Google’s update of its Search Quality Rater Guidelines shows a shifted focus on the search engine and, consequently, for SEOs. BTW, the Google PDF file name says Evaluator and not Rater… but it is Rater.

• Aligning your website with Google’s priorities
• Mobile, front and center
• Needs met or not
• Purpose-driven pages
• Meaty main content and helpful secondary content
• About advertising
• FAQ: How can I align my website with Google’s priorities using the Search Quality Guidelines?

For years, the buzzword for search engine optimization has been “relevance” — making your site the most relevant result for a searcher’s query. But as Duane Forrester, our former VP of organic search operations, observed: “It’s all about usefulness today and moving forward. The goal of the search engine is simple: increase searcher satisfaction. That’s why ‘useful’ is the new watchword. Previously we said ‘relevant,’ but really we all meant ‘useful.’”

Google regularly updates its internal guidelines document that tells hired human quality raters how to evaluate sites as part of Google’s ongoing experiments. We in the search industry usually get only leaked tidbits and summaries to read. But last month, in a rare gesture, Google published the guidelines as a PDF for all to read.

While it doesn’t reveal any ranking formulas or algo secrets, the 175-page document complete with many examples and screenshots does offer a coveted view of what the search engine considers priority. As Google’s announcement states, “the guidelines reflect what Google thinks search users want” and therefore can help webmasters and business owners “understand what Google looks for in web pages.”

The guidelines are not the algorithm. But they show what Google focuses on, and that’s worth paying attention to.

What’s important for business owners is not all of the nitty-gritty technical details. Leave those to your SEO. Instead, business decision-makers need to glean what Google’s focus is so they can allot budgets and assign priorities correctly in a website strategy that’s aligned with what Google rewards.

Aligning Your Website with Google’s Priorities

Search engine priorities change over time, and your SEO strategy has to adapt. When you compare this 2015 version to previously leaked Google quality rater’s guidelines (as Jennifer Slegg does here and here), the differences point out how Google’s focus is shifting. The two biggest changes are:

• Mobile everything: Not only is there a whole new section devoted to mobile quality, but also most of the examples now show screenshots taken on mobile devices.
• Needs Met focus: A new rating scale judges how fully a web page result meets a mobile searcher’s need. Any site that is NOT mobile-friendly automatically fails this criterion. The entirely new section for judging Needs Met proves that Google is all about satisfying the searcher’s needs.

Here’s our checklist for making sure your SEO campaign aligns with Google’s priorities.

Mobile, Front and Center

Is your site really mobile-friendly?

Earning a passing grade on Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool is the bare minimum required for all web pages and apps now. Beyond this, you must make sure that tasks are easy to accomplish with a mobile device. From the guidelines, here’s a checklist you can use to evaluate how your site performs with a smartphone:

• How easy/hard is it to fill out forms or enter data?
• How does the site or app behave on a small screen? Are all features usable?
• Is the content legible without requiring left-to-right scrolling to read text?
• Do images fit on a small screen?
• How easily can someone navigate? Are menus, buttons and links large enough?
• What happens on your site when Internet connectivity is inconsistent or slow?

Needs Met or Not

How well does your site anticipate and fulfill a mobile user’s needs?

Another entirely new section added to Google’s quality rating guidelines is called “Needs Met Rating Guideline.” Here’s the description, which is clearly targeting MOBILE users’ needs (from Section 13.0):

Needs Met rating tasks ask you to focus on mobile user needs and think about how helpful and satisfying the result is for the mobile users.

To get a high quality rating in the Needs Met category, a search result and its landing page should:

• Require minimal effort for users to immediately get or use what they’re looking for.
• Satisfy all or almost all users looking for the same thing (so that they wouldn’t need to see additional results).
• Provide trustworthy, authoritative, and/or complete information that is helpful.

A mobile user’s intent differs from that of a desktop or even tablet user. (Tip: Aaron Levy’s SMX presentation covers mobile audiences in depth.) Evidence of this is found in the new mobile section of Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines, where page after page of examples show what mobile users probably want when they search for various spoken or typed queries. At one point, raters are instructed to “think about mobile users when deciding if queries are [a particular type]. Use your judgment here.”

The takeaway for mobile SEO marketers as well as for app/website owners is this: Think about what mobile users may be trying to do, and make sure that your site fulfills these things as directly as possible. Google is all about satisfying mobile users’ needs; you should be, too.

Answering this question takes some serious thought, but ultimately pays off in spades.

Purpose-Driven Pages

Does the webpage have a clear purpose, and how well is it achieved?

One of the first tasks a rater must do is figure out what a webpage is for and then decide how well the page achieves that purpose. For example, the purpose of a news site homepage is to display news; the purpose of a shopping page is to sell or give information about a product; etc. Google has very different standards for different types of pages, so understanding a page’s purpose lays the foundation for assessing its quality.

How helpful is the page’s purpose?

Google wants each page to be geared to helping users. Helpfulness factors heavily into quality ratings. On the low end of the quality scale would be pages that harm or deceive users (even though they may be fulfilling their designed purpose).

To be deemed high quality, a page must have a helpful purpose, such as:

• To share information about a topic
• To share personal or social information
• To share pictures, videos, or other forms of media
• To entertain
• To express an opinion or point of view
• To sell products or services
• To allow users to share files or download software
• … many others.

Is the purpose of the website as a whole clear, on and off site?

Make sure that your website’s overall purpose is explained clearly, ideally on the About page. The rating guidelines include examples of pages with “non-obvious purposes” — pages that seemed pointless or inaccurate on their own, until the rater referred to the About or FAQ page and discovered they were actually beneficial (see Section 2.2).

In addition, Google looks at independent sources to see whether the site’s reputation matches what it claims about itself. If there’s conflict, Google will tend to believe what the outside sources have to say. For small businesses or organizations, a lack of reviews or reputation information does not mean the site is low quality (see Section 2.7).

Meaty Main Content and Helpful Secondary Content

Does the page have quality main content?

A webpage’s main content (which excludes ads, sidebars, and other supplementary parts that do not directly fulfill the page’s purpose) can earn a high quality rating if ALL of these are true:

• There is a satisfying amount of high quality main content on the page.
• The page and site have a high level of E-E-A-T (experience, xpertness, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).
• The site has a good reputation for the page’s topic.

There are no hard and fast rules, and no minimum number of words per page. The guidelines encourage raters to decide whether the main content fulfills the purpose of the page satisfactorily.

Is there any supplementary content on the page that is helpful to users?

Google recognizes that supplementary content “can be a large part of what makes a High quality page very satisfying for its purpose.” Consider what you can include to offer related information, ways to find other cool stuff, or specialized content that could be helpful to people visiting that page.

YMYL Pages Have Higher Standards

How high quality are your site’s YMYL pages?

Pages that can impact a person’s “future happiness, health, or wealth” are known as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages. Google first introduced this concept in the 2014 Search Quality Rating Guidelines, which held these types of pages to a much higher standard across all quality criteria. Examples include pages for shopping transactions, financial information, medical advice, legal information, and many more.

Google specifies “needs met” ratings that judge how well a webpage fulfills a searcher’s needs. If you have YMYL pages, needs met is particularly important.

Maintaining Your Site

Does your site look alive and well-maintained?

Raters are instructed to “poke around” to see whether a site is being maintained. Here are a few signs of life Google expects of a well-maintained, quality website:

• Links should work.
• Images should load.
• Pages should continue to function well for users as web browsers change.

How fresh is your content?

Google’s algorithm is known to look at “freshness” as a ranking factor for many types of queries. When Googlebot gets to your site, does it find any recently added or updated content?

For blog posts and other content that is dated, don’t try to game the system by setting up a program to automatically change dates to make things look recent; Google’s on to that scheme. Raters are even instructed to manually check the Wayback Machine to investigate suspicious dates to see whether content is copied or original (see Section 7.4.7). By the way, Google’s algorithm doesn’t need the Wayback Machine to recognize original content, so don’t even try to cheat.

A healthy website frequently adds new content and/or updates old content to keep things fresh and useful for site visitors.

How expert is your content?

We know from the 2014 guidelines that Google quality raters look for signs of E-E-A-T, which stands for expertness, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. The newest guidelines reinforce this concept, but define “expertise” differently depending on the topic of the page (according to Section 4.3):

• There are “expert” websites of all types, even gossip sites, forums, etc.
• Topics such as medical, legal, financial or tax advice, home remodeling, or parenting “should come from expert sources.”
• Topics on hobbies, such as photography or learning to play an instrument, “also require expertise.”
• Ordinary people may have “everyday expertise” on topics where they have life experience, such as people who write extremely detailed reviews, tips posted on forums, personal experiences, etc.

Make sure your expert content is “maintained and updated” to increase your site’s E-E-A-T rating.

About Advertising

If you have ads or monetized links on your site, are they appropriate for the page’s purpose?

The guidelines state that “the presence or absence of Ads is not by itself a reason for a High or Low quality rating” because Google realizes that many websites and apps owe their existence to ad income. However, Google “will consider a website responsible for the overall quality of the Ads displayed” (see Section 2.4.3). So keep an eye on the amount and use of affiliate, display, or other types of advertising. Make sure that ads don’t overwhelm the more useful main content (and supplementary content, if any) that each page contains.

Wrapping Up Your Quality Review

The old saying goes that there’s always room for improvement. This post is by no means a complete SEO checklist. We hope that as you apply these points from the 2015 search quality ratings guidelines that are based on Google’s priorities, you’ll begin to view your online properties with a new SEO point of view — and make your sites and apps more useful.

If you’re eyeing the best way to improve your website quality and would like to have a free consultation, fill out a quote request, and we’ll give you a call.

FAQ: How can I align my website with Google’s priorities using the Search Quality Guidelines?

Creating a website that resonates with Google’s evolving priorities is crucial for sustainable online success. Google Search Quality Guidelines provide a roadmap to effectively understand and implement these priorities.

Mobile-friendliness is a pivotal factor in Google’s ranking algorithm. Websites that offer a seamless experience across various devices garner higher search visibility. As Google emphasizes mobile-first indexing, responsive design becomes essential. Mobile-friendly pages enhance user experience and cater to increasing mobile search users.

Content quality is another cornerstone. Google’s emphasis on “usefulness” encourages webmasters to provide informative, engaging, and relevant content. Comprehensive, well-researched articles showcase expertise, boosting credibility and user engagement. Balancing text with multimedia elements like images and videos enhances the content appeal.

User intent is at the heart of Google’s priorities. Ensuring your website meets user needs is vital. Analyze your audience’s queries and preferences to provide solutions that resonate. Optimize conversational queries by incorporating natural language in your content. Addressing user intent fosters longer time spent on your site, positively impacting ranking signals.

E-E-A-T (Experience, expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) matters greatly. Establish your expertise through author bios, showcasing qualifications, and linking to reputable sources. Leverage authoritative backlinks to credible sites, enhancing your website’s trustworthiness. Regularly update content to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to accuracy and relevance.

User experience encompasses site speed, navigation, and design. A smooth browsing experience reduces bounce rates and increases user satisfaction. Minimize page loading times, ensure intuitive navigation, and maintain a clean design. A visually appealing and user-friendly website fosters positive interactions and contributes to higher rankings.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Aligning Your Website with Google’s Priorities

1. Mobile-Friendly Optimization: Implement responsive design, ensuring a consistent device experience.
2. Content Quality Enhancement: Craft well-researched, engaging content that caters to user needs.
3. Address User Intent: Analyze user queries to provide relevant solutions and foster engagement.
4. Establish E-E-A-T: Showcase experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness through bios and backlinks.
5. Optimize User Experience: Prioritize site speed, intuitive navigation, and a visually appealing design.
6. Keyword Research: Identify relevant keywords to target user queries effectively.
7. Semantic Search Integration: Incorporate natural language and contextually relevant terms in content.
8. Structured Data Implementation: Use structured data markup to enhance search results display.
9. Internal Linking Strategy: Establish a logical hierarchy of internal links for easy navigation.
10. Backlink Acquisition: Acquire authoritative backlinks from reputable websites in your niche.
11. Regular Content Updates: Keep content fresh and accurate to demonstrate ongoing commitment.
12. Local SEO Optimization: Optimize for local searches with accurate business information.
13. Social Media Integration: Share content across social platforms to increase visibility and engagement.
14. Mobile Page Speed Optimization: Optimize images and minimize code to improve mobile load times.
15. Schema Markup Utilization: Implement schema markup for rich snippets and enhanced search visibility.
16. User Engagement Analytics: Monitor user behavior to refine content and design strategies.
17. Competitor Analysis: Study successful competitors for insights into effective strategies.
18. Secure Website: Implement HTTPS for improved security and higher trustworthiness.
19. Reduce Bounce Rates: Create engaging landing pages that address user needs promptly.
20. Ongoing Monitoring and Adaptation: Continuously analyze performance metrics and adjust strategies accordingly.

The post Search Quality Rater Guidelines Checklist: Evaluator Considerations appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Event coordinators: You can update your event information in Google according to these new schema properties for postponed and canceled events.

You can attend digital marketing conferences all over the world, and 2020 has more than ever. For this year’s update of our Digital Marketing Conference Calendar, we found more than 450 events scheduled from Los Angeles to Lebanon!

So where will you go in 2020? Use our list to explore and then plan your year ahead. If you’re into marketing, you’ll find a conference for you whether in search, PPC, content marketing, blogging, social media, analytics, UX or a specialized focus like WordPress, local, or video.

Why go to a conference? Attending an event in person is the quickest way to grow professionally. A live event gives you information plus … inspiration, friendships, confidence, and much more.

NOTE: We add events to this list continually — see ones marked “NEW” for updates throughout the year.

Below you’ll find digital marketing conferences organized in three ways: by geographic region, by topic focus, and by month. You can also download the calendar for viewing in your Google Calendar, where you’ll always see the most up-to-date information. (Click here to skip to the full downloadable calendar.)

Just click a marketing conference name to visit its website, get all the details, and register. Happy planning!

2020 Marketing Conferences by Location:

• U.S.
• Canada
• Europe
• UK
• Asia
• Australia
• Africa
• Latin America
• Middle East

2020 Marketing Conferences by Topic:

• Advertising / PPC
• Affiliate marketing
• B2B marketing
• Blogging
• Content marketing
• Data / analytics
• Digital marketing (general focus)
• Local marketing
• Miscellaneous (specialized)
• Retail / ecommerce
• Search
• Social media
• UX / conversion
• Web development
• WordPress

To see all 450+ digital marketing events organized month by month through 2020, jump down to the full calendar.

We compile this list of marketing industry events to help you plan ahead. Register early, and you can save hundreds on 2020 conference fees by taking advantage of early bird rates!

• 2020 digital marketing conferences by region
• 2020 digital marketing conferences by topic focus
• Download the digital marketing conference calendar

2020 Digital Marketing Conferences by Region

Events are listed below by their geographic region: U.S., Canada, Europe, UK, Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Scroll down if you’d rather view events organized by topic focus or on a month-by-month calendar.

U.S. Conferences

Canada Conferences

Europe Conferences

UK Conferences

Asia Conferences

Australia & New Zealand Conferences

Africa Conferences

Latin America Conferences

Middle East Conferences

2020 Digital Marketing Conferences by Topic Focus

Here, you can find events listed by their primary focus, though many cover a wider range of topics. Click the conference links to read detailed descriptions. (See the full calendar here.)

Advertising / PPC

Affiliate Marketing

B2B Marketing

Blogging

Content Marketing

Data and Analytics

Digital Marketing

Local Marketing

Miscellaneous (Specialized)

Retail / Ecommerce

Search

Social Media

UX / Conversion

Web Development

WordPress

Download the Digital Marketing Conference Calendar

FREE RESOURCE: It’s easy to add this Digital Marketing Conference Calendar so you can view it (optionally) in Google Calendar.

Add this calendar of events to your Google Calendar viewing options.

Fast Facts for 2020

• We found 477 conferences in all, making 2020 a banner year for marketing folks. And we’ll keep updating this post and the conference calendar throughout the year.
• This list contains events in 57 countries!
• March is the busiest conference month this year, with 90 events around the world.
• London, UK, tops the list this year with 26 marketing conferences — more than in any other city in 2020.
• South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, is the longest event at 10 days!

Have an Event to Add? Submit Your Event

If you know of an event that should be included on this calendar, we want to hear about it!

Only in-person conferences associated with digital marketing will be accepted. Meetups and online-only events are excluded from this calendar.

To submit a conference, please email Social-BC[at]BruceClay[dot]com. Give us the name, dates, and a link to the event website. We’ll be happy to add your event to the calendar.

[conference image credit: Marketing Land]

If you like this resource, please share it! And for more news from Bruce Clay Inc., subscribe to our blog.

The post Digital Marketing Conferences in 2020: Calendar of 450+ Marketing Events Around the World appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Kicking off the conference, CEO Sundar Pichai opened a two-hour keynote to a packed audience of developers, tech reporters and others who were joined by viewers in 85 countries watching online to hear what was new from the tech giant, including one overarching announcement:

We have shifted from a mobile first to an AI first world.

This shift into an “artificial intelligence first” world will impact the way customers find your business AND the way you interact with those customers.

Lots of articles no doubt list the many Google feature announcements coming out of the I/O conference. But here, we zero in on something that all business owners should be aware of as we move forward into this AI-powered, machine learning-based new world…

Focus on solving user problems

One thing becomes clear as you watch the tech giant unveil feature after feature: Each new product is designed to solve a problem. You could say this is the key to Google’s success.

During yesterday’s keynote alone, Google announced many coming AI-enabled features that exemplify this problem-solution strategy. Here are just a few.

• Google Assistant will be much more connected, even allowing people to type their interactions through a phone instead of speaking them — because there are times you don’t want people to overhear what you’re saying.
• Google Photos is getting Photo Sharing, a new feature that can recognize people in your photo and proactively suggest sending them the file — because people have a problem following through and sharing their photos.
• Google Visual Positioning Service will be able to guide your indoor movements through a store such as Lowes to help you find what you want — which solves a big problem for visually impaired people, not to mention the rest of us who need help navigating aisles.
• Google Lens is a fascinating new AI feature that takes visual identification to new heights. In one application, Lens can remove obstructions in front of a subject, such as a chain link fence (see demo tweeted below), and fill in the missing elements — because people want to be able to take better pictures.

Yes, this is a real thing real people at Google are working on. #Googleio2017 pic.twitter.com/vZJqkHBtH3

— Golden Krishna (@goldenkrishna) May 17, 2017

Let’s apply Google strategy to your business. In a nutshell:

To find the opportunities awaiting discovery for your own business, ask yourself two questions:

1. What do people complain about in my industry? Complaints expose problems just waiting for a new product, service or technology to solve. This kind of negative feedback also provides clues for how to best engage your prospective customers.
2. What is difficult or time-consuming for prospective customers to accomplish today? In addition to listening for pain points, also just observe. Look for processes that everyone just accepts, but which require a lot of time and effort to do.

If your business innovates a solution to a problem, you can make people’s lives or jobs easier, potentially jump ahead of your competition, and grow your business.

But even if you’re not going to invent the next great product, by understanding people’s needs better you can offer solutions more effectively. Your marketing campaigns will ring truer (and have better click-through rates!) if they come from a point of empathy.

Solving people’s problems underlies the majority of Google’s advancements. Make it your business’s mantra, too.

Note: You can watch Google I/O to see various presentations live May 17–19 (check out the schedule here).

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The post The One Thing Your Business Can Immediately Take Away from Google I/O appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

But when a search engine like Google gives that kind of advice? That’s a more unbiased source you can really listen to and learn from.

As it happens, there’s a new video on Google Webmaster Help’s YouTube channel called “How to hire an SEO,” and we think it’s excellent. So we’re putting it up on our blog to help it spread far and wide.

If you’re shopping for an SEO consultant, or even if you ARE one, this 11-minute video is a must-see.

“SEO is not black magic.”

Maile Ohye, a developer programs tech lead with Google, opens by myth-busting some ideas about search engine optimization — it’s not magic and it doesn’t work overnight.

If someone is promising you instant rankings as if by magic, look elsewhere! It’s critical to avoid a “bad” SEO — someone who produces no results or, worse, implements shady practices on your website that hurt your visibility in search.

For long-term success, there are no quick fixes that will immediately rocket your site to rank No. 1. A good SEO helps improve the site itself so it can put its best foot forward and rank appropriately.

An SEO’s potential is only as high as the quality of your business or website. –Maile Ohye

I’d like to have that engraved for our lobby.

“SEO looks to improve the entire searcher experience.”

The scope of optimizing a website — the SEO’s purview — is broad. It requires looking at the entire journey a searcher may take, from seeing and clicking your search result, to arriving at your website and potentially converting.

Accordingly, an SEO looks at straightforward improvements like writing descriptive tags all the way to complex issues such as implementing language tags for an international site. Along with increasing the organic traffic to the site, the SEO has to ensure that your site provides a good, helpful experience for visitors no matter what device they’re using.

How long will it take to see results from SEO?

Four months to a year is a realistic estimate of how long it takes to reap results. Since many prospective clients expect to see results much faster, we’re so glad Google set the record straight.

With our own SEO services clients, we first lay the groundwork — analyzing the site, researching competitors, compiling an assessment and making initial recommendations. Then the timeline greatly depends on the client’s ability to implement. We work with the client’s in-house SEO or technical staff to help move the project along as we further refine and expand our recommendations.

Certain fixes can produce nearly instant results. For instance, if something is truly broken on the site, such as a robots.txt file that’s blocking the search engines, a correction can make an impact. However, in most cases, four months to a year sounds about right.

Get corroboration for recommendations.

Ohye’s “strongest advice” is to request that SEOs support their recommendations with a documented statement from Google. Ask to see an article, video or Googler response that includes the issue that needs to be improved and the approach being prescribed.

Oh, and never buy links for ranking purposes. Ever.

If your site has some “technical debt” (not being mobile friendly, or having an antiquated CMS, for example), you may need to invest in improving your infrastructure as part of your SEO project. If you’re a local business owner, you can get started bringing your local business online using this Google video series: https://goo.gl/I4giIX

In a majority of cases, doing what’s good for SEO is also doing what’s good for your online customers. –Maile Ohye

Steps in the SEO Hiring Process

Here’s what Google outlines as the “General SEO hiring process”:

Step 1: Conduct a two-way interview

We can’t agree more that you want to find a consultant who’s sincerely interested in you, your business, your customers and your goals. After all, you want someone who feels like an extension of your team.

Ohye advises that if the person doesn’t show interest by asking exploratory questions (check the video for a suggested list), then don’t do business with them.

Step 2: Check references

Talk to past clients about their experience. Ask them how effectively the SEO worked with their various staff and vendors, and what kind of guidance he or she provided.

You want to hire someone who will help educate you, not just implement short-term solutions.

A good SEO should be someone you can work with, learn from, experiment with, and who genuinely cares about you and your business. –Maile Ohye

Step 3. Request an audit

For smaller businesses, Ohye suggests asking for “a prioritized list of what they think should be improved for SEO.”

For larger businesses, she suggests doing this with multiple SEO consulting candidates. Then, compare their audits. Here’s the audit structure Google recommends:

You’ll need to give the SEO restricted-view access to your Google Search Console and Google Analytics accounts (not full or write access) so they’ll have the data needed to perform the audit. You should also let the consultant talk with your developers to understand any technical constraints.

Right up front, Ohye notes that you’ll probably have to pay for the audit. We agree.

This level of custom technical and search auditing requires a considerable amount of time spent by a trained, experienced SEO analyst. If a prospective consultant is offering you a “free audit,” more than likely he or she plans to just run your site through a tool to produce an automated report.

A good SEO will try to prioritize what ideas can bring your business the most improvement for the least investment, and what improvements may take more time, but help growth in the long term. –Maile Ohye

Step 4. Decide if you want to hire

When you’re ready to engage an SEO consultant, make sure your whole organization is on board. Without internal cooperation, you may not see any search improvements at all, no matter whom you hire.

One of the biggest holdups to improving a website isn’t [the SEO’s] recommendation, but it’s the business making time to implement their ideas. –Maile Ohye

Want to talk about your business and how SEO might help you? Fill out our request form and we’ll contact you.

For additional resources pertaining to the SEO hiring process, be sure to check out our related posts:

• How to Onboard an SEO Agency – Checklist
• 30 SEO Interview Questions You Must Ask a Prospective SEO Analyst

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The post How to Hire an SEO – in Google’s Words appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

That and more is what’s coming to Google AdWords advertisers following announcements this past Tuesday. For our PPC SEM services clients and others, we’ll walk through the exciting opportunities coming out of Google Performance Summit.

We followed up this article with an on-air discussion of AdWords’ new game-changers:

“Mobile-First” Means Greater Reach

This week at the Google Performance Summit keynote we were introduced to a “completely re-imagined and rebuilt” AdWords system for a “mobile-first world.”

Both the AdWords advertising platform and Google Analytics are getting major redesigns to help search advertisers better meet mobile consumers’ needs. Advertisers are getting some new opportunities to interact with people specifically in those “micromoments” when a person wants to know something, do something, or buy something.

The bottom line is this: Marketers will have new ways to be present at critical points when an ad can perfectly answer a searcher’s intent and context.

Bigger Text Ads to Get More Clicks

Text ads longer: Recent formatting changes in the Google search engine results page (SERP) paved the way for what Google announced as “the biggest update to the ad creative” in many years.

(Quick review: Ads stopped appearing in the right-hand column, and the main search results column increased from 512 pixels to around 600 pixels wide.)

Now AdWords text ads can have much longer headlines — up to two lines of 30 characters each — and descriptions can hold up to 80 characters with the new formatting on both desktop and mobile SERPs.

Here’s a comparison of existing text ads and the new expanded text ads:

—> Dramatic change here. With 50 percent more room for ad text overall, text ads can do a better job of delivering compelling messages highlighting features and benefits. PPC managers should take a look at expanding their current ad copy. Use additional words to give more info and more specifically engage target personas, which will increase CTRs (click-through rates). Google claims that testing has shown a 20 percent increase in CTR — that’s huuuuge!

Fine-Tuned Device-Type Bidding for Optimized CPA

Bid modifiers for ALL devices: Our prayers have been answered! Advertisers will be able to set individual bid adjustments for each device type. For instance, if your tablet ads are exhibiting poor performance, you can adjust the bid downward while leaving your other device bids the same, all within a single AdWords campaign.

—> This new bidding flexibility deserves the big applause it got at the AdWords Summit. Fine-tuning for optimal CPA can finally be accomplished via bid adjustments on every device. Better ROI!

New Ads in Google Maps to Drive Foot Traffic

Google Maps receives 1.5 billion destination searches per month. Using location extensions, advertisers can be found by nearby searchers by including a new promotional message within a local map result. For example, when someone searches in Google Maps for electronics stores, Best Buy could feature “10% off phone accessories” in local map results.

Promoted pins can show a logo and a special promotion or other ad message to a nearby person who’s looking at a map. For example, someone walking while searching might see a Starbucks offer pinned along the route. The opportunity here is huge for driving foot traffic to brick-and-mortar establishments. Google says that 30 percent of mobile searches are related to location, and location-related mobile searches are growing 50 percent faster than other types of mobile searches.

—> The ability to highlight a physical location on Google Maps is a game-changer. As an advertising platform, Maps can help local businesses get noticed by people who are nearby and drive in-store visits.

Mobile Responsive Display Ads Will Always Look Good and Require Less Work by Advertisers

Google-designed display ads: The new AdWords will do the work for you of building display ads. As the advertiser, you’ll need to provide only a headline, description, image and link; the system will then automatically design a responsive ad that appears differently for each platform throughout the Google Display Network (GDN). Google promises that such ads will be “beautiful and easy to click/swipe.”

—> Responsive mobile ads are the future. Letting Google auto-design ads may not suit every advertiser, especially if branding is a priority. The layout modification to fit each different platform will be convenient. The wording and image creation, where the real skill comes in, remain the advertiser’s job. But the production values of Google’s auto-generated ads are surprisingly high, and perfectly well-suited to constructing similar ads while testing ad messaging.

Reaching more GDN customers: Google shared a rather astonishing statistic: Advertisers on the GDN, which now numbers two million publisher sites, can reach a whopping 90 percent of all internet users.

Not to sit on their laurels, Google announced that the GDN reach will exceed that 90 percent by allowing advertisers to spread ads to “cross-exchange inventory.”

—> They weren’t specific about which ad exchanges or sites would start displaying GDN ads, but more sites = more conversions per GDN campaign — great for remarketing efforts!

New Tech to Tie Online Ads to In-store Activity

Google studies found that three-fourths of local mobile searchers who clicked an ad visited a store within a day, and 28 percent of those visits resulted in a purchase. It’s clear that AdWords is accountable for an increasing amount of in-store activity.

Beacon signals: Beacon signals will improve existing location data and track store visits better, letting advertisers measure the impact of online ads on in-store activity to build a local strategy. According to Larry Kim, Google will simply look at phone location history to tell whether the person who searched and clicked on your ad ended up walking into the store.

—> Tying online ad clicks to purchases in a physical store has so far been difficult, but increasingly this is how people shop. Beacons will help track a local advertising strategy.

Similar Audiences and Remarketing to Extend Your Targeted Ad Audience

Savvy advertisers know that GDN remarketing campaigns, whereby ads are shown to previous site visitors, are essential to maximizing traffic and conversion volume. An under-utilized variant that’s been around for a while, Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs), helps boost the performance of search campaigns. And Google has announced a new feature that will make RLSAs even more powerful …

Similar Audiences for Search: Reaching searchers who have similar interests as those who’ve already visited your site allows you to expand into bigger “similar audiences.” Google said this new feature will automatically create a similar audience for each remarketing and Customer Match list. These additional lists can be used to target RLSAs.

Demographics for Search Ads: Another format that’s currently in beta is DFSAs, which allow advertisers to target search ads using Google-inferred demographics data like age and gender.

—> Applying similar lists and demographic targeting to search campaigns will certainly boost traffic and conversion volume. Keep an eye on CPAs, though — these new audiences might convert at a lower rate than “non-RLSA” campaigns.

While We Wait …

Google is filling advertiser arsenals with some powerful new tools to be rolled out in coming months. At BCI we’ll be using them to boost our clients’ conversion volumes and profitability.

Why these changes now? We’re in the AI age of course! Google’s artificial intelligence-based technology, which uses machine learning, is making sense of the search giant’s vast amount of user data. From this, we advertisers are getting ground-breaking opportunities.

These changes will be rolling out through the year. Talk to us today to get your Google AdWords account in shape for when these hyper-targeted, mobile-first opportunities unfold for your business.

The post Why the Coming Google AdWords Changes Are Mobile Advertising Game-changers appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Search engines play the role of referee in the search engine optimization game. For business owners, this means that ethical SEO conduct can pay off. Google has a manual actions team whose job is to help keep the search results clean. They back up the algorithms (which do most of the work filtering out webspam) and review individual cases by hand. These people have the power to blow a whistle to stop misbehavior and even to bench a player who refuses to play by the rules. I like to picture them in black and white striped shirts (though I’m sure jeans and t-shirts would be closer to the truth).

While referees can be very unpopular, their words carry a lot of weight. This week Google published a report titled “How we fought webspam in 2015” chronicling what they discovered and accomplished last year. Impressively, the manual actions team sent more than 4.3 million messages to webmasters last year. That means webmasters were notified personally not only of a yellow flag being thrown, but also about what caused the penalty action.

From a searcher’s perspective, all of this refereeing is fantastic news. It means that if I search for “referee clothing,” I will actually see striped shirts and not spammy, unwanted junk. Touchdown!

From a business’s perspective, however, Google penalties can be livelihood-threatening realities. Since the introduction of the Panda Update in 2011 and the subsequent waves of algorithmic and manual action Google penalties, we’ve seen a rise in SEO services clients requiring penalty assessments and removals. This latest report from Google is important for online businesses to be aware of because it points to trends in webspam and identifies red-flag digital marketing tactics to avoid.

In BCI’s 20-year history, our digital marketing company has been a pioneering voice for ethical search engine optimization. Due to our methodology founded on SEO ethics, we’ve helped countless clients recover from manual and algorithmic penalties, and now eagerly await the next Penguin update to see additional penalty recovery resolutions. (Read a testimonial.)

To partner with a top-tier technical SEO agency and grow your website’s revenue-driving potential, fill out our request form or call us today.

Below I’ll explain more about how webmasters can deal with Google penalty situations. But first, here is the state of webspam, according to Google’s report.

Webspam-Fighting Highlights

It bears repeating that Google’s manual actions team sent more than 4.3 million messages to webmasters last year. Many “penalties” occur algorithmically and can blindside webmasters with a sudden, unexplained loss of search traffic to their sites. You’ve got to appreciate the fact that the search engine takes the time to notify this many people directly to communicate that a problem and/or penalty has occurred.

SEO Tip: You’ll find any messages sent by the manual actions team if you look in your Google Search Console account messages. So if you haven’t set up Google Search Console yet, do it now!

Hacked Sites Up by 180 Percent

Compared to the previous year, the number of sites being hacked was up by 180 percent! Google’s report identified site hacking as a top webspam trend of 2015. Here’s what being hacked means: One day, you wake up to find your nice, clean website covered with the graffiti of someone else’s spammy content. (Jump down for what to do about hacked sites.)

Thin Content Is Trending Up

Google’s manual actions team reports that “sites with thin, low quality content” are the second most commonly increasing form of webspam.

“We saw an increase in the number of sites with thin, low quality content. Such content contains little or no added value and is often scraped from other sites.”

Businesses should know that we’ve been living in the age of Google’s Panda algorithm update for several years now. What is Google Panda? Panda eats low-quality content for lunch. And Google told us earlier this year that Panda is now part of its core ranking algorithm.

SEO Advice for Businesses Facing Google Penalties

A Google manual action notice is usually terrible news for business owners. A penalized site drops in the search engine rankings, losing untold revenue from website traffic that’s no longer coming from search.

If this happens, site owners may not understand how to recover. Sometimes the issues are straightforward and, after a bit of housecleaning, the site owner can submit a Reconsideration Request to Google and be restored to good standing.

However, many sites have long-standing issues or layered penalties that require more expertise. We’ve had a number of clients come to us after struggling for a year or more to fix their own sites without regaining much ground in the SERPs. (If that’s your situation, read about our SEO penalty assessment service and let’s talk.)

But can a notification by the manual actions team be GOOD NEWS? It can be if it alerts you to a problem.

If you receive a manual action message, stay calm. It might be a penalty, but it might just be a warning. When you read the notification, here’s what you’re going to want to understand ASAP:

• What problem caused the manual action?
• What will it mean for my site (i.e., in terms of ranking and revenue)?
• How can I fix the problem as fast as possible?

Recognizing a Hacked Site

If your website is hacked, Google’s manual actions team may be the first to notice it. Google’s webspam fighters have gotten pretty good at identifying when a site is the victim of hacking, rather than purposely trying to spam through deceptive SEO conduct. And that’s great news for webmasters.

Juan Felipe Rincon, a lead of Google’s Webmaster Outreach team, spoke on manual actions at SMX West. He explained: “Content that wasn’t put there by the legitimate site owner and website hacks account for 45 percent of manual actions.” Forty-five percent of 4.3 million manual action notices represents a HUGE number of sites victimized by hacked content.

SEO tip: If your site has been hacked and you get the news directly from Google, be thankful. It’s a diagnosis you need to hear so you can work on curing the problem. For all webmasters, Google’s recommended preventative measures can help you protect your content and keep your site safe from hackers.

Solving for Thin Content

Sites scraping content from other sites to fill their own pages is apparently happening more and more.

This is a bad practice from an ethical perspective (because it’s stealing) and also from a business perspective. The search engines can identify where content comes from, including its original source, because they know the date and location they first discovered that content. So the reward just isn’t there for the crime of scraping! But since I’m pretty sure scrapers are not reading the Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog, I’ll end my rant. ;-)

There are plenty of other reasons, besides outright scraping, that your site might appear to have “thin, low-quality content” to a search engine. Some of the most common scenarios are:

• Boilerplate pages by location
• Filtered ecommerce pages (such as category pages)
• Product pages (which often reuse manufacturer-canned descriptions)
• “Me too” SEO posts (just repeating what others have said with no added value)

If you have received this type of Google manual action, here’s SEO advice for what you can do about thin content.

The Good News about Ethical SEO Conduct

There’s light on the horizon of this whole Google penalties/manual actions world. A lot of light, actually, especially for people practicing SEO ethics.

1. Many webmasters have cleaned up spam on their sites. There were 33 percent more sites last year that went through Google’s reconsideration process successfully, compared to the previous year.

2. Google is getting better and better at the referee business, identifying improper SEO conduct and rewarding sites that behave right. Not only are the algorithms constantly learning and improving their spam-detecting skills, but also the people in the manual actions team are go-getters. In fact:

Google’s webspam team acted on 65 percent of the more than 400,000 spam reports that users submitted globally last year, and considered 80 percent of those to be spam.

3. Spam doesn’t pay. A business hurts itself if it stoops to scraping or other manipulative tactics to influence the search results. The web is a much fairer playing field for ethical SEOs and site owners who focus on creating quality sites with high-value content.

A Story of SEO Redemption

Have you seen a drop in traffic to your website over the last several years? If you have been wondering why, know that if it’s due to a penalty, you’re not alone. Here’s the story of one client we helped recover from the depressed traffic of a penalty.

A niche ecommerce company named Groomsmen.com suffered Penguin penalties that all but wiped out their organic traffic from Google. Trying to recover on their own, they cleaned up their SEO conduct as best as they could and ended their paid links program. However, for two years their rankings did not improve.

On a friend’s recommendation, they came to BCI for help. We gave them a hyper-focused, three-month SEO project that combined our Penalty Assessment and Link Pruning services. During the six months following our project period end date, the site’s organic traffic from Google grew five-fold compared to the previous year, yielding a 513 percent increase in ecommerce revenue from search.

Competition is fierce among organic search results. But compromising on ethics is a sure road to disaster!

Want an experienced, ethical SEO agency to grow your website’s revenue-driving potential? Reach out using our form or call us today.

The post Google’s Report on SEO Conduct & Webspam: Ethical SEO Help for Businesses appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Our livebloggers captured news and lots of in-depth information from top paid search experts throughout the year. Here we present the four most popular of those to bring search marketers up-to-speed on 2015 developments in pay per click.

Using AdWords Scripts for Relevancy-Triggered Automation

First up at our PPC virtual conference, while your brain is still fresh and your morning caffeine still running through your veins, let’s talk scripts! While AdWords scripts weren’t new in 2015, we did get some great tips during this year’s SMX West session “Mastering AdWords Scripts for Search Marketers.”

With an AdWords script, your paid search ads can adjust automatically based on external data, such as from a Google Drive document, calendar, or even a third-party API. For example:

• An ice cream store’s ad might be triggered only when the temperature goes over 75 degrees.
• A restaurant could offer a special happy hour deal only when it’s raining.

It’s not hard to create these types of flexible ads using AdWords scripts, which are pieces of code that let you automate AdWords reporting and management. Scripts give search marketers more flexibility than automated rules and require less skill (and server resources) than APIs do.

The session’s three expert speakers — Frederick Vallaeys, Steve Hammer and Patrick Bennett — give you:

• Detailed explanations to understand scripts (variables, functions, etc.)
• Ways to tweak prebuilt scripts for your purposes
• Three premade scripts you can use for AdWords reports and links to 43 additional templates

This AdWords-focused liveblog will get you scripting so you can make your pay-per-click ads more adaptive and powerful.

Mobile PPC Advertising Takes Off

With more than half of searches occurring on mobile devices, advertisers simply must have a mobile strategy these days. But before you dive in with your ad dollars, it’s important to understand your mobile audience — because mobile users behave differently, and have different motives, than desktop users. To give you a jump on your own mobile persona research, Aaron Levy shares fascinating stats from his own mobile research on the four types of mobile searchers and their typical behavior, wants and needs.

Second up is Amy Bishop, talking about the importance of location targeting for mobile advertising. Searches containing “near me” have grown exponentially — and 80 percent of those searches occur on a mobile device. If you’re not targeting the best location radius and timing for your mobile ads, you may be wasting money.

Last in the lineup, John Busby zeroes in on the two PPC ad formats that support phone calls:

• Enhanced campaigns
• Call-only campaigns

The session “Winning at Mobile PPC Advertising” liveblog contains the full slide decks and in-depth information to help you take advantage of mobile advertising to drive ecommerce.

Watch Out: How to Prevent AdWords Mistakes

In this session from Pubcon Las Vegas, PPC pros David Szetela and Mona Elesseily discuss the changing SERP landscape — with mobile gaining over desktop and the layouts changing for paid and organic listings. They list a few dozen specific mistakes that advertisers commonly make and, more importantly, how to avoid them. Here are a few big ones:

• Not using all ad formats available to you. This includes the non-keyword-based ones like dynamic search ads, call-only campaigns (for mobile), and Google shopping.
• Not getting mobile and reallocating mobile spend to desktop. People may be searching on mobile first even though they’re converting on desktop.
• Missing key landing page elements. For example, make sure your landing pages have a headline, image, CTA(s), company info, bulleted benefits, testimonials, etc. And your mobile landing pages should follow a slightly different format.
• Trusting the Search Query Tool too blindly. Often, negative keywords get added at the campaign level, but you need to do research using a broad-match, single-word variation of the exact match keyword. Szetela gives step-by-step tips for doing your keyword research correctly.

These and many more common problems are remedied in “Major AdWords Mistakes and How to Prevent Them.”

Keynote: Google AdSense, AMP and More

We wrap up our Virtual Conference PPC track with a power session by two Google execs. Richard Zippel, product manager for publisher quality, and John Brown, head of publisher policy communications, answer paid search marketers’ questions in an ask-me-anything (AMA) style. Topics range from ad policies that didn’t work to what the search engine is doing for advertisers in the face of rising ad blockers. Find out what Google says about:

• How Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is Google’s solution to the “systemic problem” of ad blockers, particularly for mobile advertisers.
• What the EU cookie law means for webmasters and American site publishers.
• How the fight against referral spam is growing.
• How advertisers can keep site speed and load times fast.

Dive in to the liveblog of Pubcon’s “Google AdSense AMA Keynote” for the full scoop.

The post Paid Search Marketing Lessons from 2015: Our PPC Virtual Conference Recap appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

The concept of mobile friendliness covers increasingly advanced digital media territory:

• Mobile apps: Do you have a mobile app? Is it indexable by Google? Are you taking advantage of Google’s stated ways of getting ranking boosts for your app?
• Mobile conversions and personas: Is mobile traffic failing to convert? That’s to be expected if mobile personas, mobile-specific conversions and calls to action haven’t been identified. Mobile visitors are not the same as desktop visitors, after all.
• Mobile advertising: Are you utilizing mobile search PPC features like call extensions and call-only campaigns?

At the two biggest search-industry conferences this fall, SMX East in New York and Pubcon Las Vegas, search engine reps and renowned speakers covered the full range of Internet marketing topics, especially mobile issues — everything from Google’s mobile-focused features to app indexing to mobile ads. We published 46 sessions and keynotes from these conferences on the BCI blog. Here I’ve distilled most important news and advice that was shared related to mobile.

App Indexing Is Essential

App usage is growing, and Google is serving app content in search results. In the SMX session “Beyond the Web: Why App Deep Linking Is the Next Big Thing,” Webmaster Trends Analyst Mariya Moeva explained that Google currently supports deep app links for signed in and signed out users on Android. In other words, when people do a search on an Android smartphone or iPhone, they can see an install button for an app in the results. Read the developer documentation for Android app deep link indexing and the just-released developer details for indexing iOS app deep links.

Developers should implement app deep linking and get their apps indexed so they’ll show up in Google-powered searches. Session co-speaker Emily Grossman called app deep linking “the next big thing” and gave a list of in-depth recommendations and resource links to help people go from an app store model to a search engine model. See the liveblog for details.

Some tips for implementing app deep linking:

• Use http instead of a custom scheme.
• Associate your website with your app (in Google Search or Developer Console).
• Publish your deep links with the app-indexing API and get a ranking boost.
• Fetch as Google for Apps lets you test changes to your app before you push it live to Google Play.

Note for SEOs: In a recent Google Office-Hours Hangout focused on app indexing, Google reps Mariya Moeva and John Mueller clarified that there’s no concern over duplicate content if you have an app or a mobile site delivering similar content as your website; the search engine can tell the difference.

Mobile Personas

Advertisers need a mobile strategy. In “Social and Mobile PR Secrets” at Pubcon, Lisa Buyer said that social advertising is predicted to grow to $35.98 billion by 2017. While the audience is there, you’re not alone if you’re finding conversions are much lower from mobile traffic. If that’s the case, the problem is likely you, not the users.

Mobile visitors have their own unique needs and motivations. To capture their attention, it’s crucial to understand the mobile audience and do mobile persona research.

Mobile customers fall into four basic categories, according to Aaron Levy in the SMX session “Winning at Mobile PPC”:

• Bored: Mostly professionals, either commuting or not wanting to talk to people. Tend to be impulsive.
• Research: Often parents, these are busy people filling a few minutes of time. Tend to be thoughtful before buying and usually convert on other devices, not on their phone.
• Need: People with only a phone to access the Internet, often low income. Tend to respond to promises of convenience.
• Desperate: These people forgot something and need it right away. Tend to be rich enough to buy the first thing they find.

For each type of audience, Levy recommended ways to tailor mobile ads. Also in this session, co-presenter Amy Bishop explained how to effectively target local searchers by their location, and John Busby showed how to use Google’s PPC ad formats that support phone calls, enhanced campaigns and call-only campaigns.

Mobile Advertising

Along with Google’s mobile-friendly advertising options described above, some paid search-focused sessions looked at the unique challenges of mobile advertising, including the trouble with social media referrer data.

In the Pubcon session “Social Media in a Mobile World,” social media managers Cynthia Johnson and Kendall Bird presented many tips for social media marketers. Though ROI from social media is difficult to assess, social media efforts can be tracked using a combination of Google Analytics (such as the Social report under Acquisition) and the data that each network natively provides. Build a dashboard that monitors whatever KPIs are important to your business, which differ between social media platforms, and you’ll have a way to showcase economic value to stakeholders.

Be aware, however, of dark social media, which refers to the sizable chunk of direct traffic that you can’t track in analytics (for example, users clicking a link from Instagram). Speakers Johnson and Bird recommended URL building as the best way to recapture those hidden (dark) metrics.

Google AdSense came into the spotlight when two Googlers (Richard Zippel and John Brown) hosted a Q&A style Pubcon keynote. Takeaways for advertisers were:

• Ad blockers are a big concern for Google. They’re looking into what they can do to help advertisers.
• Faster is better with mobile, but ads can slow down a page’s loading. Google’s brand-new Accelerated Mobile Pages tool can help publishers speed up a website. Use this and avoid bogging down pages with too many ads.
• Mobile is necessary, so figure out your best mix of products (Google has products for videos, AdX, etc.) and platforms (iOS, Android, wearables, etc.).

Think Mobile First — Google Does

If you do nothing else, forget about mobile being a subset of the Internet. With mobile searches exceeding desktop searches, Google now focuses exclusively on mobile — that’s what Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes reported in the “Getting Mobile Friendly to Survive the Next Mobilegeddon” session at SMX East.

Here are three ways Illyes advised webmasters to stay mobile-friendly (watch video):

• Make content legible and usable on mobile devices. Illyes said Googlebot looks at “5 or so” properties of a page to see whether they appear correctly.
• Don’t disallow resources (such as CSS, JavaScript or image files). You don’t want to block Google from seeing the site as mobile-friendly — a misunderstanding that would hurt your search rankings.
• Focus on giving the user a great experience on your website and “everything else will follow.”

SEOs and webmasters should follow suit by making mobile their primary framework for thinking of online visitors.

The post Latest on Mobile: Essential Takeaways for Marketers from SMX East & Pubcon appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

“Please share a post about how to classify good and bad quality links.”
–blog commenter Mike Jone, July 25, 2015

Backlink analysis is a much-needed skill today. Our SEO analysts spend hours analyzing backlinks for clients — whether they come to us specifically for help removing a Google penalty or not.

Let’s dive into the details of effective SEO link building and analysis. Here’s a handy Backlink Evaluation Flowchart you can refer to when doing backlink analysis and cleanup. (Click to open it full size.)

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<p><strong>Please include attribution to Bruceclay.com with this graphic.</strong></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p><a href=’http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/backlink-analysis/’><img src=’http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Backlink-Evaluation-Flowchart-452×1024.png’ alt=’Backlink Evaluation Flowchart’ width=’600px’ border=’0′ /></a></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <p>

Overview of the Backlink Eval Process

These days, all webmasters need to keep an eye on their backlink profiles to identify good links to count as wins and bad ones to target for link pruning. Here we’ve outlined our internal process for analyzing SEO client backlinks to judge which links to keep and which to get rid of.

1. Understand your goal. Approach backlink cleanup differently when working to remove a penalty vs. performing regular backlink maintenance.
2. Create your master list. A spreadsheet is your tool for keeping track of your research and backlink analysis activities.
3. Check your site’s backlinks against any previously submitted disavow files. If you’re inheriting a website that has had search engine optimization management, you may find that a Google disavow file has been submitted. It’s always a good idea to confirm that the previously created disavow file was accurate and did not prune links unnecessarily. Once you’ve confirmed that the disavowed links are low quality, you can continue to include them on future disavow files.
4. Score backlinks (keep, request removal, disavow) with tools. Tools including DisavowFiles, Ahrefs, Majestic and Moz can indicate quality of backlinks.
5. Visit the pages linking to your site. While you can get some idea of backlink quality with tools, nothing can evaluate topical relevance and overall appropriateness like a human visitor.
6. Choose to keep, request removal or nofollow, or disavow each link. Then take action.

At the end of the article you’ll find additional backlink cleanup resources:

• Criteria for judging backlink quality
• How to nofollow links

Backlink Analysis

Analyzing backlinks is a messy and time-consuming business. When we perform SEO penalty assessments and link pruning services for our clients, the most tedious part is manually evaluating the individual backlinks. It’s like sorting laundry, or weeding a lawn, or separating trash into recyclables and, well, garbage. But all of these tasks must be done.

Have the Right Attitude for Your Goal

Keep in mind that backlinks are necessary and good to help a website rank. Don’t go waving your machete around too wildly or you might hurt your website more than help it. Still, as Bruce Clay says, every site has its weakest link — and depending on the site, you may have a lot of spammy links that need removing.

Have a penalty? If your site has been penalized for unnatural links, then you should be harsher in your backlink analysis. Your site is already bleeding traffic and revenue. Find the bad links and cut them off! Websites not in a penalty situation can be more lenient in their backlink analysis. Adjust how strict you are in your attitude towards backlink cleanup based on your site’s situation.

Create a Spreadsheet to Track Your Findings and Decisions

Backlink analysis is a process that has many steps that may not be happening linearly or along the same timeline. Every one of your thousands of backlinks could be in a different stage of the process. Use a master list to combine the data from several different sources in whatever spreadsheet program you’re using (Excel or Google Sheets). Basically, you want to take the different spreadsheets you created doing the various downloads and combine them into one.

We recommend downloading your backlinks in bulk from Google Search Console and at least one of these additional sources:

• Bing Webmaster Tools (free)
• SEOToolSet Link Analysis (free, limited)
• SEOToolSet Pro Link Reports (fee-based)
• Majestic Site Explorer (fee-based)
• Moz’s Open Site Explorer (fee-based)
• Ahrefs Site Explorer (fee-based)

In your spreadsheet, use the linking URL as your key identifier in one column, the root domain in an adjacent one, and get the various other data fields lining up. Merge and delete your duplicates to create a workable list of backlinks.

Your spreadsheet may have hundreds or thousands of web pages that link to yours. Here’s an example of how you might set up the combined list, with columns for Source, URL, Root Domain, Action, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, Nofollowed, Not Found, Notes, and Whois.

Check for Disavowed Links First

Save yourself some work and find out right away whether the website has ever submitted a disavow file to Google, which is the list of links a website asks the search engine to ignore. Get a copy of the most recent disavow file that was submitted (because each new disavow file submitted to the search engine supersedes any previously submitted versions for that site).

If either the specific URL or the domain of the linking site (which is the main site name, such as badsite.com) have been disavowed, consider the link disavowed also. The good news is that, once you are satisfied with the disavow file’s accuracy, you won’t need to do any more backlink analysis on those links! You’ve already asked the search engine to ignore them, so you can, too.

Find Out More about the Linking Sites

With the remaining (non-disavowed) backlinks, you need a way to tell the good from the bad. Can you tell just by looking at the URL? With practice, sometimes you may be able to. But usually, you’ll need some extra information in order to evaluate them.

The tools below provide quick intel for backlink analysis. They can help you judge the quality of websites linking to yours. Which ones you choose depends on your budget, time and tool preferences.

• Majestic: Trust Flow and Citation Flow
  Majestic’s metrics top our list because our SEO analysts think this tool gives the most accurate, up-to-date link information available. In fact, we integrate our SEOToolSet Pro software with link data pulled from Majestic to provide link reports for subscribers. So if you gathered your original backlinks list using either your own Majestic account or an SEOToolSet Pro Link Report, then your spreadsheet should already contain columns for Trust and Citation Flow. Briefly … Citation Flow is a number from 0 to 100 that shows how much link juice the site has (based on how many sites link to it). So this number roughly shows how influential a backlink from this site may be, whether for better or worse. Trust Flow (also 0 to 100) shows how trustworthy the site is based on how close those links are to authoritative, trustworthy sources. In other words, this number shows whether a backlink from this site could be helpful or not.
• Moz: Page Authority and Domain Authority
  Moz’s Open Site Explorer product shows you scores (on a 100-point scale) estimating the authority of a specific web page and of the site as a whole.
• Ahrefs: URL Rating and Domain Rating
  Ahrefs’ proprietary scoring system can help you judge backlink quality. Ranking scores attempt to measure the authority of a URL (page) and its domain based on backlinks, similar to Google’s PageRank.
• DisavowFiles.com (a free service of Bruce Clay, Inc.)
  DisavowFiles compares your backlink profile (pulled from Majestic) against disavow files others have submitted into a crowdsourced database, telling you how many times a particular linking site has been disavowed by others in the database. Knowing which of your backlinks have been disavowed by others can help you easily identify sites you might want to disavow, too. There’s no stronger red flag for backlink cleanup than knowledge that a site is a frequently disavowed suspect.

Visit the Linking Sites

Once you’ve combined download sources, merged duplicates, removed already-disavowed links, and added trust metrics and intel, it’s time to review your master list. Now’s when you roll up your pant legs and prepare to wade through a little mud.

Just kidding. (Not really.)

Unfortunately, there’s no substitute for going to look at most backlinks manually to determine whether they are OK to keep. Since you may be working with thousands of backlinks, prioritize the work so you find the worst offenders first. You may not have to wade far before you’ve discovered and removed the links that are hurting your site the worst.

To prioritize your backlink analysis, sort your spreadsheet by the metric you feel shows trustworthiness the most clearly. For example, you could sort by Trust Flow (with Citation Flow and Root Domain as second and third sort levels). Invert the order if necessary (by clicking on a column heading) so that the lowest trust metrics appear at the top.

Make Decisions and Take Action

Create columns for where to put the results of your research. In the spreadsheet example we showed above, there were columns for Action and Notes. Use these to mark whatever you find out and what you decide to do, if anything, with each link.

There are several possible backlink cleanup decisions you can make from your backlink analysis.

• Ignore (keep the link)
  
• Request that the site remove or nofollow your link
• Request that the site change the anchor text of your link
• Disavow the linking page or domain

What Makes a “Good” vs. “Bad” Backlink

Unless the site engaged in illicit link-buying in the past and accumulated a slew of spammy links, most links are probably beneficial or at least neutral in their impact. You should be able to ignore the majority of backlinks in your spreadsheet for most non-penalized sites.

Good backlinks come from a trustworthy site, not a spam site. So look at those trust metrics you gathered. For example, a Trust Flow of zero could mean the site is new and hasn’t gotten any link love yet — but it also could indicate a problem. Watch out especially for a site with low Trust Flow and high Citation Flow — that means it’s getting a lot of link juice from all the sites linking to it, but they may all be spam! A link from that type of site could be poison.

Good backlinks come from web pages that are relevant to your page’s topic, as well. One or two links to your auto insurance site coming from a local dog groomer might be innocuous. But beware of patterns of unnatural linking. If every dog groomer in the state is linking to your auto insurance page, it could cause an eyebrow raise or even a penalty from Penguin.

Similarly, beware of global links to your site. For instance, if every page on a site has a followed link to your auto insurance quote page, that looks really suspicious to the search engines. If you see hundreds of links all coming from a single root domain, you should look to see what’s going on there.

Nofollowed Links Are Okay

Besides ignoring the good links you find, you can also ignore links that are nofollowed. Google won’t tell you which ones are and aren’t followed links to your site, meaning that they pass link value (for better or for worse). So it’s up to you to know how to tell the difference.

Look at the HTML source code of a page. If either of these are true, then the link is harmless to your site:

• The attribute rel=”nofollow” is contained in the link tag itself.
• The head section of the linking page has a meta robots nofollow tag.

Ongoing Link Maintenance

The first time you download links and go through them takes the most time. Once you have that initial work done and submit a disavow file with the stubborn links to Google, it takes a lot less time to do the ongoing maintenance of your link profile. Use our flowchart — feel free to print a copy for your wall — and make backlink analysis part of your regular (monthly or quarterly) SEO procedures.

The post Backlink Analysis: How to Judge Good Links from Bad appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

The last few weeks have seen a surge of articles and online chats on the topic of link building and its proper place in search engine optimization. Unlike black-hat forum discussions of past years, these recent discussions about links bring to light the battle-worn wisdom of knowledgeable, go-to search engine optimization minds, like John Mueller and Neil Patel, whose advice has been indispensable in the two years since we first were introduced to Google’s Penguin algorithm update.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: See new quotes at the end. The conversation is continuing in the industry, adding important balance to the discussion.]

These latest conversations exposed unknowns and some new fears, along with newly released tools and solutions to the problems of links, good and bad. Here we’ve harvested highlights from the articles and online conversations on the following topics that may surprise and wisen SEOs and webmasters of all experience levels:

• Link building today — its current definition and role
• Natural vs. unnatural links — staying in Penguin’s good graces
• Disavow files — tools and techniques for backlink cleanup

When we started listing all the thought-provoking insights from SEO thought leaders, we found that there have been so many fresh thoughts lately that we decided to number them in a list here. Enjoy these 19 fresh thoughts on link building, link cleanup and disavowal.

1. Google Portugal: “Do not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links that may violate our linking webmaster guidelines.”

The latest wave of link building talk was spurred in part by a statement on the Google Portuguese webmaster blog that, translated into English, gave this bold advice to webmasters: “Do not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links.” Period.

If you, like many, read that and grew concerned that just asking for links might cause site penalties, you were not alone. Google soon calmed everyone down by revising the Portuguese blog post to be less alarming: “Do not buy, sell, exchange or ask for links that may violate our linking webmaster guidelines.”

Upshot: Google really doesn’t want you to be soliciting links, but link requests are okay as long as they adhere to Google webmaster guidelines, specifically those regarding link schemes.

2. “There simply is no sustainability in trying to manipulate the algorithm.” –Linkarati writer Andrew Dennis

Let’s first state the obvious: Links still count in the search engine algorithms as one factor among many that influence search results ranking. But the old days in which unethical marketers could buy a thousand links and get a rise in search engine placement are long gone, squashed by the Google Penguin algorithm update as well as a savvier Internet user base. Columnist Andrew Dennis said it well in a July 7 post on Search Engine Land: “There simply is no sustainability in trying to manipulate the algorithm.”

3. “(O)nly focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your website than actually helps.” –John Mueller, Google webmaster trends analyst

Is there any good in trying to build links today? Google representative John Mueller answered the question in a February hangout. He said:

In general, I’d try to avoid that (link building) … only focusing on links is probably going to cause more problems for your website than actually helps.

4. “Is linkbuilding dead? Nope. Apparently not. Not only does daily practice affirm its existence, but the industry moguls do, too.” –Neil Patel

Experienced SEOs still practice some form of link building. Patel published a Forbes article wherein he explains why links are still necessary for SEO: “Though oft maligned and long abandoned, linkbuilding is one of the most effective ways to make your website rank higher.”

Is Link Building Black Hat?

5. “The term ‘linkbuilding’ has some baggage, but it is not inherently black hat. Still prefer ‘link earning’. All about intent.” –Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO Manager Rob Ramirez

Last week we got to host #SEOChat, a Twitter chat that addresses SEO issues, and we chose to discuss link building. In the chat, our SEO manager shared this gem:

A2) The term “linkbuilding” has some baggage, but it is not inherently black hat. Still prefer “link earning”. All about intent. #seochat — Robert Ramirez (@ramirez_robert) July 16, 2015

6. “We don’t know what to call it, so we might as well call it linkbuilding […] Link earning? That describes the practice better, but it just doesn’t have the same sonorous and electrifying quality.” –Neil Patel

As a counterpoint to Ramirez’s thoughts, Neil Patel’s take on his preferred term for link building/link earning shows the power words hold. It’s reminiscent of the debate over whether or not SEO is dead. SEO is not dead, but evolved, and link building/earning with it.

Natural vs. Unnatural Links

7. What is an unnatural link? “Well any link which is built is, by definition unnatural.” –Alastair Kane during #SEMRushChat

Obtaining links naturally is every web marketer’s goal. You want to have content that attracts people so that they like and then link to it. A strategy of earning links is far safer in today’s world than going after them with any link-building campaign. A participant in the July 15 #SEMRushChat (yes, two industry Twitter chats devoted to the same subject last week shows how topical this is!) put it this way:

@semrush Well any link which is built is, by definition unnatural. Natural links come from great content – or so they say! #semrushchat — Alastair Kane (@Alastair_SIC) July 15, 2015

8. Link earning isn’t a passive activity. “Actively seek out websites that are relevant to your website and audience, and promote yourself.” –Andrew Dennis

The columnist argues that a user-first approach is needed to earn links. But Dennis doesn’t think you have to just wait for them:

While it’s possible to earn these links passively, in order to take full advantage of your opportunities you need to manually promote your value. Actively seek out websites that are relevant to your website and audience, and promote yourself.

His article goes on to detail many approaches to doing this.

9. Behind every real link is a real person. “Remember that your goal here is more than just a link—it’s a relationship, which could be mutually beneficial to both of you.” –Ruth Burr Reedy

In a June 25 post on the Moz blog, Ruth Burr Reedy wrote: “The kinds of links that Google wants you to build are the kinds of links that you get when a real live person decides to share or link to your content.” She goes on to explain how you can attract links in person — at trade shows, conferences, meetups and trade associations — as well as how to assess these relationship-based links.

10. “Linkbuilding, if you want to call it that, is risky business. (…) Content marketing is the safest and most effective method of building links.” –Neil Patel

Patel calls link building “a high-risk activity” because of the danger of Penguin penalties. One thing is certain: Websites have to be careful how they get links.

He simplifies the process a bit by recommending that content marketing is the most effective way to earn links naturally. He concludes:

Thus, content marketing is the superhighway to links. Instead of creating artificial and spammy links, marketers are churning out real and high-quality content that warrants legitimate and relevant links.

Patel’s article gives three ways to (more-or-less) safely come right out and ask for links when sharing your content.

11. “As of now guidelines are pretty clear: You cannot reimburse links in any way. Let’s stick with that!” –Ann Smarty and Jim Boykin

Last week’s Jim & Ann Show discussed how one could go about asking for links in order to stay within Google’s guidelines. They covered lots of specific scenarios such as, “What if I sent free stuff but didn’t ask for a link? Should I be worried if that person links?” (They answered yes.)

12. “(M)ake it possible for other people of course to link to your content. Make it easy …” –John Mueller

When you’re sure you have high-quality content worth linking to, Mueller suggests two ways you can make it easier for people to link to your pages:

• Put a little widget on your page that helps someone link to it.
• Make sure URLs are easy to copy and paste.

13. “Go through your entire backlink profile MANUALLY. Any that look remotely suspicious, investigate (& where necessary remove)” –Dan Smith

During the #SEMRushChat Twitter chat, the other part of link management, dealing with unwanted backlinks to your site, was addressed. Here are a few nuggets of wisdom on the need for link pruning to avoid or recover from a Penguin penalty:

A4: Go through your entire backlink profile MANUALLY. Any that look remotely suspicious, investigate (& where necessary remove) #semrushchat — Dan Smith (@itsdansmith) July 15, 2015

Backlink Disavowal

14. Should every site submit a Google disavow file? “Depends on the penalty situation. If not penalized, no disavow. Pruning for sure though, in all cases. Everyone’s got skeletons” –Matthew Young, senior SEO strategist at Adobe

The link pruning process starts with monitoring your site’s backlinks to try to identify your weakest (least trustworthy and relevant) links. Most SEOs today agree that watching your backlinks is essential. Once identified, those low-quality links should be removed — which means going through the painstaking process of contacting the linking site and requesting they take down your link. When that doesn’t work, webmasters have a last resort: They can disavow the links they cannot remove.

One of the #SEOChat questions asked: Do you always recommend a site submit a Google disavow file? The answers were mixed:

A7. Depends on the penalty situation. If not penalized, no disavow. Pruning for sure though, in all cases. Everyone’s got skeletons #seochat — Matthew Young (@MatthewAYoung) July 16, 2015

A7: No. We only go disavow route if we suspect a penalty is in place #seochat — Netvantage Marketing (@netvantage) July 16, 2015

Tools for Backlink Research and Cleanup

15. “We believe there has been, up to this point, a critical imbalance in disavow link data. (…) We decided that instead of letting Google and Bing keep the data themselves, there is a way to have more intelligence about our backlinks and disavow files if we crowdsource the data.”  –Bruce Clay

In June we released DisavowFiles, a free tool that started as a dream of Bruce Clay’s to have greater visibility into Google’s black box of disavowed link data. During the weekly digital marketing podcast SEM Synergy on June 10, which was one week after launching the tool, Bruce explained the genesis of DisavowFiles:

We give all this (disavow link data) to Google in bulk. All of us give it to Google because we don’t want the penalty, but we have no way of seeing that data ourselves. They keep it from us. We decided that instead of letting Google and Bing keep the data themselves, there is a way to have more intelligence about our backlinks and disavow files if we crowdsource the data. Everybody gets to give us their disavow files, and with our new service, DisavowFiles.com, this is what it does — it collects the data and allows us to query and get answers to these questions.

16. “Very TAGFEE: (…) DisavowFiles – upload file & can see whether others have disavowed links that point to you” –Rand Fishkin

Because DisavowFiles is a crowdsourced database and we’ve shared it among the SEO community, Wizard of Moz Rand Fishkin called DisavowFiles “very TAGFEE.” Since its June launch, the tool has more than 1,200 members signed up and hundreds of Google disavow files uploaded so far.

17. “It also made sense in a lot of ways to share data, especially when you’re dealing with the same types of link farms, the same types of sites that scrape and are showing up in a lot of our clients’ backlink profiles.” –Rob Ramirez

In the announcement podcast, SEO Manager Ramirez chimed in with another reason that DisavowFiles.com is such a helpful tool for speeding up the link cleanup process:

Like all good ideas, (DisavowFiles) was born out of necessity. We had a very real need to simplify and speed up the process of doing link audits. It also made sense in a lot of ways to share data, especially when you’re dealing with the same types of link farms, the same types of sites that scrape and are showing up in a lot of our clients’ backlink profiles. Simplifying that process, being able to share the data across our clients, was something that was a very real need that we had.

18. “Tried (DisavowFiles) again today and it worked — found ~1,000 more domains and URLs to add to our file.” –Daniel Thomason of Online Performance Marketing in Dallas, Texas

The primary purpose of DisavowFiles is to show webmasters which of their own backlinks have been disavowed by others in the database. This kind of insight gives them more confidence in disavowing links. Here’s what one told us:

Hey everyone,
Tried [DisavowFiles] again today and it worked — found ~1,000 more domains and URLs to add to our file.
Thanks for innovating with a tool like this.
–Daniel Thomason

19. Would you want to know if your website has been disavowed by others? “Yes, I would like to know. There’s no reason to be oblivious in this respect imo” –Jesse Stoler during #SEOChat

There’s a side benefit for DisavowFiles.com participants, and that’s being alerted whenever someone else disavows one of your own website’s pages. Google has stated that being listed in a disavow file does not affect your site negatively. Nevertheless, knowing that people consider your web pages worthy of disavowal can cause you to take a good hard look at your site. #SEOChat participants were asked whether they would want to know if their pages are disavowed. This question would have been unthinkable before this tool because search engines don’t share this kind of intel. The SEOs balanced their answers between common sense and confidence in their own website ethics:

A8: Yes, I would like to know. There’s no reason to be oblivious in this respect imo #seochat — Jesse Stoler (@JesseStoler) July 16, 2015

A8: No. If you know what a disavow is, you should be comfortable w/ your own site. Feeling “alarmed” is not a productive state. #seochat — Eric Lander (@EricLanderSEO) July 16, 2015

A8. Yes, especially in cases where you suspect negative SEO. I would want to be notified immediately. #seochat — Matthew Young (@MatthewAYoung) July 16, 2015

Off-Page SEO Evolves

So is link building black hat? Is SEO dead? No! The role of search engine optimization continues to evolve, and as long as Google’s webmaster guidelines change and its search engine ranking algorithms along with them, so will the definition and target of link building. Off-page SEO once was defined primarily by link building. Today, link assessment, cleanup and disavows are off-page optimization tasks that require careful attention by search engine marketers. Take pride in staying up on the debate and the journey, and enjoy the ever-changing practice that is SEO.

UPDATE 8/5/2015: The conversation continues! This week Jesse Stoler took center stage publishing “A Link Builder’s Response to John Mueller” in Search Engine Journal.

First he acknowledges that spammy link building is still, unfortunately, alive and well — and that this is what Google (and everyone) wants to stop. But he makes a good case that link building is “another form of promotion” that is still necessary today:

The overwhelming majority of sites online today don’t have even a morsel of brand recognition. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve it. It just means that the Internet is a really noisy place. … Modern link building is all about finding relevant sites with audiences that could benefit from your unique value proposition, and persuading those sites to link to you. That’s it.

The post 19 Fresh Thoughts on Link Building & Disavow Shared by Top SEO Minds from John Mueller to Neil Patel appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..