Category Archives: Uncategorized

Google-Web-Dev-SEO

Google Has Release Its Own SEO Tool : WEB.DEV

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Yes, you read that right. Google has indeed released a new SEO & site metrics tool that helps site owners to get an overall picture of their SEO efforts & overall site performance. However, it’s in beta mode and as a result is kind of buggy, but overall, it’s a useful tool.

Since Google already has all the data in the world, it was not a surprising move that they launched this tool. However, some SEO “experts” are arguing that whether Google should be deciding the definition of SEO or not. Smh.

We would say that it is a very useful tool that is developed by “GOOGLE” itself. So it’s a no-brainer that you should try your hands on it. Here’s how it works.

Once you enter the URL of your page, it will rate the website for the following metrics.

• Performance
• Progressive Web App
• Accessibility
• Best Practices
• SEO

Here’s how the reports look like:

Web-dev-seo
The new SEO score gives you information about the page crawlability, but the overall SEO score is based on just 10 VERY BASIC On-Page elements, which makes it easy to score 100%. But, in reality, SEO is much more complicated than that.

Many would argue that when GOOGLE itself says that my site is doing good on the SEO part, why would I need your expertise? The simple difference is the level of detail that an agency works on. Google is just telling you about basic things and not about the competitive stuff, where the real game begins.

So any site can score 100% on SEO web.dev and still rank on the 10th page of the Google. Because ranking for specific keywords and “money” phrases is the main purpose of SEO.

 

For more information on how to utilize Google’s Web.Dev SEO Tool
Connect with us to learn more!
google-my-business-app

Reviews Now Manage Your Business On The Go With New Google My Business App

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Google announced last month that they are launching a new Google My Business App that provides a host of features that can help small business owners to easily manage their online presence and respond to customers.

Following are the biggest features and highlights:

1. Profile Tab
Google has made it extremely easy to upload photos, create offers and add events by providing a post button. You can also update information of your business from the profile tab and it will instantly appear on the search as well as Map.

2. Customer Tab
People can connect with you in many ways. They can message you, follow you, book a service or leave a review. From now on, you can see all of these customers in one place – The new customer tab. You can not only see but also respond to the reviews & post offers. Not to mention that you will get a notification when you get a new customer connection. Also, you will soon be able to respond to messages directly from the app.

3. See your Progress in Real Time
The data that matters to you the most is now on the home screen itself. So you can now check how many new people interacted with your business, new connections & more in one place.

Here’s a short video:

Takeaway

Google My Business App is a very powerful tool that every business owner and SEO professionals must have. It’s easy to use and offers a lot of tools that make tracking, analyzing and making changes easy. The other big news is that Google is about to launch a chat feature for Maps. So users can directly chat with business owners directly after searching for their business. Having a GMB app will help you with this feature as well.

To learn more about the Google My Business app connect with us!

youtube-measurement-tools-header

Youtube is Determined To Provide Measurements You Trust

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In order to help YouTube advertisers drive more conversion, Google added new features that combine the power of YouTube’s creative canvas with Google’s machine learning and measurement solution.

YouTube advertisers soon will be able to use a wide variety of ad extensions, so that they can provide interesting information and compel the audience to take actions.

Google now wants to encourage viewers to complete a lower funnel action, i.e.: booking flight, downloading app etc. & for that, they are testing additional use cases.

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Google also wants to enable YouTube advertisers to measure the full impact of their video campaigns by evolving Brand Lift. They are also partnering with IRI so that it will get easier for the advertisers to act upon upper and lower funnel metrics.

They also have introduced new metrics:

Lifted Users: To know the estimated number of users whose perception changed after seeing your ads.

Cost-per-lifted-users: To know the average cost of the lifted users.

Google also added that in order to utilize this new measurement tools to the fullest, you should use Maximize Lift bidding.

Furthermore, Google is investing heavily in Google Measurement Partners to ensure that the measurements you receive is authentic & not exaggerated. Google said that it’s their topmost priority to provide measurements that advertisers can trust, as it is crucial to their overall advertising efforts.

Since Facebook drastically exaggerated activity reports (As much as 900%), having a measurement that you can trust is vital to the success of the ad campaigns. Google also announced their “New MRC accreditations and partners for Google and YouTube ads measurement”.

In the end, we would like to add that if you are a big brand, then you surely want to check all the new measurement tools and metrics that YouTube has to offer in order to get the most out of your YouTube ad campaigns.

For more information on Youtube’s latest and great measurement tools and how to implement it for your content, contact us!
Google-slow-page-speed-header

Google Sends Email to Slow Loading Websites Suggesting Improvements

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Google is sending emails to site owners who are struggling with site speed via Google Search Console. The intention is to help them identify and fix the slow loading pages. Here’s the email.

“Google has noticed that your site’s performance is significantly below average. Real user measurement data from the Chrome User Experience Report shows that pages on your site are slow to become interactive. This can have a severe negative effort on your business metrics and can cause user frustration. 

Speed is a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop search results. While we don’t disclose the exact factors used for ranking, we recommend using a variety f metrics to understand your site’s performance, including first content paint, time to interactive, and first input delay. In particular, 8.70% of loads on this site have a slow first input delay and 39.7% have had a slow first contentful paint.”

Our takeaway: Speed is crucial for both mobile and desktop version of your site and it is officially part of the algorithm. It not only help you with your SEO efforts but also massively boost the user experience since most of the users want a fast loading page. So site speed means better ranking and it also directly boost the conversion rate. Hence it is a very crucial aspect of your site which you should be paying attention to.

Need help with site load time? Connect with one of our Sales reps to assist you further.

REVIEWS-RATINGS-HEADER

REVIEWS & RATINGS ARE THE MOST PROMINENT LOCAL SEARCH RANKING FACTOR

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A Local Service ads click study, sheds some light on how users interact with local service ads and how it affects organic results.

A total of 5500 “impartial internet users” participated in this study and gave us some invaluable insight into how the local service ads impact the overall results and click through rate.

Below are the highlights from the study:

1. Local service ads get 13.8% of the overall Google local search clicks.
2. The local service ad on the top of the search result receives the highest clicks while the lowest one receives the least clicks.
3. The first organic result gets the highest number of clicks.
4. Local service ads encourage people to click on paid ads. When it’s live paid ads get 25.3% of all the clicks, while they are absent, the paid ads receive a mere 14.6%.
5. Review & ratings are the biggest driver of clicks in the local search result.

As much as 91% of customers read reviews while shopping online and that is why the reviews are the number one factor that customers pay attention to when evaluating a local business. Reviews not only help you generate trust among your prospects but also help you stand out from the crowd as it looks good to the eyes too.

Customers prefer a business which has a healthy number of reviews & it increases the click-through rate up to 25%. The more reviews a business has, the more customers they will get as people generally prefer popular business as compared to the new one, because taking risk is not something we as a human-like to do, very often.

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And this is why you should be paying more attention to reviews. If your product or service is good, then it is highly likely that there will be happy customers, who are willing to invest some time and effort in writing reviews. To help you get more reviews for your business, we highly recommend our review widget. It’s a small piece of code which is placed on your website and helps you get positive reviews on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. In addition, it helps to filter out negative reviews thus ensuring a positive experience to website users.

 

Need more details? Please connect with us.

Google-word-count-limit

Google Switched from Word Limit to Character Limit for GMB Posts

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Earlier, a Google My Business post had a word limit of 100-300. Now, they have changed it to 1500 characters. Although it’s not a revolutionary change, because 1500 charterers roughly translate to 294-320 words, it still provides more convenience over the word limit. How?

GMB-Character-LimitBecause counting words is not as precise as characters. You will now know exactly where to stop while writing Google My Business posts.

 

Are there any changes in how many characters will Google display on Mobile devices without having to click “learn more”? According to our test, it has increased from 55 characters to 140 characters. Google has not officially said anything about this, but few others who have tested it are backing our claim.

Overall, now you can be able to convince your customers more effectively via Google My Business posts.

Contact us for more insights on all the latest updates to Google My Business posts!

For more in-depth insights into the most vital features of Google My Business, Download The SEO Solutions 2018 Guide to Google My Business to learn more!

Sign up for The SEO Solutions Newsletter to read up on all the latest updates!

Full-Version-Google-Search-Console

The Full Version of The New Google Search Console is Here

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Google launched a beta version of the new Search Console at the beginning of this year. Since then, they have added a lot of features to it and it’s now out of Beta. Here’s a list of features you need to know.

More Data

  • Index coverage report that shows a concise view of your website content.
  • Access to 16 months of search analytics data.
  • Links report to view all the links pointing to your site.
  • URL inspection tool to get information about the indexed version of a specific page.

Automatic Alerts and Other Fixes

  • Get automatic alerts. Also, you will now be able to see the pages affected by indexing, AMP, crawling or other issues.
  • Now you can see the HTML code (If any fix is required) directly from the reports.
    A more convenient way to share information within your organization to quickly fix any issue.
  • After fixing an issue, notify the Google and they will review your page and get back to you. Here’s how you can file a reconsideration request.
  • Manual action report has gotten a new look and it also shows any manual action that is pending.

Simplified Account Settings Management

  • Now you can submit sitemaps and help Google better understand your site structure.
  • You can submit the URLs of individual pages.
  • You can now effortlessly add a new site to your account & manage users with ease.

Be informed that not every feature is available in the new search console. Here’s what Google has to say:

“While the old Search Console still has some features that are not yet available in the new one, we believe that the most common use cases are supported, in an improved way, in the new Search Console. When an equivalent feature exists in both old and new Search Console, our messages will point users to the new version. We’ll also add a reminder link in the old report. After a reasonable period, we will remove the old report.”

If you are having a problem migrating to the new search console, head straight to their help center.

Contact us for more information on the latest features and updates to Google Search Console!

Sign up for The SEO Solutions Newsletter to read up on all the latest updates!

GMB-Listing-Ownership

A Gentle Reminder That You Don’t Own Your Google My Business Listing

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The main aim of having and maintaining your Google My Business listing is to spread awareness about your business. But in case you forget to fill the Service area then you will face something that’s rather strange. 

Many users have reported that, when they forgot to fill the service area, a third party lead generation company’s link called “singleplatform.com” appeared in front of the service section.

ownership-google-my-business-listing
Upon clicking on the link, it takes you to a page that is dedicated to the business. And the weirdest part is, it doesn’t open in a new window, but rather navigate you out of Google.

Claim-menu-google-my-business-listing

Sometimes it shows “Get a Quote” option, not from the business that you have searched for, but from the businesses that have paid on singleplatform.com to get listed.

When you click on the “Claim this Menu”, it will show you a service cost that ranges from $99 to $149 a month. Although we didn’t investigate further, Google forcing business owners to opt for a paid option is a wakeup call for those who think that they “OWN” their Google My Business listing.

Although the above encounters were mostly from the home service industry & were limited to the cities which have Google local services active.

The only way we can see to protect yourself from this is to fill out your services menu within Google My Business. We recommend you do this regardless of your industry. Just because Google is focused on the home services industry doesn’t mean they won’t turn to your industry next.

For more in-depth insights into the most vital features of Google My Business, Download The SEO Solutions 2018 Guide to Google My Business to learn more!

Sign up for The SEO Solutions Newsletter to read up on all the latest updates!

Google-Search-Console-Features-Update

3 More Features Shifted to New Google Search Console

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Google has shifted some popular reports to new search console with upgrades. Here’s a look:

1. Links Report

The new links report combines the functionality of “Links to your site” & “Internal link” reports & not provides the following information:

  • Top linking domains (Which sites link to me the most?)
  • Top linked pages (Which are my top linked pages from other sites?)
  • Which are my top linked pages from a specific site?
  • Top linking text (What link text points to my site?)
  • What are the links from a specific site to my page?
  • What are the top sites linking to my page?
  • Top linked pages (Which of my pages is linked the most from within my own site?)
  • Which of my pages links to my page?

2. Mobile Usability Report

Now you can not only see the issues but can also fix it by submitting a reindexing request. Google said that they know how important mobile usability is for the site owners and allowing them to request a fix directly from the report will be super convenient.

Be informed that the features are the same, the upgrade is that you can now select the error and click “Validate Fix Button” & Google will promptly Re-crawl the error.

3. Site and User Management

You can now add & verify new sites and manage your property’s users & permissions using the newly added settings page. Although we encountered some bugs while using it, we are sure that Google will fix it very soon.

google-mobile-useability


Takeaway: All the new features and upgrades provide invaluable data. Take your time to explore the new search console and you will be able to figure out what feature and tools are most useful for you and how to use them to your benefit.

For more information on the latest updates to Google Search Console,  feel free to reach out to us.

Sign up for The SEO Solutions Newsletter to read up on all the latest updates!

Google-Search-Types

Three New Types of Google Searches Are On The Way!

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Google is soon going to roll out three new types of searches: Q&A, FAQ & How To content. It will be pulled directly from the pages & will appear on the search engine result page for enquires that falls under the above mentioned three categories.

Here’s a snapshot of Google’s developer manager, Stacey Chan unveiling the new search types at Google Dance in Singapore.

Search-Types-Google-Update

The sites that are using structured data properly can expect to benefit from it. The three categories are as follows:

1. Q&A Schema — Use this to markup a page with Q&A or FAQs

2. Questions Schema — It works in conjunction with the above schema

3. How To Schema — Use this to markup step by step instructions (How to) As of now, the above schema types are not included in their featured schema guides. In order to locate it, go to Google Developer’s page, click on the Left menu > Structured data > Feature guides.

Schema-Types-Google

If you want to see the Q&A structured data in action then head straight to StackOverflow.com. They are appearing on the top of the Google search results for the Q&A from quite some time. The best answers are displayed first, which is really convenient for the users.

Some people might argue that this is good for the users and Google but bad for the site, since users will get the entire answer in the SERP itself and they will not bother to enter the website. Most of the Q&A, FAQS & How To answers are short. So displaying the entire answer will not do any good. But, it will give you exposure and will also send visitors to the site since most of them would like to know more about it, but before entering into the website, they would want to confirm that the site is worth their time and actually offers genuine answers.

To stay on top of latest structured data, one can not rely on plugins since they are not up to date and often take time to catch up to the latest version. But there are some plugins that can help you leverage structured data. If you are using WordPress, the SOGO & Kansas City SEO’s plugin will come in handy.

Contact us For more information on all of Google’s latest updates.

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