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The Meta Description doesn't help Google ranking, but helps CTR

Tony hello, ive been reading that the meta description doesn't help Google ranking , but helps ctr. if this is the case does it matter what length it is , too short or too long, thanks 3 👍🏽 3 📰👈

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Ali Suggested meta title length is 55 to 60 characters Meta description length 150 to 158 character. If your character limit exceed the it will be shown in doted Daniel I've not even bothered writing meta descriptions for a couple of years and it hasn't done me any harm. Google usually picks what it wants to use out of the text based on the query anyway. Luke Don't focus on character count. Focus instead on the content of the description and use it to convince your target customer to click the link. Make it unique and create a compelling Call to Action within the allotted space. i.e. “Looking for roof repair in Dallas? Call our experienced roofers and get a 10% discount on your next project and a free…” They're left thinking – free what? And ooooh 10% discount. I've seen CTR's double after this change. The discount is just an example that I used, but of course, feel free to test different strategies. Increase the CTR will move the page higher in the search results. Sometimes, if Google thinks a specific part of your page is more relevant to a user's search, it will remove your description and put in it's own excerpt from your content. But, don't assume this will always happen. What's your service offering?

Tony ✍️ » Luke I'm a kids entertainer, supplying kids parties Luke » Tony Interesting. So, it might be something like: Planning a children's party? Call [Company Name] now to book an entertainer and get 15% off our services. Work in a keyword or two without stuffing them and focus on making it a smooth read. And make a unique description that relates to each page. Molu » Luke do you think Google likes to see calls to action in meta descriptions? They don't seem to want them in their meta titles. At least on ads and shopping. Luke The Title is a ranking factor, so I would not use a CTA in the title; it's a waste of valuable space. Choose your primary keyword for the page, then use your secondary keyword or a synonym directly after it. You can use this symbol "|" to separate ideas. i.e. Dallas Roofing Contractors | Roof Installation & Repair Then, add your call to action at the end of the description. If it's a product, discounts and sales promotions make great CTA's. Use: - specific numbers - humor - fear of missing out (FOMO) i.e. "Buy now and get 50% off while supplies last." (FOMO) "Shop today for laptops under $1,000" (#'s) "Order by Friday for free 1-day shipping" I work with contractors, and one of the funniest descriptions I've seen was for a lawn service: "Your grass is yellow, call now and let's make your grass green again! (###) ###-####" The CTA was through the roof. You can track them over a short period to test each one as long as you have some traffic going to your page. Tony ✍️ I'm sure, could be wrong but Google states it's not a ranking factor. “Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords factor into Google's ranking algorithms for web search. Meta descriptions can however impact a page's CTR (click-through-rate) on Google which can positively impact a page's ability to rank.” Luke » Tony Right, meta descriptions and meta keywords are not. Only the meta title is a ranking factor. Molu » Luke 🤣🤣 grass is yellow … great little anecdote man! Goes to show that it doesn't always need to be so rigid and predictable. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of spewing monotonous copy. 🤭1 Molu » Tony perhaps not directly but if the CTR is boosted that should in itself lift rankings. Tony ✍️ Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords factor into Google's ranking algorithms for web search. Meta descriptions can however impact a page's CTR (click-through-rate) on Google which can positively impact a page's ability to rank. Luke » Molu How right you are.

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These may satisfy you: » Thoughts on Leaving a Keyword out of an H1, H2, and the Meta Description » The Users feel these Tools Help up Click through Rate CTR from SERPs

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Is there a template to steer an SEO content writer?

Amba What types of SEO content writing instructions do you provide your writer? Anyone have a good template? 34 👍🏽 35 📰👈

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Kevin I can't comment on that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) side of things, but from a writing point of view I'm trying to break things down into digestible chunks for writers and include strong language/benefits they should include in each section + tips/mistakes they made earlier to avoid. If you break it into pieces, it's easier. For example, if we're talking about cleaning hiking boots, you might say "part 1: how to prepare shoes for cleaning - include reasons why they're important, include common mistakes to avoid, include professional tips to make them better, use words like comfortable, longer lasting, better durability, save the agony and make sure not to repeat the header like you did last time" it will help a lot. But in truth you probably wrote the damn thing yourself at the time. 🤭👍🏽12

Chris Link » Kevin Our did something very similar. But we can reuse our template for many topics so it makes sense to take the time to create one. If not then maybe as well write it yourself. Lol 🤭👍🏽 2

Md See, we are an agency that creates and handles B2B and Blog Content. me dealing with clients and planning content. Every client is different and so do content type. However for affiliate articles … my instructions is: - Writing for readers, turning complex topics into easy-to-understand concepts. Explain. - Practical examples and centric articles "I" pay. STILL. - Consumer intention and Buyer persona are important. Research and use your data with that in mind. - Google is just an indexing system, not your boss. Optimize Keywords usually rather than pushing two keywords in 200 words or so. - The ideal number of keywords is 5 times in our 5000 word article. Of course, we use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) if and where it's needed. - The LSI frequency and the main keyword depend on the words of each keyword phrase have. We don't use 4 to 5 word Keywords very often. That's difficult to engineer a sentence around them. - The grammatically flawed article is "No Go." Yes, you can "bending" the rules a bit, but breaking them is not an option. - Make a list of long articles and answer as many questions as possible You can. Keep it entertaining. Readers don't have to jump up and down information after landing on your part. - Design content clusters around your topic. Each article must have 5 informative topics for you to work on. The internal link between them is must. 👍🏽 6 Chetraj » Amba It's technical (what keywords or keyword clusters are written for) Search for keywords in the Google domain you are targeting Take note of the two content segments each of the top 10 sites has This could be Phrase definition Why choose us content points What does that involve is service 5/10 frequently asked questions Multiple user reviews on pages that include these targeted keywords Our how-to section (which also uses keywords) Several blogs (information) related to your topic (keywords and secondary keywords are integrated into it) And among them have multiple Call-To-Action (CTA)s for subscribing/inquiring services At SEMrush you can check your competitors for selected keywords and keyword groups And can also check how your content compares to ten rivals in terms of density / readability / keyword density..etc But if you don't want to pay for those ten site manual reviews - jotting down the elements they have and then writing content to win is the thing to do. 👍🏽 6 Morgan We have Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)s for our writers on how to use tools like Phrase and Clearscope, that's where they write and edit content. When it comes to content summaries, we always include the expected word count, main keywords to use, titles, questions to answer and topic overview, + competitor websites to check. 💟👍🏽 2 Dolman Each content assignment includes a content summary and content templates for the required content types. If the author writes a review article, they receive a content template for a review article that outlines how to write a review article for a physical product and a content summary for a specific physical product for which they will write a review that provides details and specific direction for the article assignment. If an author is assigned an article assignment "how to use", "how to maintain/clean", "how to fix/troubleshoot", or "best roundup", they will follow the content template for that content type using the short content assignment for that content type instead , but the general process and workflow is the same regardless of the type of content they have been assigned to write. 👍🏽 6 📰👈

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Read another article: What is your biggest struggle when Looking for Good Content Writers?

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An SEO Company does Partner with a Pay Per Lead (PPL) One | This is my Ongoing Marketing Strategy

Daryl Oberg Do you partner with a Pay Per Lead (PPL) company for paid traffic as an SEO or hire in house? The reason I ask is I know the foundation of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but focus more on paid traffic and it seems to be a good working relationship. A good SEO company will build a good site that is designed to convert and usually provides good content. Then the Ad company just needs to focus mostly on managing the ads specifically to help their client. Building landing pages and websites I can do but it's not my favorite part of the job description. 7 👍🏽 7 [filtered from 35 💬🗨]📰👈

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David Morgan You're right. Both, Organic and Paid positions are critical to online success. To achieve the results you're looking for, getting those clicks for the ultimate conversion is the main goal right? To your question, It's actually either-or. If you can do it in house, more power to you. If not, finding a team that you can trust and partner with would be a good sound solution.

Daryl Oberg A good SEO saves me a lot of time they design the website so you can just send traffic and feel fairly confident it will convert. David Morgan Both paid and organic has to convert. I'm playing from the premise that both are in top-notch shape. It's the kind of thing that you're asking, can you save money doing the ads yourself, or hiring a person to do it? I'll say this and it's the right kind of question. Because I can't speak to the circumstances of each individual, there are factors to consider. 1) Do you know and understand Pay Per Lead (PPL) well enough to handle this? If not, you'll lose money. 2) Just like other SEO agencies out there, not speaking to anyone in this group or other groups, of course, but you have to have a wary eye open and make sure they do take care of your project properly on your behalf. You can flip the script and say, if you were a PPC expert, should I learn SEO and do it in house or hire out. I personally have it done in-house. Not because I don't trust others, cause I know others here I can probably hire out to and know I'd get a good job. There are nuances however that we always consider. Daryl Oberg » David Morgan Hiring is greater control as long as you know what you are doing or can hire someone to manage them and make sure it is being done right. Hiring on a larger scale works better for that control and quality factor. David Morgan I couldn't agree more. Well put, Daryl Oberg.

Nicole Jobes I'm biased, but I say outsourced paid. Experts in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and experts in Pay Per Lead (PPL) are two very different skill sets. Plus, PPC that is focused purely on conversions can give some valuable keyword data to use in your SEO efforts. That's the ultimate - knowing what's converting and doing both your SEO and outsourced paid based on what's converting into new business for your clients.

Daryl Oberg The search terms provided are like jet fuel for SEO content. The skill sets are different with some overlap but I do agree they are different skill sets but work together really well. Nicole Jobes » Daryl Oberg Yeah, absolutely. They work great in tandem, and can change and grow based on results from both sides. Mike Pilko » Nicole Jobes What was your criteria for a trusted partner? Just personal relationship and results over time? Nicole Jobes » Mike Pilko I'd say a trusted partner would need to show you some case studies and level of service. At least that's what I do to gain trust.

Ryan Royce It really depends on the size of the accounts you are working on, and I feel this is true for both SEO and for PPC. Doing SEO at the enterprise level is a different game than medium-sized businesses (SMB), just like doing PPC for SMB is different than e-commerce. Really though, your typical Google Ads on the search network is not that difficult, as long as you can set up targeting and conversion tracking properly and write good direct response ad copy. Once you start expanding and require things like HTML5 banners, product feeds and dynamic creative, things get a bit more complex.

Daryl Oberg There is a lot more that can be done beyond search. Your needs and level ad management required will affect how you approach it significantly. Basic search ads someone can take the time to learn if they want to. Ryan Royce You can learn pretty much anything if you put your mind to it brother.

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Read another article: An Advanced SEO Strategy Ahead

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Keyword Research: Primary Keywords Only or Related Keywords Also?

(1) Keyword Research: Primary Keywords Only or Related Keywords Also? (2) Keyword Research: Should I Create Content Based on All Related Keywords to Increase the Chance to Acquire the Main Keyword I Aim To? (1) Keyword Research: Primary Keywords Only or Related Keywords Also? Allen Let's talk keywords. When you take on a new client or build a site out, are you pulling all keywords related or just a few at a time? 10 👍🏽 10 [filtered from 9 Answers]📰👈

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Jordan My team crawls the site (if existing), maps all ranking keywords to all pages, looks at the page itself and assigns a primary keyword on what it should be ranking for. (just because its ranking for keywords does not mean it matches with the intent of the page)

Allen » Jordan So how are you deciding on which keyword to use as the primary keyword for that given page? Jordan » Allen A combination of things but mostly intent of the page + common sense. It might be ranking for some high volume keyword on page 2 but has nothing to do with the intent of the page. Don't chase short tail keywords if they dont make sense. Do the Google search and see of the sites that are ranking match what your site is about. If it makes sense, optimize. If not, reevaluate

Keith L Evans 🎓 All keywords past, current and potential. I have to plan the site for now and the future opportunities. Key to is asking the CEO where they plan to be so products, geos, categories can be planned accordingly.

Allen Hey Mr. Trickster, so say you gather a list of 400 keywords. You're assigning each of those 400 keywords to each page and mapping them out at the start? Keith L Evans 🎓 » Joshua They are more like keyword topics or categories. I don't know what the cool kids call it now: clusters, clouds, clans. 🤭👍🏽4

Ejaz In start, we first go for the low competitive keywords in our niche. We first prioritize keywords on the basis of competition. Slow and steadily we go for the keywords having higher Keyword Difficulty (KD). Before making website my strategy would be Competitor Analysis — ->> Competitor's keywords after filtration — ->> Shape Content Plan — ->>Publishing Schedule Dino Better question: Why only pull just a few? Makes no sense to me. MORE DATA in my reasoning equals BETTER analysis for making the most PROFITABLE determinations. Whenever I am doing keyword research I want to find the most profitable keywords to target. I can't do that unless I have the best data to work with! Best data = MORE DATA

Allen » Dino Indeed. But once you have a list of 1000 relevant keywords, what do you do? Dino » Allen I sort them in a spreadsheet using conditional formatting to color code them by category. For example, all the keywords with a certain word in them. Also I narrow down the list first by removing anything with no search volume (unless of course it is in a niche that has very little search volume to begin with). So with a list of 1000 that can be narrowed down to just a few hundred. Also in the list you will find most of these are redundant. Like for example flipping the keywords "Chicago Dentist" or "Dentist Chicago". Other examples of redundancy could be the keyword "Dentist in Chicago". So by adding the word "in" you will still be optimized for "Dentist Chicago". Other examples of category could be having the word "best", "top", "number one", "highest rated", etc. So if the keyword with "best" has more search volume than "top" I will make that one a higher priority by optimizing for that in a stronger place on the page. After having color coded all the categories you will find that locating keywords in the columns of the spreadsheet is much easier and faster. It will be "scannable by a human eye to find the categories quickly. After the color coding I sort the list again from highest to lowest search volume - which will reveal the most profitable and relevant groups of keywords (because those have the potential to bring in more traffic). Doing this will make it so that you can easily prioritize which ones to use when writing the content. So when taking away the redundancy, the list of 1000 can be narrowed down to about 50 to 100 keywords - that can then be used for writing the main content on the website and later for things like blog posts. I usually do "question keywords" separate because these can be used for informational articles designed to draw in more traffic from potential buyers (who are in a different stage of the buying process). For the highest search volume keywords I will optimize for those in the strongest places like title tag, h1, h2, h3. For the lower search volume those can be sprinkled into the paragraphs in a natural way. It would make no sense to optimize for a keyword in the title tag with only 10 searches a month when another similar keyword has 100 searches a month. Unless of course your strategy for the pages is targeting easy to rank keywords that will rank faster for quicker results for whatever reason you are doing that. So by collecting more data you can then narrow that down to the best keywords - many of which most people will never find because they are not willing to do the extra work. I use the same process whether it is a list of 20,000 keywords or 1000. Larger populated areas will of course have more keywords with search volume to deal with (because of the higher number of people searching in that area). 💟1

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(2) Keyword Research: Should I Create Content Based on All Related Keywords to Increase the Chance to Acquire the Main Keyword I Aim To? Soni Trying to create content on the "Art Classes" keyword. I am seeing related keywords for the same. Should I create 5 different pages for the keywords I mentioned in the picture or just one page that covers all 5? 5 👍🏽 5 [filtered from 16 Answers]

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Zak Art classes ≠ online art classes ≠ art classes for kids ≠ art classes near me ≠ online art classes for kids // for me this 5 keywords have all different search intent so it's different pages. You could put them all on one page but I guess nobody likes to read 10k word articles (you will reach better rankings if you do for all this keywords different pages with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like 2010). If I would be you I would create that cluster around "art classes" and link back and up… Properly there are much more of that low hanging fruits - don't overthink Google AI is not that smart :') Thomas I'd look at WHY you want to create content around "art classes" more. Are you offering art classes and want to sell art classes to buyers? Put up the content that's relevant to your business/client's business and the customers associated with that. Solve their pain points, entertain them, make them think, educate them, etc. Ben It seems like you're trying to rank for something without understanding the search intent, which is a problem. This is shown by the fact that you want to rank for a "near me" keyword, which is going to return mostly local city level results, which you would have a near-impossible time ranking. Just because keywords seem related, doesn't mean they should be grouped together. They could have different search intents, which is way more important. Search intent is basically, "what is the user really looking for when they search for this keyword?" People who are searching for "online art classes for kids" aren't looking to take in-person art classes, and vice versa (there might be a small overlap with some people, but it's not most people). As Thomas pointed out, ask yourself what are you trying to do? Are you actually offering art classes? If not, I would try to find a different keyword. 💟👍🏽25

Garnes » Ben Great explanation 👏 Ahmed » Ben This 💯 Marian » Ben The masterchef has spoken 🤭1 Sanker Yup. also the near me isn't an actual keyword, but local intent. Farley » Ben Seems like their trying to rank without knowing how to rank lol…which may be a bigger problem

Truslow "Related" does not always correlate to "Relevant." Start by looking at intent. Are your art classes online? Or In-Person? (Or Both?) If they are only in-person, then "online art classes" is silly to go after - even if you can rank for it, you don't have what the person was searching for. If they are only online classes, then "near me" is useless for the same reason. Do you have classes for kids? If not… then the "kid" variations are silly, too. Then once you've narrowed that down… you need to look at covering your bases logically based upon the user personas that are going to be visiting your site. Got some classes for kids but not all - then sure… create a page that lists your classes for kids, but don't forget to make one that lists classes for adults, too. If you've only got a "kids" page but didn't make an "adults" page because there wasn't enough search volume - where is Google supposed to send people who aren't looking for classes for kids? Ultimately, when it comes to products and services, keyword research gives you an idea of how you can classify and organize EVERYTHING on the site. It can give you an idea of how to tag or categorize things - but it won't cover everything. Think first of what you've got to offer, then use those suggestions as a way to look at how that can be presented, organized, and structured so that EVERYONE can get through. Build a site based upon keyword research alone and you're going to be in a world of hurt. Roger If the keywords have different types of intent, yes, build few pages and links them, else just group them into one. I strongly recommend you watch this video. Nathan is really good and kind to offer such value info in free video - https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=Nt7i_0pWu80 7 Advanced Keyword Research Tips for SEO (Works in 2021) 📰👈

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These may satisfy you: » Why Keywords are Important in SEO Content! » Unique Keyword Research » 4 Common Mistakes I See People Make in Doing Keyword Research for SEO

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Someone Who Has Little Experience Wants to Get a Work Placement in an SEO-Related Field

Laura Hello everyone, any tips to get a work placement in an SEO related field with little experience? 14 👍🏽 1 💟 15 [filtered from 51 💬🗨]📰👈

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Martinez If you have any creative experience (writing, film-making, voice work for radio or podcasts, etc.), emphasize that. Even if you're only a student, emphasize the classes and extra curricular activities you've taken or been involved in. Show people the skills you have. Let them figure out if they can find a way to leverage what you know for their needs. I once hired someone who was a perfectly capable writer (her examples were fine) primarily because she told me she helped her nieces with a lemonade stand. They set it up in their front yard and sold nothing. She moved the stand to a wide median in the middle of their neighborhood and they sold out within an hour. 💟👍🏽4

Laura That's very reassuring to hear, as I do have experience in all of those (I'm a journalism student)! I only have experience with on-page SEO, even though I'm trying to learn as much as I can about off-page too. I really feel like getting a proper work placement would be so enriching. That's a lovely anecdote, thank you for sharing it! And thank you for your benevolence overall! Martinez » Laura With your background I would try to avoid "off-page SEO" as much as possible. If someone doesn't scoop up a journalism major for content production there is something wrong with the universe.

Megan I found my first gig on a link-building team on Craigslist… although it was totally suspect and I probably shouldn't have responded. Glad I did, though! Look for entry level coordinator or client services type roles at agencies to get your foot in the door, even if your end goal is to be on the strategy/ specialist side. Take any and every opportunity to work on projects with individuals in the roles that you want to be in. Don't be afraid to throw your hat into the ring when new positions open up. Worst case, they say "no", and you can take the practical experience you've been building up to apply at different companies.

Laura » Megan Thank you for your advice Megan, I really appreciate it! Aha, I totally see what you mean, some opportunities come out of the most unexpected places! Glad it turned out well for you! I'll definitely keep those tips in mind in the future once I'll be job hunting! For now, I'm only trying to secure a work placement to complete during university, because SEO is one of the few skills I haven't been able to develop fully during my journalism training! Thank you for your answer!

Tripper In the long wrong ranking a personal blog or two is great, but a big part of it comes down to if your willing to work for entry level money. We have had several shires in the last couple years of people with little to experience. Having a genuine interest matters a lot. For an entry level position the Google certs and things like that that might seem like not a big deal can help.

Laura » Tripper That's what I'm already doing, blogging and writing a lot! But right now I'm looking for a proper placement as part of my course. Thank you for your answer 😃

Steve Toth 🎓 You can learn a lot by blogging. Even if you don't make it to the first page you can still experiment and watch yourself move up in Google Search Console. Having your own blog is a huge differentiator for employers in this field. imho

Laura » Steve Toth Very interesting, that's what I'm trying to do at the moment 🙂

Laura Just wanted to thank everyone again for being so helpful, really cheered me up! I wanted to clarify as well, I'm a Journalism student looking for a placement for April as part of my degree. If you have contacts in media, that could be super helpful to me! Nick Start blogging and working on your own projects, and sharing your journey on social. The folks on my team who spend time building an audience on LinkedIn and Facebook get several job offers a month. Andrew is a guy to take notes from 💟1

Laura » Nick Lovely advice! I've started blogging a while ago, but am yet to share anything on social media. I'm very picky with what I produce, and tend to not share it unless I find it worth it. So far I haven't reached a level where I'm comfortable sharing my work to be honest, but I appreciate the advice, and it's really encouraging to see people get opportunities like this! I'll have a look immediately, thank you for your advice!

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Read another article: Where do SEO Agencies go to find Full-Time SEO Talented Employees?

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When Doing a 'site:' Google Search, what determines the Order of the Results?

Kayle Larkin 🎓 When doing a 'site:' Google search, what determines the order of the results? 12 👍🏽 12 [filtered from 57 💬🗨]📰👈

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Roger The site:search is not connected with Google's algorithm. This is true for all the advanced search operators. None of the advanced search operators, even the LINK search operator when it worked, are connected to Google's algorithm. So there are no takeaways related to the algorithm that can be taken from a site:search.

Joshua But it's always the same order. So there must be something. Roger » Joshua No, there's nothing but the job they were created to do. Any order you see is random or arbitrary and are 100% disconnected from Google's ranking algorithm. Advanced search operators are purposely designed to do a limited job that is outside of the algorithm. When the allintitle, allinurl and link search operators were first introduced, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) community went wild trying to deconstruct Google's algorithm. They spent HOURS trying to figure out why their site ranked #1 in allintitle SERPs but not in the regular Search Engine Optimization (SEO). etc. The link operator and how it originally worked is a great example, Joshua of how there is no "something" there that relates to the algorithm. I will share the history of the link operator with you so you can better understand the reality that there is no "something" there. Originally, the link operator it only showed links with a PageRank score of 4 or more. People like you Joshua who thought "there must be something" to it deduced that sites with a PR of 4+ are more important. This started the tradition that that you MUST get links from PR4+ sites and anything else was useless. The TRUTH was that the PR 4 was a random number that an engineer picked, who never imagined the SEO industry would think "there must be something" to it. What happened is nobody wanted to link to or get a link from sites with less than a PR 4. So this guy, Dave Naylor (Bronco SEO agency in the UK) talked to Matt Cutts about it and Matt Cutts brought the feedback to Google and they randomized the results. So you see, Joshua, there is nothing to it. The advanced search operators are literally separated from the regular algorithm and have no meaning or diagnostic usefulness. 💟🤯👍🏽12 Joshua Thanks for the pointless speech. Even data sets ordered by nothing are still ordered by something. Roger » Joshua And if you figure out the order of the data sets it's pointless. How useful is it to know that the link search operator is randomized? The only use of that knowledge is to keep you from wasting your time trying to figure out how it relates to the algorithm. What is truly pointless is trying to figure out the arbitrary order of advanced search operators. It's trivial and just good as an anecdote, like the one I shared with you about the link operator. What matters is if it has something to do with the algorithm. If it does not then you're wasting your time as this will not help you rank better or do a better job. People were obsessing on those advanced link operators from day one. It's pointless because nothing ever came from it. The site search has no connection to the algorithm and in my opinion appear to be random. In fact, more random today than ever before. That's by design. I believe in the past there may have been a relation between site:search and links but that's no longer the case for at least the past couple years. Joshua I never mentioned any algorithm. Roger » Joshua What's the point of knowing that the link operator was randomized? The point is that it's not useful for ranking and that the information in it is truncated and thus it is useful to know that it's useless, as I said. In fact, Mueller recently said, but I didn't write about it, that the site:search operator is unreliable and to use the Google Search Console (GSC) for understanding what Google is indexing. I don't have a link to that as it's in one of those videos, LOL. Kayle Larkin 🎓 This was great information. Shaun » Roger These types of responses are why I'm in this group. Thanks Roger! 💟👍🏽2 Kenner » Roger Amazing reply! Would love to follow your work and analysis 💟👍🏽2 Roger Michael, I publish a lot of good search marketing info on SEJ, and even on news related articles I try to add something useful for work. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/author/roger-montti/ Roger - Search Engine Journal 💟👍🏽2

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11 Points to Protect Multiple Domains From Malware, Phishing, and Code Injections

Amine Our WP sites get hacked/compromized too many times for my liking. What do you guys use to protect multiple domains from malware, phishing and code injections? WordFence? CodeGuard? SiteLock? Sucuri? What's the best solution pricewise? 7 👍🏽 7 [filtered from 51 💬🗨]📰👈

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Raef I answered a similar question in another group. If it's not okay for me to copy and paste my own answer, please delete and may the fleas from a thousand camels infect my jockey shorts. These are best practices: Most of what I'll share with you is for Apache based websites. Nginx is different. 1. Keep hackers out of wp-includes and wp-admin with some .htaccess files. 2. If you have more than one website accessible from one cPanel, lock each site down individually with php.ini files. Use the open_basedir command to specify the exact path to each site. 3. Always use a good strong anti-virus program on your local computer. ALWAYS! It's astonishing to me how many websites we remove malware from that were hacked due to a password-stealing trojan on their computer. 4. Keep all plugins updated daily. There have been so many websites infected recently that were the result of the elementor-pro plugin not being updated. Recently. After the plugin was patched. 5. Me personally, I would never give someone an admin level account on my WordPress site. Never. If I did, as soon as they were finished, I would delete the account. 6. You must have file monitoring. No other way about it. You need to know that any files added or modified are safe or not. Not just notified that they've changed or been added, but are they safe. 7. Disable PHP in the wp-content/uploads folder. Nothing in there needs to be executed. Nothing. 8. Change your passwords frequently and change the password salts in wp-config.php just as frequently. 9. I have little faith in WAFs. Read their blogs and updates. They all say after finding a new vulnerability, "Now our customers are protected from this exploit". Really? Why wasn't this attack blocked before? Block SQL injection, cross-site scripting and other attack METHODS. Stop chasing the latest exploit. Block the methods hackers use and you'll be ahead of the game. 10. If you're on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Dedicated server, block countries by IP address. Do you need traffic from Ukraine, Russia or a host of other countries? If not, block them. It's one less avenue to worry about. However, don't do it at the application layer with a web application firewall (WAF). That's chewing up resources. Do it at the application layer. 11. You must have the logs monitored. Want to know what's going on with your website? It's all in the logs. (Even what Google is crawling, how long and how often they crawl too! 😉😉😉) Log monitoring along with file monitoring will tell you exactly how the sites were infected and when. From there, if your security needs tightening, it's relatively easy. Any questions? Fire away.

Adly Great checklist! thank you. may i ask which tools do you recommend for log and file monitoring? Raef » Adly I wrote my own. I stream logs from customers sites to my servers where I analyze them "on the fly". Kieran Awesome response. 💟1 Loga » Raef Thank you for taking the time to share this. Superb insights. Thanks. 💟1

Martinez Among other things we rename the login URLs. If hackers cannot find them they cannot break into them. I believe this is the most effective strategy.

Anton » Martinez How does this help? Users will have login buttons on top and find the page very easily. Igor That's only on sites that have accounts enabled. Most businesses don't have this. Martinez » Anton What Igor says is correct, but many of the bots used to attack login URLs are preprogrammed to go after a small number of URLs. If you rename the URLs the number of brute force dictionary attacks should decline. If you leave comments open on Posts or Pages, closing those off after a couple of weeks also helps. Most comments that are left after 15-30 days are just spambots anyway. Some of them will attempt to dump SQL injections into the comments,

Edward WordFence severely slowed our site down we had to ditch it. Sucuri does a fair job of spotting injections and vulnerabilities. Problem with WP is the update addiction. Every update - apart from potentially breaking the whole site - may fix one vulnerability, but may open up several others unknowingly. So you keep updating, and keep hitting the same problem going round in circles. Instead of doing minor dangerous updates often, I'm inclined to test and launch sites as-is, fix vulnerabilities in existing plugins manually where possible - then look at upgrading everything properly as a new project down the line. 📰👈

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These may satisfy you: » Some Advice if your Server Get Hacked » How to Delete Hacked Urls From Google SERPs? A New Owner Has Been Added on GSC

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In What Cases Would You Want to No-Index a Page but Has the Googlebot Follow the Links?

Sirris A few questions… If I use x-robot tag in the HTTP header and I noindex a page, do I need to specify a follow or nofollow? Meaning does this default to follow? Also, in what cases would you want to noindex a page but has the googlebot follow the links? What's the benefit of doing that if the page passing link equity isn't indexed? Maybe I'm missing something here but I can't image a case where you'd de-index something and leave bots to follow the links. It's one of those days… 2 👍🏽 2 [filtered from 26 💬🗨]📰👈

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Martinez Google has said they'll convert a "noindex" to a "nofollow" for the page. ADDED ON EDIT: Specifically, John Mueller said in a 2017 Webmaster hangout that after the noindexed page is completely dropped from the index there is nothing to follow. If you create a page with "noindex" it won't be included in the index for any length of time - so then there is nothing to follow from the beginning.

Bauer actually what they (JMu) said was that the links would be followed until the page actually drops out of the index, in which case the links would no longer be discoverable. in other words, "There's no really big difference there in the long run." and how long until that happens? "it depends" of course… see this for more discussion: https://www.webmasterworld.com/Google/4881752.htm Martinez » Bauer It doesn't depend in this case. Once the page is removed from the index (and he did say there would be a delay) then there is nothing to follow. No one should assume that "noindex,follow" will work for very long. Martinez And *IF* the page is never indexed in the first place then the links will never be followed. So creating pages for the sake of linking/crawling with a "noindex" is a waste of time and resources. The pages will be crawled, Google will see the "noindex", and that will be that. Bauer » Martinez I' not sure if you agree with me or not. i'm merely reporting what i've read. i'm pretty sure i reported it accurately. Martinez » Bauer You clarified the point I made by pointing to a video where John says that if they see "noindex,follow" they might follow the links for an unspecified time but once the page drops out of the index there is nothing to follow. I conceded that point and corrected my original comment. But I also pointed out that if someone creates a page with "noindex,follow" from the start - Google won't index it and therefore it won't follow the links. So, to answer the question posed above, I would only do this when transitioning from one URL format to another on a site where I could not for some reason set up redirects (and that's a very rare hosting situation). Sirris » Michael So to sum up, - NoIndex, also means nofollow in due time. - NoIndex, follow will drop to nofollow once the page is de-indexed. - Not specifying a follow tag on a page will automatically default to follow, if the existing directive is to index the page. Which hosting situations would you do the above? So why even NoIndex a page ever? Why not 404 or 301 the page? Is it to save "link equity"? But in that case NoIndexing a page will stop passing back link equity over time. Martinez » Sirris "Which hosting situations would you do the above?" There are still a few very, very old platforms out there. I'm not even sure if they are taking on new customers. I've advized a few old acquaintances on ways to get their content off those platforms. I seriously doubt anyone in their right mind would try to get onto them. Sirris » Michael This seems to do a good job covering the topic. I'm just confused why you would want to NoIndex and Disallow a page if it wasn't a staging section or private content. Like if I published 1000 blog posts, why NoIndex, NoFollow. Why not 404 or 301 redirect those page? Also, why would anyone just disallow a page. That still allows the page to potentially be indexed in search results? https://www.matthewedgar.net/noindex-vs-nofollow-vs-disallow/ Noindex vs Nofollow vs Disallow Commands | Matthew Edgar Martinez This page explains how Google handles "noindex". Looking at what people have done on their sites doesn't tell you the story. The TripAdvisor SiteIndex page doesn't appear to be in Google's index, but if any pages it links to are indexed that doesn't mean Google follows the links on the SiteIndex page. And you cannot use 3rd-party link research tools to determine which links Google knows about. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en Block search indexing with 'noindex' - Search Console Help

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Read another article: Thoughts on No Indexing Tag and Category Pages for Blogs

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An SEO tool said my traffic worth is $600 a month, but I make about $4 using Google Adsense

Dennis Hi guys, according to Ahrefs my organic traffic roughly 1500 visitors a month to a niche is worth $600 a month. I make about $4 at the moment using Google Adsense. What am I missing?! Thanks! 16 👍🏽 5 🤭 21 📰👈

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Troy The estimate is usually based on the cost per click of the keyword and the estimated traffic received from your organic position. So it's saying if you were running Google ads, you would have to pay this much for your traffic from those keywords (based on their estimates) Martinez You can't take those projections seriously. They're nice to know about but the advertisers decide what they are willing to spend. Maybe your site is being rejected by advertisers even though you're in the network. Maybe you're using the wrong kind of ad units. The discrepancy between projection and reality can be due to many things. We have sites in our portfolio that double, sometimes triple their earnings in December and January over the rest of the year. We have sites that earn most of their money in the spring months. It takes time to figure out what works for you.

Breslin » Martinez Yes I totally agree with the above, could be price ticket of product, trust worthiness of brand, targeting issues, even sales outlets so for instance years ago I worked for a brick slip company had great rankings good traffic but little buying going on, when we made a competitor analyses project we realized the top 2 companies were advertising in specific construction site where architects and project managers could source multiple materials in the same place, logic said we needed to identify our ideal customer and understand his job role and responsibilities in order to understand how to advertise to him. This process may not be linked exactly to yours but is an example of how you have to map things much further sometimes to find out what's missing,

Logan Same problem. Same #s. Thinking my issue is that my products are hot for only a week and worth only $20 on average…then after a week nobody searches for them again. Daine This has nothing to do with how much your site is worth, but how much it would cost you in ad spend to drive the same estimated traffic from the same keywords using Google Ads. Friar As others have mentioned, that is not the amount you should generate, it's what it would cost a comparable amount of traffic through Pay-Per-Click (PPC). As for how much your site should be worth, the number I have seen is $10 per thousand users monthly in ad revenue. But I seriously doubt the people using that number are using ad sense, it's usually affiliate links plus an affiliate ad network.

Martinez » Friar 10,000 visitors to 1 site could generate 2-5X as much AdSense revenue as 10,000 visitors to another site. Any formula that projects earnings isn't worth much.

Christine I have a dead/abandoned website with only 8 articles (guides how to start an AirBNB articles). One article ranked and generated me several new hosts referrals (but I was only paid for 5 successful referrals because of terms and conditions, blah blah). The point is: - the blog is basically abandoned/dead/started but not continued - only took 1 ranking to generate income - income from 5 referrals: $200 x 5 Nowadays, it only has Adsense (for the sake of the few cents), but hey, it's passive lol. I'd focus on affiliate marketing if I were you. Generate referrals' fees/affiliate commissions relevant to your niche. P.S. i abandoned it because Airbnb paused/stopped their affiliate program and I haven't been airbnb hosting since Pandemic started (and therefore have nothing easy to blog about). I'm currently focusing on one Affiliate marketing site instead. Guzman You are missing the understanding of how these two tools work. Initially, Google tools metrics for Cost-per-click (CPC) and Search V. are way too different than third-party tools like Ahrefs. This alone is an indicator that what Ahrefs says cost 1USD CPC; Google might say for the moment, it's 0.5 USD CPC. So you cannot rely on the metrics of Ahrefs to calculate your AdSense revenue. The other thing is tracking, Ahrefs calculate the traffic value not based on click but based on keywords ranked positions. On the other hand, Google, via your tracking codes on one side and browser settings, among others. This is a superficial, basic explanation of what you are missing! Enzo Maybe Google is making $596 a month, and you make $4 🤭👍🏽8 Adrian Forget about Adsense. You lose your time and efforts. Try other option of monetization with CPA offers, try to sell something on your website.

Mark I couldn't agree more - at least "try" and find something better. This thread now has its answer.

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These may satisfy you: » Revenue per 1000 Views of an Adsense (RPM) » Elementor vs Gutenberg if a website is Adsense powered

[adieka]

Approach for a Primary Keyword That Gets Such Low Search Volume

Jessica Foster 🎓 What is your approach when you encounter a site whose primary keyword gets such low search volume and each variation/longtail keyword/etc. gets none at all? (for instance: "seattle underwater basket weaver") Do you broaden your scope? Continue to use the same keyword across all of the pages? Don't bother? 3 👍🏽 3 [filtered from 24 💬🗨]📰👈

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Kennan Hard to say without knowing the specific niche… when we were working in the online education lead gen space the company I worked with put up a jobs site that focused on all the crappiest jobs… fast food jobs, McDonalds jobs, burger king jobs, landscaping jobs… then they hit them with a opt in form when they signed up asking them if they wanted to get money to go to college from home and tons of them indicated interest. Sometimes you gotta think way outside the box. 🤭👍🏽2

Jessica Foster 🎓 I love it. ❤ I wanted to avoid specifics here because I have ran into this question a few times for people asking for advice on very small niche sites. My brain starts to veer toward other kinds of marketing rather than Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Kennan » Jessica Yep alot of times SEO is cost prohibitive when there isnt enough value or interest in the product or service or people dont even know it exists so there is no demand. That's why I tend to stay away from brand new industries and start ups unless they are getting a lot of publicity. 💟👍🏽2 Jessica Foster 🎓 » Kennan Very smart. I try to explain this to people but it is sad. They get their little hearts set on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Kennan Gotta find a product or service that has demand and use that as a feeder. There are certain industries where everyone gets referrals. There's literally almost no search volume. Jessica Foster 🎓 » Kennan Good idea. Kennan » Jessica Foster There are tons of financial advisors… very little volume relative… but plenty of people looking for bookkeeping and IRAs and estate planning and accountants and CDs, and banking / finance solutions along with long tails. The online education leads company spent millions per month on ppc for crap jobs.

Hartzer Many keywords don't get enough traffic to be on the radar of the popular keyword research tools. That's why I don't focus on keywords, I focus on the content that's necessary for the website. Once the site is live you can use analytics data and Google search console data to tweak some of the keywords. But generally I don't write content based on what a keyword research tool says. It should based on your persona research, not just keyword research. If you have a list of competitors, though, you can put their domain in SEMrush and see what they are ranking for. That can give you some content and keyword ideas. 💟👍🏽7

Jessica Foster 🎓 Fact. I like your thoughts here. I think competitor research can help a lot (assuming they have some). Obviously the market has to be there. As Kennan said above, sometimes SEO doesn't necessarily make sense cost-wise. Other marketing methods may work better for the time being.

Richard » Jessica Keep in mind the search term used may not include a city / geo modifier depending upon the searchers intent. ie: someone living in the greater searching for a wedding planner in Seattle may only search for wedding planner. However, someone living in New York who is planning on getting married in Seattle may include the city geo modifier. If the basket weaver has a business address serving the specific geo, then check SEMrush for the term w/o the geo. May also check basket weaver then look for related phrases to under water. Aqua, hydro, wee n wild, etc. Paul With real low search volume should be no problem ranking on page one for their main keywords. I guess there are some niche markets out there with such low search volume that might not be sustainable as a business ,ie if there is not enough people seeking such a thing, not enough people wanting that service / activity / product, all of which can simply be because not a lot of people know such a thing exists. At least those that ARE looking for such a thing will easily find your clients site. As it's an underwater activity you could try rank it for underwater activity / activities, and also rank it for just plain basket weaving, could also rank it for scuba diving (with a difference) as it can involve that too. In other words rank it in related niche's so that people that don't know such a thing exists will discover it and possibly be interested in trying it out!

Jessica Foster 🎓 I was just using "underwater basket weaving" as a random example. That's not actually what the topic is. Paul » Jessica Foster Lol ok well same idea could apply, if there are any related niche I suppose

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These may satisfy you: » Why Keywords are Important in SEO Content! » Unique Keyword Research » 4 Common Mistakes I See People Make in Doing Keyword Research for SEO » How do some Tools Calculate the Keyword Difficulty? Which One is Relatively more Reliable? SEMrush|Ubersuggest|Kwfinder

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Recently I was thinking about the Author Box as a way of increasing EAT

Osvaldo Author Box + About us Page - Do you actually need it or not? Hello guys, Recently I was thinking about the Author Box as a way of increasing EAT. Our blog is based on WordPress, and we have 4 different languages, so it will take a lot of time to change all posts to the name of the original authors (right now there's no Author box, and the writers are not even registered). My question is, is it worth the time or it doesn't matter much? The website where we sell the product is "Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)" but the blog is a mix of Ymyl+ free content. what about the "About us page"? That's also another way that I thought of increasing EAT, having pictures + names of the team, a small description of what they do, and etc… Have any of you actually done that before and got some kind of "Good result" in the long run? Thank you! 📰👈

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Jenks In terms of Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EAT), if your authors are official authorities then I've seen some data that suggests it will definitely help in some niches. I worked with a major finance site in Canada that saw some nice wins when they had their content reviewed by certified experts, with credentials listed in their author box. 👍🏽3

Osvaldo » Jenks Yes, they have some authority in the niche, I'll try it and maybe post here if results come in the future. Fiona This guy, Roy, knows a thing or two 😉 Osvaldo major niche websites don't do it for funsies and industry experts like Marie Haynes or Barry Schwartz would say exactly what Roy has. Even if they names of the authors aren't or reviewers aren't experts 'yet' you need to build that presence and authority through author acknowledgement and an expert reviewer. Jenks » Fiona Fiona you're making me blush! 🤔1

Mišo Absolutely worth it. Newcomers are subconsciously mean: Their brain thinks "Who the hell is this guy/girls to preach me about XYZ". If there is some kind of an ID in form of an author box, they instantly get calmer. It is pure psychology: tons of various cognitive biases. I am not talking about light reading content like showbiz. I am talking about impactful topics that should not be taken lightly from just about any random website. Just remember the last time when a guy in a car did something in front of your that made you wanting to kill him. However then he apologizes and you are suddenly like the best friends. 🙂 That's how fast human brain changes moods. That's why you need the Author box. Similarly, the Bio page is useful as well, but only IF you have something meaningful to put to it. Here's another tip: never forget the academic title if there is one. For some reason it gets omitted often. With regards of testing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) results, yes. This alone isn't doing much, but as part of the overall strategy, with other things in place, it does help. Especially on finance and health websites. 👍🏽1

Osvaldo » Mišo Thank you for the very detailed message! I agree with all you said and I'll definitely focus on adding author boxes to all posts this week. 👍🏽1

Martinez There is no Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EAT) score. There is no EAT algorithm. Ask yourself what kind of site you would want to visit, visit again, and maybe link to. Create that. 👍🏽11

Martinez » Mariya I expected you to post something like that. You completely ignored the opening text: "Google's algorithms identify signals about pages that correlate with trustworthiness and authoritativeness." Furthermore, that text has been removed from the article because it was misused by the SEO community to spread the false belief in a non-existent EAT algorithm and non-existent EAT scores. The article now includes THIS warning: "Note (March 2020): Since we originally wrote this post, we have been occasionally asked if E-A-T is a ranking factor. Our automated systems use a mix of many different signals to rank great content. We've tried to make this mix align what human beings would agree is great content as they would assess it according to E-A-T criteria. Given this, assessing your own content in terms of E-A-T criteria may help align it conceptually with the different signals that our automated systems use to rank content." Here is the link: https://developers.google.com/…/blog/2019/08/core-updates What webmasters should know about Google's core updates 👍🏽2 Martinez People need to understand that whenever someone avoids linking to an authoritative source of information - and whenever they deliberately omit important context - they are trying to hide something. There is no EAT algorithm. There is no EAT signal. If there were such things, no one would have to resort to tricks to support their arguments that such things exist.

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Read another article: Thoughts on “EAT is Not in SEO”| Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EAT)

[adieka]

Migrating a Website: CMS Hubspot and CMS Wordpress

Sarah Hi everyone! what's your point of view between Content Management System (CMS) HUBSPOT and CMS WordPress? I need to migrate a website and don't know which one choosing. 🙏🏻 please help me 7 👍🏽 7 [filtered from 24 Answers]📰👈

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Mark I think HubSpot CMS is around £150 a month so budget would be a big deciding factor. WP is free depending on if you need any paid for plugins or not Baron I would go HubSpot no questions asked if you can afford it

Sarah ✍️ » Baron could you tell us why? Baron » Sarah Sure! I will make a Youtube video about it but for now the cliff notes are: 1 you can track everyone visiting your website 2 natural integration with HubSpot Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 3 Doesn't require you to update and install plugins constantly 4 Developed by a billion-dollar company that has a team of people working on it 5 Incredible levels of support by a team of people who actually developed it 6 Dynamic Content pages 7 Natural drag and drop editor 8 Integrated A/B testing Its a long list but if your budget fit it, its a no brainer in my opinion.

Charlie Hubspot has a CMS 😳 🤭1

Sarah ✍️ » Charlie https://www.hubspot.com/products/cms Build and Manage Your Website on CMS Hub | HubSpot Charlie » Sarah no thanks. WordPress dominates this space for a reason Daniel » Charlie exactly my first thought my friend you're not alone LOL me personally what's a WordPress but I have made it a point to learn webflow because I believe that is the best new age CMS in the world currently.

Vojkan Hubspot is an all-in-one solution that provides, CMS, hosting, CRM and support. If you are not technical you'll still need to hire someone for design and tech stuff. All that comes at a price of $300/mo. Choose this option if you like Hubspots CRM and if you don't want to worry about tech stuff too much. WordPress is a free CMS, but you'll have to pay for hosting, theme, plugins, support. Its wide range of plugins makes it very powerful, scalable and yet cheap. Choosing this option will require someone to deal with tech stuff. 💟👍🏽4

Evan » Vojkan I have a client on HubSpot … they have the highest tier package. They still need a tech person. Shit, the account managers at HubSpot need a tech person 🙄 😤🤭👍🏽5 Vojkan One of my clients is also a Hubspot enterprise client and they hired an external agency to help them with Hubspot tech stuff. 🙂 They sometimes complain even about that external support. Re: HubSpot support, I found them to be good for simple questions. You can't really hire experts that will be on call for that price. Overall, I like HubSpot and after a few days working in it and with a little help from Google I can found my way for everything I need. Evan » Vojkan I've been working with hubspot long before it became what it is today. Not a brag or anything but I guess I know the platform better than a lot of the recent hires shrug 🤷‍♂️ don't get me wrong I love hubspot but as with everything else, when you start to grow, the quality of service your people provide to customers can get diluted. It can be frustrating though especially when you've been doing SEO for a client for a long time and things are good then hubspot comes along insisting that we must move our current blog which pulls massive traffic from its current sub folder to a sub domain … I said not happening, advised against moving to the subdomain. But hubspot wouldn't let up and my client said can we at least try it? they were convinced it was the best thing … it was a disaster.

Daniel Webflow blows both of them away … However it's not just because of the fact that the performance on webflow is incredible it is also that you can export 100% WP compatible code and therefore use it as a design CMS staging site then hand off that code to your WP DEV team and done. You will have the ultimate well written badass coding on WordPress. Now the only reason why you would choose WordPress over webflow is for certain businesses that have requirements that end up seeing huge volume traffic. But for most small business sites webflow all day man. And that is what's so cool is that if that small business one day became an international conglomerate then you'll be able to migrate the site right on to WordPress exact design translates into WordPress Ambar I love Hubspot CRM but I wouldn't touch their CMS with a 10 foot pole. We have a few landing pages with them and it is really frustrating to use it. You have very little control over the look and feel. The rest of our website (hundreds of pages) runs on WordPress which offers a high degree of flexibility. P.s. we also had our entire blog running on Hubspot until we discovered there was no structured data for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)… a big let down. 💟1 Diego I heard Hubspot was like 30K a year

Sarah ✍️ » Diego starting 280€/months but all inclusive. Assistance, maintenance, A/b testing, subdomain…

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These may satisfy you: » Is WordPress Really the Best Web Development Platform? » Speed up Your WordPress Website and Avoid Plugins | Add This Script to .htaccess » Is Anyone Using any CMS Other Than WordPress? How is Your Experience? » Making a Custom CMS is Better than Using a Common CMS eg WordPress. Isn’t it?

[adieka]

What are Your Productivity Hacks? Besides SEO Activities

Pablo What are your productivity hacks? Here are some things that are working for me. Not Search Engine Optimization (SEO) related, but hopefully useful. Tip #1 Track daily your habits, put there things you know you have to do, but never do, and things you know you always do too. Track them, even if you don't do them, every day, mark the ones you did, leave unmarked the ones you didn't, don't feel bad about those. After some time, by inertia, you'll start doing those you didn't do before, and you'll continue doing more of the ones you already did. Use an app to track them, don't set a time to check them, just do it daily. TIP #2 Use two computers, or two users on the same computer. On one, just have the things you use to work, plus something that gives you a bit of rest but don't take too much of your time, think music, etc. On the other one, put the things that entertain you but take more of your time, think video games, Facebook, Netflix, Youtube. TIP #3 Make sure you have more fun doing the work, this might mean reduce the time it takes to do some of the boring ones, or remove them fully if they don't add enough value. By having more pleasure associated with your work, you'll do more of that productive work. You'll probably do your work faster / better. TIP #4 If you enjoy your work, but you're having trouble getting started, because it is work after all, and there are more fun things to do, like scrolling forever on Facebook. Your tasks are probably too big, divide and conquer. Break them into smaller tasks, start with the smallest one, you'll probably start moving in the right direction. Hard things are only hard if you want to do them fully. Think building a house all at once, vs piece by piece. 22 👍🏽 3 💟 25 [filtered from 26 💬🗨]📰👈

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Casarez Something that started working for me: Getting up earlier and getting my routine started. My workout/training, my reading, my affirmations, cleaning, etc. All of this before checking any social media or emails or starting on work. Getting a few wins and my routine started early seems to make me happier and more productive during the remainder of the day. Mainly because I don't have nagging reminders in the back of my head that I still have X to do before the day is over. I can focus on work. 💟👍🏽2

Pablo » Casarez Getting a few wins early, that's a great way to get started.

Casarez Any recurring task/project that requires multiple URLs, I keep them in bookmarked folders and open them in batches when the time comes. Cuts down on the decision fatigue.

Pablo » Casarez Like that, "decision fatigue" Casarez » Pablo https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/323748 9 Ways to Combat Decision Fatigue Keith L Evans 🎓 Good one Chris! I do this too. Many times I will have tasks that are just in it's own browser, only thing on the screen. (no distractions) Then every tab open is designed to assist with the task. Casarez » Keith L Evans, Pablo I use this program in a similar fashion for items on my desktop. In addition to create .BAT file for opening multiple files at once when needed. https://www.microsystools.com/products/launcher/ Launcher - Application Launcher to Manage and Launch Programs

Bogdan at no 2, for a long time I used to have 2 desks, one "production" desktop, one "communications" laptop, and a chair with weels. after a while I was able to track my working habits by simply checking the wooden floor on both desks. slightly used here, quite a hole there… 🤯🤭👍🏽3

Pablo » Bogdan Tracking habits in real life, nice lol Bogdan » Pablo More like digging habits, it was the mIRC times 🙂

Bogdan my share now. 1. I group things I hate and give them a full day. when a day is ruined, is ruined anyway, all day, so I rather get the most of it 2. alternate repetitive non-brainer tasks with the creative / research ones. 3. listen music, but never video, never radio - just music I know well enough so it will not break my concentration. 4. keep Facebook only for professional groups, unfollow all cat pics, look I have a coffee, political views, what advise can you give me for a new mousepad etc 5. have my coffee at home, news reading, wife talks etc (we wake up 2 hours before we wake the children). 6. never stay a minute longer after the office hours, it will just give you the impression "I have plenty of time" and make you linger half the day. 7. never work at night, when I am tired or hungry 8. always set clear timetable and deadline for boring tasks, never do that for creative / research ones. 9. never argue with stupid people, never avoid arguing with smart ones and to complete the decalogue - with a not so much productivity tip, but more like a life choice: 10. if I don't like it, it should be very well paid. if is not even that, f*ck it. for some things, life is a lot longer than it seems to be for other things. 💟👍🏽6 📰👈

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[adieka]

A Boss Ordered a Marketer to Switch an SEO Tool to Another Else Because the Boss Thought that It was the Most Famous Tool

A Boss Ordered a Marketer to Switch an SEO Tool to Another Else Because the Boss Thought that It was the Most Famous Tool

Andrew

ADVICE NEEDED: I am deep into the SEMrush ecosystem. I have done the entire SEMrush academy and tests. I feel I know it inside and out. I've used it to attain top 10 rankings for my blog posts for the startup I work at. As well as great competitor research. I've done some linkbuilding as well.

Now the dev team of my startup (I'm on content SEO team) wants to switch to Ahrefs.

I can push for:

a) Using both SEMrush and Ahrefs (boss doesn't know much about Search Engine Optimization (SEO))

b) Fight to keep SEMrush

c) Go political and 'agree' with switching to Ahrefs for the dev team's sake but then use this "agreement" capital to push hard for a content marketing tool like MarketMuse, Clearscope, Frase, Pageoptimizer Pro, etc. which my manager also agreed would be useful.

Thoughts?

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Rana

My question - why is the Dev making decision on which SEO tool to use? Is that not your teams decision?

Andrew

Great point. I have brought it up…i'll continue to bring it up.

Peranić

Your company has bigger issues than tool that will be used.

Tool is just tool.

What's connection between SEO tool and dev team? Where comes from their interest in tools?

Who is project manager for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Dev!?

What cleaning lady has to say? What's her opinion about tools for SEO, design and development?

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Steve

Certainly smells that way. Your time has a value, you aren't going to benefit the company if you spend your time learning rather than doing.

What is the economic argument in terms of benefits for changing your tools underneath you? How much is it going to cost you to retrain in lost company time?

I'm with Peranić - it seems from a distance like your dev team are throwing a clueless, potentially damaging spanner in the works.

Be honest with your manager. The question they should be asking is why it's any of the devteams business.

( disclaimer- I work at Majestic but am doing my best to answer this in a tool agnostic fashion )

The issue here isn't the platform - it's who is calling the shots and why.

George

Andrew you should argue with the dev team about them using Notepad instead of any complicated coding tools 🙂

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Andrew

lol

Seeman

My $.02 … I have worked with a medium sized (200 employees) software company doing content and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and I would recommend just asking why they would like to make that switch.

Usually there are different teams, and each team has a different perspective. Maybe they heard that Ahrefs is better from someone outside. They might not have experience with it personally, but that also means they don't know the difficulties of making the switch. Once you have listened to the other team, you can address their concerns. This also positions you in a place with a valid voice or opinion.

They might also see an offer or deal that will save them money. If it is a startup, they might be concerned with cost at this point. If it does come down to cost, then you can start to speak in their language. Have they considered the manpower and hours to make the switch? Are you going to have time to learn the platform? Do they have a timeframe or deadline for the change to take? Sometimes, they haven't considered this, but the Dev team will be used to dealing with these terms.

If all else fails, take it as an opportunity to learn a new skillset. There isn't one way to do things, so you can be creative. Don't take it personal. Use it as an opportunity to learn from the Dev team, and your company will be stronger.

All that being said, it might just be that a manager thinks it is a good idea. You might not have a choice, but that also reveals how the company works and how they deal with differing opinions.

Chetraj

I agree with Seeman and Peranić on this one-

Either: do what you want and let others know that you are the SEO guy and u are not going to be bullied into using their choice (give ur reasons of course and educate them) — don't be bully like they seem to be.

OR

2- Go with them and see if they are right or not ( and let them also learn)

OR - just give them a half an hour lecture on Ahrefs vs SEMrush tutorial AND show them the SEO value you get of SEMrush and tell them ( actually show them how much hell is ur life in relation to comparison/analysis etc) what you need to make SEO (growth decisions)

Ps: I have worked with 100+ devs so far, but no one has advized me to use this or that tool and NOR have I have advized them on their tools.

Simple as that

Karishma

I'll suggest u to fight for SEMrush and Ahref both.. A unique thing about SEMrush here is that you get in-depth data (both SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC)), which makes it a more well-rounded keyword tool. Also, SEMrush comes out on top because of its amazing site audit feature. The most important thing is that SEMrush updates the data more often than Ahrefs. But on the contrary Ahref is much much better for links.

Using both will make ur flow of work better.

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[adieka]

Some Clients Ask for an ROI Plan Before They Buy Your SEO Services

Yuan Heard that a lot. We all talked about ROI; if you have proven ROI, then the price does not matter much on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) charge…couple of things, we show the growth on keyword rankings, traffic/visitors, the leads on calls, and from web form submissions. so do you ask or get biz owners their monthly revenue $ to justify the proven ROI? How do you know and how much of the ranks, traffic, and leads becoming real sale $? We manage many eCommerce/online biz with store backend admin access. We can clearly see the ROI on $. for instance, 3M sale within 6 months with 100% profit margin. we can figure out the ROI. however for small/medium businesses (not with online selling/eCommerce), lots of time, business owners do not disclosure their $ number. so what your proven ROI looks like on your SEO work? 1 👍🏽 1 [filtered from 16 💬🗨]📰👈

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Lucas It's different for ever client. I try not to get bogged down too much on the accuracy of numbers in order to prove ROI (unless I can reliably obtain them) and instead focus on educating the client to see the intangibles and understand the ROI is there, with or without the numbers. If the client can see the growth in sales, and the growth in traffic, they naturally correlate the two and they see your value. Obviously, it's great to be able to track exact ROI, especially for your own experience and learning, but it's not always possible. For instance, I did an online reputation management campaign for a local business that had 5 reviews on Google, and after a year they had 190 five star reviews from real clients. And that's just Google. FB and Yelp saw similar results. They quickly overtook all of their competition and are now nationally recognized in their niche as one of the best. People travel from all over the US to work with them because of this. They were able to see an increase in phone calls, consultation requests, and new clients almost immediately after we started this campaign and once they saw the value in the work I was doing, it was a no brainer…But there is absolutely no way for me to prove how much money I made them. The point is, it doesn't matter HOW MUCH, it only matters that they can see the ROI exists.

Yuan » Lucas Thanks. Totally agreed!

Chris Edwards 🎓 I just talk to the client about the current state of affairs, sales from traffic etc average order value. I then ask how much of a difference another 20% of sales or an increase in average order value by xx% would make. NEVER talk SEO to a customer unless it's pure technical SEO fixing a problem. ALWAYS talk in £$ etc because that is a clear number they can understand and evaluate your costs against.

Yuan » Chris Edwards True. Just rankings on page 1 or top are meaningless if no leads and sales.

Petter First off, agree on what Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s to measure, how they should be measured - and sit down with the client to set values for those KPI-events. I strongly advice that you lower the value every time - with the client, because then you most likely did more for their business than what you're measured on (gives goodwill). How to find these KPI's? Phonecalls, emails and form submissions are fairly common. Newsletter subscriptions are also fairly common. Demo's, freebies and trials occurs with some businesses (for a reason). - Most businesses also has a sales-process that can help you identify potential KPI's that the website can contribute towards that might not be present when you start as well which means you can increase the different C2A elements you can apply to different stages of the customer-journey that will be counted towards KPIs and Return on Investment (ROI) on those. Then agree on attribution. Should you report on last-click only - or apply attribution models? And if you go with models - what's your worth if it's not last-click, and what KPI's should be included here? Lastly agree on timeframe for evaluation (this should ideally overlap contract renewal). But you should report on your ROI monthly, and make sure that the client knows that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn't like ads - and that in the beginning you should be reporting negative ROI's. You don't deploy SEO and see the results the next few hours (even tho some of the stuff we do is like that now).

Yuan » Petter Great insights thanks. Appears that you got pretty deep on these. Do you one tool or use multiple tools to track and report KPIs? Petter Google Tag Manager (GTM), analytics and DataStudio. As well as insights from Google My Business (GMB) (and other sources if it gets covered).

Ameet If you can't measure, still provides the result and satisfies client expectation, he/she will continue to pay you. If not, there's you miss the client! Yuan Agreed. Some clients do not want to share any sale data. So we can only track some Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s and see their trending Meakin Simple conversation with client "If you don't want to share sales data that's completely fine. But obviously it's going to be harder for me to demonstrate an Return on Investment (ROI)." In either case, have a monthly check-in to discuss progress. This way they will soon let you know if they're not getting an ROI and you can help them troubleshoot. 📰👈

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[adieka]

If you were to hire an SEO content writer, would you give them access to your analytics?

Jessica Foster 🎓 Tracking the progress and success of my content is a huge part of my business, as I want to be able to showcase measurable results. So my question is, if you were to hire an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content writer, would you give them access to your analytics?? Why/why not would be helpful too. Thanks! 31 votes 10 votes 6 votes 4 votes 6 👍🏽 6

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Eric Since I am on the other end I can only speculate, but many people seem paranoid about data for reasons I do not understand. I often get people flat out refusing to tell me which ones performed better than others like they worry about revealing a secret. I find that paranoia kinda sad because my only purpose is to try to improve, but some people are so terrified of showing data for reasons even they can't explain, they end up hurting themselves. Of course, this is not every time, but there are many people like this and it confuses me. 💟1

Jessica Foster🎓 » Eric Yes this is what I am trying to dig into. It's like they feel exposed. I get it. I just want to find a method that works for most. It only serves to make my work even more effective. Melandsø What she said. I often go straight to the person that may feel somewhat offended by my findings in order to try to get their buy in. Making champions at clients is a good way to go. In my humble experience anyway Eric My favorite is when you ask for specifics, they give you nothing then get pissed off when you do something that doesn't work or they do not like, they get mad at you when it could have been prevented had they given you an answer. Melandsø » Eric Fortunately i have had few of those moments. But I see your frustration there.

Stuart Give them access to a predefined Google data studio report to remove security issues 👍 💟👍🏽3 Afraz Daily improvements in your execution is the thing which can you make to tackle this situation… I think most of the people would be at ease to give you access to data as they might understand the importance…for others, it's you who need to set up accordingly…ask them to highlight low performing content and i think you'll be able to get what needs to be done with that…

Jessica Foster🎓 » Afraz Good points here. Thank you.

Andrew🎓 How are you measuring access?

Jessica Foster🎓 » Andrew A combo of the above. Since most of my clients are SEO users/agencies, they typically have their analytics on point. But it's also hit or miss whether I am allowed access. Some clients didn't have GA set up, so I have set that up for them. It really varies. The point of this question is to help me decide if it I should make access to analytics a requirement. Also if, say, the poll determined that most people want conversion tracking set up for them, I'd have to factor that into my costs. Andrew🎓 How do you measure your contents affect on conversion? I have a hard time demonstrating this in a way I'm comfortable with sharing. I can dig into some data but I dont feel like in surfacing the things I should be when tracking blog contents effect on conversions, especially when multiple campaigns are going simultaneously which affect my ability to track what one thing is really responsible for more conversions. Just because someone read the blog doesnt mean my blog article affected the conversion, especially if that article happened to be in the reverse goal path of a returning visitor. I'll stop rambling. I'm just very confused on how you would use analytics effectively. 🤭1 Jessica Foster🎓 » Andrew Not a ramble. I get what you are saying. Well, I would just say that you don't want to have too many different conversion points on one piece of content. For one, it really should serve a primary purpose and written with that in mind, with the others being a bit more residual. Then you can track form fills, sales, subscriptions separately. It has been a while since I have done it to that extent, as most of the business I work with set this up themselves. I am sure someone can add insight to this.

Joe You can't judge the success or failure of a piece of content in isolation on a single page, or a single keyword. All ships rise and descend in the tide and therefore it's important to understand the WHOLE landscape of a site. Unless a client is just paying for content and links. Then in which case the deliverable is very clearly defined. This many links and this much content.

Jessica Foster🎓 » Joe That's the point. I am rarely just doing a single piece of content. However, we are talking about conversions on landing pages, content marketing pieces, etc too. The client wants those numbers and so do I. Joe » Jessica Foster Then they can't not give you access to GA. 💟1 Jessica Foster🎓 » Joe Thanks for your input 🙂

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[adieka]

How Much Effectiveness is Social Media for SEO?

(1) How Much Effectiveness is Social Media for SEO? (2) Does Social Media affect SEO? Search Engine Optimization? (3) Do Social Signals Work for SEO? (4) How Important Are Social Signals to Rank? (5) Some Value of Displaying Social Share Numbers in SEO (6) Social Shares Help You Rank Higher in Google Is a Myth! (7) Can You Rank a Blog Post Purely on Social Signals With No Backlinks? (8) Do You Do Buying Social Links From Any Influencer Else? (9) A Social Media Content Strategy for a Niche of Maternity (10) Is Instagram Good for Backlinking? (1) How Much Effectiveness is Social Media for SEO? Christine I’m looking for information on link building using social media and how I can effectively use social media to grow our Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is for a legit online business and I’m focused primarily on a North American and European audience. Anyone willing to point me to some useful reading? Anything from beginning to expert. 2 👍🏽 2 [filtered from 12 💬🗨]📰👈

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Peter Try “The Art of Social Media” by Guy Kawasaki. It’s not written from an SEO perspective, of course. It’s really about optimizing your social media channels and getting the most out of them, but it’s got useful tips on engagement on social. If you can be engaging on social, you can influence your rankings indirectly through all the traffic you send to your site from social posts.

Christine ✍️ Great! Thank you!

Jay You can't link build with social media, but you can have strategies for awareness and brand mentions which does help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) somewhat but only for your brand. If you don't have a brand and just have a generic web site… social media is not going to get you long lasting results.

Christine ✍️ Thanks for the reply and info. We are hoping to use social media to better establish and grow our brand. We have a number of things that we’d like to roll out over the next couple of months, so I’m trying to learn as much as possible so I don’t waste any opportunities. Do mentions have any direct effect or does that solely help awareness and traffic? Jay It's not direct, but I believe Google keeps an awareness of brand mention across the major social platforms. There's no way to know absolutely how their algorithm takes it into account, but from what I understand it does help. The problem with social media is that there's no link permanence and individual account values can't be corroborated easily by Google. However, it is a good way to both jump-start awareness as well as garnering opportunities for attracting web links that do matter in the long term. If you focus on social, your primary efforts will be: Page creation & maintenance on Facebook. Don't focus on post volume at first, focus on post quality and engagement. Make sure your posts are both attractive and interesting and trigger engagement from anyone seeing the post. This will fuel Facebook to show your page posts to more people more often. Facebook's algorithms are based primarily on engagement. If your brand/business has a visual angle to it take advantage of Instagram. Again, quality over quantity. Make people stop scrolling to want to look at your photos & like them. Pinterest is OK but doesn't usually drive social value. Twitter is good if you have truly interesting and unique things to say. All of these social platforms require regular attention, especially early on as you build up a following. Create a blog and add 2-3 posts to it weekly. Interesting topics, nothing bland. If you Google the topic you want to talk about and 8,000 other sites already have the same article with basically the same information you plan to post - write about something else. Or, if you have a truly distinct spin on a topic then go ahead, but you really need links to it to out-rank those who already have a foothold on the search terms related to the topic. As you build your main web site, also make sure to always focus on best practices. You don't need an SEO company to tell you what those best practices are, just Google for advice and you will find a million articles. SEO companies are good for helping you determine why you may not be ranking for specific terms, or how to lift your Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) a little higher, or to review your site to see if you are doing something wrong, or to look at technical stuff that you may not have familiarity with - like sitemap files, micro tagging, link building (the legit kind, don't fall for the mass backlink scams), HTML mark-up, etc. Christine ✍️ Thank you for such a thorough response. This is helpful info!

Chris Social media signals (e.g shares, comments likes on posts that mention your brand/on your page) directly help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but it's not a HUGE ranking factor. There's nothing amazing or special that you can genuinely read about. Getting specific ideas to help would be optimal, your business has a lot of viral potential, think voice over (VO) competitions, posting VO work/parodies , I remember the EA sports guy going viral a while back, stuff like that will help you get a lot of mentions and grow your brand. It's all about the content you produce and how normal people will interact with it. There's a lot of reading you can do out there, but ultimately doing actual SEO would probably help you a lot more, especially if you are targeting business owners.

Christine ✍️ Thanks for the response and info. We’ve been tossing around some viral video ideas, but you sparked a few new thoughts from my partner.

Doug Social media, at the moment, helps with traffic and branding if you have a large enough audience and/or wallet. Besides improving dwell rate, it does nothing to “help” with rankings on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Christine ✍️ So it sounds like rolling out a well planned social strategy going for brand awareness and traffic is what we should focus on. Thank you!

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(2) Does Social Media affect SEO? Search Engine Optimization? Horia created a poll. Cheers, everyone! Here's an interesting thought experiment: Does social media affect Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? More specifically, do your social media efforts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et. al.) have any impact on organic rankings? Would love to get everyone's verdict in the poll and your opinions in the comments. Thank you! 66 votes 15 votes 10 votes

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Marty Marion🎓 » Horia From my viewpoint, if one objective is to generate more searches for keywords or phrases that are important to you, then social media can have a massive impact on stimulating searches… and searches result in clicks… which definitely impact Search Engine Optimization (SEO)… so I would think social media CAN affect SEO, not that it DOES all the time… I always like to look at social media strategies as PART of a comprehensive SEO plan. 💟👍🏽4

Horia That's a great argument, Marty! So I take it you see the benefits of social media from a "social engineering" point of view, where you create momentum for phrases, which in turn stimulate queries. 💟👍🏽2 Marty Marion🎓 » Horia Yes, stimulate intrigue, questions, etc that make people search for the specific subjects (phrases) that are most important to you and make sure your pages are super optimized… 👍🏽2 Lees » Marty Marion Can you give us an example from the past in which you used this technique? Or is this just a theory? 👍🏽1 Marty Marion🎓 » Lees Sure. Have used it often. For a big ecommerce lingerie company we did social posts asking men to post their favorite "sexy celebrities" from the 1950s through 1980s. Searches for "sexy + lingerie type" etc went up and so did sales through organic. For a jeans company we asked "how skinny are skinny jeans for men?". Same results. Questions seem to provoke searches. 👍🏽3

Petter I do believe that some signals are included, but not to the extent that SEO users in general should have a great understanding on how to engage the public etc. there. I believe that SEO users should work with SoMe consultants, but Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a large enough field in itself, so for my part I'm happy to let SoMe consultants take the lead there, and just see how SEO can benefit from it in the ways Marty described above (open to any venue where my clients make more money). As I see it, there are two main issues with some of the "myths" going around on how social signals has an effect on Search Engine Optimization (SEO): 1: Engagement metrics is not a direct ranking impact. If it was, then the webpages that exists to spin shareable content would win in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), but they don't. 2: Monitoring social media is possible, but it requires a lot of resources - and Google is already tasked with monitoring everything that can be monitored - so dedicating the amount of resources needed to be on top of this makes very little sense when there are so many other signals that aren't as "fleeting" and temporary. BUT: Google does tie in Facebook business profiles to businesses, so this might in some way somewhere feed into the algorithm, but from the little research I have done - I have yet to see any correlation between rankings and active, inactive or no business profiles on ie. FB - so if there is a signal there, then as of now it cannot be a strong one. The link from your business profile on FB is nofollow - so after march 1 2020, social media profile link might start to add value. However - visible links (written URL's that goes via redirects with nofollow) may count towards a mention when/if Google picks it up. Hashtag trends is fairly available, which could make sense for Google to tie into on queries that are fresh (I believe that at least their machine learning algorithm focusing on obtaining meaning to queries ties into this in some form or way - ie. "planking" made no sense before, but then suddenly became a trend - and I believe Google wants to be relevant on such queries and the only way to be that is to stay on top of what queries might mean). And again, like Marty stated above, Social Media has the ability to provide impact on amount of brand queries as well as other queries. So it is a valuable channel for the client to pursue. But again, I believe that our clients are better off if they have someone who solely focuses on these channels helping there, leaving us SEO users to cooperate with them but at the same time keep our focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 📰👈

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(3) Do Social Signals Work for SEO? John Do Social Signals Work For SEO, Whats Your Opinion? 📰👈

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Kumar Yes...do work...do it on proper way.. After publishing new page or post...share it on social media..and do social signals on it.. Also after doing any guest post...do the same...👍3

John ✍️ Great Advice. Kobi » Kumar what do you mean by social signals? Kumar » Kobi most powerful social media's... Twitter - Retweets. Facebook - Shares. Pinterest.. - Repins. Share on all these platforms and do social signals...

Blair Yes they do work but for me best be Twitter signals overall if they come from popular accounts. John ✍️ Really? Do you think Twitter is better, why?

Kumar » John most powerful social media's... Twitter - Retweets. Facebook - Shares. Pinterest.. - Repins. Share on all and do social signals... You will see the positive response..👍2

Mike They only work in making your link building look less fake. No direct impact on rankings and I say this after buying 10’s of thousands of signals for numerous web pages.👍3

John ✍️ I Agree and Disagree......I seen someresults but nothing major.👍1 Tiwari » Mike It is all about quality and not the quantity. These 5 dollars bot-generated Fiverr social signal gigs are just worthless. Mike I’ve compared urls that I built links to with, and without social signals, never saw 1 case where a kw rank improved due to signals. Even on less competitive branded terms. If you know a vendor who can provide a better experience I’m all ears! Mike Nah, Ive used providers “recommended” by notable people in this group and others, never Fiverr...but I might as well have used Fiverr for the results.👍1 John ✍️ » Tiwari 👍.

Hays I've seen it work in for time-sensitive queries like events. I had a site ranking in the top 3 positions for a few top keywords after an event/raffle we had got shared a few hundred times and we had over 10,000 post engagements, that brought 7,000 visitors to the page in 3 days from Facebook. So within 24 hours from the post we were ranking for these keywords. 3 years later, after the event we still rank number 1 for our focus keyword which was the item we raffled. This last year's event ranks number 2 for same keyword and similar item.👍1📰👈

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(4) How Important Are Social Signals to Rank? ArtRos How important are social signals to rank? 3 👍🏽 3 [filtered from 25 💬🗨]📰👈

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Roland They can help in some areas but not a requirement for success. One very useful return from posting on social media is quicker indexing of the site promoted. Keith Webpages with a significant amounts of social engagement are likely quality pieces of content that have generated a number of other Google related signals that convinces Google to rank them higher. Doubting the causation to social signals impacting ranking that much as they are so easy to manipulate. Maggie it's part of trust and authority within your niche - but Google can tell fake social signals from true engagement. It won't affect your rank negatively if you don't have them, but they help to some extent. Peter You can indirectly influence your rankings through traffic to your site from social, so I’d say put out great content on social (or post links to good website content from social) that gets people wanting to visit your site. Steve Hi, it depends on what you mean by social signals, but as long as you mean getting likes/shares/etc for your content then I think it's definitely a positive factor. Here's a screenshot of a page of mine in the fitness niche: As you can see it has gathered over 2000 Fb shares and engagements over the years (I think 10k or more but Buzzsome has a 1 year limit to show, anyway… ) and this page ranks rather well in Google for its target keyword. Granted, I also managed to build a lot of white hat backlinks to it with outreach strategies and the Skyscraper Technique, but 1, even before I started link building to it I saw a nice little upward movement for it in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) after I started getting so many FB shares for it, so I think all those shares definitely sent a positive message to Google. 2, the social shares helped in one more way with Search Engine Optimization (SEO): I displayed a big Social Share Counter box on this page so that when I asked other people to link to it (you know with the outreach Skyscraper link building technique I mentioned earlier) it helped me get a "yes" from more people because they saw how popular the page was already. So I'd say bottom line: yes, social signals do help a lot with SEO both directly and indirectly. Steve P.s.: Unfortunately I got all those thousands of shares back when my site was http and not https, and since I switched to https the social signal counter doesn't really work, that's why I had to rely on Buzzsumo data as proof that you can see for yourself.📰👈

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(5) Some Value of Displaying Social Share Numbers in SEO Neil Is there 'value' in displaying social share numbers - yes or no? (and why) 3 👍🏽 3 [filtered from 30 💬🗨]📰👈

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Fleming No not for SEO purposes. It's more to show users that your website gets engagement and has value its more to create user engagement.. Imagine walking past 2 shops one has customers queuing even outside, while the other has no customers whatsoever, which one are you likely to want to go in? Now some people will go to the empty one to avoid the queue however most will want to know what that shop has the other doesn't. Hope that makes sense Neil it did in my head as I wrote it lol Its also worth noting that a lot of those plugins you can change the number of likes retweets so it doesn't even reflect the real shares etc half the time. 💟👍🏽5 Neil ✍️ On my own website I do display the shares which may look great on some urls that get shared a lot 1000+ shares etc BUT - some urls don't get shared and then potentially have the oppositive effect - 'this url has little value' (maybe it has). Also, I do wonder whether displaying what is your website's popular pages - is this giving valuable data to competitors… all this, without the effect of slowing down the load time (albeit hopefully minimally). Fleming I just see it as a vanity metric who cares if it was shared 1200 times if only 5 read the whole thing and got anything from it? Its kind of like when people go yeah my video was view 10k times but only 4 got past the 30 seconds. Daine » Christopher is right, it is a vanity metric to a degree. But, here’s the thing. It has value because: 1. Social Proof: It encourages other people to share it, thus expanding your reach, audience, and traffic. 2. It builds authority and credibility. It shows that the piece is popular. 3. It has a hidden SEO benefit, because when conducting link outreach, posts that have been shared a lot convey popularity, and value, in turn helping to increase the chances of gaining a link. People are more inclined to link to popular content. 4. It encourages people to read it more, due to social proof. Social proof is very powerful, psychologically. 5. Social signals MAY play a small part in ranking. 💟👍🏽12

Neil ✍️ THAT is my gut feeling - and why I have stuck with it… Hazi Social proof. Fleming Does it hold much value though? when social proof can be easily manipulated as most plugins you can add the share counts etc? Daine It’s more ‘perceived’ value, rather than real value. Fleming » Daine yeah more a trust signal kind of thing. Daine » Christopher , yeah, exactly. Lancaster Perception is reality and the only reality is the one your visitor chooses to believe when they are on your website.

Micha » Daine I’d go with on this one, with these additions: 6: each share is a potential batch of new readers, therefore, possible links 7: BuzzSumo recently did a study of over a million datapoints and discovered sharing on social media is half of what it used to be. Whether that’s an ongoing trend or not, FOMO, likeability, credibility and the “follow the herd” effects are all indisputable market persuaders.📰👈

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(6) Social Shares Help You Rank Higher in Google Is a Myth! Martin This guy disappointed me. Are social shares really unimportant in ranking? Myth #5 Social shares help you rank higher in Google [38 💬🗨]

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Janka You're disappointed by the truth? 👍🏽9

Shubham » Janka ✔️ Ronald » Janka lol, thats society in general though 👍🏽1

Fouad Why being disappointed? I think he explained it very well. 👍🏽1 Doug At the moment, there is no evidence to suggest that social shares directly help improve the ranking of a website. To my understanding, it might help with User engagement if it’s compelling content... which would likely help with rankings. (Arguably if it’s compelling content it would likely rank well anyway outside of social shares). Also, it might help get a page indexed that is currently not. Social Likes and Shares are too easy to spam and manipulate. The only thing I could see Google doing in the future is assigning authority or credibility to individuals who share content based on their voice within a certain community/industry... that might be an interesting (albeit somewhat concerning) progression on this topic. 👍🏽6 Bhati I have site which get traffic from Google and only links it has are from facebook shares. 👍🏽3

Owais » Bhati What type content the website shares? Bhati » Owais viral articles, political, national news. I have multiple sites. 👍🏽1

Farhat yup, social share is very important, it helps your URL to indexed and make engagement with the audience, which helps Google bot to understand your content is useful to users. 💟1

Carl » Farhat agreed i have a 50k sku ecommerce store we get lots of social shares

Kevin To explain it simply : Bot shares won't help SEO, because it won't drive traffic. But real human share will benefit to SEO BECAUSE it will drive traffric in the end. But this is not the number of shares / likes that matters but rather the fact that it drives traffic or no. In others words, you would better have a 1K shared post that drive 50% traffic than a 20k shared post driving 2% traffic. 👍🏽4 Smith There's no evidence that there's SEO traffic because of the social shares. He is right. It's the other way. You get more social shares because of your SEO traffic. And that makes sense. 👍🏽4 Suraj Only believe on your experience, there are share only there review. Toth They're an indirect factor. Way too easily gamed to be a direct factor, for Google anyhow. 👍🏽4 Hazra It certainly doesn't have any impact for info post. Social shares helps to gain more visibility which indirectly increases the chance of getting natural back links. That's it.. 👍🏽2 Homer He's wrong. Social shares are social signals, and will affect both indexing and ranking. It won't get you to page one alone, but it will make a difference. 👍🏽1

Hamid but you can't say that they are impacting directly to your rankings. 👍🏽1 Homer » Hamid Yes, because I have had sites move up from page 10 to page 5. They are. 👍🏽1 Hamid » Homer Great, so how do you monitor that really due to socials this happened? Homer » Hamid On the sites that this happened on, I only had social signals going to them. The content was also old and had quite jumping around in the SERPS. The site also had no real traffic going to it. I always start link building with social signals only, meaning that there was no other factor.

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(7) Can You Rank a Blog Post Purely on Social Signals With No Backlinks? Lyon Can you rank a blog post purely on social signals with no backlinks? [filtered from 22 💬🗨] 📰👈

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Nabil It depends on how hard to rank for the keyword yet how powerful and specific your website, last but not the least how's your website's technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) status. Arif If you're not an instant-lover, or you're not in rush, well... yes you can. but if you are, well this method doesn't suit you. Roger You can rank an article with just dummy text and no backlist but, for that to happen, there are certain variables that need to occur and, one of the most important is keyword difficulty/competition. Oliver There is absolutely NO evidence that social signals are being used by Google as a direct ranking factor. 👍🏽1 Tanvir I think yes .. it depends on the content you have ... like if you have good content and people visit your site from the social site ... and then they create backlink ... then yes you can rank 😃 Joe Ive been doing this for 20 years and love the variety of opinions here. In various ways there is a tiny bit of truth to many of them, but Oliver states the truth. That being said other items on the page will affect the ranking. Social signals alone will do nothing for you. Social signals combined with other things like a great description in the social post or key technical aspects of the page will get additional people to click and visit so while you may think you did it with social signals, it is misleading. No one strategy is good all by itself. That is something Google frowns upon. you need multiple strategies and techniques. Above all you need kickass content which drives traffic and engagement. you might have zero backlinks and crappy technical but if your content rocks, you have people visiting, staying and engaging, Google will still rank you. their priority is the searcher and giving them the best results for their query 👍🏽1 Jim Ranked for this, no backlinks bro

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Oliver The website has 130 do-follow referring domains (according to Ahrefs), only ONE internal link (with a keyword-rich anchor text) from the homepage would be more than enough to rank #1 for that keyword, Google still uses PageRank internally. Your website looks awesome and from what I'm seeing you have a lot of useful content, reviews, case studies, and etc.. 👍🏽1 Jim » Oliver yeah but in terms of referring domains pointing directly to this page, there's none, so yeah.

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(8) Do You Do Buying Social Links From Any Influencer Else? Olga Hello! How often do you buy social links or blog posts for your projects? [filtered from 28 💬🗨] 📰👈

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Mike I never buy social links... at least not from an SEO perspective. I might approach someone with a significant following about advertising with them, but that is for the traffic, not any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit. Not sure what you mean by buying blog posts. If you mean posts for your own site, I regularly pay writers to create content. If you mean guest posts on other sites, I pay for those frequently, but never through anyone selling them as a service. 👍🏽8

Wren » Mike wow so interesting. How do you go about advertising with someone with a significant following, do you get them to share your product and do they have to declare that it's a paid promotion? Mike » Wren Depends on the situation and what we are promoting. Sometimes, I might have a client willing to sponsor a YouTube video in exchange for the content creator doing one of those typical 15-30 second pitches you see on a lot of videos. In those cases, a sample of the product or a few products will be sent to them to use in the video. Stuff like that. It's never a video 100% devoted just to the product or service. Instead we sponsor one of their videos they are already doing. Wren » Mike ok, so does that mean they don't to say they have been paid for it. Mike » Wren They will say something like, "this video is sponsored by...." Wren » Mike ok cool. Cheers for sharing this with me. 👍🏽1

Singh It is not a good idea to buy a social link....in a long run it can affect your website very badly 👍🏽3

Olga ✍️ » Singh how's that? Singh The purchased social links are likely bots or inactive accounts, so they won't engage with your posts. This means your posts won't show up on Explore Pages, or on your real audience's newsfeeds. It will also make it hard to measure metrics. 👍🏽1 Olga ✍️ mm I see. That's true. Thank you! 👍🏽1 Singh Thanks for sharing

Laura Never. I share my links to my website's own social accounts. If pay-per-lead (ppl) wanna link to my pages or projects they can go ahead, I don't do any "link building" and don't find it necessary. 📰👈

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(9) A Social Media Content Strategy for a Niche of Maternity Ammar Hey SEO Pro's.. I've got a brand with a niche of maternity products.. I'm. regularly posting content on its social media platforms but I don't know why I'm unable to achieve any engagements or likes.. Could any of you experts please let me know what I'm doing wrong if possible please? Facebook link: https:/facebook.com/mamanmeofficial Instagram: instagram.com/mamanmeofficial Any type of help is appreciated, thanks a lot! 1 👍🏽 1 [filtered from 17 💬🗨]📰👈

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Shetty You do have a decent number of followers. What about your insights? How many people are you reaching and how many are taking action? Website clicks?

Ammar ✍️ Its not very good atm even after paid marketing as well..

Dielan Could be due to the fact you are only targeting consumers in Qatar? It’s not a very large country

Ammar ✍️ Tried removing Qatar, same results no effects :S

Lowry Try to engage your followers. Ask questions, post to articles & ask peoples opinion about them. Post a small fb survey about what baby merch products they want to see on the market. Eva You’re posting too much about your brand and products. Try posting 20% brand/product posts and 80% other. Who is your target audience? What are their challenges and interests? Share posts that solve a problem for them, that they can relate to, that they find useful. Particularly on Facebook, it’s about being social, not selling.

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Ammar ✍️ Tried posting tips - quotes- and stuffs like that but still no effect :s Eva » Ammar yes, you’ve posted tips and quotes but in the caption you’re selling. It’s the first thing Mums read as they scroll through their feed and they won’t even read the quote or tip in the image. You don’t have to sell in every post. Also, because you have small numbers, try sharing viral posts from similar parenting pages Ammar ✍️ Noted, What are your thoughts on post styling? are they good or do i need to change anything? Eva » Ammar I think the styling of the image is good. Just a couple of things. 1. This post, for example, [product image] I recommend that instead of writing about the business, you explain what this product actually is and how it can help a mum. 2. On Facebook don't use hashtags. 3. Try to limit the posts you have with links to an external website. Facebook likes to keep people on Facebook, not clicking out somewhere else. This one, for example, [quote image] Instead of writing about the business, write something that resonates with a mother, 'Do you feel like you need to keep your eyes open with matchsticks at the moment? Don't worry, babies start to figure out night and day by 3 weeks so (hopefully) you can get a little more sleep. Remember too, you'll have a different audience on Facebook and Instagram so try to share different content on each. Try and find a parenting group and ask mums with newborns what their challenges are and craft content around that. For each product you promote, relate it to the mother. What problem can it fix? How can it help them get more sleep? How can it help their baby sleep more? How can it fix their sore back? How can it help with breastfeeding and helping them get more milk? But also, share humor, Facebook users love humor that relates to their situation. With Instagram hashtags, look at what your competitors or similar businesses are using. Click into the hashtags, have a look at the content that is being shared and what's getting the best engagement. Ammar ✍️ These info's are gem, thanks a lot!

🔗🏹 Gergo My opinion: There are different tactics to use for different platform. Niche website built for organic traffic-turns into product selling, or other monetization methods. IG is not a platform for niche site-building, it is for entertainment! My point is, try to look for user intent perspective. People generally not using IG for finding any product to buy… imo. Another key issue is IG is full of bots, my friend tested and built 6000 followers in 3 months on a personal account with a simple code… yes it got banned, but we just wanted to see how far it goes… I assume your follower base probably full of those bots, commenting, like-ing anything, but its not a real audience with intent to buy. Haven't looked for deeper atm, but there is a huge different building a site and getting 2k traffic and converting into sales, as having as IG account and 2k followers… Sebastian Very interested. One very quickly look at the account. What comes first is mind. Is have your content made up by mother's. Join some library mother and baby groups and survey them for what are interested. Than post those on Instagram.📰👈

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(10) Is Instagram Good for Backlinking? Mikkel Is Instagram a good or necessary Backlink? [filtered from 24 💬🗨] 📰👈

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Andrei No, social media links are nofollow and do not pass link juice. Useless for SEO. 👍1

Ethan » Andrei that's not entirely true.The main argument being that social media doesn't directly affect your SEO. However, it does have an impact on the factors that do affect rankings such as traffic, meaning it indirectly affects your rankings. So, it may not directly increase your seo or provide backlinks but it definitely please a role in your seo ranking and should be utilized for best practices. 👍5 Andrei » Ethan sure, but that kind of argument can be made for any type of marketing, including paid ads. You gotta draw the line somewhere and say this is an SEO job and that is something else. Back to the question at hand, having a genuine, well maintained social media profile is a must for most businesses and will marginally contribute to your search performance. Having a backlinked social media account sitting idle is not going to contribute to your seo. 👍1 Ethan » Andrei true and I see your point there. However, social media plays a massive role indirectly with your SEO. I mean social platforms have there own search engines after all so this plays as another way to provide your company with more traffic to increase SEO. We all know how important local seo is and you might as well forget about it unless you have a social media presence. Social profiles will also ranking on Google so if you want to draw a line, then technically your now creating seo for your social profile and ranking on Google with it. Don't forget about how much content is shared through social media as well 👍2 Andrei » Ethan all good points! Although I think social media is not exactly critical for local seo. Is it? There is GMB and schema and some local directories. Never seen social media on this list. 👍1 Andrei » Ethan I feel like we are arguing, so I wanted to stress that I'm not, this is how I express curiosity. It might come off arguing-ish since my first language is russian 🙂 👍1 Ethan » Andrei I am not arguing either but I am glad that your clarified. I hate how facebook is used so much for that 🙄. I am curious as well and want to always better my skill and knowledge with SEO. I enjoy general conversations about it. True, but most if not all of those that rank without social media have been around since the dawn of google. If you take a new company and try to start ranking, it would be much much harder without social media platforms. If you were to take the same company and start with social media from day one, they are much more likely to start ranking on google faster and higher. 👍1 Swanson » Andrei I treat social media as another directory to update for locations. Will I manage your profile and post for you? No. But I want to make sure that your locations are listed correctly, that the descriptions and contact info is consistent with the rest of your web presence. I tell clients it’s just another channel you can use to present content they are adding for their site. 👍1

Ryan Let's say you are a taxidermist in a city of 1,000 people. You have one competitor.. All else being the same, your competitor has a website of the same quality as yours. If you have optimized Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and let's say you posted 50 posts, my guess is you would be ranking ahead of your competitor. It's not like an Instagram account will rank you, but in most cases it's common sense to have one, probably worth the 5 mins it takes to set it up. You're establishing your brand online. Could you go without it, of course. 👍2 Russ I just don't get why Instagram is so popular lol… You cannot put links in posts, which just seems daft and pointless… So if someone posts something that looks interesting, no way to find out more, you have to Google it for more info. So no backlink SEO benefit either. you cannot even share/re-post other people's posts from the app, you have to get another 3rd party app to do that. 📰👈

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This may satisfy you: Do You Reveal Yourself on Social Media that You are a Site Owner/Founder? Any Risk About it from Competitors, Haters?