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Setting website and SEO goals

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Here’s the real truth:

It is tough to prove ROI or that your effort in SEO is working IF you haven’t documented what your overall goals are.

Your goals will help everyone on your team be on the same page about what you’re doing and how ultimately it’s driving overall organization/business goals.

It’s also important to be clear about what those goals are since SEO tracking tools and web analytics tools often have to be set up IN ADVANCE to measure your goals and success. This is why the critical first step is to think about your goals EARLY in your SEO project.

It’s also important to have clear documented goals as it can help prioritize your work.

You’ll find that as soon as you start “doing” SEO, you’ll quickly discover there are a million moving parts and things to tackle. Your documented goals will help keep things in perspective.

So how do you set website and SEO goals?

The first step is to understand the business or organization you’re supporting.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

  • What are their business or mission goals?
  • Does the website support those goals?
  • How does organic traffic drive those website goals?
  • What keywords/topics do they want to appear for organically?
  • Who are their competitors?
  • Who is their ideal target audience and what do you want them to do when they arrive on the site?

Once you have a sense of how SEO lines up to the business, the next step is to set up your SEO KPIs and then measure them.

Wait…What’s a KPI?

A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator. It’s a specific measurement that moves up or down, and as a result of that movement, you take some action.

KPIs are:

  • Measures that help you understand how you are doing against your objectives.
  • Easy to understand
  • Lead to action

Here are examples of a well-worded KPIs. (Note there are specific numbers and date ranges):

  • Increase the number of visitors signing up for the email list or RSS feed by 10% month over month.
  • Increase the purchases and the average order value by returning visitors by 20% in by Q4.
  • Increase the share of search for top 10 target keywords by 10% by Q4 in 2013.
  • Decrease the bounce rate for visitors driven by top 10 target keywords by 10% by Q4.

You can find additional KPI examples and their associated reporting dashboards here to get you brainstorming.

Not sure if you’ve got the right KPIs in place?

Here’s a tip (coined by Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist):

Ask the metric “so what” 3 times, because each question provides an answer that usually raises a question. At the end of the 3rd question, you don’t get a recommendation for action, then you have the wrong metric.

Here’s the “so what” test in practice:

  • “The trend of repeat visitors for our website is up month to month.” – So what?
  • “This is fantastic because it shows that we are a more sticky website now.” – So what?
  • “We should do more of xyz to leverage this trend.” – So what?

If your answer is:

“I don’t know… isn’t that a good thing… the trend is going up… hmm… I am not sure there is anything we can do… but it is going up right?”

This might not be the best KPI for you.

Think about your business and what KPIs will work for you. Generally, they break down into goals around driving awareness, engagement on your site and conversions (leads, email signups, etc). They should also be something that helps you answer questions and drive improvements and action (if things are not improving).

Questions to ask to determine if KPIs are helping include:

  • Is my organic traffic improving?
  • Are visitors from search doing what I want them to do on my site?
  • What type of content on my site is getting the most traffic and why?
  • Which marketing channel is converting visitors most effectively?
  • IS my online visibility and brand awareness improving?
  • What referring links are bringing in the most traffic and how well are those visitors performing on the site?
  • How do we create more of those types of relationships?

Once you’ve documented your business goals, set your KPIs, and set them up in your tracking.

We then recommend that you measure your performance monthly (comparing against the month previous) to help you drive improvements over time.  It’s easiest to set up that reporting in Google Data Studio, which is free and has great templates to get you started.

Weekly Search & Social Updates June 25-July 8, 2018

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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a search news update -My family took a break for the entire July 4th week. We enjoyed the DC museums and, like the rest of the country, tried desperately to stay cool. There were so many updates this week that this post is longer than usual. So buckle in and let’s get to it!

Be careful with Meta refresh redirects – it can lead to indexing issues!
From one of the latest Google Webmaster Hangouts: Google Treats Meta Refresh as Redirect Meaning Wrong Content Might be Indexed. It turns out that Google treats a meta refresh as a redirect, which may mean the wrong page is indexed. For example, a news article page with a meta refresh to a login page will mean the latter is indexed rather than the actual content.

There is a new URL tool in Google Search Console
This is a new feature in Google Search Console that is rolling out – it can be found just below the sitemaps option on the sidebar. It allows you to individually inspect each URL on your site to see what details Google has on it (how it was crawled, how was it indexed, if it is seen as a canonical etc.). Google released a detailed help guide.

Google Search Console: You can add subdirectories
You can now add subdirectories to Google Search Console – which give you a much granular view of any issues on your site and will help you troubleshoot indexing issues by subdirectory. Super helpful if you’re working on a big site.

URL removal tool doesn’t remove the URL from indexing
The URL Removal Tool in Google Search Console instead justs hides pages in search but that those URLs are still crawled AND indexed. @JohnMu explains more here in a Google Webmaster Help thread.

If you are new to SEO & JS, then read this:
Really it’s a great article if you’ve never had to audit a site with JS on it (and if you haven’t yet, you will at some point as developers LOVE to use those JS frameworks).

I love this line:
“Key word: recommend, not implement. It’s 100% our job to flag the issue to our client, explain why it’s important (as well as the possible implications), and highlight an ideal solution. It is 100% not our job to try to do the developer’s job of figuring out an ideal solution with their unique stack/resources/etc.”

I agree! You can be an effective technical SEO even though you can’t recommend EXACTLY how they are going to fix the issue with their development situation.

Click depth matters for SEO
Google’s John Mueller revealed that more weight is given to pages in search results based on how many clicks it takes to get to them from a site’s homepage versus the URL structure.

The question was related to how many slashes in the URL, and in Mueller’s response, he stated that the number of slashes in a URL does not matter. However, he did focus on how many clicks it takes to get to a page from the homepage, and if there was only one click then Google would consider the page more important.

An HTTPs story
I’ve had quite a few clients come to me this year to get my help after a rocky HTTPS transition. If you’re curious about all of the SEO work involved in what seems like something that should be so simple, check out the story from how the BCC news transitioned.

All sites need to be HTTPs – or you’ll lose users

HTTPs warning
Related to transitioning to HTTPs….37.6% of Chrome users do not continue through SSL warning are Google’s results from a study about users and their interactions with browser warnings.

Updated ‘hreflang’ guidance from Google
You can read the updated guidelines for how to tell Google you have multiple languages on your site (or target different countries) here.

Google has stopped crawling AJAX scheme
If you’re on an old JS framework and haven’t transitioned this means you’re going to be facing even more SEO issues related to crawling and indexing of your site. You can read more about the update here.

 

Publishers: You need to let your users cancel their news subscriptions online
Thanks to a new California law that went into effect July 1, a news site (or other business) now has to let you cancel your subscription online. While it’s just a California law, it also applies to any company (or publisher) with paying customers in the state. More coverage here.

Publishers: A New Knowledge Graph Feature
Spotted in the wild: Google showing “topics they write about” in the Knowledge panel:

Optimizing your site’s page load speed?
You should check out Deepcrawl’s latest white paper – one of the most comprehensive tutorials on improving speed. Google also has a great guide on how to use its Chrome LightHouse tool.

Google says that it’s not reading Gmail messages
Except that if you’re an app maker, you have access to that data.

Claim your brand mentions and get a link!
Here’s a great tutorial that walks you through the process for contacting journalists and editors to get a link back to your site if your brand is mentioned.

How is your brand doing on social?

Brandwatch has released an update of their Social Index – the ranking of top brands by industry. You can check out the top performers in the https://www.brandwatch.com/the-social-index/public-sector government sector here. Worth a quick look to see what the social media leaders in your industry are doing.

Interested in a full social media competive benchmark? Drop me a line.

How to “do” SEO in a world where organic opportunity is disappearing
There is a great

WhiteBoard Friday from Rand Fishkin about optimization opportunities with Google even with less organic opportunity. Totally worth a listen.

5 Years of Google organic ranking signals
If you’re in SEO a must read from Bill Slawski – THE one in the industry that has been following Google patents for YEARS.

Related, I thought Will Critchlow’s Search Love San Diego presentation about Google’s history and patents was also enlightening.

Claim your organization’s Knowledge Panel
Google now lets you “verify” and claim your own Knowledge Panel. Rusty Brick walks through how he claimed his.

I’ll be speaking at VOICE!

Voice Summit logo

 

 

Last, but not least, I’ve been selected to speak at this year’s VOICE summit in NJ  (which is this month). I’m leading a session about SEO for voice search and I’ll be participating in a panel on the new rules of search and discovery. With over 150 speakers and 50 workshops, VOICE is the 3-day event for anyone interested in how voice search or voice commands will influence everything from development, technology, and marketing.

If you’re interested in attending, you can get 20% off your registration just for being part of my network and using the code TalkVoiceToMe. So, let me know if I’ll be seeing you there, and I’ll make sure to say hi!

Are you tracking all of your Organic traffic in Google Analytics?

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I saw this great article on Moz about Direct traffic by Tom Bennett the other day and it prompted me to write this post, which includes a checklist you can use to ensure that you’re tracking all of your organic search traffic (and SEO work!) in Google Analytics.

I also wanted to make sure that my clients and readers were aware of how Google Analytics’s recent changes will cause items which you might consider organic traffic to be delivered as referral sources instead.

Here’s how your organic traffic can be mislabeled (or missing) in Google Analytics:

Missing GA tracking code

If you launch a page and somehow forget to put GA tracking code on it, Google Analytics not only won’t be able to track interactions on that page but also won’t be able to track where the traffic came from.

To check to see if this is an issue for your site, check to see if you see your own website showing up as a referral source in your referral reporting, and you can also scan the GA tags on your site using Tag Inspector.

Conflicting GA code

Google Analytics can’t support two or more Google Analytics tracking codes on the page (unless they are being loaded from within Google Tag Manager) and if there are two or more codes on the page, it often results in a misfiring of the tags and a loss of data. This also occurs if there are 2 Google Tag Manager containers on the page.

You can check this by using the Google Tag Assistant plugin for Chrome.

Clicks from Google News

You might not be aware, but when someone clicks on your article in Google news, instead of showing up as an organic source, they will show up as news.url. google.com.

Conversely, if your article shows up in the Top Stories carousel like this:

Screenshot of news carousel

Then you’ll see that traffic in your organic reports in Google Analytics.

Clicks from Knowledge Graph Boxes

Most people don’t know, but when a user clicks on a link that shows up in those boxes, those visits show up as referrals from google.com in your referral reporting, not an organic traffic click.

Also, keep in mind that each time a user finds what they were looking for directly in the Knowledge Graph, it negates the need for them to visit the website, and that results in one less visit coming to the website from the branded keyword search.

Clicks from your Google My Business listing

Same as above, these clicks will show up as referrals from google.com unless you’ve used UTM tagging to adjust those links before you add your website link to your Google My Business listing. Same with Google Posts that you can post from your Google My Business listing.

Did you move to HTTPs without executing 301 redirects?

If you have a redirect from your HTTP page to your HTTPs page, your organic referral source is maintained. But what if you redirected using JavaScript, or didn’t use 301 redirects at all and just re-published all of your URLs as HTTPs? Well, you’ll lose the organic traffic source if anyone clicks on those indexed HTTP URLs, and that information will show up as direct instead. Additionally, you’ll lose all of the SEO organic rankings for your HTTP URLs as you effectively broke all of them and re-published them as HTTPs.

You can check this by running a crawl with your favorite crawl tool to see how many valid HTTP pages are surfaced.

Other redirect issues

Sometimes 302 redirects will drop the referrer, and (no matter what Google says you want to use a 301 redirect). Also, Meta refreshes and JavaScript redirects can wipe out your original referrer – replacing it with Direct as your traffic source. Those later redirects are also bad for SEO as well.

Curious as to what type of redirect you are using? You can surface this data by using a crawl tool like ScreamingFrog, Sitebulb, or Deepcrawl, or you can check this issue on a page by page basis by using the Chrome Redirect path plugin.

Links from Non-HTML documents

Links in Microsoft Word documents, slide decks or PDFs do not pass referrer information. you should be tagging the embedded hyperlinks with UTM campaign parameters.

Did you move to AMP?

Without proper configuration, you’re going to see those visits from some version of cdn.ampproject.org vs. Google organic. If you create a channel grouping report – pulling in all of the AMP clicked pages you can get a more complete set of metrics around how AMP is performing against your other marketing channels.

Incorrect UTM tagging

If you mess up using UTM tagging, Google Analytics will get confused and put that traffic into the direct reporting instead. While I encourage my clients to use a spreadsheet to track their UTM tagging usage and the very least you should use this online UTM tagging creator and keep track (in an internal document) of how you label your various parameters (including capitalization). That should cut down on the errors. And be careful when labeling “social media” as Google only takes particular labels for the medium parameter.

And please don’t use UTM tagging on your landing pages. That will destroy your data integrity and make digital marketers like me cry.

Dark Social

A large number of your users will share your content via private channels – their own email, a messaging app (like Facebook Messenger) and all of those platforms strip our your ability to track where your users have come from.

Or maybe your user opened up your URL from an email or social media app (like Facebook, Pocket, or the Google News app). When that happens, it’s basically as if they had simply copied and pasted that URL into their browser (unless you already use UTM campaign tagging for your social media posts, then Google will read those parameters you provided and assign the referrer properly).

Here’s an infographic about the impact of dark social:

graphic on percentage of dark social sharing
https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-direct-traffic-google-analytics

 

Groupon did a study in 2014 that showed that 60% of their Direct traffic was actually SEO traffic.

OK, but how do you fix all of these SEO traffic tracking issues?

  1. Check to make sure you have Google Analytics tracking on all of your pages.
  2. If you notice that you have many of these issues, you might need a full Google Analytics audit (and I can help you with that).
  3. Make sure you are using 301 redirects only (unless there’s a great reason to use a 302, like a user login page).
  4. Use UTM tagging properly and regularly on any link you place OFF your website, and on your non-HTML documents like Word docs or .pdfs.

What have you seen in your Google Analytics accounts? Do you think you’re effectively tracking all of your organic traffic?

Weekly Search & Social Updates June 1-15, 2018

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Dear Reader,

I’ve been gathering some great stuff to share with you over the last three weeks. I’m now back in the DC area from a wedding in Victoria, BC and from Search Love Boston. 

First – my SEO insight from the wedding: I counsel a few clients on international expansion and whether or not you need to purchase a global top-level domain (GTLD) to rank well in another country. The quick answer is no, not based on the Google algorithm, but allow me to give you an observation:

My dad used to run a sign shop, so I have a habit of always checking out signs wherever I am. I didn’t see .com on any of the signs while in Canada for the wedding. Instead, I saw .ca EVERYWHERE. So, while you could have a domain that is not .ca and rank in Canada, would you get the same type of clicks when everyone there is more familiar with .ca? Possibly not.

Ok let’s get into the news I think you should see:

One of the best histories of Google on the Internet
I was introduced to this presentation by Will Critchlow at Search Love Boston last week, but it’s honestly the best overview of Google patents, algorithm changes, and acquisitions I’ve seen since starting as an SEO. If you’re new to SEO (and haven’t been following the industry for over a decade like I have) this is your fastest way to get up to speed. It will help you take the long view of Google’s growth and help you evaluate Google’s motivations as they make announcements about algorithm changes. Consider this your essential reading for the week.

Tips for SEOs from Google I/O

Missed Google I/O?

Google IO 2018 logoThere’s a great write up by DeepCrawl about the presentations that will impact SEO. It includes great tips on how to improve page speed and how to use the Chrome Lighthouse tool. Also included are some great insights about PWAs and how Google handles JavaScript. If you’re looking for the CliffsNotes for Google I/O and don’t have time to watch the videos, this is it.

Search ranking factors that matter
If you struggle with how to prioritize SEO recommendations, make sure to bookmark this. This is most readable and accurate search ranking factors post I’ve seen in a long time. It comes with a handy infographic you can post on your wall.

New EU ruling impacts global companies that redirect users.
The European Union has announced it will end “unjustified” geoblocking within 9 months of passing GDPR (which went into effect last month). You’ll have to make changes if a German user types yourdomain.com and you’re using GeoIP redirects to send them to yourdomain.de. There are lots of things to consider checking on your own site.

Managing an Instagram account?

Instagram
Photo by Luke van Zyl on Unsplash

Then you should be up to speed on how its algorithm works. The upshot is that your personalized feed is based on your interest, recency, and relationship. Additionally, they look at how often you open Instagram, who you are following and your Instagram usage.

Using Google for SEO Research
Ahrefs has put together this great guide for advanced search operators that you can use in Google to help you find content ideas, link building options, check indexation, spy on how often your competitors are updating their site, etc. I’m bookmarking this one. You should, too!

37 Different Search Engine Results Pages
I knew the number had grown. This is the reason why you need to look at the SERPs for each topic you want to rank for BEFORE you start plannig what type of content you’re going to create:

Google app for Podcasts
Google is preparing to launch their own dedicated Podcast App for Android. Users will be prompted to download the app when searching in Google Assistant.

URL Parameters Tool does not block crawling
Google clarified that the URL Parameters Tool in Google Search Console will give Google guidance on how to handle parameters, but it does not work like the robot.txt file and block crawling of those URLs.

Google provides more guidance on Web Light pages
When your site is loading too slow on mobile phones with slow connections, Google will transpose your site into something that performs better on those connections. They clarified how Web Light works in this post:

As an FYI, I would look at your Google Analytics reports as their update also clarifies that they don’t execute all Google Analytics tags (like event tracking) on those pages. If you have a huge audience that is getting Web Light pages, this might be the time to improve your page speed.

Google answers questions about mobile first indexing
Google made some clarifications related to mobile-first indexing based on what they were hearing at SMX Advanced this week. Search Engine Land compiled all of the updates into one post.

Soon! A browser that can read the Internet to you
I personally can’t wait for this one. I don’t know how many times I’ve had a burning question while driving, and while I can use Google Assistant to ask a question, I then need to read the answer on screen (dangerous while driving, and not something I do).

It turns out the creator of Firefox is working on a voice-controlled browser that can read to you.

Google launches “Talk to Books”
In a similar vein, Google has also recently launched a “Talk to Books” feature where the AI-powered tool will scan every sentence in 100,000 volumes in Google Books and generate a list of likely responses with the pertinent passage bolded. Of course, this is the brainchild of Ray Kurzweil (in case you were wondering what he’s been up to at Google).

Another EU law that would potentially impact US businesses
Not as well advertised, but the EU is also working on trying to pass a law that would levy a tax against anyone who links to a news article. You would need to proactively get a license what would be active for 20 years after the news publisher published the story. You can read the background here and take action against this law here. They are planning a vote on June 20th or 21st, 2018, so make your voice heard!

Discounts for Voice Summit in New Jersey

Google Home, voice speaker
Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

I’m speaking at the VoiceSummit.ai next month in Newark, NJ about voice search. If you’re interested in attending, make sure to use my 20% discount code: TalkVoiceToMe. And drop me a note so that we can connect while I’m there!

That’s it from me this week. I hope you have a great week!

Katherine Watier Ong signature

 

 

 

Katherine

WOStrategies.com

What does it take to get into Google news?

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I’ve counseled quite a few clients (RollCall.com, WattAgNet, and others) about how to get their sites into Google News and I wanted to share those best practices with my readers.

A word of caution, however – Google makes the decision to include you based on an algorithmic evaluation, which means that there are NO humans at Google you can talk to and who could troubleshoot why you are not included. The best you can do is follow their requirements and best practices closely.

So without further ado:

Here are the requirements and best practices for getting into Google News:

(If you are short on time, you can just download my Google news requirements spreadsheet).

At a high level, it takes the following to be indexed and ranked in Google news. All of these items are based on Google’s guidelines and industry research.

This is what Google says:

Ranking in Google News is determined based on a number of factors, including:

Additionally, we know that these factors are also critical for high Google News ranking:

  • Meeting Google’s quality content guidelines, and news sites are considered Your Money or Your Life pages, so the bar for content quality is higher and includes transparent and robust information about the authors of each news article.
  • A fast loading, mobile usability site.
  • Clean XML news sitemap files that have unique, permanent article URLs that can be extracted by Google newsbot.
  • News schema markup and relevant subscription markup on your pages.
  • Accurate on page <title>, <h1> and <alt> tag markup.
  • Inbound links.
  • Social shares.
  • Links out to other reputable sites.
  • On page engagement and click through rate from SERPs.

Search Metric’s Media Ranking Factors study is the most recent industry study on Google news ranking factors highlights the following factors that impact ranking:

Search Metric's ranking factors for media findings

There are a few technical elements that you need to make sure are set up properly as well, including:

Your news article URLs:

  • They need to permanent, unique URLs that you are not recycling or republishing at a later date. Here’s more from Google’s help files.
  • Each URL in your news sitemap file needs to have content that is long enough and quality enough to be included in Google news.

 

You should create a News XML Sitemap file.

The Google News XML sitemap format is different than your regular sitemap. Here’s an example of that format:

Google News XML Sitemap format

Here are some other things to keep in mind:

  • The sitemap needs to be less than 1,000 URLs
  • Should only include URLs for articles published in the last 2 days.
  • And it should update with fresh articles as they’re published.

Submitting to your articles to Google

Google now has 2 ways to submit your content for inclusion in Google News. You can sign up and license your content to Google News through the Google News Producer tool.

You can also submit your website for inclusion through the Google News Publisher Center. Even if you don’t do either, they might find your news content via a regular web crawl, especially if you have submitted that news formatted XML sitemap to Google via your Google Search Console account.

More about the new Google News Producer Tool

There seem to be quite a few benefits of signing up for this new tool. First of all, it gives you WAY more options to manipulate how your content appears in Google news searches and the Google Play Newsstand Android and IOs apps.

Google News Producer screenshot - Edition settings

Note that you can set your logo and logo colors as well as contact information.

Also, you get additional analytics out of the box when you associate your Google Analytics account including automatic tracking of the following user actions:

  • Reading an article
  • Viewing an ad
  • Bookmarking an article
  • Viewing an edition’s section
  • Interacting with content on common screens (e.g. Read now, Search, and Explore)

Google News Producer Screenshot - sections

Again, a ton more options – associating an RSS feed, your social handles, your news photos, etc. You can also associate the font families that you use:

Google News Producer screenshot - Media Library

It also allows you to control the distribution with other Google products is also new, as is the ability to set your language and target language.

Google News Producer screenshot- distribution

And there are new troubleshooting features that you don’t have in the old Google News interface, as News Producer allows you to troubleshoot your content directly in the Google Play Newsstand apps.

Google News Producer screenshot - Publish

You have the ability to manage your on-site ads within this interface as well.

Google News Producer screenshot - ads

Only give Google-News bot access to your news articles via crawls


Google wants to ensure that Googlebot-Newscan only crawls news content – both on your site and via your sitemap file. You want to make sure that you only block Googlebot-News crawling of your non-news content, not the non-news Googlebot crawler. More about how to execute that here.

Block Googlebot-News crawling to any pages that are not news

You can either do this via your robots.txt file (if all of the content is in a particular folder), or you can add a meta tag to all non-news pages with the following formats:

Here are some common meta tags you can add to your HTML pages:

To prevent specific articles on your site from appearing in Google News, block access to Googlebot-News using the following meta tag: <meta name=”Googlebot-News” content=”noindex, nofollow”>

To prevent specific articles on your site from appearing in Google News and Google Search, block access to Googlebot using the following meta tag: <meta name=”googlebot” content=”noindex, nofollow”>

To prevent specific articles on your site from being crawled by all robots, use the following meta tag: <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow”>

To prevent robots from crawling images on a specific article, use the following meta tag: <meta name=”robots” content=”noimageindex”>

To inform us that an article should be removed from the Google index at a certain time, use the following meta tag:
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”unavailable_after: 25-Aug-2011 15:00:00 EST”>

Specify the time and date in RFC 850 format. This meta tag is treated as a removal request. It takes about a day after the removal date passes for the page to disappear from the search results. However, for the tag to function properly, it must be included with your article when it’s first crawled.

Make sure you have fast loading article pages

People looking at news on their phone
Photo by +Simple on Unsplash

Google uses your sitemap file to discover new URLs to add to its crawling quota and then ultimately it’s index. You need to make sure that your pages load quickly enough so that Google Mobilebot can discover the URLs. You can check your mobile page speed with on the Think with Google site, using Chrome’s LightHouse audit tool, via your Google Analytics page speed timing report, or by running the site/page through GTMetrix.com.

You want to aim for a page that loads in two seconds or less. The GTMetrix and LightHouse reports will give you tons of specific things to do to improve your page speed.

Use Structured Data Markup

Make sure that your news articles use the news article markup.

Proper structured data in your news, blog, and sports article page can enhance your appearance in Google Search results. Enhanced features include entry in a top stories carousel and rich result features such as headline text and larger-than-thumbnail images.
(Google’s implementation instructions are here.)

Here’s what the articles would look like with the markup:

Check to see if your competitors are using AMP

This is where you should check to see if you’re still ranking, but not being rewarded with top rankings based on your competitor activity.

Are you competitors using AMP and being included in the news carousel and you are not? Are your competitors using other types of structured data markup that is giving them an advantage? You can check by using Google’s Structured Data testing tool.

Not in Google News (and you feel like you meet the above criteria)?

Here are some things you can check:

1. Have you checked whether your content quality meets the content quality for Google News guidelines?
Here’s more about that issue from Google’s help files:

According to our analysis, having many low-value-add URLs can negatively affect a site’s crawling and indexing. We found that the low-value-add URLs fall into these categories, in order of significance:

Google goes on to finish by stating:

Wasting server resources on pages like these will drain crawl activity from pages that do actually have value, which may cause a significant delay in discovering great content on a site.

2. Do you have aggressive server errors?
Server errors can also cause a problem on larger sites:
Again, more from Google:

“If the site responds really quickly for a while, the limit goes up, meaning more connections can be used to crawl. If the site slows down or responds with server errors, the limit goes down and Googlebot crawls less. Even if the crawl rate limit isn’t reached, if there’s no demand from indexing, there will be low activity from Googlebot.”

3. What if you are in the Google News Publisher network, but can no longer find your articles in Google News?

Here are the things that you should check:

  • Log into your account and check to make sure that Google is not having issues with your news XML sitemap file.
  • Check to make sure Google News-bot can extract your articles by using the troubleshooting tool within your Google News Publisher account.

Here is a sampling of the type of errors you might see:

Article disproportionately short

Uncompression failed

Extraction failed

Here’s more from Google about the specific crawl errors:

3. Does your site have mobile usability issues?
The site currently has mobile usability issues and considering that mobile usability is a larger ranking factor for news sites (see Google’s announcement here), this area is impacting indexing and ranking for mobile search queries:

4. Are your bio pages for your authors too thin?
Google has somewhat recently added News articles are now considered Your Money or Your Life pages as you can see from their latest Google Human Rater Guidelines. This means that there is a higher bar for what it expects on your bio pages, and depending on what type of news site you are, perhaps Google expects even more information about the expertise and authoritativeness of your authors.

Here’s a strong example of a good bio page:

Example of a good bio page from the NY Times

And here’s more from Google’s guidelines about what they are looking for:

Users tell us they value news sites with author biographies and clearly accessible contact information, such as email and physical addresses, and phone numbers.

Here’s more from a Google News Help forum answer:

Does the person or organization has sufficient expertise in the topic? If expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness is lacking, experts use the Low rating to your site.

In news, you need to specify an author attribution. The author is an always human (an individual reporter), not a company name or website. (You need to) create a separate profile page for authors. Specify the author’s name, a photo, a biography, his/her office address and phone number, Email…. On each article (news), you include a byline with the author’s full name and an author short bio below with a faceshot.

If there is no author bio, thus no indication the author is a professional journalist or an expert in the field. On (the about) page (Contact), you need to specify company name, office address, office phone number, office E-mail, business time, editor’s name.

5. Did you recently move to HTTPs?
Did you set up a new account with Google News for your HTTPs version of the website? If not you will see an error when Google crawls your https sitemaps like this:

Here are Google’s news publisher recommendations for when you change your domain (or move to HTTPS):

When you plan to change your domain name, let us know Changing your site’s domain without notifying us may cause your site to be dropped from our news index. In order to give yourself the best possible chance of avoiding an interruption in crawling, please follow these steps:

After the switch is completed, submit the URL of your new site. Depending on the nature of your website change, our team will give you next steps. For certain types of changes, we change your site URL immediately. For others, we must review your site for quality purposes. After the change is made, you can verify that articles from your new domain are included.After verifying ownership for your new domain, update our record of your section URLs and associated labels within the Google News Publisher Center. If you’re using a Google News Sitemap (recommended) create your news sitemap with your new domain, and resubmit it in Search Console.

6. Did you update your sitemap file in Google News to HTTPS?
Is your old sitemap file still valid? DId you add your new https sitemap file to your new HTTPS Google News Publisher account?

Your new HTTPs news sitemap file can generate errors if the name in the sitemap file and they are not registered in your Google News Publisher account. Here’s what that error looks like:

Additionally, here are Google’s recommendations around how the sitemap file needs to match the domain:

The protocol you use in your sitemap should match the protocol of your site URL in the Publisher Center (e.g., if the URLs in your sitemap start with https://, the URL listed in the Publisher Center should also start with https://). If you need to change the protocol of your site URL to make it consistent with your sitemap, contact us.

&. Are you handing your subscription-based content in a Google-friendly way? 

Woman staring at a wall

Here are Google’s recommendations about how to handle subscription sites properly.

Sites with paywalls are strongly encouraged to apply the new structured data to their pages, because without it, the paywall may be interpreted as a form of cloaking, and the pages would then be removed from search results.

There are only two options Google recommends for handling subscription content: daily metering or lead-in.

Daily metering
We recommend that publishers start by providing 10 free clicks per month to Google search users in order to preserve a good user experience for new potential subscribers. Publishers should then experiment to optimize the tradeoff between discovery and conversion that works best for their businesses.

Lead-in
Lead-in is generally implemented as truncated content, such as the first few sentences or 50-100 words of the article. Lead-in allows users a taste of how valuable the content may be. Compared to a page with completely blocked content, lead-in clearly provides more utility and added value to users.

To indicate that you are either providing metered or lead-in content you need to adjust the schema markup on the page.

Here’s an example of the proper markup to use for subscription content: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool and here’s the developer resources for implementing the proper code.

Note that Google has also rolled out Subscribe with Google which is currently in beta with a few first-mover publishers, expect that the functionality will be available to more publishers in the future.

Need help diagnosing your Google news ranking issues?

Drop me a line and we can take a look!

Filed Under: SEO

Weekly Search & Social Updates May 14-18, 2018

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*Quick note from the author*

You might notice this isn’t a normal blog post. You see, I’ve been emailing my list search and social tips each week for the last year. I realized I should probably share them with a larger audience. I’m also transitioning email marketing systems, so this seemed like a great way to transition from sharing weekly tips via email to a broader audience.  So it here goes – the weekly search and social news I don’t think you should miss from last week:

Meta Descriptions have shrunk
Even though they have been allowing us to use 300 characters since December, it seems as though they are now 150-160 characters. Google tells us that they are dynamic. Here’s more about what to do with the changing meta description challenge.

Google has new recommendations for pre-rendering JavaScript content
This came out of the Google 1/0 conference last week, but if you’re like me and tend to audit sites that use JavaScript for navigation (or to render the entire site), then I have some required reading for you. There’s a great summary which includes clarifying tweets from Google Reps and a video from Google 1/0 on the subject here.

What makes this summary so helpful is the clarifying tweets from Google reps and a video from Google 1/0. The major takeaways from the video and IRL are:

  1. Initially, Google will only index the HTML and the rendered HTML may lag for a few days.
  2. Meta tags will only be indexed from raw HTML.
  3. You need to use a pre-rendering or dynamic rendering solution to get JS indexed
  4. (New) Google recommends showing different (fully rendered content) to GoogleBot

Google also updated their mobile friendly and rich result testing tools for troubleshooting JS indexing.

If you’re ramping up on JS crawling and indexing, this is really the most comprehensive tutorial I’ve seen on the web to date.

Google News ends support for Editor’s picks and stand out tag
This is because they are powering those features with AI within the Google News app. Find out more about the announcement from Google.

The 10 Ranking Factors we know to be true
I love the mention of searcher’s intent (and the references!) in this great article by Kevin Indig.

Need to ramp up on PWA & AMP?
Check out this PWA AMP page put together by Aleyda Solis. If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of guides, resources and examples then look no further.

New research on snippets & voice search
The Roast team ran a study looking at the featured snippet answer box and whether it matched the answer Google Assistant read out loud. It was quite detailed as it ran across 22 verticals and ran over 10,000 key phrases over the month of April 2018. Not only that, but they also gathered ranking data on the same day from web search results. Fascinating stuff. You should grab a report.

Why you can’t just trust keyword volume estimates
This! This! This! Read this study!

I spent quite a bit of time explaining this very concept to some of my clients recently. Keyword research is more complicated than it used to be. Check out the data & research and if you’re still confused, sign up for my training, or ping me if you need a full team trained.

GDPR- You need to ramp up now
This is European law which becomes active next month, and even though it’s European law it is really impacting almost everyone. It also comes with hefty fines for non-compliance.

New to what GDPR is and how it might impact you? The best way to ramp is to watch this video and read this scenario of how a user’s request might impact your business. I would also recommend reading this article that walks you through the steps you need to take.

Need to know if a particular page on your site is indexed?
Google always recommends checking Google Search Console (but we know that it’s often a sample), and the site: command is not reliable anymore, but there’s a new tool on the block that is more reliable (and free). Check it out: https://www.greenlanemarketing.com/tools/google-indexation-tester/

Live stream recording from BrightonSEO

Didn’t get a chance to attend BrightonSEO? Maybe because you were moving (like me), or maybe because it was across the pond? Don’t worry – there’s a live stream recording you can check out. If you’re still trying to wrap your head around keyword research or deciphering searcher’s intent, there are two great sessions about those topics. You can get the live stream AND the speaker slides here.

Speaking of SEO Conferences…

I’m heading to Search Love Boston in early June this year. If you’re in the Boston area, let’s make plans to connect!

That’s it from me. I recently moved and really need to get back to unpacking. Once my office is unpacked, I promise to start doing video tutorials again on SEO tips & tricks. Let me know if you have any burning SEO questions you might have as I’m still thinking about which SEO tips I’ll record first.

Katherine

Getting a Google Knowledge Panel

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Are you interested in getting a knowledge panel for your brand, but not sure where to get started? 

I’ve outlined the areas you’ll need to focus on below, but ultimately this is a feature that Google rewards to entities that it recognizes as a brand.

Google will think of you as a brand if you are searched for by sonsumers, are mentioned in the press, are a publicly held company that trades on the stock market or are a part of some other notable list of successful brands. However, the specific details about how to exactly generate the “brand signals” Google favors are a bit of a black box.

But let’s get started with what we DO know.

What is a Knowledge Panel?

They first rolled out in 2012 and they look like this on desktop search:

Google describes how and why they display Knowledge Panels:

Google Search also delivers structured search experiences that respond to different user search intents—or types of queries. These responses range from lists of results for list-seeking queries to clustered facts for specific entity queries. For example…an entity query for a movie like “Interstellar” can result in content grouped around that entity to encourage deeper exploration, such as showing critic review snippets from various sites
— Google’s developer guide

What triggers the Knowledge Panels to appear?

Generally, Google needs to recognize your brand as an entity.  It has to have a variety of trust and verification signs. You can see if your brand is currently considered an entity by searching the Knowledge Graph API database.

I’ve provided those instructions below:

Google’s Knowledge Graph Search API
The Knowledge Graph Search API can be accessed via the Google API Explorer homepage.

Visit https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/ and search for Knowledge Graph.

Then click on the Knowledge Graph Search API which will then take you to the following page:

Click on the item above which will take you to the Search Entities Page, here: https://developers.google.com/apis-explorer/#p/kgsearch/v1/kgsearch.entities.search

On the Search Entities Page, you will see a variety of query parameters. To learn about these parameters click here.

However, you do not need to use all the parameters to conduct a search query, just simply use the “query” field. As outlined in the image above, enter a keyword, phrase or name into the query field and click on the execute button. For this example, I searched for my name “Katherine Watier Ong” and here are the results.

And when I do the same search for “CreativeDrive” you’ll notice that I get a blank result:

It’s important to note the score of the results as the higher the number, the more relevant you are if you are competing with other companies/people who also have your name. Another interesting thing to note is the @id (MID: machine-generated identifier) which is originated from Freebase.com. My results highlight the MID /m/0015c2pw.

There are different types of Knowledge Panels

Sometimes Google will display a brand Knowledge Panel or a local Knowledge Panel based on what was searched. The Knowledge Panels above are brand Knowledge Panels.

Below is an example of a local Knowledge Panel which is pulled from the brand’s Google My Business (maps) listing:

And it looks like this on mobile:

A local Knowledge Panel is triggered by brand searches that Google thinks is just a local business. Here’s more from Google about its local business panel.

It helps if you mark up your site as a local business. Here’s Google’s documentation on how to markup your site to potentially appear with a local business knowledge card.

Keep in mind that it is unlikely that even if you had a strong brand that you will be able to replace your local Knowledge Panel with your Brand Knowledge Panel across all searches, as Google pivots the results based on the searcher’s intent.

Where does Google get its data for Knowledge Panels?

Knowledge Panels (aka results from the Knowledge Graph), like Knowledge Cards, extract semantic data from a number of sources including human-edited sources like WikiData, data extracted from the Google index, and private data partnerships. All Knowledge Panel results are either based on human-edited data or appear as a result of data agreements with partners. For these reasons, sometimes getting a Knowledge Panel is not possible for some sites. 

What is not a Knowledge Box/Panel?

There are a variety of other enhanced search elements that could get confused with a Knowledge Box. 

Featured Snippets

These usually appear on the top of search results as an instant answer to a question and are pulled from the text on one of the URLs that are ranking on the first page of Google:

 

Sitelinks:

Sitelinks appear when someone searches for an exact domain (suggesting clear brand intent).

In this case, Google may display an expanded pack of up to 10 site links if the site is using structured data markup, has clear breadcrumbs, or there is a clear user pattern of searching and clicking on those subpages.

How do I work on proactively getting a Knowledge Panel?

There are some  signals that indicate to Google that it makes sense to show a brand Knowledge Panel for users searching for your brand:

    1. Be a brand and get mentions from where Google pulls its data
      The first step: Claim the brand name for your corporate headquarters and all locations across the major social media platforms. This includes claiming, creating and optimizing a Google+ brand page and associated YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Vimeo, Slideshare, etc.You should claim profiles on Glassdoor and other recruiting sites and any local business directories that make sense for your particular business.  Additionally, Google often pulls its data from Wikidata and Wikipedia, so having a listing there is essential. If you need a Wikidata entry or Wikipedia page, ping me and I can introduce you to my Wikipedia editor.Finally, take note of your competitors and which queries trigger their brand Knowledge Panels vs Local Knowledge Panels. Check to see where those competitors are listed (Wikipedia, Google+, Twitter, etc) as well as what industry lists your competitors are being mentioned on, and try to get mentions/links on those lists for your brand.
    2. Have a mobile-friendly website without any major technical issues so that it loads quickly
      If you’re a multi-location business, make sure each site has its own unique location page optimized for structured data as mentioned below. These pages are essential to search engines, particularly Google, and are valuable to your visitors.
    3. Create search demand for your brand
      You need to engage your audience with larger marketing campaigns and use tools like Google my Business posts on your local office’s Google My Business pages to draw searcher’s in. Google Posts allow businesses to publish offers, promote events, make reservations or allow customers to buy a product or service, learn more or sign up all from the first page of search results or from the Google maps listing.
    4. Implement Structured Data Markup on your site
      At a bare minimum, Google will be looking for “Organization” and “sameas” markup on your homepage or contact page.Google outlines the details around how to use this markup in their help article, but here are the big takeaways.The Markup should include an Organization record that includes a URL (the URL of your official website) and “sameas” (the URL of your official social media profile pages). Here’s an example of what that markup looks like. It should be placed on your homepage or your about page.If you’re on WordPress, you can implement this markup (and others) by using the SchemaApp plugin.Other markups you might want to consider include your Organization Contact number, and your corporate logo.

      If you have a multi-location business, you should add “sameas” markup for every business you own on the homepage for each business location, or on each contact page that lists each office location. There’s a great article here with more information on how to implement that markup correctly.

Once you get a Knowledge Panel, how do you get more features displayed?

The Knowledge Panel will become more in-depth the stronger your brand becomes. Google takes signals from your social media activity, social engagement, the number of Google searches for your name and mentions across the web.

How long does it take for me to get a Knowledge Panel after I fix everything?

Knowledge Panels can take weeks or months to show up.  Sometimes they don’t show up at all, especially if the website isn’t old enough or if there are not enough signals to tell Google your organization is important.

It’s worthwhile to put in the work to help Google understand that you are a brand and that brand stands for certain things. Even if you are not immediately rewarded with a  Knowledge Panel, this effort will help search engines better present you in search results.

Like everything in organic search, however, keep in mind that you’re competing for visibility with other brands. Is your website as comprehensive and as user-friendly as competitors? If you’re having trouble getting a Knowledge Panel, check to see if you’ve tackled all of the best practices and then check per keyword to see what insights you can glean about why other competitors are getting a Knowledge Panel and you are not.

What has been your experience working to get a Knowledge Panel for your brand? I’d love to hear. Leave a comment below!

Filed Under: SEO

Please call it social media: Social media UTM tracking gone awry

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Ok. Let’s talk social media UTM tracking.  If you’re unfamiliar with what UTM tracking is in Google Analytics, please read this first.

Now that we’re all on the same page – it’s time for a Public Service Announcement.

I am seeing clients getting way too creative with their UTM tagging and as a result, they are limiting the usefulness of their Google Analytics reporting.

If you are seeing a category called “other” in your Google Analytics channel grouping reports, your UTM tracking might be off and there might be a very simple reason why. 

Here’s the type of thing you DON’T want to see and that should lead you to take another look at your UTM tracking:

Google Analytics - other in Channel reports

In many cases, the channel grouping report is not capturing all the social media traffic coming to a site because the UTM tracking is re-assigning the creatively tagged social media traffic, rendering it unreadable by Google. Those visits get put into the “other” traffic bucket in your acquisition reporting.

In order for Google Analytics to recognize and properly file social media traffic appropriately in the “social” channel in the reporting, the medium (tag) needs to be one of the following labels:

social, social-network, social-media, sm, social network, social media

All other label variations, including [brand]socialmedia for example, will automatically be reassigned to the “other” channel.

If you are interested in tracking just your site’s social media posts and how successful they are in driving traffic to the website, you should modify the UTM campaign content variable, NOT the medium (see above).

In UTM tracking,

The campaign name:

Should be the name of your overall marketing campaign push. For example,  you could use the campaign variable fall2018ask which you will then push out to your audience via multiple channels.

In UTM tracking,

The source:

This is the platform the link is pushed out onto – for example, Facebook, Google, newsletter, etc.

It’s best to track all of your tracked links that have UTM tagging in them, and Annie Cushing has a great UTM tracking spreadsheet that you can use to organize your tagging efforts.

The campaign content:

Can be whatever you like. It’s often used for differentiating two types of display ads, but it can also be used to track content that you put paid promotion behind on social media (for example) vs something that you just post and see how it performs organically.

What’s the impact of clean channel reporting?

It powers these powerful reports that help you make decisions about which marketing effort is delivering the most ROI:

Multi-Channel Funnel Grouping Assisted Conversions:

Google Analytics Assisted Conversion Reports

Top conversion paths:

And conversion model comparison reporting:

So, if you are creating UTM tags, make sure to use the default labels that Google can read for “medium” to ensure the reporting is clean and accurate. You can find a full list of what those default labels are in Google Analytics’ help files here.

Happy measuring!

Time Saving Keyword Research Tools I’m using in 2018

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I’ve been digging deeper into keyword research for a few clients over the last month or so – focusing on trying to find the heart or seed keyword that they can use for their optimization plans. Along the way, I’ve found a few really interesting (and new to me) tools that I thought I would share – in some cases I’ve created a few videos to show you how the tools work.

Keyword Research Brainstorming
AnswerthePublic.com is a tool that I thought everyone had heard of, but I brought it up in conversation the other day and it seems as though not everyone has tried it. It helps you visualize keywords in a new industry. I open up this tool in the early stages of keyword brainstorming.

I also use Google Adwords Keyword Planner and put on the site to see what terms it will surface.

Google Keyword Planner screenshot

I also ask the client about their competitors (SEO Quake’s Chrome plugin is great for scraping the terms from competitor pages. I am also a fan of Ahref’s content gap report and Keyword Everywhere’s Chrome plugin), industry magazines, journals, and conferences. Simply check what terms your competitor’s sites or industry sites use and see if you can capitalize on those terms.

Google Trends
When you search for a term on Google Trends, you can then pivot to just US queries and then check out the “related terms” to see if there are any additional terms you may have missed. Here is an example.

Focusing on terms with volume
Ahrefs & Moz – both have great keyword data sets. I tend to use Ahrefs more now since it has surfaces keywords with lower volume. I don’t use Google Adwords Keyword Tool anymore as it’s data is unreliable.

Also, SEMRush now has keyword research functionality as well that I’m testing out. [affiliate link] You should check them out. They have great data on keyword volume per keyword overtime which I think is really useful:

SEMRush-screenshot-keywordresearch

Brainstorming with keyword suggestions
Keywords Everywhere is a great tool that overlays Google Suggest terms while you’re searching and in your Google Analytics reports. It also has a database that will pull YouTube and Amazon searches for you. I have a “how to” video here:

Eliminating keywords based on searcher’s intent
I’ve seen across many clients that you can achieve top rankings without having the most backlinks if you really nail the searcher’s intent for the keyword. Not sure how to get started with searcher’s intent? Check out my blog post here.

Mapping keywords to pages that are ranking & finding gaps
You can pull reports from Google Search Console.

Alternatively, you can use SEMRush or Ahrefs to quickly give you a list of pages that are ranking for target keywords. You can then compare your target keyword list and see where you have gaps. Then, you can use Google to find a page that is close to ranking for the term to optimize first instead of starting from scratch.

If you happen to have Tableau, this approach is amazing: this article related to visualizing keyword research, but for most folks tableau is pretty cost restrictive.

Helping you group keywords topically
Most folks I talk to do this manually, but I like to speed up my work with tools as much as possible. Along those lines, I found the following tools that I’m trying:

https://topvisor.com/
https://www.wordstream.com/keyword-grouper
https://trevorfox.com/keyword-visualization-tool/
https://mazen-app.com/keyword-research-stop-wasting-time-digging-keyword-suggestion-tools-excel/

Creating a writing brief per keyword
After the keyword grouping phase, I then distill the information into a brief that highlights all of the competitive and searcher’s intent data per keyword. This provides clear guidelines for writers to follow (including supportive keywords) before they start writing on the topic. I provide a complimentary copy of my writing brief to site members here.

A side note about YouTube keyword research
Keywords being used by searchers on YouTube are different, and I’m currently trialing these two tools to find appropriate keywords for a client:

KeywordTool.io:

https://vidiq.com/
https://www.tubebuddy.com/

Do you have tools that you love to use for keyword research?

Let me know in the comments!

Filed Under: SEO

Supporting Girls and Tech

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Here at WO Strategies, we are committed to #givingback to our community each month. It’s something that we take seriously as a family and as a business. I was raised with these values and it’s impossible to ignore the responsibility of giving back personally and professionally to the community.

In December, we found a family friendly volunteer activity at a nonprofit we’ve volunteered with previously. Food and Friends is a group that focuses on the critically ill in our area and ensures that they have good quality food that is delicious and nutritious.

Food and Friends

We assisted with food delivery to their clients and our toddler really enjoyed helping with food delivery and brought smiles to quite a few faces!

#GiveBack

During the month of January, we worked hard to find a volunteer opportunity that was family friendly, especially on MLK day. However, we discovered the events that would have allowed us to volunteer as a family (including 2 small children) were either huge overwhelming events or outside in the cold.

So, we decided to donate this month, inspired by my daughter’s interest in space.

See, last month my daughter got the best care package. My sister-in-law met the Deputy Director of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Clayton Turner , when he was speaking at a Washington DC area alumni event for the Rochester Institute of Technology. By the way, the Langley Research Center is where the movie “Hidden Figures” was set, my daughter’s favorite movie.

Hidden Figures

She happened to tell him how excited my daughter was about space. So he went back to the center, packed up a box, and sent it to my daughter. This surprise package that arrived in the mail had an impressive amount of NASA swag. It was absolutely perfect.

It’s so important to encourage young girls especially about the importance of science, math, and technology. Inspired by Clayton’s generosity, we have donated this month to the Space Foundation, which advocates for continued space research.

When I was 13, my mom gave me a Commodore 64 which my brother and I coded on for hours – getting the computer to make cat or cow sounds. That curiosity around digging into the code is something that I still use today. I’m sure her curiosity around space launches and how astronauts are able to live in zero gravity supported by complex computer systems will have similiar payoffs.

If you have a desire to support STEM and space education then you can donate to the Space Foundation here!

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