sections of your site should appear in the search results and what they will look like. For instance, you can choose to hide certain archives from the search results or to set a template for SEO titles for your product pages. If you have an extensive website though, all different sections and options could create a long list on a tab. On the content types tab, you could already collapse the various content types. Now, we added this functionality to the other tabs as well, for example the archives tab:collapsible sections yoast seo search appearance

This way you’ll have a better overview, making it easier to select and edit the section you want to work on. Also, we’ve improved the accessibility of these collapsible sections, as they should work for everyone.

Bugs killed

When working on this release, we again realized how fortunate we are to be part of the WordPress community. No fewer than 4 voluntary contributors went together on this bug hunt with us. A big thanks to schurigbainternetdawnbirthmikeschinkel to help us fix stuff. Mad props to all of you!

One of the issues we fixed was a residue of our 7.7 release. In that update we introduced the new snippet variables in the snippet preview and templates of the Search appearance tab. In some instances, templates would not be saved correctly though, causing the default template to show under a post or page. This is one of the issues we resolved in Yoast SEO 7.9. Did this bug – or any of these annoy you? Update and get rid of them now!

Preparing for Gutenberg

Slowly but surely Gutenberg is heading our way. Not sure what Gutenberg was again? Check Edwin’s post about Gutenberg here. Gutenberg will have an impact on everyone using WordPress. Whether you’re a copywriter, editor or plugin developer.

Of course our own plugins need to be ready to integrate seamlessly with the Gutenberg editor when it’s there. Not something to take lightly! So we have a special team that’s fully dedicated to make sure we’re ready when Gutenberg is. They’re completely rebuilding all parts of the Yoast SEO plugin in the JavaScript library React, amongst others. Soon we’ll be able to tell and show you more on this. So make sure to keep an eye on our updates.

Working towards a more complete content analysis

Our 7.8 release was all about adding synonyms and keyword distribution in Yoast SEO Premium. Our plugin is now able to recognize synonyms of your focus keyword in English and sees how you’ve distributed them throughout your copy. This was just the first step to a more complete content analysis and understanding of the topic of a text. Apart from identification of synonyms we’re working on morphology (other forms of the same word) and related words recognition and an entire recalibration of our SEO analysis. Curious about the changes that lie ahead? Marieke sheds light on them here.

Read more: Why every website needs Yoast SEO »

https://ift.tt/2A6oIKu

Breaking Down Silos In Process & People: Five Ways To Integrate SEO-PPC To Maximize Your ROI

Like any service-based industry, it’s easy to have an “hours-in, deliverables-out” mentality. We all have goals to hit with limited time, and marketing consultants often default to measuring through channel-specific clicks, traffic, and keywords.

But here’s the problem—users don’t care about channels and keywords (and neither do CEOs, to be honest).…

https://ift.tt/2uZHgGl

How Hashtags on YouTube Can Improve Searchability

How Hashtags on YouTube Can Improve Searchability

With Google constantly updating their search algorithms and services on a monthly basis, it is only fitting that their Google affiliate YouTube also launch their own set of updates as well. Being the second biggest search engine in the world, YouTube also has the largest online video database in the world, with billions of hours’ worth of videos to watch.

Along with being the largest video platform, it is also one of the highest earning websites as well, with a huge number of users earning through their monetized videos. With the overwhelmingly large amount of videos in the site, YouTube also has its own ways to optimize search and improve visibility. One of the newest ways to search videos on YouTube is through the use of hashtags. The use of hashtags has already been seen on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and has helped create some of the most successful and viral social media posts and campaigns.

With this new feature, let’s see how hashtags help expand YouTube search and help you find the right videos.

How Hashtags Work

Ever since hashtags were introduced on Twitter in 2009, it has become an important element in social media posts, as it provides the option for users to be able to track various posts and events with similar hashtags. Putting a hashtag on a post will add a hyperlink that allows users to click on it and see the posts. Here is how hashtags look like on their respective platforms.

This is how it looks like on Twitter:

Hashtag Twitter

This is how hashtags can be viewed on Facebook:

Hashtag Facebook

And this is how hashtags look like on Instagram:

Hashtag Instagram

Hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram work in similar ways, as they gather up all of the related posts in a single place.

Twitter Trends

For Twitter, hashtags are also used to track down trending topics and posts, which can help you see which ones have gone viral in certain parts of the world. For Instagram, having multiple hashtags helps posts become more visible to users, as they will be able to view them in a single place.

Hashtag YouTube

When it comes to hashtags on YouTube, hashtags are used as another method to be able to search for various videos. For example, if I want to watch a video about the latest Nintendo news and announcements, I have to use #Nintendo to look for related results. Like the three social media platforms, YouTube uses hashtags to make related content easier to view in a single location, allowing you to find the best content for your keywords.

How to add hashtags to your videos

Hashtag YouTube Description

Adding hashtags on YouTube is as easy as adding a video description and video title. All you have to do is to add the hashtags on the video description itself. After uploading the video, you will be able to see the hashtags above the video. Based on what I have seen in numerous videos that have used hashtags, I can only see at least three hashtags above the video title. It is important to note that you can only add a maximum of 15 hashtags in a single video to prevent getting penalized for over-tagging.

Will this affect YouTube SEO?

All in all, this is a simple and straightforward process that will become another important part of your YouTube SEO. While the change only requires you to add hashtags for searchability, choosing the right ones now become a crucial element. One of the main reasons why hashtags are added into the platform is because YouTube wants users to be able to avoid misleading and offensive content, as per their new policies. This means that users will be able to access more quality, informative, and authoritative content that fits their preferences.

While hashtags are still a new feature on YouTube, it is important that you update your older videos to further improve their searchability, and make sure that these hashtags truly reflect the content that users would expect after typing in that hashtag.

Key Takeaway

Hashtags have become an important element in social media, and with YouTube finally adding them into their platform, this adds another degree of searchability that users and brands will find very useful in the future. While it may be a simple update at a glance, this adds another degree of search in the world’s second largest search engine.

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

https://ift.tt/2LA66Hd