seo

Google’s Core Algorithm Updates and Copied Content: The Domino Effect of Negative Impact

There’s never a dull moment in Google Land. And that’s especially the case for health and medical sites over the past year starting with the Medic Update in August of 2018. Since then, we have seen several major core updates, which seem to include a new method of evaluating quality for health and medical sites. … Read more

NOT taking the (canonical) hint: How to estimate a low-quality indexing problem by page type using Google Analytics, Search Console, SEMrush, and Advanced Query Operators

During a recent crawl analysis and audit of a large-scale site that was negatively impacted by Google’s core updates, I surfaced an interesting SEO problem. I found many thinner and low-quality pages that were being canonicalized to other stronger pages, but the pages didn’t contain equivalent content. As soon as I saw that, I had … Read more

Google’s Core Algorithm Updates and The Power of User Studies: How Real Feedback From Real People Can Help Site Owners Surface Website Quality Problems (And More)

Google just rolled out another broad core algorithm update on June 3 (which was preannounced by Google’s Danny Sullivan.) And once again, the core ranking update was big. It wasn’t long before you could see significant impact from the update across sites, categories, and countries. Some sites surged, while others dropped off a cliff. And … Read more

Beyond The 1K Limit – How To Bulk Export Data From GSC By Search Appearance Via Analytics Edge (including How-to, Q&A, and FAQ)

Google has been releasing new features in the search results more and more recently that can have a big impact on SERP treatment, click-through rate, and potentially traffic. Three of those features are part of Google’s “best answer carousels” and include Q&A, How-to, and FAQ snippets. Q&A has been live for a while already, while … Read more

Exploring Google’s New How-to Snippets In Search And On Smart Displays: SERP Treatment, Fresh GSC Data, Video Templates, Monetization, and more

Google is always working to enhance features in the search results (SERPs). Over the years, we have seen the SERPs change from ten blue links to a mix of images, videos, featured snippets, one-box results, immersive mobile results, and more. There are many features beyond ten blue links now, which was covered by John Mueller … Read more

The March 12, 2019 Google Core Algorithm Update – A Softer Side Of Medic, Trust And The Link Graph, Quality Still Matters, And The Importance of the “Kitchen Sink”

In 2018, we saw three broad core ranking updates that caused massive volatility in the search results globally. Those updates rolled out in March of 2018, August of 2018 (Medic Update), and then late September of 2018. All three were huge updates, which sent some sites dropping off a cliff and others surging through the … Read more

7 Examples of Untrackable Clicks From Google’s Ecosystem of Search, Chrome, and Feeds

Information is powerful. And for SEOs, it can help inform, guide, and drive change. That’s why we’re always looking for more data from Google to better understand where traffic is coming from, what people are searching for, which elements in the search results are driving those clicks, and more. And that’s also why tools such … Read more

A Holly Jolly Load Balancer Christmas – How Google Treated A Major Site Performance Problem From A Crawling And Ranking Perspective [SEO Case Study]

Ah, the holidays. Who doesn’t love a festive atmosphere, ugly Christmas sweaters, eggnog, singing Christmas carols, and major performance problems that can take down your site? Wait, what was that last part??The holidays are always interesting for me SEO-wise. Every few years, I receive an SOS from a site owner right around Christmas Day based … Read more

Searching For Buried Treasure – How To Find More Of Your Featured Snippets Using Google Search Console (GSC), Analytics Edge, And SEMrush Position Tracking

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how to surface your featured snippets via SEMrush’s powerful SERP features widget. I love using SEMrush to plug in any domain and view (many of) the featured snippets it has. It’s a quick an easy way to conduct competitive analysis from a featured snippets standpoint. Remember, … Read more

How To Find The True Size Of Your Site Using GSC’s Index Coverage Reporting (And Why It’s Important For SEO)

So, how large is your site? No, how large is it really?? When speaking with companies about SEO, it’s not long before I ask that important question. And I often get some confused responses based on the “really” tag at the end. That’s because many site owners go by how many pages are indexed. i.e. … Read more

How To Use Scroll Depth Tracking, Adjusted Bounce Rate, and Average Time On Page As A Proxy For User Engagement and Content Quality

I was helping a company a few months ago that got hit hard by recent algorithm updates. When digging into the audit, there were a number of problems that were surfaced, including content quality problems, technical SEO problems, user experience issues, and more. From a content quality perspective, the site had an interesting situation. Some … Read more