Category Archives: Search Engine Optimization

GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE STRUCTURED DATA REPORTS HAS RELEASED 3 NEW REPORTS

Coding errors can pop up anytime and Google is all set to make it easier for us to realize when we have one on our hands. In an effort to offer more transparency on how your structured data is actually performing, Google has added three new structured data reports to Google Search Console.

These new Google Search Console structured data reports are as follows:

Logo Enhancement Report – If you are using Logo Markup, this report will provide you with details pertaining to the performance and/or errors around your Logo Markup.
Sitelinks Seachbox Enhancement Report – This report has been put in place to provide you with insight into the performance and/or errors around your SearchAction Markup.
Unparsable Structured Data Report – This error report has been designed to help you analyze and resolve issues around markup codes that fail to pass Google’s testing.

As long as your site has these specific markups, you will be able to find these reports listed under the Enhancements tab in Search Console.

Why do we need these Google Search Console structured data reports?

It is fairly common for an error to pop up even after you run a new code through Google’s Structured Testing Tool. These new reports give you a comprehensive breakdown of when Google first discovered the error, the pages with the error and even what the error looks like.

However, while you are trying to see whether you have been able to successfully troubleshoot the markup coding issues in your site, you need to bear in mind that the reports take time to update. It can take around a week or more for the updated page code to reflect on the reports even after you Validate a Fix.

Now Is The Best Time To Embrace Search

Leave a reply

Voice Search is undeniably growing at a rapid pace, and for good reason — it’s fast, convenient, allows you to search on the go, and it’s becoming part of the devices that consumers are using. It has taken a good percentage of total searches across the world. This is thanks in part due to AI assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, etc.

With mobile impacting desktop in terms of search queries, and home automation devices becoming mainstream, voice search will power many future local search queries. Optimizing for voice search conversational terms will be a key differentiator.

The good news is that we already have services in place according to Google’s priorities such as surveys and widgets to boost customer reviews in Google / Yelp / Facebook. We were one of the first agencies to adopt Voice Search optimization, wherein the content we create is more conversational and matches user’s natural language pattern.

Here’s a list of things were currently doing for Voice Search optimization:

Verified and Accurate Google My Business Listing – Most voice search queries will ask for directions to your business address. For this, we will make sure that your business is listed accurately on Google Maps. Without verification, it would be really difficult to rank for voice search queries.
NAP (Name, Address, Phone) Consistency across Local Sites – Accurate map listing, in terms of name, address and contact number, across multiple map databases will also help search engines to be more confident about your location, and it will form part of ranking algorithm. We will ensure that your business information (NAP details) is consistent across other top tier and second tier local search engines, directories and review websites.
Generating Positive Reviews – Customer Reviews are a critical part of ranking algorithm for voice search. We can help you get positive reviews on Google and Yelp for your business via our proprietary Plug and Play Review Widget and Survey Review Booster.
Mobile Friendly Website – Since most voice searches are done on mobile devices, you MUST have a mobile-friendly site. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, we can help you setup a mobile friendly version with the help of our experienced team.
Conversational Content – Mobile voice searches will use natural language, which means long-tail keyword phrases are more important than ever. A way to add natural language to your website is by using words and phrases that people actually speak (versus words they type into a search box). The content used will be more conversational in tone, and the keyword phrases will probably resonate more with a person performing a voice search. We have already started implementing this for website content which will help the site rank for voice based queries.
Microdata & Advanced Schema Markup – Google will start using schema markup both as a site quality and richness indicator (i.e. affecting rankings), and for creating carousel-like results for certain searches, with Knowledge Graph-like summary data on each result in the list. We will help you setup structured data on your site.
Rank Tracking – We have already started tracking rankings in mobile search results for voice based terms like “near me”, “close to me”, “around me”, etc. around physical location across all verticals and reporting these rankings on our dashboard.

For more SEO tips and the latest updates in digital marketing, contact us to learn more!

Youtube is Actively Removing Spam Subscribers

Leave a reply

You may have witnessed a sudden drop in the number of subscribers on YouTube. It is because YouTube is actively removing spam subscriptions from their platform.

Google said that they regularly check the authenticity of the accounts on YouTube and remove the accounts that looks suspicious. It means that they not only deactivate the spam accounts but also remove their subscription from every channel they are subscribed to.

The most recent cleansing drive was performed on December 13th. So if you noticed a drop in the number of subscribers, this might be the reason why.

Upon contacting, they said –

“Removing spam from the platform helps ensure that YouTube remains a fair playing field for everyone and should result in higher confidence that you’re organically building a community of authentic fans”.

However, Google is not keeping the channels in dark. They are showing a banner on YouTube studio & Classic Creator Studio which informs the affected channel about the removal of spam subscribers.

You maybe wondering that how Google decides that which account is spam. Here’s their answer:

“We use a mix of industry leading techniques and proprietary technology to identify spam on the platform. Often, these types of actions are meant to make channels look more popular than they actually are”.

Google explained that it will not affect the watch time since they were spam and wouldn’t have watched the videos in the first place. So you will only loose numbers of subscribers and not the number of actual viewers.

Your biggest concern would be falling below the 1000 subscription threshold required to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program because that’s the only way most of the YouTubers get paid. Addressing this concern, Google stated that:

“Channels that had a high percentage of spam and fall below 1,000 subscribers will no longer meet the minimum requirement for YPP and will be removed from the program. They are encouraged to reapply once they’ve rebuilt their subscribers organically. You can learn about how to apply for YPP here.”

Takeaway
If your subscriber count fell below the YPP 1000 minimum, then there’s nothing you can do to gain those back. You should focus on getting new subscribers instead. And to avoid this type of sudden shock in future, make sure that they are not spam from your end. If you need more information, we recommend reading this article by Google.

For more SEO tips and the latest updates in digital marketing, contact us to learn more!

Notable Changes in 2018 in The SEO World

Leave a reply

We have witnessed some big changes in the SEO world in 2018. From big algorithm updates to mobile first indexing & changes in Google search console, there is a lot to catch up on.

Search ranking and algorithm updates

Speed update. Google pre-announced that they will be launching the Speed update anytime soon in January but launched it five months later in June. At first, many website owners and SEO professionals were flipping out, thinking that it will adversely affect their site ranking, but Google confirmed that this update will only affect the slowest sites. Google said it “only affect a small percentage of queries.”

Medic update. Clearly the biggest search ranking algorithm update in 2018. Google launched the Medic update around August 1 & confirmed it after the SEO community took notice and approached them to get more information. At first Google shrug it off saying that it just another “broad core algorithm update” that they do multiple times a year, but this update was different as it specifically impacted health and YMYL categories.

Other algorithm updates. Along with the Medic update, Google also launched March core Update and April core update.

Mobile-first indexing

Google started hinting that they will be going mobile first very soon….in 2016. Yeah, they were planning to go mobile first since 2016 and fully shifted to mobile first indexing in 2018. 1 NOTABLE CHANGES IN SEO WORLD IN 2018.

For those who are unaware of it, Google finally decided to index the internet from the view of a smartphone instead of desktop. They started sending notifications via Google Search Console to inform the site owners about this shift. Today, Google claims that almost 50% of the websites have been shifted to mobile first indexing. Here’s a Google guide on how you can prepare for mobile first indexing.

SEO changes

Structured data. Google is putting a lot of emphasis on structured data & schema. From speakable markup for voice search related queries, a brand new indexing API for job posting schema to image search changes, various updates to recipe markup, new job posting guidelines, Q&A schema, live stream support, datasets schema, how to, QA, FAQs schema and so much more.

Other changes. Google not only introduced new schemas & API but also dropped support for the old ones like news meta tag, the standout tag and editors pick in Google news. This move was seen as an attempt to appear unbiased because all of the internet giants are facing allegation of partial treatment from a lot of publishers & users.

Google’s effort around the dynamic rendering & lazy loading content and photos is an effort you’ve seen a lot around with JavaScript SEO in 2018 & will continue through 2019.

Personalization. As we mentioned earlier, the two internet giants Facebook and Google were accused of misusing personal data in 2018. However, Google said that they do not use personalization that much and it is limited to showing relevant local results. “BUT” the duck duck go founder says otherwise. He explained in a long Quora post that how Google misuses your personal data and how privacy becomes a myth when you use any of the Google products or services.

Google Search Console and other tools

Google launched a brand new search console in 2018. Just like most of their updates, they first launched the beta version of it and then removed the beta tag and fully launched it for everyone. They also provided a way to import your old search console reports and data to the new one.

Google also started showing Search Console snapshots directly in the search results for site owners. They also changed the limits and quotas on crawling and indexing within search console, removed the ability to use the public URL submission tool & provided convenience to the site owners by automatically verifying them with their Google Analytics account.

Google also tested new form of domain properties for cross site reporting, added a number of reports for event listing, AMP, links, mobile usability and more. They also launched several tools in 2018, and one of the best from the lot was URL inspection tool.

This wonderful tool gives a snap shot of how Google sees your page. Pretty awesome, isn’t it? They also heard the demand of the SEO community and finally allowed us to view 16 months of historical data. Not only that but they also expanded the API to provide us with 25,000 rows of data.

Google local

Google Posts. Google spent a lot of time polishing Google Posts. They tested many UI around Google Posts on both desktop and mobile searches and also updated the My Business Console to enable Google Posts on the web or through the mobile app.

However, all these efforts from Google didn’t yield the type of results they were expecting since many local SEO experts said that the Google posts traffic and engagement level is on the decline.

Google My Business. Google not only updated the GMB API several times in the past year but also updated the GMB mobile app to allow business owners to manage their listing on the go. They added more insights data, analytics, branded searches, more query data and also launched an agency dashboard as well.

Mobile search and voice assistants

The increasing popularity of voice assistants has made many SEOs take keen interest in voice SEO. Although Google Home is considered the smartest one out there, but the competition is neck & neck since all the tech giants like Apple, Microsoft & Amazon have their own home assistants. But we can give credit to Google home for being the first home assistant that comes equipped with a display.

Google UI changes

Google rolled out a new design for desktop searches, discover feed & more results button for mobile and did many changes to UI.

They also increased and then decreased their snippet length, expanded the autocomplete predictions and started showing cameos of famous people in search results.

AMP. Coming to AMP, Google released a developer preview of showing the publisher URLs in search and not the Google AMP cache URL. They also launched AMP stories in search & a bunch of other AMP features.

Other big Google news

In other news, Google is finally closing down Google Plus after 7 years due to many security incidents.

Continuing from the last year, our client’s rankings haven’t had any major impact after rollout of these algorithm updates and continue to rise as we shift to 2019.

Google Has Release Its Own SEO Tool : WEB.DEV

Leave a reply

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:

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!

All About Google’s Latest Medic Update

Leave a reply

Google released a core algorithm update in August. Some industries were hit harder than others. Basically, the health and medical industry, and “Your Money Your Life (YMYL)” sites were affected the most. Webmasters were quick to call it the “Medic update”. In case you don’t know about “Your Money Your Life (YMYL)” sites, Google defines them as sites that can potentially impact the future health, happiness and financial stability or safety of the users.

Google also released a statement after the update launch and gave a generic answer which was along the lines of — “There’s no specific fix for this update or any update. If you notice that your site has been affected, just work on providing the best possible user experience and you will start seeing improvements because ultimately, our every update is for the same purpose.”

Google did take the time to announce the algorithm update via Twitter:

Google has also updated the Search Quality Rater Guidelines and has put a lot of emphasis on Reputation. The guideline is rather comprehensive, and it’s worth the read. It tells you about how Google views the websites, pages, and content, so you can use this valuable information to your advantage.

Here are some highlights:

Build strong links with the influencers & experts of your industry. And then persuade them to write content for your site or write content promoting your business on a reputed website.
Find out how your brand looks like on the search engine result pages and is this how you want your business to appear? If not, then you can make changes.
It’s important that you have a well drawn out plan to promote your business.
Reputation is everything when it comes to business, be it online or offline. Getting positive reviews for your business is vital to managing your online reputation. Our dashboard helps you manage your reputation as well as get more positive reviews in Google and Yelp.
When it comes to content, quality beat quantity by a large margin. Don’t post content just for the sake of it. You are not fooling anyone.
Have you put efforts to define your brand? What your brands stand for?
Interview the business owners for ideas and insights into what makes their business unique over other businesses. We do this as a part of our SEO deliverables.
Your About Us page is very important. Use it to show your achievements, what makes you stand out and why people should consider your business over others. However, make sure that you don’t exaggerate, because Google double checks it with reliable independent sources. And if what you have to say about your company doesn’t match with independent sources, then Google will take words of the independent sources for obvious reasons.

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

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

The All New Google My Business Dashboard is Here

Leave a reply

The brand new Google My Business dashboard is here and people are excited about the new features. Many influential marketers got their hands on the new dashboard about a month ago, and now Google is making it available to other people on…a random basis.

Here’s a screenshot of the new Google My Business dashboard (with multiple locations).

The new Google My Business dashboard boasts many improved features such as:

All users regardless of their size will be using the same interface. It means that you will no longer have to switch between the card and list view.

The new dashboard is easy to navigate, allowing you to view and edit your listings within the same window.

What is all available? Dashboard View, Posting, Business Info Editing, Insights, Reviews, Messaging, Photos, Website, Users, Create an Ad, Add New Location, Manage Locations and Settings.

This one is big! Under Insights on the left navigation panel, you can now easily access the analytics related to the people who have viewed your photos, called your business, clicked on your website link! You can even get insights as to how many views your business gets on Google by Search results & by Maps.

Another great new feature is Messaging! You can now easily add your phone number to be listed on your Google My Business listing to receive texts from customers and prospects! Just click on messaging, add your phone number, and verify your phone number via text and your done!

Additionally, adding more listings will not affect the loading speed of the page.

Not sure if you have the latest version of the dashboard? Log in to your account and check if there’s a “Black to Classic GMB” option in the left side navigation menu.

Explore and enjoy the new Google My Business dashboard for your business! This is a game changer and will allow you to improve your online business if you just spend a little time working on this and updating this every week.

KEYWORD RESEARCH! Essential for Successful SEO

Leave a reply

You need to use keywords throughout your site so it gets listed in the search engine results when a consumer or business conducts a search using those words. Therefore, you need to know what words your target audience is searching for so you can use them in your content. This is called keyword research – first you brainstorm a large list of all the words and phrases related to your business (even ask your clients), then use keyword generator tools to narrow down this list. You also need to look at the competition for keywords and choose more specific words. Keyword research is essential for successful SEO!

Our Chicago SEO Services make sure to properly perform all keyword research!

3 SEO Facts that Never Change

Leave a reply

SEO is a long-term marketing endeavor that is a commitment and does not yield immediate results.

However, if you do have the budget and patients to wait a few months to see results, the results are some of the highest ROI you can invest in when it comes to marketing. The leading Chicago SEO firm know that it takes a commitment from both ends and only engages with clients if they are ready to stay committed to see the ROI that they deserve.

SEO is about good, relative content that actually helps the web browser find what he or she is looking for.

The Chicago search engine marketing firm commits themselves to building relative content that we tie to your keywords and the good content on your website.

SEO is not for everyone.

Search Engine Optimization is not for all businesses. If people don’t need to come to your website in order to find your business and eventually buy something than it may do little good and actually some harm spending money to promote your site. Businesses that thrive off of referrals and already have a full customer base may find SEO to be of no use. The Internet marketing company Chicago will never try to work with companies that won’t fully reap the benefits of SEO. They only work with businesses that will truly benefit from SEO

How People Find Your Business (Products & Services)

Leave a reply

Local search! People find businesses through the internet, and websites that are optimized for local search get found first! What does this mean? If you have a website and it isn’t optimized for a local search (SEO) campaign then it won’t be found before your competitor’s site. The reason for this, your competition is spending the few extra dollars to have their website optimized on a monthly basis so that it maintains it’s well ranked positioning on popular search engines like Google.

Yes, word of mouth and newspaper advertising are close seconds and thirds but that’s just what they are, seconds and thirds. The number ONE way people find your business product and service is to look it up online. You need to understand this if you want to be the competitor who is found first and retains the business opportunity!

What people look for are websites that pop up first on Google and businesses that are close by. Your website needs to include a few more things however, correct contact information and an easy way to actually connect with you. Second, your products must be displayed and described briefly and correctly. People want information when they want it and in our digital world, that is NOW!

: Local Search Engine Marketing Simplified

: Search Engine Optimization

SEOSolutions.us provides each and every one of its clients with individual research to implement unique and powerful Search Engine Strategies that boost their ROI.