With all of the new TLD domain names coming out, did you ever wonder if keyword based TLD’s such as .attorney or .seo will actually have any SEO benefit? Well, you’re not the only one – and I am sure that plenty of people originally got excited about the new TLD’s thinking they would be […]
Category Archives: SEO Talk
Google Is Rolling Out The May 2016 Mobile-Friendly Ranking Signal Boost
The importance of mobile users is not going to be going away anytime soon – in-fact there is a greater focus on these users now than there has ever been. People are using their mobile devices while on their way to work, while standing in traffic, while walking – heck almost all the time. They […]
Google Is Rolling Out Another Mobile Friendly Ranking Boost
Google has been strongly pushing all webmasters to have mobile-friendly websites. The first major push happened back in April of 2015 when Google officially made mobile friendliness an SEO ranking signal. Now Google has announced that starting May of 2016 they will start rolling out another mobile ranking signal in an effort to help mobile […]
Google Removing Public Access to PageRank
Google’s publically viewable PageRank hasn’t been updated in ages – and Google’s John Mueller stated back in 2014 that we probably shouldn’t expect to see it updated ever again. Frankly when Google dropped PageRank scores from Google Webmaster Tools (now Google Search Console) – alarm bells should’ve started going off. Alas there’s still plenty of […]
Google Begins Rolling Out Campaign Drafts and Experiments in AdWords
Google has began rolling out Google AdWords Campaign Drafts & Experiments – a new suite of features intended to let advertisers test and measure changes to their campaigns with ease. Things essentially break down into two main features: Drafts – which let you prepare and review multiple campaign changes without actually implementing any live changes. […]
Google Confirms: No Need To NoFollow Related Posts
The majority of blog’s out there showcase “related” posts at the end of their blog post – and in most cases this content is automatically generated via a plugin – and a common concern is whether or not these auto-generated links need to be “nofollow“. And the final answer – no. Google’s John Mueller confirmed this […]
Google Confirms: External Links Are Not A Ranking Factor
Yay! There’s more confirmations from Google! This time around Google’s John Mueller has stated that external links are not a ranking signal. The news came from a Google Hangout, and can be viewed here at 19:53 in the video. Our point of view, external links to other sites, so links from your site to other people’s […]
Bing Now Powers AOL Search Results
Bing and AOL announced a long term partnership back in July of 2015 and now, as of Jan 1st, 2016, Bing has taken over AOL search – successfully powering all of AOL’s search results. As of Jan. 1, Bing powers AOL’s web, mobile, and tablet search, providing paid search ads and algorithmic organic search results to […]
Google Confirms: What It Really Thinks About Your Title Tag
During the last Google Webmaster Hangout session an interesting question came up. Just how important is the title tag for Google? Here’s what Google’s John Mueller had to say about the topic: We use that just as a part. I think it’s not like the primary ranking factor of a page, to put it that […]
Google Confirms: There’s No Technical Benefit to Having Multiple Sitemaps
Sitemaps are a key part of any websites onsite SEO task-list, however what happens when you have a really large website with dozens of categories and hundreds of pages? Do you keep everything within a single sitemap, or do you split it up? Furthermore – what does Google want?! Well, Google’s John Mueller answered this […]
Google Confirms: Don’t Use Special Characters In Your URLs
This recent confirmation from Google is a bit common sense, but just in-case: don’t use commas, semicolons, spaces, quotes, and other special characters in your URLs. John Mueller from Google stated in a Google Webmaster Help thread: I generally recommend avoiding special characters like commas, semicolons, colons, spaces, quotes etc. in URLs, to help keep things […]
Google Will Favor HTTPS Content In Search Results
It’s probably safe to say that Google has started, and led, the battle for a safer and more secure browsing experience – ever since they mentioned the first SSL ranking boost back in 2014. Ever since I’ve seen countless websites transition to HTTPS, and have gotten tons of questions from webmasters – most of whom […]
Google Confirms: Clicks On Your Business Impact Your Local Ranking
A recent post over in the Google My Business Help Forum confirmed something we’ve long believed: clicks on you’re listing help boost your listings ranking. Search history: The number of times it has been useful historically on the basis of relevance, prominence and distance. Which basically means how many times someone has searched for a […]
Bing Launches Their Own Mobile Friendliness Test Tool
Bing has launched their very own Mobile Friendliness Test Tool – much like the Google Mobile Friendly Test tool located here. The tools functions in much the same way as the Google counter-part, providing a clean and straight forward report for you to see exactly what you need to change – if anything. Here is a […]
Google Confirms: We Pick Up Text Links But Do Not Pass PageRank To Them
Ever wondered just how Google would treat a non-hyperlinked text link? Will Googlebot recognize it as a link or simply look over it? Google’s John Mueller finally confirmed on Twitter that Googlebot does in-fact recognize text links however no PageRank or link signals are passed to it. @AGr4ves @methode We can pick up links from […]
Bing Is No Longer Microsoft’s Money Pit – Finally Becomes Profitable
Bing has been looking like a money pit for Microsoft for years now with massive investments being made towards datacenter infrastructure. However something awesome has finally happened. This past week Microsoft held it’s first quarter earnings call for fiscal 2016 and announced that Bing is finally profitable! In all Bing contributed a cool $1 billion to Microsoft’s first […]
Yahoo Can Now Display Google Ads & Search Results
Yahoo has published their 2015 Q3 Results, which shows a 7% growth in GAAP revenue, a loss from operations, oh and a partnership with Google that lets Yahoo show Google search results and ads. I’ll quote directly: In October, the Company reached an agreement with Google that provides Yahoo with additional flexibility to choose among […]
Google Battles Spam From Hacked Websites
Google recently rolled out a new set of algorithms designed to help clean out their search results from spam induced via hacked websites. As a webmaster, if you didn’t notice the hack yourself than Google’s Webmaster Tools will often times send you a notification when it locates something suspicious – and often times these are […]
Check Out Google’s Hour Long Discussion On Duplicate Content
Earlier this week Google’s John Mueller held a video hangout to discuss the SEO communities most popular topic: duplicate content. The hangout ended up lasting over an hour, featuring roughly 20 minutes worth of presentation and a 40 minute Q&A session. I won’t even attempt to summarize all the different questions and concepts that get […]
Get Your Bing Link Explorer Results Exported While You Still Can
Bing has announced the retirement of Link Explorer, a tool originally from Yahoo which let you see your own websites backlinks along with those of your competition. This was a great way to do some competitive link analysis to learn who was linking to websites such as your own. Bing states that the Bing search […]