As time moves on one thing is for sure, search engines like Google will not be sitting still. Recently Google has been adding logos and images to their knowledge graph. In the past webmasters haven’t been too sure if the knowledge graph was good for their website or not. By showing the results from YOUR website whilst still on Google (and therefore not clicking to your website) would you would think reduces the amount of traffic to your site. Google says not.
We however, think it does!
Anyway, if your website does get included into their knowledge graph at least your logo will be seen and help with brand advertising.
To receive this knowledge graph result we searched for Conversion Rate in Google.co.uk.
Sign up to our newsletter!
Get the latest Tips and News that will help your website perform better
I have been working “online” since 1996 concentrating on SEO and online marketing since 2007 working with both Sole Traders and international businesses helping their websites perform better.
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering January 2017
This report will cover all the important updates and changes from the search engines and social media platforms for January 2017.
Site and Link bye!
Algorithms
It looks like a small algorithm update went live on Google on January 16th, however, Google have jet to confirm this and it didn’t look to be too big.
Mobile
The mobile index algorithm looks to be still rolling out. More on mobile Tips in our SEO report covering December 2016. As far as we can tell not many sites have been hit by this update, however, the sites that have been, have been hit hard.
The Mobile first index not live yet, due out later this year, which could mean a month from now or in December 2017. No date from Google so we will have to wait.
The link: operator
This no longer works. 🙁
By entering: link:www.juicyseo.co.uk it used to list a good slice of the links to your website. This hasn’t really worked for quite a while, but only now Google have confirmed it doesn’t work. You will need to use another way to find your links to your site.
The site: operator
Another popular command you can use in Google search box is: site:
This command lists all your pages indexed in the search engine. This month Google confirmed that there isn’t any order of the pages that are displayed in the results. Some people thought that it was in pagerank order, it’s not.
Bad Links
If you happen to create a link to an external site which the site is ‘bad’, Google recommends that you use the rel=’nofollow’ command. An example of why you would link to a bad site is if you want to show an example of a bad site (we can’t think of any other reason why you would do this). All other links shouldn’t really use this command.
Search Console
There is a setting in search console that you can set the country you wish your website to target. Google this month confirmed that even if you set your site to target UK (for example) traffic it will not harm your ranking in other countries. This just doesn’t sound right to us but Google have said this is so, so we will have to believe them.
AMP
The new’ish format of mobile websites, AMP, is not a ranking signal by Google, however, they will display your AMP version ahead of other versions if you have one.
Penguin
That’s it! There will not be any more versions of the Penguin algorithm which are numbered (last one being Penguin 4.0), instead updates will continuously roll out unnumbered.
That’s it for this month, don’t forget to check out our SEO report covering December 2016 which includes our predictions for 2017 in the world of SEO.
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site. Since 23rd Sept 2016 this has joined the core search updates and is now real time.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.
EMD: Exact Match Domains. Matching the domain name exactly with the search term used.
Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering December 2016
Welcome to the final 2 minute read monthly online marketing report from Juicy SEO covering 2016, and what a year it was!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
No doubt like most people you will be making a new years resolution for 2017, if you haven’t thought of one yet can we recommend optimising your website?
If increasing traffic to your website is something you are interested in then make sure you keep coming back to our monthly round-up of all the important changes that will affect your website perform better each month.
So, lets get on with this…
Search Console
Google have removed the content keyword report in Search Console, this is due to it sending the wrong message to the webmasters and Google wanted to make their communication to webmaster easier to follow.
Moving websites
If you are thinking of moving your website from one server to another, Google recommend that for small and medium sized websites to move the whole site in one lump. If however, you have a large website it is ok to break it up into sections.
Sitemaps
Both Bing and Google have increased the maximum size for sitemaps that can be submitted, now 50MB instead of 10MB. However, there is still a limit of 50,000 url’s, so basically the extra space is for longer urls.
Index
Google have added a “SUBMIT TO GOOGLE” button directly in their mobile friendly test. By clicking this button it will add the URL to the Google index queue.
Submit to Google button in mobile friendly test
Speed
Google have advised to keep the homepage load speed less then 2-3secs. It is very rare that Google provide a figure like that, so worth paying attention too!
Google have also mentioned that if the page is slow to load, they might mark it as not mobile friendly even though it passes the mobile friendly test.
See our 2017 prediction below for more on this
Paid links
We know paid links are a NO NO, but did you know giving to charity for a link is also?! Well it is.
HTTPS
Google have recommended that if you are changing from HTTP to HTTPS that you keep the rest of the url the same whilst changing over. They don’t recommend changing the url structure at the same time. You might think of doing this to add some keywords into the url for example. It is better to perform two separate tasks after the new HTTPS versions have been indexed.
There is an important change coming at the start of Jan 2017 for websites that either a password or credit card details need to be entered in. If your website has this and you haven’t a SSL certificate (HTTPS) Google (Chrome) and Firefox will mark the page as NON SECURE.
Not two words you want connected to your online shop!
The fix is to make the whole site HTTPS or at least the page with the password/credit card form on it.
SEO Tip
Abbreviation are not good for SEO, especially if you are abbreviating your keywords! So, make sure you write out your keywords and linked keywords in full!
SEO abbreviation fail
AdWords
Google AdWords Editor version 3.7 has been released with many new features, if you are an advertiser with Google and you use Google Adwords Editor you should update your version and have a look at these in case you are missing out.
Algorithms
Mid December there looks to have been a search algorithm update. We have not seen any confirmation from Google about this but our stats saw a lot of movement around the 15th/16th December and the SEO industry have also reported this.
Google Maps Adverts
In case this has passed you by, you can advertise your business on Google Maps. So when someone searches for “Anniversary cards because I have forgotten” your card shop can be displayed on Google Maps so the customer can easily find your shop. Obviously this is really targeting local businesses.
Anyway, I digress, this month Google have added a nice little update to this which allows you to add your company logo as the advert pin on the map.
Example of Google Promotional Pins
2017
So it’s a new year and its traditional to post what you think the coming year will bring, well Juicy SEO does this too but much much shorter!. For our predictions we, in true spirit of our 2 minute read SEO update, are going to keep it short and sweet. Are you ready?
Mobile!
SHOCK!
We know you have heard this before from us, but for 2017 you must think mobile BEFORE desktop. This is not just creating a website but also when SEO’ing websites. Optimising a desktop website could be different to optimising your mobile version.
This includes not only that the website is mobile friendly but consider site speed (biggy!), load order and AMP.
At the moment Google do NOT use site speed when deciding mobile ranking, but as sure is eggs are eggs we think they will in 2017!
But don’t worry, as normal we are here to hold your hand and to offer any advice and tips, so follow us on Twitter, Facebookand our RSSfeed.
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site. Since 23rd Sept 2016 this has joined the core search updates and is now real time.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.
EMD: Exact Match Domains. Matching the domain name exactly with the search term used.
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering November 2016
Welcome to Juicy SEO’s monthly SEO report covering all the important changes and news for November 2016.
The idea of this post is for you to quickly read and get up to date with all the important changes that have happened in Online Marketing, SEO and Search Engines.
Mobile index
As reported last month in Octobers SEO report (if you have not read we highly recommend that you do) Google will start using a separate index for mobile versions of websites. This month we have learned a little bit more about this new index.
The difference between using the current Desktop index and the new mobile index for mobile websites is that Google will index and rank pages in their mobile search results using signals from a mobile perspective. This will include things like content on the page, internal links etc. This could affect websites that do not show all the Desktop content, you could be doing this to try and increase page load times for example.
If your website doesn’t have a mobile version (where have you been!), then the mobile index will use the Desktop version of the site.
When the new mobile index is finally launched to the world in a couple of months it shouldn’t affect your websites rankings Google says, it’s just Google performing the same job but in a different way. That said, why would they create this new index if it does the same as the desktop version?
It is very common to hide content on your mobile version of your site behind things like tabs to help make a better user experience for your visitors, after all a mobile screen is a lot smaller and less can be displayed.
In the past Google would not give the full SEO weight for the content which was hidden. This month however Google have confirmed that the new mobile first index will actually give the full weight for hidden content. They just want to make the experience the best it can, like you!
As I mentioned, it’s due to be live in a couple of months and currently testing, they are having a few teething problems which need to be ironed out.
Algorithms
Some webmasters and even some SEO’s (tut tut!) still think there is only one Google algorithm, this is incorrect. All of the search engines have many algorithms managing all sorts of calculations.
Some of these algorithms do not talk to others so, if one algorithm thinks your website is “Good Quality” it doesn’t mean all of them do, something to bare in mind.
Google Search Console
A nice and useful tool Google provides webmasters and SEO’s is Search Console (used to be called webmaster tools) and one of the functions it offers is to crawl and render a page of your website of your choosing. This can help speed up the time that it take Google to index the new page and content.
Using this function does not harm your websites rankings so completely fine to use, however having a page indexed quickly doesn’t help that page rank any better. Still good to do though as your content is in their index quicker!
Juicy SEO customers don’t need to worry about this, we ensure this is performed for all your important new content you create.
Disavow files
A disavow file is used to list links to your website which you think could be harming it in search results. This is a powerful file and unless you know what you are doing you should seek help, like contacting Juicy SEO.
The links in this file should only be external links to your website, not internal links you manage on your site.
If the external link you wish to disavow still exists then keep the link in the file. If however you have managed to remove the link to your website (best option) then it is safe to remove the link from the disavow file.
Domain Length
Size matters!
Well actually not for Google, there isn’t any ranking benefits to having a long domain name.
TLD
As the internet gets more websites webmasters are looking at other types of TLD’s (Top Level Domains) instead of the standard country code or generic TLD’s like .com or .net as the names they want are not available.
If your website uses a “new” type of TLD extension it will not however help your site rank any better or worse, particularly in the field it is associated too.
For example, if you had the site www.cheap-representation.lawyer it will not rank any better for law keywords like “cheap lawyers” or any worse.
EMD – Exact Match Domains
A member of Google’s spam team has asked his followers on Twitter for any spammy versions of EMD they have seen. He is only looking for spammy versions though, for example:
www.where-to-buy-cheap-nike-football-boots.com.
Google has an EMD algorithm which, to be honest, doesn’t run too often. So what can we read into from this message from the Googler? Are they going to run it again soon and need some examples of bad EMD to test on? Maybe they have re-written the algorithm?
Either way, this is something that it looks like Google are working on.
A side note on this, they are only looking and interested in spammy EMD’s, so www.cheaphotels.com should be ok.
And that concludes this month’s report, make sure you catch up on previous month’s reports as they will still be relevant, here is a link to them all:
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site. Since 23rd Sept 2016 this has joined the core search updates and is now real time.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.
EMD: Exact Match Domains. Matching the domain name exactly with the search term used.
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering October 2016
Welcome to another edition of Juicy SEO‘s monthly online marketing report this time covering all the important updates and changes for October 2016 by the search engines.
Let’s get right to it…
The SEO road is rarely straight forward
Penguin
At the start of the month we saw the continuation of the roll-out off the new ‘real time’ Penguin update. It took a week or so to fully complete due to the update gradually spreading around the Worlds servers.
Now Penguin is real time several dodgy SEO’s out there are already thinking how they can manipulate this, the obvious one is to increase your link building and if you get a penalty simply remove the links and start again. Google have said that they are “ready for you!” if you are thinking about doing this and could remove the link value of all the links to your site. So, think carefully if you thinking about doing this!
Redirects
This one if really for the webmaster who is moving their site or changing their CMS. It is not good practice to 301 redirect your old pages from your previous version of your website to the homepage of your new website. Google will mark these down as soft 404 pages and which will not pass any link juice (SEO benefit). As much as a pain as it is you should create separate 301’s from your old URLs to the new replacement pages.
Mobile
On the 10th January 2017 Google will be releasing their “Intrusive Interstitial Mobile Penalty“. A what I hear you say?!
From this date if Google finds a pop-up that covers most or all of the mobile screen it will penalise the mobile version of the site. These “pop-ups” are used all over the web and include a lot of social ‘Share’ buttons and adverts. However, Google are only looking at page load and not, say, 5mins after you have been on the site or when leaving the site. Most of the good social share widgets out there will have config options that will fix this. A tool to test this is due out too soon from Google.
Mobile
In the next few months Google will start using a separate index just for mobile devices. At the moment Google uses the main desktop index for both desktop and mobile searches. By using a separate index for mobile devices they can use mobile specific ranking signals like page load speed to help them decide ranking positions.
Content
In some of our previous reports we have mentioned that it is possible to be out-ranked by another website which has a copy of your own content. This is often the case if the other site has a better domain authority than your own. That said, Google this month confirmed that it is also due to other websites taking your content and adding extra value to it, therefore, making the content even better.
This has been a very successful way of ranking Juicy SEO’s clients websites in the past, so if you are looking for some content ideas, research other content out there and make your version better!
HTTP2
As reported previously by Juicy SEO, Google this month also mentioned that they do not pass any search engine ranking ‘help’ if your website is using HTTP2.
AdWords
Google have officially rolled out ‘Click-to-Message‘ sitelinks for adverts which allow people to…. well… click and send a message. I guess the name of it explains the idea well enough.
Domain Authority
Although lots of SEO tools out there have their own “Score” of websites Google have confirmed that they do not have an overall score for a domain (I know I used domain authority above, it was purely to help explain).
Ranking
Finally, Juicy SEO have reported for several years now that it is often the case that Google search engine ranking updates occur at the end of the quarter. A member of Google’s team has also mentioned this month that this is the case. So, keep an eye on the date! 🙂
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site. Since 23rd Sept 2016 this has joined the core search updates and is now real time.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering September 2016
Welcome to this month’s edition of the Juicy SEO online marketing report where we condense all the changes and important news into a 2 minute read, as per normal we have a Glossary at the bottom to remind you which algorithm does what.
This month our report is mainly to do with a major update that has recently happened, Penguin 4.0 is now live and in the wild!
So, lets get to it…
Penguin 4.0 out in the wild, or just a sweet painting
Penguin
As this algorithm update is major news we will focus a little more than normal on this subject and explain what has changed and how it will affect you.
Real Time
This is the 4th version (4.0) of this algorithm and it will also be the last, this is because they moved the ‘code’ of Penguin into their main core ranking engine which ‘scores’ website pages continuously. Therefore, Penguin will be real time and any penalties given due to bad links will happen instantly. The good news though is that once you clean up your bad links your site should recover instantly too.
New Links
As Google will be checking your links all the time this also includes new links to your site, it means keeping a close eye on your links in case they affect your ranking positions.
Per-Page Not Per-Site
The new version of the Penguin algorithm does not assess links to your website but more to your web pages. Therefore, if Google penalises your site for a bad link it should just affect the page it is linked to and not the whole site. This is great news as you should be able to manage your link building strategy and see if certain links penalise your website.
Recovery
Once you have cleaned up your bad links you might expect to bounce back up to where your website once ranked, sadly that is unlikely. Google will instead of penalising your site and devalue the links they will simply just ignore them.
Therefore, if you once ranked no:1 for ‘Keyword Research’ and got hit with a Penguin penalty, the recovery will just ignore the link juice of those bad links so you won’t get any help at all from them. Your site should still move up the rankings as you are no longer penalised, just not as high as you once were.
One final thing about Penguin, well for this month anyway. Google have said that the roll out of Penguin 4.0 was their best roll out to date. Which isn’t surprising really is it as it took them 2 years to do it!
Local SEO
This month Google’s local algorithm received an update too, this time, the update was to target spam results.
API’s
If you provide an API for developers to access data from your site then this might be of interest. Google have said if your API requires a DOfollow link to access the API it is the same as a paid link and therefore against Google’s guidelines.
Widgets
If you are a provider of Widgets for webmasters to add to their site, Google this month have stressed that all the links back to you must be NOfollow, not a surprise here but good to be reminded of.
Links
Google this month said an interesting thing about links, “To get more traffic to your site you don’t necessarily need more links”. Is this a smoke screen to try and stop people link building or are they devaluing links?
AdWords
If you are a user of Google Adwords (PPC) you would have most likely been informed that the length the text can be for the adverts is to increase therefore allowing more “Words for your Buck”. We believe it is going live early 2017.
AMP
AMP sites have been seeing a considerable amount of traffic increase over the last couple of weeks, AMP is not for everyone but it is worth looking at to see if it will help your business.
Mobile SEO
Over the last couple of months in our SEO reports we have mentioned Google might penalise mobile websites that have pop-ups which fully cover or cover a large percentage of the screen when the page loads. This month they have added more information on this, sites can also be penalised if the pop-up appears after scrolling half way down the page. This is interesting as there are many social media sharing widgets that work like this.
Algorithms
Google this month highlighted that now Penguin 4.0 (oops sorry I mentioned it again) is live you should expect to see more algorithm updates coming in the near future and that this will never stop. Great! 🙁
Rankings
We are expecting to see a lot of fluctuations in ranking figures over the next week or so as Penguin calms down, so don’t panic if your rankings are not looking too good. If you need some help just drop us a line.
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site. Since 23rd Sept 2016 this has joined the core search updates and is now real time.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
AMP: Accelerated Mobile Pages. A way to increase the speed your mobile version of your website loads.
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report Covering August 2016
Welcome to August’s edition of the Juicy SEO online marketing report. This is where you can read the latest news about SEO, PPC and online marketing in less than 2 minutes.
We only report on the changes that will actually matter and could affect your website’s performance in search engines.
Juicy SEO August Monthly Online Marketing Report
Pagerank
Google have confirmed this month that Pagerank is still important, this is a number that Google assigns to each page of a website and scores it by authority.
Obviously the higher the number the better.
Subdomains
This is a common question we get asked and it just so happens someone asked Google too this month.
“Does Google see subdomains and sub-folders differently?”
The answer is….. drum roll please…… no.
Changing Domain Names
If you decide to change your domain name and redirect the inbound links from your old domain to the new one, Google have confirmed that you should try to get the links changed to the new domain name.
It’s not a critical loss if you don’t, but don’t forget to set up your 301 redirects from old to new site!
Adwords
Google have been testing their new Adwords interface for some accounts, this is due to be rolled out early next year for everyone.
Duplicate Content
If you have a copy of your website’s content in a downloadable PDF file this is not seen by Google as duplicate content.
It is completely fine to do this, in fact there are PDF search engines out there which you could add your files too!
Blogdash
If like us, you have received emails recently from a website called Blogdash here is a word of warning.
Blogdash promise to get your website in front of leading high end publishers using their PR system.
This is something you should NOT sign up to. This is exactly what search engines like Google penalise websites for.
In fact the other week Google have confirmed that they know of Blogdash and will penalise them.
Penalties
If Google gives your website a penalty and then at a later date removes the penalty due to you fixing the problem, it is very unlikely that your website will fully recover.
Best not get the penalty in the first place!
Google Keyword Planner Tool
This is a tool if you are not familiar with it that Google created to help advertisers using Google Adwords pick the right keywords for their advertising campaign.
However, a lot (most) SEO’s also use this data to help understand the volume of keywords used.
The figures are not exact and they are really Adwords results not organic but it’s all useful information.
This month however, Google have removed a lot of the detail of this data to people not running an Adwords campaign.
That said if you have a running Adwords campaign all the data is available to you.
If you really need this info, then just create a small Adwords campaign and you will see everything.
Rel=”canonical”
Just so you know, you can not use the HTML tag rel=”canonical” for images, only pages.
Algorithms
Last week Google rolled out a new Mobile Interstitial Algorithm.
This is to target popups which cover most or all of your mobile screen, Google have decided that this is not a good experience and will penalise websites with them.
This is just for mobile views and not for desktops.
Mobile
Remember when Google said:
“Make your website mobile friendly and we will add a little Mobile Friendly label next to your website in our search results”
This month Google decided to remove this little label. It doesn’t surprise me as so many websites are now mobile friendly so defeats the object.
Small business owners have to wear many different hats to run their business, adding another one called ‘SEO‘ might seem like one too many. However, there are some very simple things you can incorporate into your day-to-day tasks which will help your website perform better in search engines like Google, here are some handy tips:
Having words on your website might seem an obvious thing to include when creating a new website, after all how can you explain your product without words? It is not just your customers who need to see words on your site, search engines do too!
Search engines like Google and Bing have very complex algorithms that analyse the words on your page to determine if it is a good match to certain keywords. The problem is what you don’t want to do is create a blog post targeting keywords like “Cheltenham Marketing” and write something like this:
“…Have you ever thought about Cheltenham Marketing? If not then you should as you really need Cheltenham Marketing in your life, it will not only help Market your Cheltenham products but will make you all nice a fuzzy inside!…”
We recommend that you don’t write your content including Blog posts for SEO and targeting keywords, obviously know the keywords you wish to target but you don’t need to be so obvious in the content. Use other words that are related to Cheltenham and Marketing like Gloucestershire and Sales. Search engines are clever enough to know that Cheltenham is connected to Gloucestershire.
Links
Even in 2016 links are still VERY important, we think between 35-40% of all the SEO signals are connected to links. So, make sure you use them!
We recommend adding internal and external links to your content, here is our quick Blog writing template to use:
First paragraph link:
If you are targeting a keyword then the chances are you have a plan (funnel) where you want all your new traffic to head to after reading your post. Most likely your “Sales Page” where you can convert new sales.
We recommend adding a link to that “Sales” page in your first paragraph, out of all your links in this post THIS is the most important one!
Authoritative links:
Adding a link to an external “expert” site can have several benefits. When I say “expert” I mean government or industry body websites, places that are universally recognised.
Although Google have’nt said (that we know of anyway) that linking out to these types of sites is a ranking figure, we do think it helps search engines understand more about your content and how serious it is.
Adding extra authoritative content from another site should only help your reader find out more about the subject, they will thank you for it!
Don’t include the link to near the top, somewhere in the middle is good.
Sales page links:
Oh the so important Sales page links, most content on a commercial website is to inform the reader about their product or service. If the reader has found your website by landing on your blog post then you need to direct them to your sales page.
We recommend adding your first link after the first paragraph, something snappy like “Join 1000’s of people and get our SEO Newsletter!“.
Add another at the bottom too, try a different anchor text to increase your click through chances.
META Tags
Every page of a website needs a Title and Description for the search engines to display in their results page. If you don’t add one yourself then they will fill these fields in themselves with whatever they like, this is NOT a good option!
Title Tag
The META title tag is still one of the most important signals you can configure on your web page. If you are using a CMS like WordPress we recommend installing a plugin called Yoast which makes managing these tags easier.
When writing your Title tag bare the following in mind:
Write it to sell your product and not stuff keywords. This is your BEST sales pitch opportunity for your page, don’t waste it!
Try and keep under 55 chars long as Google will cut off titles that are too long.
Include your keyword, try and make it near the start and write for the reader, not SEO.
Description Tag
Like the Title tag this is important too, after you have got the person’s attention with your fantastic Title tag you need to add some meat to the bone. Describe what the page is about and what the reader will benefit from by clicking to your website. Don’t lie as they will just bounce off your website again, and that it NOT a good thing!
Google Search Results Title and Description tags
H1 Tag
This tip is a bonus as I feel it fits within this blog post topic. Without going into this too much, all pages should have a H1 tag.
H1 = Header 1
This is the main header statement for the page. Many CMS’s like WordPress will automatically repeat the Post/Page Title in the H1 tag, which is fine. However, I always think you are missing a trick here. Why not change the Header 1 tag slightly different to the page title to help bring in more keyword targeting possibilities. Let me explain:
If the page’s title is “Cheltenham Marketing Tips” (sticking with the Cheltenham theme, if you don’t know Juicy SEO is based in Cheltenham Gloucestershire), then the H1 tag could be:
“Cheltenham and Gloucestershire Marketing Tips”
Not all CMS’s or the themes within CMS’s make it easy for you to change the H1 tag but if you can try it out and see if the results are good! 🙂
Do you like a good tip?
Then you should get our Newsletter where we not only share some of the best SEO tips we have picked up over the years but also keep you up to date with the latest online marketing news!
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report covering July 2016
Welcome to the latest SEO and Online Marketing report covering all the important changes for July 2016.
July tends to be a quiet month for updates and this year is no exception, however, here are the most important ones!
2 Minute Online Marketing Report
Google Ranking Factor
Google have confirmed that product pricing is NOT a ranking factor for Google Shopping or their main search results. Of course in Google Shopping you can sort by Price.
Sitemaps
If you change the name or move the location of your Sitemap.xml file it will not affect your ranking positions. Google and Bing will adjust and continue using the new file in the new location. Just remember to inform them using Search Console!
Penguin Algorithm Update
Our monthly update on the Penguin algorithm update, Google said it’s coming! But then again so is Christmas!
Pop-ups!
Google have said if you use Pop-ups on page load then there is a possibility that Google will use the content in the Pop-up as the content for the page. This could affect your webpages ranking possibilities considerable so worth checking!
Short Articles
Google have confirmed that short articles do not get penalised because they are short, if the content is of quality then it will be fine no matter how long.
Linking Out
Google have confirmed that there isn’t a penalty for NOT linking out to external websites, that said they did say a while ago that it might help your website if you do link out to an authoritative site for the subject.
Adwords Extension
Google have added a new extension to Adwords called ‘Price Extension’. As the name suggests you can now add prices to your advert additional to the normal advert description.
Twitter
Twitter has now opened up their “Verified” account to everyone. These are those small blue ticks that confirm that the account is the official one for the business or person. If you use Twitter it is well worth doing, here is more on this: Why Should I Get My Twitter Account Verified?
Redirects
Google confirmed once again this month that pages that redirect to another using 301 or 302 will not loose any pagerank. This is not new news but good to remind ourselves of this.
Longer Descriptions for Adwords
Google launched longer text fields for Adwords, this will allow you to fill in more information about your product or service.
Facebook
Facebook have changed their algorithm to ensure more posts from your “Friends” are seen in your timeline than posts from pages you follow. This is a big change for businesses using Facebook, more can be found here: Facebook to increase friends posts
Yahoo! has! a! new! owner!
Verizon bought Yahoo! for $4.8 billion, we will see what that do with their new purchase!
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report covering June 2016
Welcome to this month’s SEO and online marketing report covering June 2016.
Quite a bit has happened over the last month so we will dive straight in…
Put the Paper down!
Penguin 4.0
News on the Penguin 4.0 update, a quick reminder that this version of the algorithm will continuously update so it is the last ‘major’ Penguin update we should see. Google have said ‘it is not too long now!’. Hmm heard that before!
Mobile
In the past Google have ‘scored’ your websites speed for their mobile search results with the same results they use to help rank your desktop version of your website. This just doesn’t make sense and Google know this. They have said this month that a mobile version of their speed test is on its way. Please please make sure your website is not only mobile friendly but also usable on ALL mobile devices!
Tools
Google have created a new tool aimed at small businesses to help them fix slow websites both mobile and desktop versions and identify what they need to do to make their website mobile friendly.
Worth a look: https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Page Titles
Google doesn’t care if you use Underscores ‘_’, Dashes ‘-‘ or Pipes ‘|’ in your page title tags, just pick the one you like the most! Tip: Commas are most like English sentences, therefore easier to read.
Page URL’s
Also this month Google confirmed that they don’t care which of the following you use in your URL, Underscores or Dashes. They seem to be in a non-caring mood at the moment!
TLD
If you are thinking of moving your website to a new industry version of a TLD (see glossary) like www.juicyseo.seo instead of www.juicyseo.co.uk it will not give you any advantage in their page ranking results. Phew because that is a lot of work to do that!!
Social Media
Google confirmed once again that Social Media is not used to decide their search ranking results. We do know that quantity of traffic to a page can help your website page perform better so Social Media can affect it indirectly.
Gossip
Some ‘old school’ SEO gossip raised it’s head again this month. It has in the past be thought by many SEO’s that if they see a large spike in their search ranking positions then a new Google algorithm was about to be rolled out, this is completely untrue and Google confirmed that once more this month.
Googler
An interesting conversation occurred this month with a Googler. Google’s quality algorithms might and most likely do not ‘judge’ your website right away but wait for a little while before penalising your site. This makes it very hard to see what new or changed content has affected the page ranking if affected by a penalty.
Authorship
Remember the ‘Authorship Markup‘?
A couple of years ago Google asked webmasters to create this markup on their website so they could use the data in their search results. Well, this month Google have confirmed that we all can remove them again as they are not using them anymore. Nothing like wasting a bit of time is there!?
Search Console
If you use Google Search Console (shame on you if you are not!) then you will know the maximum amount of data they hold for you to use is 90 days. Google this month have said that this will increase in the future. This is very good news!
AMP
AMP is a bit of a new buzz word, we have mentioned AMP a lot over the months but this month Google have said that it is an area for SEO’s to concentrate on. This is a BIG tip. If you are not aware of AMP here is a link to all the info you need! https://www.ampproject.org/
Rankbrain
Google have confirmed that their Rankbrain ‘algorithm’ doesn’t score websites so it is not possible to optimise for it. If your SEO says they are optimising for Rankbrain then simply say:
“Liar liar your pants are on fire!”.
Adwords
Google Adwords now offers buttons called ‘Click to Text‘. As the name suggest the customer-to-be just clicks the button in the Adwords advert and they can text directly to the seller.
Juicy SEO Tip
Our Tip for this month is to think about search results that have been created using Voice. Roughly about 30% of all Google searches are via voice and it will grow very quickly. Think about the way people say sentences instead of writing. There will be a lot of questions!
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report for May 2016
Welcome to this month edition of Juicy SEO’s monthly SEO and online marketing report. Lots have happened this month so let’s get right to the most important changes that could affect your website:
100% you will learn something!
Content
We have all heard that Quality is more important than Quantity haven’t we, however, this month Google have confirmed that it is highly possible that if you remove and de-index weaker content on your website leaving the best quality content, the website could perform better and have better quality of visitor which leads to increase of conversions.
Sitemaps
If you are changing your URLs of your website and need to set up a lot of 301 redirects Google have said that you should not leave the old Sitemap.xml file in Search Console for longer than 6 months. Once the new URLs are indexed from your new Sitemap remove the old Sitemap with the old URLs. By leaving two sets of the Sitemap with two sets of URLs will only confuse Google.
Google Analytics and Search Console have become a little bit more connected, if you connect the two tools you will now see some Search Console data in Google Analytics. Why don’t they just combine the two fully and have done with it??
Google’s Search Console has also had a new function added called ‘Sets’. This allows you to create a ‘Set’ of domains and group them together. This is useful if (as you should have) you have entries for www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com. Not a lot of functionality in it at the moment but we think it will increase in time.
Google
Google have been performing a lot of tests this month on how search results are displayed, we don’t think they have settled on anything yet. This consists of colour changes, font size and the amount of white space on the page.
Google are trying to become even quicker when indexing new content. At the moment if you regularly create content Google will most likely index the new page within minutes, a little longer if you don’t create as much content. Well, Google are not happy with this and want to index ALL regular content INSTANTLY! (I know upper caps, it’s that of a big deal!).
Do you use Google’s ‘Image Search’, good isn’t it? Well, there will now be adverts within the results too. It was going to happen!
Mobile
May saw the release of the latest version of the Mobile Friendly Algorithm being updated, version 2. It was rolled out slowly so no sudden changes for most websites, in fact, many people didn’t even notice (We did!).
Google News
Some Google News, news for you. If you have a ‘local’ website which reports of local news and a large event occurs in your location which is picked up by national news, Google will push your local version up high in the Google News section, even higher than the big ones like CNN and BBC.
Bing
Bing are also testing a lot of new design changes including a carousel like Googles.
Penalties
An interesting thing that came out this month, if your website receives a penalty from Google for being naughty and you decide to create a new website and simply redirect the old site to the new, the penalty will also follow. So don’t do that! In fact, what they did also say is that there isn’t a safe way to redirect a website with a penalty to a new website. Be a good boy or girl and this won’t be an issue anyway!
Adwords and PPC
Google Adwords has had a big redesign which now allows you to include more text in your advert, to name one of the changes (the most important one really).
And finally our monthly Penguin algorithm update report. For regular readers, you will know we (the whole world) have been waiting for Google to update their Penguin algorithm (see glossary below). Sadly still no news and nothing from Google to make us think it is coming soon.
This months SEO and PPC Tip, follow Juicy SEO on Twitter and Facebook as we post LOADS of tips all the time!
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
Juicy SEO – Monthly Online Marketing Report for April 2016
Welcome to this month’s Juicy SEO Online Marketing report covering April 2016. As months go this month wasn’t the busiest in terms of search engine changes which will affect your websites. Of course, all the search engines conduct tests and cosmetic changes but this report is purely for useful facts on how to help your website perform better, and we try to keep down to a 2 minute read.
So with the introduction over and done with let’s get on with it…
Even the National Geographic are interested!
Penguin Algorithm
It wouldn’t be one of monthly reports if we didn’t include something about the Penguin algorithm. If you need a recap what each of the algorithms do there is a Glossary at the bottom of this post.
At the start of April there were a lot of talk from SEO’s in America that Google were testing a Penguin update has there were a lot of movement which an update from Penguin could have made. However, it only lasted a few hours before everything went back to normal. Is this Google testing the Penguin update or something else, or maybe just a bug? Who knows?
Just a reminder that the next Penguin update will most likely be the last one as from then onwards it will run in real time. Great news for everyone but bad news for this monthly report. 🙁
Google have said that they will inform webmasters when they will roll out the latest Penguin algorithm update, which is nice of them. We will, of course report as soon as it has happened.
Google have confirmed that if you upgrade your webserver to HTTP2 you will not get any ranking help from the search engine, however, your website should perform faster.
Outbound links
Google have sent out another set of messages to many webmasters via Search Console concerning outbound links. If Google thinks the links on your website to other site are ‘spammy’ they will send you a message asking you to add a rel=”nofollow” META tag to the link or remove them. If you haven’t checked already we recommend that you sign onto Search Console and check for a message.
If you are a Juicy SEO client, then don’t worry we have this all in hand! 🙂
The Title tag
Although Google say they do not use the Title tag on images to help the page rank, we know differently! Juicy SEO have been using image Title tags when optimising our clients images for years and have seen very quick positive results. This month however, a public test was conducted which also proved the same.
A good tip: If you are having trouble to rank well for a certain keyword try using an image to rank for it instead!
Click Jacking
Click Jacking websites are being penalised by Google. These are websites that display an advert but when you click on the advert a pop-up or a new window is created taking you to some other dimension, or possibly just another website. This is used for forcing the visitor onto a website that they didn’t want to go to.
Website Speed
As we reported a couple of weeks ago on our social media channels, Google have said that the speed of your website if slow will not negatively affect your ranking position unless you have been informed from Google themselves. However, it is highly recommended to try and make your page load as fast as possible for the visitor as a slow = bored visitor!
Pay Per Click – PPC
PPC news, this month Google rolled out a new Adwords tag that replaces the tag you add to your ‘Thank you’ page to record conversions. The reason for this is that the new tag will provide better results for your Adwords campaign. The problem with the old tag was if the user kept refreshing the ‘Thank you’ page the refreshes were being counted as new conversions.
That’s it for this month, of course, we are continuously adding posts to our Twitter and Facebookpages if you want to learn more or be informed of changes like the new Penguin update as soon as it happens. If you find our report useful and know of someone who would too please share!
Glossary
Panda: The Google Panda update concentrates on the quality of the web page content, if the algorithm thinks the page is of low quality it might penalise it in Google’s search results.
Penguin: Google has an algorithm called Penguin which analyses links to web pages and identifies which ones are valuable or spam links. An example of a spam link would be a paid link to your site.
Pigeon: Google’s Pigeon algorithm concentrates on Local SEO, if you have a bricks and mortar business this is something you should take note of.
Phantom (Quality Update): This algorithm rewards website pages for good content.
TDL: A TLD means Top Level Domain like .com or .net or .co.uk.
