Grow Your Business throw Out of Digital Marketing

Google updated the Google Image Publishing Guidelines document today, adding more details around structured data, page speed, title management and user experience details. The old documentation can be viewed in this screen shot I captured previously. The new guidelines have updated content around creating a better user experience with your images, including adding good context, optimizing placement, embedding tips, device-friendly sites and good URL structure for your images . In addition, Google has explained how the image titles work since the change. Google also added sections for adding structured data for product, video and recipe markup. There is a new section for speed, including information about their PageSpeeds Insights tool, AMP and responsive image techniques. You can check out the new guidelines over here and compare them to the old guidelines over here .

Google announced it is now rolling out the Google Lens button within Google Image search results. Google Lens, which was introduced in May 2017, is a visual search tool to help people learn more about images and what they are visually looking at. Adding this tool to image search allows users to learn more about the images they clicked on within Google Image search. Google said “Starting today, when you see something in an image that you want to know more about, like a landmark in a travel photo or wallpaper in a stylish room, you can use Lens to explore within the image.” Here is a GIF of it in action within image search: Google Lens has been a part of Google Assistant and Google Photos for some time and is a great feature within the Pixel phone as well. How do I see Google Lens in image search? After you view an image, you should see an icon square Google Lens icon in the image, as illustrated above in the GIF. Personally, I do not yet see it, so it may still be rolling out. What if I...

Google has updated its original blog post around the Speed Update saying this is now “rolling out for all users.” Google this morning has begun incorporating the new Speed Update algorithm in the mobile search results as a search ranking factor. We posted detailed FAQs on new Google Speed Update a while back explaining some of the more common questions around the speed update. And as we clarified last week, this update only impacts the slowest of sites on the internet. Google’s original announcement said this will “only affect a small percentage of queries.” One of the more common questions we hear is how we know if Google considers our web pages to be fast or not. Google won’t give you a specific metric about this, but the search giant does say it uses a number of ways to measure page speed and suggested webmasters look at the metrics from the Chrome User Experience report, the Lighthouse tool and PageInsights tool. Again, Google has quietly updated the blog post this morning to say ...

Google is sending out a new type of notification to those who have verified properties in Google Search Console . The new messages inform site owners about really slow pages that take too long to load. Oliver H.G. Mason posted a screenshot of this message on Twitter : Google has a Google Speed update which is aimed at reducing the search rankings of really slow mobile pages. Google also had a speed factor in 2010. This notice references how slow specific pages are with this specific website and how to fix the issue.

Google posted on Twitter Friday morning that some of their reports within Google Search Console are currently delayed more than their normal two-days. “Some Search Console reports are currently a bit more delayed due to issues in the reporting pipeline,” the company said. This has no impact on your search rankings, this is just a reporting issue. Which reports are delayed?  Specifically, the AMP, Rich Results / Structured Data, Hreflang, Index Coverage, and Mobile Usability reports are all delayed according to Google. I will say that I did check several of these reports, and not all of them are delayed. For example, while the mobile usability and AMP reports are both a week old, the index coverage report is only two days delayed, which is the normal expected reporting delay you would see in Google Search Console. Should I worry?  No, this is just a reporting issue which Google said doesn’t affect your site in search. So your rankings should not be impacted by this issue. When ...

Have you ever had a negative experience using a search engine optimization agency? If so, you are by no means alone. It seems like just about every business owner has heard SEO horror stories or has one themselves. This article is not an exposé of bad agencies, nor is it to “name and shame” any particular SEO company. The goal of this article is to educate business owners to choose an SEO agency that will likely provide a positive experience. What is their real reputation? This may sound pretty straightforward – but it isn’t. Learning what an agency’s real reputation is requires more than just seeing how many positive customer reviews they have. Reviews, or testimonials, contained on an agency’s site are likely cherry-picked. Reviews contained on Google Maps and other third-party review sites can also be unreliable. How so? There are rumors of SEO agencies threatening customers with legal action if negative reviews are not removed. Others may use more sinister threats such as negative ...

The complexity of working an SEO program has grown exponentially over the years, creating both challenges and opportunities for search marketers. SEO professionals today cannot simply rely on their marketing skills to drive a program. User experience, front-end development and data analysis skills are essential for success today. Honing these skills as part of your professional development can pay dividends, both for yourself and your employer. Managing SEO programs requires that we not only drive SEO results , but we must also drive growth opportunities for our teams. Growth opportunities and career progression are core concerns for employees. Investing in the growth of our personnel allows for driving significantly more impact across the organization. Laura Dillon, a senior analyst on our Walgreens team, is a prime example of how SEO expertise can be leveraged to build stronger relationships with internal customers while driving value for the company. In addition to her SEO respons...

What I liked about the piece was the implication that to show value, we have to do more than just provide recommendations. But it also got me thinking about the value of the recommendations themselves. If you search “ show SEO value ,” you’ll get a slew of posts discussing how to use data and reporting to make your case. Yes. We should do that. But what if the data isn’t in your favor just yet? How do you show the value of long-term SEO recommendations in the short term? Before we get into the actions themselves, let me clarify what I mean by “long-term SEO.” To me, this refers to things that generally take a longer period of time to have an effect on SEO progress. This includes subdomain transitions, link-building programs, Schema recommendations, HTTPS implementation and more. Take HTTPS as an example. As search marketers, we know there is long-term value in transitioning to a secured site. The web is moving in a more secure direction, users want trust, and heck, Google has stated i...

There is a never-ending issue all SEOs must face: fighting for budget. I’ve found this to be especially true when it comes to link building. SEO , although technical in nature, can be explained in real-world measures to upper management. There’s data, traffic levels, technical configurations and on-site elements directly in your control to measure and report. With link building, upper management often approaches metrics in a single, dogged mindset: price per link. The easiest way to quantify the value of a link is through cost — particularly to the budgetary gatekeeper. Measuring link-building campaigns by cost is fair, but it creates the wrong mindset. It’s the difference between price and value . Today, I want to explain how SEOs can and should sell the value of link building upstream, instead of the price. Three critical stages to communicate value As an in-house SEO, you’ve reached the point where you need links to achieve your goals. So how do you request additional budget? It st...

Anyone who has tried to make the case for investing in Search Engine Optimization to a client, boss, or colleague, will be all too familiar with the common objections: it’s too unpredictable, PPC is better, it takes too long, etc. There’s a common misconception that the financial benefits of SEO are not as clear as say, social media or PPC. But anyone familiar with SEO knows that it is highly measurable and in most cases even better value for money than both social media and PPC. And, many businesses seem to have realized this: In 2016, Borrell and Associates predicted that the SEO industry would reach $80 billion a year in revenue by 2020. A well thought-out SEO strategy will bring more qualified traffic to your website. Quality content tailored to the needs of your customers will bring a higher conversion rate. These things are well known. But ignoring SEO altogether doesn’t just mean losing a few sales here and there: it can be risky or potentially disastrous financially. Here are...

Google is testing showing little clipboard icons next to suggestions for recipe-related searches. When you begin typing your query in Google, Google shows you suggestions of keyword phrases that you might be looking for. These are called search suggestions. In this test, you can see on the right side of the search suggestions are little clipboard icons. Here is a picture from Search Engine Land reader Alex Cassidy: Google said it was a test, but had no further comment. What does this feature do?  It is unclear what the clipboard icon does or symbolizes. It might signal a new feature that lets you save the recipe related to the suggestion to a special recipe section, but that is  speculation. What should I do?  Well, at this point, nothing. But if Google does release a feature that let’s searchers clip recipes, ranking for those recipes would be important for webmasters. Google does have recipe markup for search and one would suspect the markup will be expanded to suppor...

Structured data represents a huge opportunity for SEOs to communicate key information with search engines, boost content visibility, and reach target audiences. It makes it easier for search engine crawlers to extract and understand specific information related to the content, in this case, the kind of product, the aggregate rating, available offers, and product reviews. This allows the crawler to understand your content with increased accuracy. This report from Botify describes how structured data can give SEOs a competitive advantage and lead to significantly increased levels of search visibility and engagement rates.Visit Digital Marketing hardik ghadiya  “Structured Data: Why now is the time to optimize.”

Welcome to the next-to-the-last article in our six-part series on negative SEO . If you’ve been following along, you understand what negative SEO is. You’ve audited your situation to know whether or not you were hit, and you know how to reduce your likelihood of being a target in the future. You even know how to try and defend yourself from an ongoing negative SEO campaign. Now, it is time to clean up the mess. This article is meant to serve as a companion piece to the previous articles in the series. As such, we will once again segment the recovery process into three main areas: links, content and user signals. The good news is that you can recover from attacks in any of those areas; the bad news is that, depending on what type of negative activity you’re attempting to recover from, it could be a lengthy process. Inbound links The first step is to build a disavow file of the most toxic links you have identified in your analysis of the attack. You can find more about how to structure ...

You know what negative SEO is (and isn’t). You know how to audit your site to determine if you’ve been hit. You know how to protect yourself to limit your exposure. Now it is time to discuss how to defend yourself against an ongoing negative SEO campaign. Who is attacking you? There are a variety of ways to unmask the people targeting you and your site with a negative SEO attack. Some depend on the type of attack you’re experiencing. No matter how they are coming at you, you will need to collect some information in order to shut them down. Let’s look at common attack methods and see how we can turn the tables and use what they’re doing to us — against them. Inbound links Using your favorite link analysis tool, you will need to segment the links you expect to have (your old links) to the new ones you believe are coming from an attack. This step is very easy to oversimplify because link scoring varies significantly, depending on your philosophy of links, risk tolerance and which tool y...

In previous articles, we discussed what is and isn’t negative SEO and how to determine if you’ve actually been hit by negative SEO. With the basics out of the way, it’s now time to look at how you can keep your website safe from negative SEO (search engine optimization) campaigns. To start, I have some bad news: There is no such thing as being hackproof. And there is no such thing as being negative SEO-proof! All you can reasonably do is take action to lessen the probability of becoming a victim by reducing attack vectors. This way, anyone seeking to do harm has to be more sophisticated and put forth a greater effort than they would against an average website. In this installment of our negative SEO series, we will segment SEO into three areas: content, links and user signals and focus on protecting each, as well as your site overall, from being a victim of negative SEO. Content and infrastructure Hosting.  What can your host do to keep you out of trouble? Quite a bit, actually. ...

Have you ever experienced a rankings decline and suspected it was due to something a competitor was doing? For this second article, we are going to focus on the process of diagnosing whether or not you’ve been hit by negative search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. If you need a refresher or missed the first article, here it is: What Negative SEO is and is Not. As you progress through the following steps to try and diagnose what happened, you’ll need to honestly ask yourself whether the decline you’re facing is more a result of your own actions or due to someone acting against you. It’s an important distinction; your first inclination can be to assume someone is out to hurt you, while it might actually be something as simple as accidentally no-indexing your index, disallowing critical paths in robots.txt or having a broken WordPress plug-in that suddenly duplicates all your pages with strange query parameters and improper canonicalization. In the first article, I segmented the ma...