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How to Catch & Fix 4 Common SEO Issues Before It’s Too Late

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Taking a proactive stance in your SEO processes will help you catch and resolve problems before they impact your rankings. Here's how you can do it. As an SEO professional, it’s your goal – and responsibility – to ensure that you can do what’s necessary to keep things running smoothly and stay up-to-date with your website’s content.  On September 23, I moderated a sponsored Search Engine Journal webinar presented by Steven van Vessum, VP of Community at ContentKing . He shared how to finally take a proactive stance in your SEO processes as you catch (and resolve!) problems before they impact your rankings. Search engines never sleep. They are continuously crawling your site to update their indexes. SEO mistakes can happen anytime.  You need to fix them before they impact your rankings and bottom line. About 80% of SEO issues go unnoticed for at least four weeks .  An average SEO issue can cost up to $75,000 in lost revenue. But with the right tooling and processes, you c...
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How Google Handles Naked Links

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In a Google Office Hours SEO hangout Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller answered how Google handles links that don’t have anchor text.  In a follow up question he answered if text surrounding those kinds of links have an effect. What are Naked Links?  There are many kinds of links, including branded links, keyword optimized links, nofollowed links , etc.  This question was about a type of link that is referred to as a naked link. A naked link is a link that is in the form of the URL. Here’s an example of how a “ naked” link would look on a web page: https://www.example.com/  How Does Google Handle Links Without Anchor Text?  The question asked was within the context of auditing the inbound links of client sites and noticing that certain links are coded as naked links. The SEO asking the question wanted to know how Google processed those links. This is the question:  “When auditing links for my clients websites I see some naked URLs that are poi...
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Google SERP Study: Which Rich Results Get the Most Clicks?

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A study of Google SERP click-through rates finds which rich result types generate the most clicks on average. All rich results in Google SERPs are not created equal – at least not when it comes to click-through rate – a new study finds.  Milestone Research, the research division of Milestone Inc., analyzed over 4.5 million queries to find users click on rich results 58% of the time, compared to a CTR of 41% for non-rich results .  Perhaps it’s not shocking that users are more likely to click on rich results compared to regular organic results. What is eye opening about this study is how much CTR can vary depending on the type of rich result. For some types of rich results the CTR can jump as high as 87%.  The study also looks at branded versus non-branded results and which is likely to generate more clicks. ADVERTISEMENT . Google SERP Study : Key Takeaways  The average CTR of all rich and standard results on page one is 49.5%. That means roughly half of all searches...
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How to Take Over the SERPs for Your Name

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Want to take control of how your personal brand is perceived online? These SEO tips will help you own the SERPs when someone searches for your name. Have you ever had someone say something about you online that wasn’t true? I think most of us have.  We all understand the importance of a personal brand. It’s incredibly important to control how your personal brand is perceived online.  But there are many things that can hurt you in that regard. Things that can pop up in the SERPs when someone searches for our name that we may not want there.  Other people with similar names, information inaccuracies, and even outright lies. Information that might kill speaking or media opportunities or cause people to doubt your expertise. Maybe even information that can encourage people to leave negative reviews about you or your business.  So it’s in our best interest to control what comes up on the first page – or even better, the first few pages of the search results. But how do ...
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Google Rewrites Meta Descriptions Over 70% of the Time

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Google rewrites meta descriptions for pages over 70% of the time, according to a recent study examining search results for 30,000 keywords.  Portent analyzed mobile and desktop search results to find Google rewrites meta descriptions at a rate of 71% on mobile, and 68% on desktop.  Based on the data, it’s reasonable to deduct that Google will use a page’s own meta description around 30% of the time . Meta Description Rewrite Rate by Search Position  Data from the study focuses primarily on the first page of organic search results, excluding featured snippets.  Portent notes there’s a bump in the rate of meta descriptions rewrites from positions 4 to 6, which may be due to Google trying to boost relevance of those results. “I speculate that since positions 1-3 get the most click-through rate, Google might be trying to boost the relevance for 4-6 to get more clicks before users leave the page or search for something else.”  Meta Description Rewrite Rate by Search...
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5 Things I Learned From 20 Years of Working in the SEO Industry

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A seasoned SEO professional shares 20 of the most important lessons she has learned from two decades of experience in the industry. Being an SEO professional has its challenges and its rewards. After working in the SEO industry for more than 20 years, I have come to learn a lot about myself and the peculiarities that come with optimizing websites.  I started my career in 2000 optimizing my pet supply website for search engines Excite and Lycos. I learned from Microsoft’s bCentral for Business helpful tips and search engine submission.  My career took a turn when I jumped from the pet industry to the SEO industry working for an agency.  Since then I have managed Best seo company in india and in-house for startups, medium, and enterprise organizations. I now manage SEO for one of the largest and well-known companies in the technology world and throughout my years, I have come to learn a lot.  Now that I have reached my 20-year mark, I felt it was perfect timing to sh...
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6 Enterprise-Level Link Building Best Practices

Building links at the enterprise-level ? Use your size to your advantage. Here are six best practices for a successful large-scale campaign. The size of your business deeply influences your marketing strategy. Many large brands or websites inherently have an unfair advantage over smaller businesses and brands – name recognition, reach, a much larger budget to work with, and additional resources in other departments.  Take all of these benefits into consideration when planning your next enterprise link building strategy. To successfully implement a large-scale link building campaign, scalability is key .  Look to start with one brand or product/service and then, as you learn what works and what doesn’t, you can expand both your campaigns to cover more products and your outreach to get links from more sources. Enterprise-Level Link Building: Where to Focus  The most successful large-scale link building campaigns start niche-specific. Even if you were a home improvement sto...
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