How to rank higher on Google and what to do if your traffic suddenly drops
Everyone knows the importance of providing consistent and high-quality content on your website but determining what quality content actually looks like can be a bit tricky.
Why?
Because quality is subjective, of course, and while one person may enjoy one particular style of content, another may find it too long, not relevant enough or simply uninspiring.
Then, of course, you have Google. The Holy Grail of search engines. Everyone wants their content to rank highly on the site that receives over 63,000 searches every second.
That’s around two trillion searches per year by the way.
[si_guide_block id="11668" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – SEO strategy audit checklist" description="This SEO strategy audit checklist gives you a comprehensive list of activities to grade your organization against. By completing this checklist every three/six months, you'll be…
Google is transforming from a search engine to an answer engine, which you should use to shape your SEO strategy for the year ahead
These days we are witnessing the biggest evolution of Google as we know it. Google is transforming from a search engine to an answer engine.
That evolution is bringing new challenges to online publishers and businesses changing our marketing priorities and goals.
We went from this:
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to this:
in a matter of seven years.
As you can see, there are fewer organic results and more answers in the above-the-fold part of search engine result page.
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Google is the answer engine
Google is planning to become the ultimate answer engine and we find the evidence of that in its recent patents,…
Google has changed search listings related to featured snippets, e-commerce to grow by over 30% in five years, Google urged to rethink third-party cookie blocking, Netflix named favourite UK brand
Google has dominated the news this week following its announcement that it has changed search results to deduplicate listings that appear as featured snippets. Find out how it could affect your strategy by reading the full story below.
New research has suggested that e-commerce is going to account for a fifth of all retail by 2024, as consumers turn to convenience rather than heading to the brick and mortar high street.
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In other Google news, it has been asked to rethink its decision to block third-party cookies by 2022 due to the impact it could have on digital advertising.
Finally, Netflix has taken the top spot away from Aldi to be named as the UK's favourite brand while a couple of brands have taken…
Google's BERT update, Twitter's political ad ban, Snapchat's new 'share to Snapchat' button, $65m of influencer campaigns reaching fake accounts, ACCC sues Google over location data, Facebook updates video ad metrics
The last week has been a fairly busy one in the marketing world and there have been plenty of updates to explore. The biggest of these is arguably Google's new BERT update, which is apparently the biggest update of the last five years.
On top of this, Twitter is taking the step to ban all political advertising on the platform from November 22nd, despite Facebook deciding not to do the same.
A large portion of the money spent on Instagram influencer campaigns is reportedly being wasted as posts continue to reach fake accounts.
Google is being sued by an Australian regulator over claims it misled smartphone users over how their location was being used.
Finally, Facebook has updated its video ad metrics to make…
Did you see your website’s ranking dwindle following the August Google Medic update? Find out how you can recover
As you might expect given its name, "Medic" - Google’s August 2018 algorithm update - affected many websites in the health sphere. This included domains publishing content related to health, wellness and fitness.
However, these weren’t the only websites to suffer ranking losses. Some sites featuring broader content, such as news, as well as finance and legal websites, also saw dramatic declines in visibility and traffic. Such websites are referred to as “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) — a term Google defines as sites that are of low quality, or drastically misinformed — could have a negative impact on a person’s life, income or happiness.
With reason to believe that the Medic update and the more recent June 2019 core update are linked due to…
The latest on Google's June 2019 core update, Instagram's Paid Partnerships, the rise in digital ad fraud, junk food ads aimed at children banned, Google faces DOJ investigation
The big news this week is the rollout of Google's latest core algorithm update, which started on June 3rd and (as of today) is still ongoing. We've taken a look at what the industry knows about the effects so far.
In good news for brands who work with influencers, Instagram is making it easier than ever to use their content. The social media platform has announced a new tool that could benefit both influencers and brands.
A new report has suggested that ad fraud could result in costs of up to $30 billion this year, which will likely be put on the shoulders of smaller companies.
The ASA has announced that eight well-known food brands had ads banned from Google after they were shown alongside content…
Five months after Google announced the rolling out of what is commonly known as the ‘EAT Update’, just what have we learned about Google’s interpretations of expertise, authority and trustworthiness? The answers lie in those brands that have thrived
Since Google announced the 'broad update' in August, leading brands have seen some significant and sometimes erratic changes in their organic search visibility. Some brands saw their visibility almost wiped out entirely, only to return to normal shortly afterward. Weeks of volatility followed as Google appeared to tweak the dials on the updated algorithm.
This week we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains the same as in March, as we covered here: https://t.co/uPlEdSLHoX
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 1, 2018
Five months on and, whilst the volatility may have calmed down somewhat, there are still major…
Using TF*IDF for keyword research, to assess your Term Weight and improve your SEO
Keyword Density is a term frowned upon, and right it should be! It was used in such a way that the content wouldn’t look natural, as you keep reading the same word over and over again. At the time however, the Google algorithms weren’t as complex as they are today, so you could get away with it and not be penalised as badly. Meaning it once was the most main ranking factor for websites. However, these times have changed considerably as now KD is recognised as a minor factor in the rankings because the overuse of a keyword is better known as keyword stuffing which would you will be penalised for!
OnPage.org has invented a new tool for keyword research and to help towards a new method for relevant content creation based around TF*IDF. If you don't know TF*IDF, Google has been…
3 SEO techniques not to use and 3 recommended techniques to take advantage of Google's RankBrain
Ever since Google unveiled RankBrain as the latest leap in their search algorithm’s efficiency just a day after Christmas last year, the ripples it created in the SEO universe have refused to settle down. That’s saying a lot. because RankBrain isn’t really even an algorithm update, it is actually a part of the current version of the algorithm named “Hummingbird” which dates back to a 2013 launch.
With Hummingbird, Google started paying a lot more attention to an entire search query rather than just the keywords. The mission of Hummingbird is to understand the overall context of a sentence and not just specific words. RankBrain takes this effort several steps forward.
Why is RankBrain creating such a noise? The answer is partly because…
A must-read for anyone responsible for SEO or Content Marketing
Importance: [rating=5] For all Webmasters, SEO Consultants, Content Producers and Web Designers
Recommended link: Google's new Search Quality Rating Guideline
Yesterday (November 19th 2015), we saw the release of an updated ‘full’ 160(!) page version of the Search Quality Rating Guidelines. Here's a sample:
With the adoption of Mobile Devices influencing the search landscape more and more, Google have decided to update its guidelines for Search Quality Raters.
This is big news since Google used to previously to keep these 'behind closed doors', but occasionally one would escape into the wild and be dissected. Back in 2013 Google published an abridged version as they looked to “provide transparency on how Google works” after previous leaks of the document in 2008, 2011 and 2012, then in 2014. However, as the use of…
