The 10 Important Google Search Algorithm Updates of 2021

posted on February 23, 2022

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Google is constantly evolving its algorithms to display the users the most accurate, relevant, and secure pages. And every year, it seems to introduce more and more updates every year. Knowing what kind of updates have been made will help you keep up with SEO best practices, improve your rankings, and understand any reasons behind performance shifts.

Infographic courtesy of PageTraffic

Infographic courtesy of PageTraffic

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5 Tips to Get Better Results From Your Google Ads

posted on February 21, 2022

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Google ads (formerly known as “Adwords”) is an advertising platform offered by Google that allows advertisers to show their products or services on the search engine’s pages. When someone clicks on one of these ads, they’ll be directed to the advertiser’s website. It might seem like it would be easy to set up and manage a campaign for your business with this kind of advertising – but there is more than meets the eye!

If you’re looking for some tips on how you can increase your return from running Google Ads campaigns, read on!

1. Use a Budget That Is Appropriate For Your Industry and Product

When it comes to budgeting for your Google Ads campaign, it’s important to be realistic about how much you’re willing to spend. You’ll want to consider your overall marketing budget, and also think about how much you’re willing to pay for each click on your ad.

Be careful when you are setting your average daily budget. Bear in mind that the price your setting is averaged over the course of the month so you may even spend double it over some days but your entire monthly spend will not be more than your daily budget multiplied by 30 days.

If you’re not sure how much to spend, try starting with a small amount and increasing it gradually as you see results.

Having said that, make sure your billing is in line with your competitors, if they are spending $3 per click and you are spending 25 cents for the same visitors, do not expect to get many clicks.

2. Try Some Remarketing Tactics to Reach Those Who Have Already Visited Your Site

Google Ads remarketing is a feature of the AdWords platform that allows businesses to show ads to people who have visited their website before. This can be a great way to reconnect with potential customers who may have been interested in your products or services but didn’t make a purchase.

To start using remarketing, you’ll need to create a remarketing list. This is simply a list of all the people who have visited your website. These are created by adding a tracking code to your website. You can then create an ad campaign that will show ads to these people on Google and across the web.

When creating your ad campaign, you’ll need to choose a goal for it. Some common goals for remarketing campaigns include increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, and getting more leads or sales.

Once you’ve chosen a goal, you’ll need to create ads that are relevant to your target audience. You’ll also need to come up with a budget and schedule for your campaign.

Remarketing can be a great way to increase the return on investment from your Google Ads campaigns. If you’re not currently using this feature, give it a try and see how it can help your business grow.

3. Consider Using Negative Keywords to Avoid Targeting Irrelevant Searches or Competition’s Products and Services

One of the best ways to make sure that your Google Ads campaigns are effective is to use negative keywords.

What are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are words or phrases that you add to your campaign to prevent your ads from being shown when someone is searching for those terms.

For example, if you’re selling Mercedes cars, you might want to add the keyword “photo” as a negative keyword. This would mean that your ads wouldn’t show up when someone searches for photos of Mercedes cars.

Adding negative keywords can help you save money on your advertising budget, because you’ll be preventing your ads from being shown to people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. It can also help you improve the quality of your website’s traffic, as people who are searching for negative keywords aren’t likely to be looking for a business like yours.

4. Conduct A/B testing on Both Copy and Landing Pages

Test out different variations of an ad or offer to see which one provides the best results! This will help you maximize your return from running AdWords campaigns by giving you more information on what works best for you and what doesn’t

Add a compelling call-to-action that will encourage people to click through and learn more about what you’re advertising!

5. Get Professional Help With Your Google Ads

When it comes to something as important as advertising your business, it’s always a good idea to get professional help. This is especially true when it comes to Google Ads – a platform that can be tricky to navigate at first. A good AdWords consultant will be able to help you create campaigns that are effective and profitable, and they’ll also be able to give you advice on how you can improve your results over time. If you’re serious about running successful Google Ads campaigns, then it’s definitely worth considering hiring a professional consultant.

Google Ads is a powerful advertising platform that can help you drive more traffic to your website and generate sales. However, it’s not always easy for small business owners to navigate Google Ads campaigns on their own. If this sounds like you, consider hiring a Google ads consultant or agency who will be able to provide guidance and expertise in areas such as creating copy that maximizes clicks-through rates and landing pages that convert visitors into customers.

Do some of these tips sound familiar? Which ones have been most helpful when trying out new digital marketing strategies with your ads? Let us know!

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How to Recover from Lost Rankings on Google

posted on October 26, 2021

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The feeling you get when you are standing at the top and then stumble and fall into the abyss is something no individual wants to experience. Similarly, no business owner/marketer wants to find out that their website has suddenly dropped down 10-15 rankings in the SERPs. However, people familiar with SEO know that it is a common and predictable occurrence in the online world.

When it happens, the only thing you need to worry about is finding out why and taking counteractive measures.  In this article, we will share why rankings fall and how they can be recovered. 

Reasons Why Websites Lose Ranking on Google

Website rankings are ruled by Google algorithms which change constantly. No one can pinpoint the exact reason for a drop in rankings every time. However, there are some ranking factors that SEO experts know will impact your rankings. Some common causes include the following:

Hacked website 

Source: AuthorityLabs

Your website being hacked can lower your rankings. However, it is one of the rarer causes. You can quickly identify whether your website has been hacked by going to your Google Search Console, expanding the Security and Manual Actions option, and clicking on security issues. A dialogue box will open:

  • If it shows ‘no issues detected,’ then your rankings have not dropped due to hacking
  • If it shows an issue, you need to fix the problem immediately.

Google Penalty 

Google penalties are another rare occurrence. However, they may happen if Google notices that your website violates webmaster quality guidelines, such as having duplicate content on your site. You can quickly identify whether you have been issued a penalty from the Google Search Console, just like you can identify security issues.

Change in content

Another primary reason for a drop in rankings can be the recent changes you made to your content. If your content changes are not optimized enough to meet search ranking requirements, your rankings fall.

Lost backlinks

Backlinks play a vital role in your search engine rankings because they help determine your site’s domain authority.  If you lose some of your high-authority backlinks, your rankings can drop significantly.

Deteriorating user experience

All search engines emphasize providing exceptional user experience and include page load speed and mobile-friendliness as ranking metrics. If your website’s user experience is diminished due to shortcomings in these areas, your rankings will drop.

Someone published better content

Every day thousands of articles are posted on the internet for a set of keywords. If an article is published with better content than yours, it will likely take your place, and your SERP standing will fall.

Pages tagged as Noindex

If your developers unintentionally leave Noindex tags on your web pages during the transition from the development to the production stage, search engine crawlers will read the tags and fail to index those pages.  Such pages can lower your rankings.

A disallow protocol in your Robots.txt File

Like the Noindex tag, the disallow protocol also tells search engines not to crawl specific pages on your website. Some disallow protocols, however, are added explicitly to some backend files. You should consult your developers to identify whether any of them were added incorrectly. If yes, then you need to remove them. 

Changes in algorithms 

Google algorithms are constantly changing, although most changes are not disclosed. However, once in a while, Google makes some massive changes, creating a tremendous shift in rankings. You can, however, get back on track quickly enough if you simply follow the new guidelines. 

Tips for recovering your lost rankings and enhancing them

Now that you know the most common reasons for a shift in rankings, you can fix any issues to get back into the top spot. Here are a few things you can do to improve your ranking:

Start with checking your Google Search Console

The Google Search Console is your ultimate tool to check what’s going on with your website. You can track your website traffic and performance there and see if there are any security issues or penalties. 

Fix security issues 

If your Google Search Console shows a security issue, you need to fix it. A hacker may have installed malicious software or malware on your site, and you need to remove it as quickly as possible.

Remove the Noindex tags and disallow protocols

If one of your developers inadvertently added the Noindex tag to your webpages, a quick fix is to remove those tags. 

The first step is to identify all noindex tags. You can use tools to identify non-indexed pages.  Or, you can simply go to the View Page Source option on your browser and search for noindex to find the pages that are not indexed.

Similarly, you need to check for any disallow protocols in the robot.txt file. Consult with your team and identify the disallow protocols your developers have left intentionally and leave those alone. 

Perform a site redirect

Often, you need to make a lot of changes to your website. It can be a simple migration to a new domain, a change in your site’s URL, or other structural changes. Whatever the reason, when these changes happen, search engine crawlers re-index your site, and you lose your old rankings.

To prevent that from happening, you need to perform a redirect every time you make such changes.  You can implement redirects on your site through various plugins available on your CMS. 

Here is how redirection works:

Source: Neil Patel

Generate more links

Another common reason for a drop in rankings is losing high-authority backlinks. In such cases, you need to generate more backlinks, internal links for multiple keywords to make up for the lost links. It is a time-consuming exercise, but the results are worth it. 

Create better content

One sure-shot way of increasing your rankings is to create valuable content for your website. Value-adding user content plays a vital role in enhancing the user experience. By reading relevant keywords, metatags, headings, descriptions, and backlinks to your content, you can make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website.

Fix technical glitches

Any technical SEO factors such as page loading time, crawl anomalies, mobile-friendliness, and URL issues must also be taken care of to enhance your rankings.

Keep an eye on Google algorithm changes

Algorithm changes are constantly happening. Still, you need to be aware of the changes to stay ahead of the game. Some changes are too minor to make a difference, but some can turn the tables on you. To maintain your rankings, you need to regularly update your website to be in compliance with algorithm updates.

Example of website recovery after an algorithm update. Source

Don’t forget about SERP updates

It’s not just algorithms that are updated; Google updates SERP layouts as well. For example, snippets, ad positioning, etc., keep changing to enhance the user experience. Update your website to keep up with these SERP changes.

Summing up

In the end, the most important thing is not to panic when you see your rankings fall. There is always a solution. You just need to analyze the situation, find out what’s causing it and then fix it. Studying your website regularly and keeping track of ranking metrics and algorithms is the key to staying on top.

The post How to Recover from Lost Rankings on Google appeared first on SiteProNews.

6 Google Search Console Tips to Optimize Your Search Results

posted on October 8, 2021

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Google Search Console (GSC) is a valuable tool for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals looking to assess a website’s overall performance in the search results, ask Google to index your content, review your backlink profile, and more. Yet, while GSC is a great tool, there’s a learning curve.

This article will examine the importance of GSC for digital marketers. We’ll do a quick review of some of the dashboards and discuss some of the ways you can use GSC to improve your search results. Let’s get started!

1. Find Queries That Drive Traffic (& Keyword Opportunities)

When you start writing an article, you probably have a keyword, possibly even two, that you want to rank for. It’s good that you had a keyword in mind when you started writing your article. The problem is, a month or more after your content is published, you’ll find that you’re starting to rank for all types of keywords that you might not have been expecting.

Let me provide you with an example for a popular term that many people in the marketing industry might target; “how to make money blogging.â€Â

You can see that this page has the chance to rank for a range of terms. If you have access to this information, you can optimize your content for those terms. 

To access the terms a piece of content is ranking for, do the following:

  1. Click on “Search Resultsâ€Â
  2. Select “pagesâ€Â
  3. Click on “Queriesâ€Â

You can see the total search volume, clicks, and the search ranking position of the page for each term. It’s a bit like a keyword database. You can use a variety of tools to subsequently optimize for each keyword. 

2. Optimize Your CTR for Relevant Search Terms

Your headline is the most important element of your copy. David Ogilvy famously said, “when you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your advertising dollar.†

That process holds true for pretty much every type of advertising. If you come up with great newsletter ideas and write an engaging subject line, people will open your email. If you write an engaging meta headline, people will click through from the search results onto your content.

The right meta headline can make a big difference to where you sit in the search results and the number of people who view your content. Utilizing a combination of Google Search Console and some inspiration, it’s relatively easy to improve your CTR from the search results.

To access the data follow the steps shared above. Once you’ve selected the page, review your clicks, impressions, and CTR relative to the position.

Your aim should be to identify the most relevant terms with the highest impressions getting the lowest number of clicks. Once you’ve found a relevant term, you can adjust your meta description. 

To monitor the impact of the changes on your CTR, do the following:

  1. Select “Date Range†from the top menu
  2. Click on compare
  3. Enter the comparative date range

Select the relevant date range; I’d give yourself at least two weeks to run a test. At the end of the period, compare the results.

If there’s an increase in your CTR, then your new headline is doing the job. If there’s a drop, you can have a go at coming up with a more engaging meta headline.

We always take this approach with our sales pages. For example, you can see on our Unified Communications page, we start with a definition of the term.

We also cover relevant questions that people might have about Unified Communications on the page. This approach ensures we’re providing as much useful information to page visitors as possible while optimizing the page for relevant associated terms people are searching for.

Keep in mind, according to an interesting article from 2019 by Rand Fishkin, less than half of the search terms on Google result in a click. Terms with a low CTR that you want to avoid optimizing for often have instant answers in the search results or are crowded out by Google My Business listings.

3. Identify Competing Pieces of Content

Ideally, your website should be organized. Each piece of content on your website should target a relevant keyword. You can create content silos where you thematically link different pieces of relevant content together.

So, if you’re managing a website about outreach, you might have:

  • The definitive guide to SEO
  • How to do an offsite audit
  • How to do an onsite audit

Essentially, you want to have content that is thematically grouped together. Effective content silos help spread Page Rank between the pieces of content on your site. It’s also good for the user experience, as people can click through to other relevant resources on your site on the spot.

The image above from a crawl provides a nice example of what an organized site looks like.

Of course, your site might not be organized. You might have content competing for the same keyword and other issues. You can use Google Search Console to resolve problems with conflicting content.

To check if you have competing content, click on a query and then click “pages†from the menu.

If there is more than one page on the list, you might have an issue. You should check the two conflicting pieces of content to see if there is a natural overlap. If it’s a small overlap, that could be fine. On the other hand, you might have two pieces of content targeting the same keywords.  If that’s the case, you might need to delete one of the pieces and implement a 301.

4. Remove Content from Search Results or Get Content Indexed

There are many different reasons that you might want to remove a piece of content from the search results. For example, you might discover you have two pieces of content that are ranking for the same keyword and decide the best way to do that is to 301 your content.

While a 301 might solve the problem of where your visitor goes, the offending page can still appear in the search results. Thankfully, you can use GSC to request to remove content from the search results.

The process is quite straightforward. Click on the removals dashboard and make a request.

You can also use GSC to request indexing. This guide from Google discusses how to request indexing.

5. Identify and Rectify Coverage Issues

A large part of why Google is such a successful company is its focus on user experience. The search engine does everything it can to ensure people using the search engine click through to resources that fill their needs. The better they can do this, the more people use the service and the more money they make through advertising.

Over the last few years, Google has consolidated its mobile-first approach to most of its products – including search. Hence, your website’s optimization for mobile devices – such as smartphones and tablets – needs to be up to scratch. 

The good news is, there are tools you can use to check if your website is optimized for mobile. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, for instance, is particularly handy. Just pop in the URL of the page you’d like Google to check and Google will tell you its verdict.

Source

Check out what happens when I pop in the URL of this page from Nextiva, into the mobile-friendly test:

Source

The tool doesn’t just tell you if your page is mobile-friendly or not. It also shows you how that page would look on a mobile device so you can make the necessary adjustments.

Unfortunately, for far too many sites, mobile usability is an issue.

GSC has a dashboard dedicated to mobile usability issues. The dashboard provides solutions to address issues with mobile pages and AMP.

If you’ve never heard of AMP, it stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. The feature enables faster site and page load speed while delivering a consistent UX on mobile devices. Well, that is the theory at any rate. Many sites struggle to implement AMP without a developer.

In addition to mobile, you can also identify other site issues through GSC through the coverage tab. Through this tab, you can identify issues like 5xx server errors. You can fix problems Google has identified through GSC.

6. Monitor Backlinks & Internal Links

GSC provides granular insights to each page on your website. Through the links dashboard, you can track internal and external links. You can access the “links†dashboard through the side menu.

The GSC links dashboard provides you with a nice overview of your linking strategy. You can see what sites link to you and which piece of content has got the most links. The data is useful. However, premium SEO tools generally provide more comprehensive insights and have an easier UI to navigate than GSC.

For example, when I’m monitoring backlinks, I like to know the Domain Authority of a site, the Page Authority where I got the link, the site Trust Flow, etc. While Google has internal metrics to measure link quality, they don’t share this information. 

A more valuable resource, which any SEO professional needs to know about, is the disavow feature. With the disavow feature, you can ask Google to ignore low-quality links coming to your site. Or, you might have links from a site that has had a Google penalty.

If you’re unfamiliar with how to implement a disavow, I recommend you read this article. You should have a disavow file for your site.

Wrapping Up

Google Search Console is a powerful platform for running analytics on your website and improving its SERP ranking. Its wealth of features and insights places it ahead of many other paid-for platforms that evaluate site performance.

The platform’s functionalities run the gamut when it comes to metrics that affect search rankings. GSC covers metrics like keyword performance, metadata, mobile optimization, and more. Its multi-functionality coupled with well-designed dashboards make it an all-in-one solution, like a swiss army knife.

Google designed GSC to help people who run websites dominate the search results. GSC enables you to identify problem areas and take corrective action.

The post 6 Google Search Console Tips to Optimize Your Search Results appeared first on SiteProNews.

How to architect a no-code ML platform on Google Cloud

posted on October 2, 2021

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Plainsight → https://goo.gle/3urQv0h AI Simplified → https://goo.gle/AISimplified Getting into data science and ML can be intimidating, no-code solutions make ML/AI approachable. But how are these no-code solutions made? In this episode of Architecting Cloud Solutions, Priyanka Vergadia speaks with Carlos Anchia, CEO of Plainsight, a company that makes Vision AI accessible with no-code. Listen as […]