Links are one of the primary ways Google and other search engines understand and rank websites. Crawlers and bots follow links from external sites to your web property and then trace the internal links on your site, measuring the “flow” of ranking signals and attributing them to sites accordingly. “Link flow goes by many names,” said Jonathan Epstein, CEO of Brewco, at SMX Next. “Some people call it link juice. Some people call it PageRank. In the broadest terms, link flows are a measurement of how important your pages are relative to other pages out there on the Internet.” According to Epstein, two main signals go into calculating PageRank: the types of sites linking to your property and what your internal link structure looks like. “The first is: What are the other sites that are linking to each of your pages?” he said. “How many are there? How big are they? How authoritative are they? And then secondly, it looks at how are you linking your pages to each other.” Most marketers tend to focus a lot on gathering backlinks to improve their properties while neglecting to optimize internal links on their site. But, to get the most out of all the sites linking to your pages, marketers should make sure their internal link structure is well-optimized. Here are three ways Epstein recommends marketers best optimize their sites with internal linking. Optimize distribution of link flow“How do you stop pushing link flow to less important pages and push it to the more important ones?” Epstein asked. “Start by removing extraneous links that don’t need to be there.” These extraneous links are often copied on multiple pages and featured near the top of pages, such as job openings, report downloads, or company mission statements. While these are important pieces of information for visitors on the site, there’s a good chance they won’t be the most SEO-friendly pages. To address these issues, Epstein suggests marketers remove these links where possible, especially if they’re repeated often. Then, place links to pages that are better optimized for search. “Add links to the pages you want to push up based on their importance . . . If you can do this systematically across the pages of your site, you can start to push up internal link flow to the pages you want to have it and limit it to the pages that don’t need it because they’re not important for search.” Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Reduce link flow lossWhile optimizing link flow is important, marketers need to simultaneously review instances of ranking loss through links. This occurs most often when sites link to pages that aren’t search-friendly, such as internal search result pages or old tag pages that don’t receive traffic. There are many instances where linking to these less important pages is necessary for site operations, so removing them isn’t always an option. Instead, Epstein recommends marketers compensate for these links’ PageRank loss by always linking back from every internal page you link to. Marketers should also consider how they’re using nofollow links in the site content. Though there’s some debate as to how much impact these attributes have on the overall ranking, Epstein believes strategic nofollow tag use can effectively reduce link flow loss. “We like to use the nofollow tag,” he said. “We see a lot of people losing link flow to social media accounts. We see them losing it to customer login sites and help sites and partner sites. If you do have to have followed links that go out to external sites, consider downgrading them using lower point sizes, putting them further down on the page, or adding other links to the page.” Eliminate penalty factors“Penalty factors are things that your pages do that might make them look like spam pages,” Epstein said. One of the most common penalty factors related to page ranking is duplicate content. It tells search engines that your site has poor content quality. Too many internal links to content with potential penalty factors could end up harming your site rankings. “Apart from your header and footer, your pages shouldn’t share ideally more than about half of the words with each other,” said Epstein. “But we see tons of pages where a page will share 90% of its words with another page on the site. Marketers should also avoid linking to too many pieces of “thin” content on their sites. These are pages with very low word counts that are set up to be informative pieces but give little information. “When you’re sending out link flow to other sites, be careful with how they’re positioned,” said Epstein. “Too many unreciprocated, followed editorial links make it look like you’re an advertorial site even though you’re not.” Building a high-quality, relevant backlink profile is important, but optimizing your internal linking structure and eliminating risk factors is vital to reaping the most benefits from ranking signals. Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (free registration required). The post 3 ways to optimize internal linking appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/Dk8aIZJ
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Etsy will raise its seller fees from 5% to 6.5% (a 30% increase), the company announced during its Q4 2021 earnings report. The new seller transaction fee will take effect starting on April 11. Why we care. In many cases, Etsy’s seller fees are still lower than eBay’s and Amazon’s, but the margin is getting thinner, which may also erode some of the benefits of selling on Etsy. Etsy last increased its transaction fees in 2018, raising them from 3.5% to the current 5% rate. This latest increase may be a bitter pill to swallow for Etsy merchants, especially when other marketplaces may offer access to more customers or more sophisticated tools for sellers. However, some of the additional revenue from the fee increase will be reinvested (more on that below), which may offset the impact on sellers by improving the customer experience, potentially increasing customer lifetime value. Etsy’s plans for the added revenue. “We plan to reinvest a considerable portion of that incremental revenue back into the marketplace because we want to directly have that benefit the seller,” said Etsy’s CFO, Rachel Glaser, during the company’s Q4 2021 earnings call, noting that much of the additional revenue will go towards marketing, customer support and product development. “Keep in mind that the higher take rate is also expected to drive our LTV [customer lifetime value] higher so we can invest in more ways that benefit our sellers,” she added. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. The post Etsy sellers to pay 30% higher transaction fees beginning in April appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/MusKpH2 In SEO, you have access to so much data. But what good is all that data if you aren’t turning it into actionable strategies that have a clear and measurable impact? Used correctly, you can do many things with Google Analytics combined with Data Studio: pulling data, turning it into insights, and then using those insights to acquire, serve and retain customers. Ready to learn how to turn your challenges into solutions? Here’s how to transform your data into relevant and impactful SEO actions. 1. Dealing with dataData is the foundation of Google Analytics and the greatest obstacle. To make the most of it, you’ll need simple access to high-quality data in one spot. ChallengesCreating a Dashboard Taking the data from Google Analytics and other sources and synthesizing it into a dashboard is a common struggle among users. You are not alone in this. In the report “Global State of Consumer Analytics Survey” (Forrester/Burtch Works Q3 2019), providing quality data from various sources is one of the top concerns for analytics and measurement professionals. A well-built dashboard will translate and display data in a way that will allow you to understand your audience. A dashboard should provide the level of detail on your audience behavior and the effectiveness of your campaigns, enabling you to make decisions that will impact revenue. Trying to DIY Although access to data is a top concern, many businesses try to take on the challenge of creating an effective dashboard by themselves. Unfortunately, these businesses might not have the resources or expertise to do these tasks themselves, and that’s fine. So, what is the impact of not having an effective dashboard in place? An effective dashboard containing relevant Google Analytics data about your audience and their behavior and providing data from other sources can determine the route your SEO strategy will take.However, to translate insights into relevant actions in an SEO strategy, businesses should strongly consider whether their internal resources have the expertise and availability required to build and maintain a sustainable process for ingesting, enriching, harmonizing, and visualizing data, making it available to the right department in your business. SolutionsPut everything in one place Consider data as a sequence. You might not want to depend on your data if it is primarily incomplete, especially for the route your SEO strategy could take: focusing on rankings and search volumes (not good) or focusing on audience, behavior, shopping experience and revenue (ideal). Data studio will allow you to integrate data from several sources: Google Analytics, Semrush and others. If your data is relatively complete and visible in one place, it is a good starting point.Here are two sources to get you started on Data Studio: Training If your team has the passion and availability but needs that extra on how to pull, clean and centralize data, don’t just give them a few hours a day so they can find out how to do so themselves. If you have the capabilities, bringing training to your business or sending your team to be trained is also a good solution. For example, have them attend SMX Master Classes – Google Analytics 4 and Data Studio training – March 8-9. Bring a consultant Consultants might be an expensive upfront investment, but they can help you get insights and solutions faster and more efficiently, resulting in a considerable return on investment. Synchronize teams, processes, objectives Clarity is key. It is important to agree from the start on specific user-centric KPIs and how the correct data will assist you in achieving your objectives. For example, if you want to increase customer retention, what data will you need to score to retain as many customers as possible? Once you have the retention scores, what action can you take? Does everyone on your team agree? 2. Building a dashboardMany businesses have a plethora of data from multiple sources but little understanding of their target audience. The key to uncovering possibilities and turning those insights into actions is deciding how you’ll use data on a dashboard. Challenge: Differentiating your audiencePersonalization is necessary for determining what your audience wants and how to obtain the most value from them. Having clean, high-quality data from reliable sources sometimes isn’t enough. Segmenting your user base is a good start, but it won’t provide you with the level of data you need to maximize your ROI. These days your audience has too many choices, which is why it is crucial to have a Dashboard that will provide a view of your audiences in as much detail as you can (more than just behavior, location and devices they come from). A dashboard with data from Google Analytics and other relevant sources can create personalized shopping experiences and content for landing pages and publications that your audience will read and follow.
Solution: Build a dashboard focused on your audience, campaigns, revenueHow do you decide which elements to use on your dashboard when you have multiple choices, many of which could likely deliver results? Consider developing a user-centric dashboard to provide you with information about your target audience. Data that may be used to upsell, cross-sell and retain existing customers rather than gain new ones (retention is up to 95 percent more profitable than acquisition, according to research from Bain & Company, in part because you already have the data). Here are more resources on how to create a useful Dashboard:
3. Converting data into actionable SEO strategiesNow it is time to extract all of the value you’ve invested in your data and dashboard. This is the most crucial step, where you’ll decide on the best course of action to have the biggest influence on your SEO strategy. ChallengesA sophisticated dashboard is not an action or decision Businesses often lose sight of the fact that they need to act. It is common to see teams spending all their efforts on getting approval for a Google Analytics consultancy project (audit, tracking, dashboards). However, no matter how sophisticated a report is, that fancy dashboard is only a synthesis of your data at the end of the day. It would be best to have the right team with the right processes to turn these insights into action. Being receptive to different insights Also, be prepared for unexpected findings that reveal something completely new about your audience or business. Businesses sometimes want to hear insights that support and justify what they’re currently doing. That isn’t always a good thing if revenue is your top focus. Getting buy-in from business stakeholders People will struggle to recognize the value of measurement in analytics and execute the strategy if there isn’t adequate data education. Gaining buy-in from the business decision-makers is critical, especially when so many departments (SEO, development, PR, content, etc.) must collaborate closely. SolutionsCollaboration from the start and the feeling of certainty Getting buy-in early on in a project implies that everyone is on the same page about the present condition and the final goals. When you know who your audience is and what you want to achieve, you can establish certainty and trust within your team, which will help you overcome any reluctance to change and produce results. Feeling and acting with certainty get the message across to the senior stakeholders. Feeling uncertain when negotiating a change, buy-in, or an implementation? Good luck trying to get a result. Close the cycle, learn and start again Measuring is an ongoing process. A successful business continuously evaluates the performance of its campaigns regularly, refines them based on new data and facts, then retrains the model and repeats the process. Remember that successful SEO tactics are marked by a disciplined approach, an experimental attitude and a desire to explore new possibilities. Always have a user in mind, not an algorithm. The post How to turn data into insights and impactful SEO strategies appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/agNqz0l The post 202200228 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/FEv1qbS New business openings in year two of the pandemic were only 1% down from the year before the pandemic (2019), according to Yelp’s COVID-19 Second Anniversary Report. Demand for socially distant/outdoor options also remains above pre-pandemic levels for dining and other activities. New business openings are nearly at pre-pandemic levels. In year two of the pandemic, new business openings reached 521,926, up 14% from the first year of the pandemic. This brings new business openings roughly in line (down by just 1%) with the levels Yelp reported in 2019 (the year before the pandemic). But, business openings in major cities varied. While new business openings rose nationally, the Delta and Omicron variants resulted in decreased business openings in nearly all of the largest metropolitan areas across the country, Yelp said. Boston, Los Angeles, New York City and Seattle experienced the largest decreases in new business openings during the Delta and Omicron waves. However, certain cities, such as Atlanta, Dallas and Detroit, were able to break this trend and increase new business openings despite the variants. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Demand for socially distant options still above pre-pandemic levels. The number of Yelp users searching for businesses with outdoor seating increased 292% in year two of the pandemic when compared to pre-pandemic searches. The adoption of Yelp’s outdoor dining attribute has also grown every month since the pandemic began, reaching 25,999 in January 2022. Consumer interest in many outdoor activities (measured by actions like business profile views, posting photos or reviews) is also still above pre-pandemic levels. Yelp’s report highlighted pickleball, coffee shops, scooter rentals, outdoor movies and horseback riding as some of the biggest winners here. And, over 12,000 businesses on Yelp have adopted the contactless payment attribute since its introduction in 2020. Why we care. Despite inflation, bottlenecked supply chains and a labor shortage, Yelp’s data indicates that more businesses are entering local economies, which may be good for local SEO practitioners. However, these new business openings aren’t evenly distributed across the country and many major cities actually experienced a decrease in openings. Businesses that aren’t offering outdoor options may want to reassess as demand for outdoor seating, for example, is nearly triple what it was before the pandemic. If the availability of vaccines and booster shots has not diminished that demand, then outdoor options may simply be part of the new norm. The post New business openings nearly match pre-pandemic levels, Yelp says appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2nzLTIB Google Search has updated the map in the local pack within the web search results from a static map to an interactive map. The new interactive map allows you to zoom, pan, hover and click to see more details on the map. Previously, clicking on the map just took you into the Google Maps interface. What is new. When you do a search in Google Search and the local pack comes up showing you nearby businesses that match your query, you can now hover your mouse over the map and see the businesses, their reviews, zoom in and out of the map, drag the map around to see more places or click on a listing directly in the map interface. Here is a GIF I made of this in action: Note, this may also appear on the right hand side of the three local listings. How does this impact local search? Allie Margeson, who first spotted this change, said “businesses that aren’t ranking in the top 3 positions may still have a pin on the map, and now a searcher can hover over that pin and see the business’s review stats at a glance.” This is why, she said, reviews may now be even more important than before – because those customers can quickly see those reviews and decide to click or not click on your listing. Why we care. It is too early to tell if this will have a significant impact on local search and local businesses. But you should note that this change went live over the past couple of days and pay more attention to your local reviews going forward. The post Google Search local pack’s map is now interactive appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/g6f4937 Microsoft made a few announcements this week on the Bing webmaster blog around more software providers adding support for IndexNow leading to millions of sites using IndexNow since its launch in October 2021. Part of these announces have that Duda, All in One WordPress SEO plugin and Rank Math SEO plugin all added IndexNow integration into their systems. What is IndexNow. IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results. The co-sharing of IndexNow went fully live last month in January 2022. Millions of sites using IndexNow. Last November, Cloudflare announced it added integration with IndexNow and 60,000 websites turned on that feature. Microsoft released a simple to use WordPress plugin for IndexNow and Google announced it would be testing this protocol. Then last month, Microsoft said 80,000 websites are now using IndexNow for URL submission. We are now up to millions of sites adopting IndexNow, just several months after IndexNow was initially rolled out. New adoption. In these three announcements, we had the number 20 CMS platform on the internet, Duda announce they have enabled IndexNow by default across nearly 1 million active websites. The All In One WordPress SEO plugin announced it added support for IndexNow to the over 2 million sites that use its plugin. To activate and use IndexNow with AIOSEO, users can head over to the Feature Manager tab in the AIOSEO dashboard, where they’ll find the option to activate the addon. Then Rank Math SEO plugin announced it added support to the 1.1 million sites that use their plugin. Check out those individual blog posts to learn how to activate IndexNow if you use those tools. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. How it works. The protocol is very simple — all you need to do is create a key on your server, and then post a URL to the search engine to notify IndexNow-participating search engines of the change. The steps include:
Why we care. Like we said before, instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing. Now with these three new software players adding support, it makes adoption even easier for millions of sites. The post IndexNow integrations grow as Bing says ‘millions’ of sites are using it appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/Yz4wWHa LinkedIn is piloting its own podcast offering, known as the LinkedIn Podcast Network. The pilot program will include shows about topics such as technology, recruiting and mental health, from external experts as well as its own in-house news team. Why we care. There is a growing number of podcasts aimed at professional audiences — this is especially true in the search marketing industry. Hosting your podcast on LinkedIn may help your brand — particularly if it’s a B2B brand — get closer to professional audiences than they might on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, for example. While the LinkedIn Podcast Network isn’t open for all brands to join, there is a lead form for those that are interested in learning how to join it, so that may be a possibility down the road. Where to listen. All LinkedIn Podcast Network shows will be available globally on LinkedIn by following the podcast hosts and subscribing to their weekly newsletters. These shows are not exclusive to the professional social media network — they can also be listened to on other podcast platforms, like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. How to join the LinkedIn Podcast Network. It seems that existing podcasts may be able to learn more about joining the LinkedIn Podcast Network by filling out this form. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. The post LinkedIn launches podcast network aimed at professional audiences appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/JsXLQG4 “Migration is a burden that we all have with websites,” said SEO industry leader Bruce Clay at SMX Next. “We have to upgrade them periodically. A stale or an out-of-date website deteriorates your rankings in the search engines.” “There are all sorts of reasons to do it — maybe you have an e-commerce platform or just need an upgrade,” he added. Design upgrades, domain changes for a rebrand or necessary website merges can all necessitate a website migration. But, with so many moving pieces, the potential for errors — both from a ranking perspective and a site functionality standpoint — can increase if site owners and SEOs aren’t prepared. Here are some of the most important do’s and don’ts Clay recommends SEOs consider when migrating a website. What to do when migrating a websiteThere are many tasks involved when migrating a site, but the following are critical for preserving your rankings. Make an inventory of old URLs. Before beginning the migration process, marketers and site owners should put together a list of all their current URLs. This will establish a baseline to use as a comparison with the new site. Clay pointed out that running this inventory will inevitably uncover URL errors such as 400/500 status codes or redirect chains, so marketers should make note of these before the migration. SEOs can pull this data using one of many free crawling tools. Benchmark old rankings. Migrating a website will almost always result in ranking changes, and if you don’t know the original rankings, it can be difficult to figure out what caused those changes in the first place. That’s why Clay recommends noting the old site’s rankings: “You’re going to want to benchmark your rankings and any performance metrics you might have. You’re going to want to run analytics reports and ask yourself, ‘What rankings do I have right now? How is it [the site] performing and how am I going to be able to move forward?'” Create a backup of the old site. Site owners should regularly back up their sites, but this is even more crucial during the migration process. If something goes wrong with the new site, you’re going to need the old version to fall back on. Marketers should consult a developer to make sure this is done correctly. Plan the navigation and structure of the new site. Site structure is critical to the SEO success of any domain. And while it’s ultimately up to you what format is chosen, Clay recommends implementing a siloed structure with a hierarchy of pages on the new site to ensure its content is ranked most effectively. When you’re ready to migrate your content to the new site, be sure to address the errors identified during the inventory process and make sure everything is ready to be transferred. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. What not to do when migrating a websiteSEOs can sometimes get so caught up in the high volume of migration tasks that they fail to set the new site up for success. Here are some big “no-nos” when it comes to transferring the old site to the new version. Don’t delete your old site. Many site owners might be tempted to delete the old site once the new site is up and running, but Clay recommends keeping it live to ensure all the content and signals are transferred: “You could put the old site on the hard drive and just rename the directory. There are lots of things you could do, but make sure you have your old site and don’t take it down if you don’t have to.” He also said that some webmasters end up copying their old site onto the new site, only to have the new site fail. Having the old site live — ensuring it redirects to the new version — is critical in these early stages in case something goes wrong. Don’t use the staging site’s robots.txt file. Before using the new site live, don’t use the staging site’s robots.txt file, which could keep search engines from indexing your site. It’s always best to have a new version ready to be uploaded before the new site goes live. “Don’t copy that robots.txt into production or you’re going to be blocking your new one,” said Clay. Don’t schedule the migration when your traffic levels are highest. Site owners should avoid pushing a migration while experiencing high levels of traffic. This can disrupt your users’ experience and, ultimately, result in huge traffic losses. “Wait until your traffic levels are a little bit calmer,” Clay said. “Sometimes this is harder. Maybe you have a site that’s active 24/7, international or in season. But if you’re going to migrate and there’s an off period, that’s the right time to do it.” Don’t panic if/when rankings drop. There’s almost always going to be a shift in rankings after a site migration, and that’s okay. Unless there’s a major error — such as a redirect problem from the old site — these fluctuations should be temporary. Google and other search engines need time to recrawl your site and take note of the changes. “There’s going to be re-spidering happening. It’s going to take some time for Google to figure out what your site is. You know you’re going to take a hit in many cases now. We have had cases where we have done everything right, migrated it and don’t see traffic loss.” “That’s wonderful, but don’t count on it. And whatever you do, don’t panic,” he added. Site migrations are complex by design, but they don’t have to be disastrous for your SEO. With the right planning, marketers and site owners can enjoy the benefits of a brand new site after the move. Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (free registration required). The post SEO dos and don’ts of website migration appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/vSpKzf4 The post 202200225 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/cpjFRS7 |
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