Want to create content curation roundup posts to get maximum results? Then let these 20+ tactics guide you to develop the best possible crowd pleaser content.
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My first exposure to “less is more” as a concept came from advertising – this ad to be precise. I was completing my first rudimentary keyword research around the time I first saw it, not for an SEO agency – I didn’t really know much about SEO at the time – but for a fancy-dress […]
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Marketers use this Definitive Guide To Get Conference Results Without Being Physically There. Has tactics and examples to help you succeed.
The post How To Get Useful Conference Results On The Cheap Without Being Physically There appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Within this cognitiveSEO Talks episode you’ll get the chance to get inspired by Lukasz Zelezny, a prolific keynote speaker, SEO consultant, and author. He started working in the SEO industry around 20 years ago while living in Poland. Every year he is actively participating in 10 to 20 events as a keynote speaker and he constantly worked for mid and large companies such as HomeAway, Thomson Reuters, The Digital Property Group,to mention just a few.
As Lukasz himself is mentioning, he is a hands-on person, spending lots of his time keeping up to date with the changes in the technology of online marketing. He started his professional career in 2005 and has since been responsible for the organic performance of a number of companies including HomeAway, Thomson Reuters, The Digital Property Group and Fleetway Travel.
Lukasz traveled 75,000 km speaking at many SEO and social media conferences including ClickZ Shanghai China, ClickZ Jakarta Indonesia, SiMGA Malta, SES London in the United Kingdom, as well as conferences held in Europe – Marketing Festival in Brno, Brighton SEO in Brighton, UnGagged in London.
Additionally, whenever he has the chance he organizes workshops where he is sharing tips around SEO, Social Media and Analytics. And talking about SEO tips and tricks, hope you enjoyed the list of SEO tips Lukasz has shared with us within this interview.
The post How to Get 100% Year-Over-Year Organic Traffic Growth with Lukasz Zelezny appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.
Without the right insights, it’s easy to talk yourself out of investing in quality on-site content and even easier for your boss to cut your budgets. The key to ensuring you have a clear understanding of how and where your content is adding value lies not in producing in more content, but in developing a […]
The post Justifying your content investment with analytics appeared first on Builtvisible.
Considering a job in marketing? Get marketing career advice from 20+ women. Includes charts.
The post Marketing Career Advice: Women Tell You How To Triumph appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
As a B2B brand, you face the difficult task of asking anxious B2B customers to spend big and put their reputation on the line amid a climate of fake news and mistrust of politics, big business and advertising. Do not despair. I strongly believe that if you infuse your content marketing with respect and empathy […]
The post Six ways to earn the trust of B2B audiences through content marketing appeared first on Builtvisible.
301 redirects are one of the core elements SEO experts use on a regular basis. They are very useful but they can also be very dangerous. You can fix broken links with them, but you can also create redirect loops which can affect indexability.
In order to really take advantage of 301 redirects, you have to know how to set them up properly but also the scenarios in which they are required. Last but not least, you have to know what to avoid when using 301 redirects to deal with a problem.
In this article, you will learn when you should use 301 redirects to take advantage of them for SEO purposes and how to avoid mistakes that can affect your rankings.
Warning: Playing with URLs and 301 redirects on a large scale can have massive negative impact on your site if done improperly. If you don’t feel 100% confident doing things yourself, it’s a better idea to get in touch with an SEO specialist that can approve and help with the modifications.
Most people know what a 301 redirect is, but just in case, I feel the need to define it.
301 is a status code. Status codes indicate whether an HTTP request was successful or not or; in other words, if a web page works or not. There are multiple status codes, some of which you already probably know. 500, for example, indicates a server error, while 404 indicates that a resource doesn’t exist. Status code 200 is the most common one but you probably see it less, because it indicates a successful request (you end up seeing the page instead of any status code, which is good).
Source gomage.com
The 301 status code states that a web resource can be found at a new address. So, for example, if I have page A and I 301 redirect it to page B, if you access page A the browser will automatically take you to page B.
In other words, it’s like moving a page from one address to another.
Search engines try to provide the best experience for their users, so they don’t want to display bad resources in their search results. A missing resource is definitely a bad experience for users.
Due to the way they work, it is inevitable that search engines don’t display some 404 pages in their results. The crawler finds new resources and brings them to the indexer. The indexer then indexes the page and it is only after that the ranking process begins.
Once a page was indexed, it gets displayed if you search for it. Also, from time to time, it gets recrawled. Google does this in order to discover if any modifications have been made to the page. However, a page can suddenly vanish. Maybe the owner deleted it, or maybe something bad happened to the server.
During that period between two crawls, a page can be indexed and ranked by Google, leading users to 404 pages.
At some point, Google will figure this out and it will not be pleased. It will eventually remove the 404 pages from the index, but if this issue keeps repeating, it might even view a website as less reliable, because it is wasting crawl budget.
But 404 pages don’t only affect Search Engines. It affects you! Your website, your business and your revenue. If users search for your pages, if they click on your links and these links return a 404, you’ve just lost a client.
Not only that, but if you’re the one creating the 404 pages (by accidentally deleting content, for example) you’re also going to lose a lot of link equity if those pages have backlinks pointing to them. 301 redirects can help channel that equity to a new location, so that your domain doesn’t lose authority.
Of course, it is inevitable that at some point a site will have 404 errors. In fact, I can create a 404 error right now by linking to an nonexistent page. But that would be bad for me as well. I don’t want to link to 404 pages, because Google will then think that I lead users and search engines to missing resources.
You see, it’s not actually the broken page that matters, but the link that’s pointing to it. As I previously said in another article (and I’m going to quote myself now):
A page doesn’t really exist until another page links to it.
You can find if your site has 301 error issues by using the CognitiveSEO ToolSet. Use the Site Explorer and search for Broken Pages to find backlinks from other sites to your site that return a 404:
Use the Site Audit to find 404 issues within your own site. You can also view your entire set of 301s and check if they’re all good or pointing where they should.
So, if you find that your site has other sites pointing to 404 pages, you can try to contact the owner to replace the URL or simply do a redirect yourself.
The 301 redirect’s main purpose: to minimize the existence or appearance of missing or broken resources.
Now we could say that Google and other search engines love 301s, but that doesn’t mean that you should start redirecting everything. 301 redirects should be used with caution and only in specific and necessary cases, as messing things up can have devastating outcomes.
If you don’t find yourself in one of these situations, then you probably shouldn’t be playing with 301s.
When you launch a new website, one of the first things you should do is redirect all the domains to the preferred version.
There are 4 main versions of your site:
Naturally, in 2019 you’ll want to have SSL. This will probably be default sometime in the future, who knows. In general, it doesn’t matter if your site is www or non-www but you can go with www just to make sure (helpful for something related to CDNs, images and cookies if your site gets bigger in the future).
In any case, let’s get back on track and state where 301s come in:
Every other version of your site should 301 redirect to the preferred version and it’s also preferable if the redirect is a 1 step process.
So if my preferred version is https://www.yoursite.com, I don’t want http://yoursite.com to redirect first to https://yoursite.com and then to https://www.yoursite.com, but directly to https://www.yoursite.com.
You can easily check this by running a Site Audit in the CognitiveSEO Toolset:
Many websites still run on HTTP connections. This is risky, especially when dealing with personal data. For example, even a small contact form on your contact page could be susceptible to GDPR infringement if it’s not secure, since the data could be intercepted by 3rd parties.
If you’re planning to move from HTTP to HTTPS, you have to be very careful. I repeat: You have to be very careful.
This can have devastating negative effects if the transition isn’t done properly. By properly, I mean setting up 301 redirects from each HTTP URL to its HTTPS conterpart.
You can check this step by step http to https migration guide if you want to make sure you get everything right.
Broken pages and links are actually 404 pages. You should be constantly looking for these types of errors as they can appear at any time, for example, when someone misspells a URL.
Any link pointing from outside your site towards your site that reaches a 404 error should be dealt with. You can find broken links and pages using the CognitiveSEO Toolset, as mentioned above in the article.
The best scenario is to contact the owner and ask them to fix the link. However, this is time consuming, sometimes inefficient and might even lead to them replacing the link altogether.
You can redirect those 404 links (broken pages) to the most relevant page on your site to fix these issues.
When it comes to internal broken links (links that are broken within your site), ideally you should change those instead of 301 redirecting them. 301 redirects pass link equity, but some of it gets lost during the process, so a direct link is always better.
Take this with a very very small grain of salt. Sometimes, you might actually want the resource to return a 404. For example, if someone links to some weird URL on your site and it looks like spam, it’s probably not a good idea to redirect that negative equity to one of your good pages.
Now this is debatable. Some would say that you should always redirect any broken link or resource. Everyone will agree that the best type of redirect is to the most relevant resource possible.
So, for example, if I have a blog about animals and I delete a page about dogs, I don’t just want to redirect it to the Homepage and definitely not want to redirect it to a page about cats.
The proper 301 redirect should always be towards the most relevant page on the website.
But what do you do in case you don’t have any relevant page? Well… the most commonly recommended thing is to redirect to the homepage. However, this comes with a problem:
By displaying a 404, you give the users an answer and also have the chance to show a call to action or at least make them laugh (via design). By redirecting to the homepage, you simply send the users somewhere they didn’t expect to land.
If the user’s intent was to read an article about a topic, he or she will be even more confused by ending up on the homepage of a site than landing on a 404.
So here, a 404 can be a lot more helpful, especially if you add a nice design to it and also a call to action. Here are a couple of examples, maybe even better than in the one above if you have a big website with a lot of 404s:
Sorry, the information you were looking for isn’t here (can be personalized) but:
It’s not such a big deal if your website has 404 errors here and there, but if it’s on a large scale or if they are pages that quality sites link to, then you should redirect them to the most relevant resource.
Also, keep this in mind:
It’s better to return a full 404 than a soft 404, which is a 404 looking page that hides a 200 status code under it.
Soft 404’s sound like a bit of a trickery to Google. On one hand you’re telling the user that the resource they’re looking for isn’t there, but on the other hand you’re telling Google that the page is OK.
In SEO, it’s usually a good idea to never change the URL of a specific resource.
However, if you do need to change it, then you should always 301 redirect the old URL to the new URL. Popular CMS, such as WordPress, even do this automatically. If you change the URL, you can notice that the old one redirects to the new one.
When you change a URL, Google will have to first crawl it, then index it and rank it all over again. This can take time. Setting up a 301 redirect will tell Google that the page isn’t an entirely new page, but actually an old one that has just moved its address.
For example, you might have a very old website with some very old pages that used to have underlines in the URLs. As you know, dashes are now preferred, so you might want to change https://www.yoursite.com/this_page/ to https://www.yoursite.com/this-page/.
If you do it, make sure to 301 redirect from the old page to the new one.
Redesigning or improving a website on a large scale can often end up in deleted pages, moved or rewritten content.
If you’ve removed any pages during a redesign process, make sure you redirect those pages accordingly to the most relevant resource on your site.
Again, big changes on websites can always have negative SEO impacts if certain aspects are not taken into account.
If you’re in the process of redesigning your website or are thinking of doing it in the future, you can always check our website seo redesign checklist.
If you have a very big website, especially in the eCommerce field, you’re constantly dealing with duplicate content or dynamic URL issues.
For example, if you have big a set of products both in red and yellow, the use of dynamic URLs might create duplicate or at least very similar content when filtering for either red or yellow.
301 redirects can help with this in certain scenarios, but you can also use Canonical Tags. You can read more details about canonical tags towards the end of this article.
You can check if you have duplicate or similar content issues using the CognitiveSEO Site Audit:
Recommendations regarding this issue can vary from one scenario to another. Due to the fact that this usually also happens on a large scale, with thousands of pages, it’s always better to contact an SEO specialist before making any modifications.
However, if you do have multiple URLs that are almost identical, you can redirect them accordingly to a final version. This can potentially strengthen that page, as it won’t be cannibalized and the link equity from different links, if any, will be sent to that page.
Are you planning to change your domain? Do you have two brand websites and would like to combine them? Then 301 is the way to go.
But don’t make the mistake to just set a simple 301 from one domain to another. Each and every URL must redirect to its new location on the new domain.
Ok, now that we’ve covered the most common and important cases when you should take advantage of 301 redirects, let’s get into how exactly you can set up correct redirects from one URL to another and even from one domain to another.
Setting up 301 redirects is actually simple. That is… if you don’t have to set thousands. You can set them up in different ways:
Via Plugins: Setting up redirects via CMS plugins is pretty easy. You can use any redirection plugin / extension / module. Usually, there are two fields, the one with the current URL and the one with the desired URL.
Via .htaccess: Setting up 301 redirects can be done via the .htaccess file on your server.
If you want to redirect from one URL to another, it’s pretty simple. You just have to add:
Redirect 301 /old-URL/ /new-URL/
You can read more on .htaccess redirections here.
Via cPanel: A cPanel redirect can also be used and it’s pretty easy to do on a small scale.
Via Domain Level Redirect: Last but not least, you can set up a domain level redirect from your domain registrar dashboard. This is a good way to redirect especially if you’re merging from one domain to another.
Set two redirect records, one with the host www and another with the host @ each pointing to the new domain and make sure to add a backslash at the end of the domain. S,o if I were to redirect cognitiveseo.com to brandmentions.com, it would look something like this.
Type > Host > Value
Redirect Record > www > brandmentions.com/
Redirect Record > @ > brandmentions.com/
This will redirect all pages to their new counterparts (for example, it will not only redirect cognitiveseo.com to brandmentions.com but also cognitiveseo.com/page to brandmentions.com/page).
This is actually the question which led us to writing this article:
“When you are moving site or content and make proper 301 redirects (one to one), what is the safe period after which we can consider all possible page juice is passed to new pages and Google deleted it from its index and it’s safe to permanently kill redirects?”
The answer is pretty straight forward:
It is never safe to remove 301 redirects. The best case scenario is keeping them running FOREVER.
Sounds like an evil request, but you’ve heard me right! You have to keep doing it for eternity. Why? Well, really, it depends. But it’s just safer if you never remove the redirects.
If it’s just a page with no backlinks and no traffic, you can simply check if the new URL has been indexed and the old URL has been deindexed. You could then remove the 301, as it’s no longer needed. However, if your page does have backlinks (even internal links within your own site), then removing the 301 will result in a 404.
It’s always better to keep them, as long as they don’t create any technical issues with the server, which they shouldn’t.
There are also some things that you must make sure you don’t do when working with redirects!
The worst thing you can do when working with 301 redirects is to create a redirect loop.
Or, you might have seen it before in the form of “This website redirected too many times”. A redirect loop is when Page A redirects to Page B and then Page B redirects back to Page A. I hope you can understand why Google would get frustrated.
It’s also recommended not to do multiple or chain redirects. You can have 2 or 3 if needed, but Google won’t usually follow more than 4 redirects.
Google tries to crawl the web as efficiently as possible. Each site gets a certain ‘crawl budget’. If you waste that on abandoned chain redirects or redirect loops, you can end up having less for other important pages.
So, instead of having:
Page A > 301 > Page B > 301 > Page C > 301 > Page D
You should have:
Page A > 301 > Page D
Page B > 301 > Page D
Page C > 301 > Page D
Also, when you’re trying to fix broken pages, don’t just redirect everything to the homepage. It won’t necessarily do any harm, but you can maximize effectiveness if you redirect each page to something relevant.
People often get confused by canonical tags and 301 redirects because they are sort of similar. So, which one should you use and when?
The canonical tag’s purpose is to tell search engines which page to display without redirecting users to that page.
So, by using a rel=”canonical” tag, Google will see Page A but it will display Page B in the search engines, but when users access Page A (via the site navigation menu or direct URL) they will still see Page A.
Generally, it is better to use 301 redirects when dealing with missing or old content, but it’s probably a better idea to use canonical tags when dealing with dynamic URLs caused duplicate content.
Going back to the example I previously gave (a big set of products both in red and yellow) using a canonical tag can help you let the users browse the site disturbed, while telling the search engines which version of the page to display.
Please note that if your pages have searches for both Yellow and Red color, you should keep both the pages indexed. However, if the users only search for the product and never search for colors, then it’s a better idea not to cannibalize the results.
Please read this article about common canonical tag mistakes if you want to learn more about this topic.
301 redirects can be both very helpful and deadly (if used the wrong way). Make sure you properly 301 redirect when encountering any of the cases mentioned above for the best SEO outcomes.
Important things to remember:
Have you ever used 301 redirects to fix SEO issues? How did that go for you or your client? Let us know in the comments section! We’re really curious to find out.
The post Top Use Cases When to Use 301 Redirects & How to Properly Do It appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.
What is social media and how does it relate to marketing? 60+ marketing experts give their social media definition. Also includes data.
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Want awesome blog results despite content saturation? But you keep finding blogging blarney? We smash 17 pieces of blogging blarney and replace them with solid marketing tactics for success.
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To succeed enter marketing circle of trust. Includes trust definitions, research, data and tips to increase customer trust and support social good.
The post Marketing Circle of Trust: How to Improve Relationships for Social Good [Research] appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
“To cross, or not to cross? That is the question.” Deciphering whether you need cross domain tracking in Google Analytics (GA) can be a minefield! If you’re reading this article, you’ve likely already realised that this isn’t always a simple question to answer. Many of the existing guides out there are either unnecessarily complex or […]
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Over the last few days, there has been a lot of buzz about possible Google algorithm updates. And yes, it’s true that Google updates its algorithm every single day, often multiple times per day but this update seems to be significant. And moreover, it is confirmed by Google on March 13.
Number 13’s infamy will probably explode even more now, but you need to know that the most recent Google Update started on 12 of March, continued in force on the 13 of March and the rankings fluctuation seems to continue as you’re reading this.
Leaving modesty aside, we did spot the update before Google making the official announcement and before all the buzz in the SEO world. No, we do not have psychic powers, but we do have a super powerful tool: cognitiveSEO Signals.
While we are aware that search results are different around the world, in different regions, and in different languages, and changing search results is almost a Google trademark, the rankings fluctuations were really high on lots of countries. The daily updates that typically occur in SERP don’t compare to this one in any way. And this time, Google officials also confirmed what the data already told us.
This week, we released a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see these tweets for more about that:https://t.co/uPlEdSLHoXhttps://t.co/tmfQkhdjPL
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 13, 2019
Of course, a lot of buzz did not delay to appear on the social media channels, with people complaining about big high volatility as well as dropped traffic and drops.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Ian Fleming (the guy that wrote the James Bond series of novels and short stories) byword, but it’s somehow bitter funny how it applies to our current situation.
Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.
It’s clear that we cannot talk about coincidences at this point as people all over the places are facing rankings fluctuations.
Seeing less Positions, Impressions and Clicks cut in half from countries where my site shouldn’t show up. Surely will see less bounces from total site =)@JohnMu @rustybrick @dr_pete pic.twitter.com/dlkVQrOy3u
— amagnacco (@amagnacco) March 13, 2019
As we don’t like to take anything for granted, we researched and double-checked on real case studies to see how the current update impacted businesses from all over the regions. We used the cognitiveSEO Rank Tracker to easily check and analyze some keywords and their rankings.
We found some massive drops in rankings on commercial keywords with high search volume. Below you can see some screenshots with just some the search position drops we’ve identified.
We couldn’t find any increases in rankings for the moment, yet this doesn’t mean that increases didn’t occur. I’m sure that in the following days we’ll better understand how this update impacted the Google ranks and as the law of nature works when someone goes down, someone else goes up.
We’ve done the research on several countries and languages to find out that Florida 2.0 is clearly a global update that affects websites regardless of the country, region or country.
What is also important to notice is the amount of keywords websites have lost their rankings on. We’ve found just a few situations were the websites declined in SERP on just a few keywords. Most of the analyzed websites faced drops on half or maybe more than half of the keywords they were interested in ranking for.
For the moment we cannot draw a conclusion on what the March 12 Google Update actually targeted: links, content, intent, all together, something else? There could be a commonality between the websites affected by this update, yet, further research needs to be done. But keep still, here at cognitiveSEO we are a bunch of geeks who like doing in-depth researches so most likely we’ll come back with more details on what Florida 2.0 is all about.
The truth is that Google doesn’t always disclose updates and algorithm changes. Or, being a bit nasty, we might say that Google rarely makes public its rankings updates. That’s why there is also a lot of buzz and confusion every time someone from the SEO world notices something out of place in SERP.
How did we find about the update before Google making any official statement?
It started with a mail. A notification actually from cognitiveSEO Signals, cognitiveSEO’s tool that spots Algorithm changes in real time.
Checking the tool on several countries, positions, and changes, we realized that there is actually something big going on and for sure the biggest fluctuation from the last 5 months for several countries like US, UK, Australia, India, several countries in Europe and so on.
The short answer is: it depends on who you’re asking.
If you’re asking Google, the answer you’ll get is :
There is nothing in particular to “fix,” and we don’t want content owners to mistakenly try to change things that aren’t issues.
According to the same big G officials, a broad core update means that Google is not targeting any niche or any particular signals, like quality. In a broad core algorithm update, Google is not targeting anything. There’s no “fix” for pages that may perform less well other than to remain focused on building great content. Over time, it may be that your content may rise relative to other pages. And as with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. There’s nothing wrong with pages that may now perform less well. Instead, it’s that changes to our systems are benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded….
Of course, as with any update, some sites may note drops or gains. Yet, if you’re asking any SEO Pro or webmaster who is very concerned about his website ranking high, well it is hard to do nothing while your ranks are dropping.
We are not saying that you should look for issues on your website where they are not, or to start changing stuff just for the sake of the algorithm update. Yet, there are some actions that you can take.
And yes, you can check everything by using only one tool: the cognitiveSEO toolset.
There is no secret that mobile searches in Google are constantly growing from one year to another. And therefore, Google’s interest on mobile search market is increasing as well. What is very interesting to notice is that when it comes to ranking fluctuations, the mobile SERP is way more volatile than the desktop one.
If the current algorithm (named Florida 2.0) is the biggest Google fluctuation on desktop from the past five months, when it comes to the mobile market, the situation is completely different. Dozens of fluctuations and lots of volatility can be easily observed on the screenshots taken from the UK and USA mobile vs. the desktop search market.
If you’re checking the WebmasterWorld Forum or read SEO Pros opinion on this Broad Core Update, you’ll see that it is referred to as the Florida 2.0.
Where is all that coming from?
Well, Google Florida was the first major algorithm update and it was released in November 2003. This, of course, was the first significant update in what would become a decade filled with huge updates. Regardless of what it was called, Florida hit in the middle of the holiday shopping season targetted highly commercial terms. As you can imagine, lots of pages and businesses have been wiped out from Google’s SERP.
As you might tend to think that these two updates are similar in the way of rolling, what they actually have in common is the name. Google Updates were always given names by the search industry; it was not Google’s officials who named their updates Fred, Penguin or Panda. And the Florida update was named this way due to the fact that it was released around Pubcon Florida SEO conference taking place. History repeats and with the update and the conference taking place in the same month, Florida 2.0 came naturally.
How about you? Did you encounter any ranking or traffic fluctuation? Let us know in the comments below!
The post Huge Google Update – Florida 2.0 Is Rolling Out! Massive Rankings Fluctuations appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.
Google is quite disputed be search marketers all over the world but we can all agree on one thing: Google offers lots of tools and features which can help every business, big or small, to thrive and make the most of their activity. From developer tools to business management and valuable resources, here it is – what we hope to be – the complete list of Google marketing tools.
We’ve scooped the whole internet to find the most useful and relevant Google tools for everyone who wants to create a good and powerful marketing strategy and a successful business. Here we go!
I. Google Marketing Tools to Monitor& Grow Your Business
III. Google Tools for Time & Projects Management
Every business that has a website should have a Google Analytics account to track and measure website traffic. It is a paid tool and one of the most widely used tools for website analytics. It has data on users’ demographics, interests, behavior, and more, plus data on acquisition channels for third party campaigns, site traffic and speed, real-time activity.
Most recent updates and integrations with Google Ads and Search Console made it a fundamental tool for every business. You have all the information in one place, which allows you to create better connections regarding your data. You have access to the Acquisition, Behavior and Conversions data in one place, which means more possibilities to discover insights:
GA helps you track any fluctuations in your traffic evolution, so you can spot any drops or improvements and check furthermore whether there is a connection to Google penalties.
Measure overall organic traffic to better understand your users and get insights based on the activity that happens on your website or set up goals to track specific user interactions on site.
The data give you the power to make valuable business decisions.
Google Ads (former Google AdWords) is an optional tool that you can use to create advertising campaigns on Google Search, Youtube, Mobile Apps or remarketing on third-party websites. Google Ads is an advertising tool, that works on a bidding strategy. When you create a campaign, you’re allowed to add a landing page and create brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, video content and generate mobile application installs. You can choose out of three pricing models, based on the type you’d like to use:
The first two pricing models are available for paid search, and the last one can be available only for Display Network campaigns (a large resource of websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear).
Google Ads can give you lots of insights on the searched keyword phrases, best performing landing pages, type of visitors and other descriptive information.
Google Keyword Planner is an important feature from the Google Ads tools. You can use it independently, no matter if you pay or not. There’s a catch though. If you have active campaigns, you’ll get more information comparing to a non-paid account.
It is a keyword research tool, which can be used for getting insights on the terminology used for different topics or keyword ideas, plus search volumes for every country and language, search trend. You have the possibility to apply filters and get only the results you are interested in.
DoubleClick Search was rebranded under the name Search Ads 360, and it’s an ad serving platform. Unlike Google Ads, Search Ads 360 allows you to distribute and manage ads that appear on other sites you’ve negotiated media buys for.
With Search Ads 360, you save a lot of time by managing your ads across engines, make better decisions and increase your Return on Investment (ROI) for search marketing. The tool provides multiple bid strategies, which are more accurate and better targeted:
Google Marketing Platform is a suite of tools designed for businesses to have smarter marketing measurement and better results. It is a paid tool and it includes advertising and analytics tools by Google such as Analytics 360, Search Ads 360, Display and Video 360, Tag manager 360, optimize 360 and more. Some of them were presented already, and some of them can be found below in the article.
Along with the change made for AdWords & DoubleClick, which became Ads and Search Ads 360, Google integrated the new tools into a new platform: Google Marketing Platform to have in one place all the tools that a business needs.
Every business owner and marketer has one major pain point: to better understand their customers. Having all the tools in one place makes it easier to gather all the information and easily compare the information side by side than using different web pages and platforms.
Google Adsense is an easy way to earn money online by placing ads on your website and YouTube channel. If you’re using AdSense, on your website there will be placed ads from advertisers through the Google Network.
Do you know those ads that appear on sites on the right or left side, or on the bottom of the page besides the main content? Some of those ads are served automatically by publishers. You can see text, image, video or even interactive media advertisements which target the audience of the site. Below is an example of such ad:
For local SEO you need to register on GMB. Google My Business is connected to Google Maps and here you can add your contact information such as NAP (name, address, phone), website, open hours, photos, posts and a lot more.
The process is simple, create a GMB account, add all the information, choose a verification method, after that use the code you received in the verification step and submit the request. After that, you’ll be able to see your location on Google Maps.
There are several ways to verify your GMB listing:
Whenever you search for a specific company, if it is registered on Google My Business, you’ll find that information on the right side of SERP. Beside the NAP information, you can see Q&A posted by users, popular time visits.
Also, you can add your social profiles and see all the reviews from your users, integrated into this snippet.
It is recommended to register on GMB because users can get directions, and this will increase the number of clients that come to your store.
Google Trends is a free service from Google that analyzes the popularity of a certain topic/keyword on Web search, News search, Google Shopping or Youtube search. The website uses graphs for displaying information and comparing actions.
You can see and compare data across lots of regions and locations around the Globe. There is a time frame available starting with 2004.
For businesses, Google Trends can be very useful for spotting trends and understanding the evolution of certain keywords and search for keywords. You can easily identify seasonal trends, then create content at the right time. Even though we are strong advocates of evergreen content, seasonal content can be an additional traffic boost, which shouldn’t be avoided.
Google Patents provides one of the most comprehensive collections of patent data. Patents are a good source for documentation. We’ve used Google Patents for understanding the way Google’s algorithm works and documented a blog post about context SEO.
Bill Slawski is the founder of SEO by the Sea and Google patents master because he can make any individual understand the encrypted world of patents.
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I started paying attention to, and looking for new patents from Google after reading on about Information Retrieval based upon historical data, which was written by some of Google’s top search engineers, and focused upon indexing stale content and spam content, and how Google might avoid both.
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Bill Slawski |
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Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital |
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Google Scholar is a free and accessible web search platform that provides a lot of academic literature. Google has a massive collection of resources, which can be a go-to place for case studies or stats for every-day business. You can find articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
It is a good place for documenting on a specific topic or field of activity, where you have your business.
It’s a must to keep up with the news, see what is out there. Find out any information that could benefit you and could influence your business. On Google News you see lots of articles based on your regions and language settings. You can see customized headlines, based on your preferences.
Google News can also be used as a source of inspiration for marketing campaigns, articles ideas, business goals and for implementing new business strategies. Search for any topic you’re interested in, such as digital marketing or business, technology, entertainment, science, sports, science, health.
Google Play is a digital service that offers a large collection of Android apps, games, music, movies, TV, books, magazines & more. Developers can add that type of content on this digital distribution service.
You need to sign up for a Google Play developer account to create apps using your Play Console. Create an account and pay the $25 registration fee. Go to All applications > Create application. Then, select a default language and add a title for your app. Type the name of your app as you want it to appear on Google Play.
Google Alerts is a tool for managing your online reputation, by following topics or companies that you’re interested in. There are customizable settings for every alert, based on your preferences.
Google Alerts can be used for companies to receive notifications on specific topics and be up-to-date with what’s happening in your domain of interest. You’ll receive emails every time Google finds an article about a topic you set an alert for.
The tool can be useful for cases when you want to monitor your brand or spot trends, spy on your competitors and find out valuable information for future marketing campaigns. See exactly where your competitors appear (sources), what type of content is promoted, what is the context.
As a company that wants to thrive in the online world, having a Youtube account is a great asset. For SEO, Youtube can generate more brand awareness and therefore traffic to the website. There are certain situations when the video content has better rankings that the website content.
In the screenshot below you can see that for the query “cronuts with puff pastry” Food And Wine is ranking with the Youtube video on the second position and with the website content on the second page.
Might be an isolated case, might be a real fact. There’s the same content, the difference is that on Youtube it is posted a month later than the article on the blog. The difference, in this case, might be the Domain Authority gained by Youtube in comparison to foodandwine.com. Another great Youtube benefit is the comment section. Comments and user-generated content, in general, are a great asset for SEO.
Long story short, Youtube is a tool that shouldn’t miss from a company’s profile.
Similar to WordPress, Google Blogger is a platform for blogs with more limited features. It can help you create a fully customizable theme to fit your blogger style. From simple and sleek to fun and funky, there’s a whole list of themes.
Blogger can be used by anyone who wants to have a blog. Google made it easy to write your posts and to manage them without problems. It’s even easier than WordPress. We all know how important content is, so businesses shouldn’t encounter any issues in achieving that with Blogger.
In 2019, blogging should mean fresh and evergreen content, updated consistently, serving users’ purpose.
For every business owner, organizing tasks is very important for management and transparency. Google Calendar is a time-management tool that allows you to schedule every meeting and event and receive reminders.
The good thing about the calendar is the fact that you can synchronize it with your smartphone and have all your information in your pocket. You can manage your calendars and see the information categorized based on that. Invite guests and send them reminders to the meetings.
Google Calendar allows you to schedule whatever type of event and integrate other plug-ins and manage time and activity more efficiently. For example if you’re having webinars or meetings, you can use Cisco Webex, Zoom, GoToMeeting and more.
Google’s Assistant is an AI-powered virtual assistant available on mobile, smart home devices, smart display, and a lot more. Very easy to use and set up to find whatever you want on search and on your phone (emails, messages, phone numbers, WhatsApp messages and a lot more) by offering us the possibility to make voice searches and personalize our content on Android, even if you’re offline.
Google Assistant might be the best fit for every business because it has lots of functions to manage every day to day activity easily and more efficiently. This app helps you perform the following actions:
In a fast evolving technology, Google is taking part in history. Google’s Assistant created a lot of buzz through a unique demonstration at Google I/0. The made an actual call to a salon for a haircut appointment.
Data Studio makes it very easy for business owners to visualize data and make it accessible and useful, so your team or clients understand and find the information faster. There are three steps for setting up your dashboard:
Data Studio allows you to tell great data stories to support better business decisions. It works best for creating reports and visualizing the evolution and the changes for every business. It has a few awesome templates which can be used.
Gmail can be a great support for getting your business emails and creating filters. For setting your work email on Gmail, go to Settings » Accounts and Import » Check mail from other accounts (using POP3). After that, you need to add your email address, password and add the email settings.
Other than that, Gmail is great for setting filters and getting only the information you want without polluting the inbox section. There are lots of actions which can be applied, depending on the type of email you get:
Google Drive is a storage platform where you could save Docs, Sheets, Lists, images and other information that you think is valuable for you. It is very easy to use and can be synchronized with your smartphone to keep your data. You can store files on their up to 15 Gb for free.
Save business information, statistical data, presentations, documents, Excel files and whatever you want.
Google Cloud is a suite of cloud computing for secure storage and lots of useful integrations, such as data analytics products. Works very well with Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Drive. The service boasts with high security whether you build, create, code or store.
When you first sign up for an account, Google offers $300 for free to experiment with different products over a period of 12 months. There are endless solutions to use Google Cloud:
Google Contacts is a contact management tool that allows you to keep all your contacts in one place and add email, phone number, job title. Apply labels for more filtering options and a more segmented list.
Finding the right candidates can be hard. Google developed Hire, which helps small to medium businesses to share jobs, identify candidates, build a relationship with them and attract them to the company. It uses an applicant tracking system making the recruiting process easier and more engaging.
It has 4 management sections included:
Google Search Console provides valuable information regarding organic traffic, website performance and issues. Every webmaster should register their website into Search Console to have an accurate image of their users’ activity, especially because it’s a free to use service.
Search Console can offer valuable information that will help you get lots of insights. You can set up the next actions:
SpeedInsights is a testing tool that gives you recommendations to make your website load faster. Analyze the website and get instant results based on the mobile and desktop version.
The loading speed time is very important for user experience and can easily influence all future actions for a client. Every website should be verified and implement the recommendations. The improved PageSpeed Insights gives you directions on:
Mobile-Friendly Test is a stand-alone tool, which can give extra information beside Pagespeed Insights for mobile. It is mandatory, not even optional to have mobile-friendly websites if you want to thrive in your business. The web has more and more mobile users. Creating websites that are mobile friendly will make them suited for other devices and improve performance.
Add the domain URL, and the testing tool will analyze it. The results will say if the website is mobile friendly or not. For the second situation, the tool will give you some directions. Implement the instructions and run the test once again.
Since we’ve talked about mobile optimization, you can AMP to rank better on mobile. Accelerated Mobile Pages is a project designed by Google to make websites load faster and rank better in Google for mobile devices.
AMP is built for speed. Special design, effects and features are not important in the accelerated mobile page. There are three steps to setup AMP:
You need somebody with technical experience to setup AMP. Before finding somebody, you can test your AMP pages through the AMP testing tool and see what’s the status. The tool shows you if you have valid MAP pages or, on the contrary, the tested page doesn’t have AMP settings.
Structured Data Testing Tool helps you discover if the markup data is implemented correctly. It is the easiest way to view a result from your data and check if you set them right. Structured data markup is used by a website to make Google understand better the content on a page.
You’ll have to add the URL to the page that has structured data implemented and check it. After the analysis is over, the tool will be detected and let you know if it has any errors, warnings and items. In case you’ve done some wrong markup, then you’ll be able to see exactly what the issues are. Check out the next printscreen to see a wrong markup structured data setup. Instead of the actual name of the product is the URL.
Bad implementation and abusive structured data use will trigger the Structured Markup Penalty by Google. Make sure your website complies with the quality guidelines and the markup information is showing ok in SERP.
Rich Results Test is a tool that analyzes your public page to see which rich results can be generated by the structured data it contains. Below you can see an example of a page for Pink’s concerts.
The page is tested and for each Rich results, you get the number of warnings, if there are any. In our case, we found warning for some optional fields, such as:
If you have a website that uses or wants to use rich snippets for helping the user get to the most relevant shortcuts on the website, then rich snippets are a great integration. But, it’s important to generate them correctly.
There are two versions, Google Optimize which is the free version and Optimize 360 which is a premium testing. It is an integrated tool that offers A/B testing, website testing and tools for small businesses. Optimize helps every business to test and deliver more personalized experiences on the site.
You can use data from your accounts and there are three options available:
There are many situations and templates you could use for offering the right experience to your users. For example, you can create customized messages at checkout or redesign your homepage and a lot more.
Tag Manager is a system created by Google for a simpler way to manage JavaScript and HTML tags used for tracking and analytics on websites. The nice part of the tool is the fact that it gives you information on whether the tag is applied correctly or not. It is easier to install the Tag Manager than editing site code every time you want to add HTML/JavaScript snippets to your website.
You can add a tag from lots of Google tools, such as Analytics, Ads, Search Ads 360, Optimize, Google Surveys and a lot more or even customize. For each tool you’ll have a snippet that you need to add to header.php file.
As the name says it, Google offers a library of licensed fonts. The interactive web directory allows to add fonts in your account and use APIs for conveniently using the fonts via CSS and Android.
Google Fonts is an open-source and 100% free for commercial use. Download fonts for free or embed them in your website easily by selecting the fonts you like. You even get directions on how to add them on your website. Choose fonts that load fast to embed them into a webpage.
Google Domains helps you register for a domain, build a site, have web hosting and create a personalized email. The offers start at $12 per year depending on the domain ending or top-level domain and has no additional cost for more domains.
You have to search for a domain to see if the one you want doesn’t already exist. Google domains provides powerful tools and free integrations to have painless management of your domains and lets you choose how much personal contact information you share.
Either you’re trying to create editorial calendars, want to hire new members to your team, create friendly websites, make money online with your website and for your business, track results, create blogs, generate visitors through video and monitor your brand, there are lots of Google tools suited for every business.
Google Contacts is a contact management tool that allows you to keep all your contacts in one place and add email, phone number, job title. Apply labels for more filtering options and a more segmented list.
Finding the right candidates can be hard. Google developed Hire, which helps small to medium businesses to share jobs, identify candidates, build a relationship with them and attract them to the company. It uses an applicant tracking system making the recruiting process easier and more engaging.
It has 4 management sections included:
Google Domains helps you register for a domain, build a site, have web hosting and create a personalized email. The offers start at $12 per year depending on the domain ending or top-level domain and has no additional cost for more domains.
You have to search for a domain to see if the one you want doesn’t already exist. Google domains provides powerful tools and free integrations to have painless management of your domains and lets you choose how much personal contact information you share.
Either you’re trying to create editorial calendars, want to hire new members to your team, create friendly websites, make money online with your website and for your business, track results, create blogs, generate visitors through video and monitor your brand, there are Google tools suited for every action and business.
The post The Complete Google Marketing Tools List Every Business Should Know About appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.
