Search Trends in the Time of Coronavirus

Last updated on March 31, 2020 at 03:35 pm

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I have heard of people who have been calling the past few days, the “new normal”. We are in the midst of history. The way that health sectors, technology, and businesses regenerate from this crisis will dictate progress that will come in the coming years. For those who are staying at home, this is the perfect time to learn. Seize this opportunity to know more about the world, study that foreign language you’ve been meaning to learn, and for those who do SEO, take COVID-19 as a case study of how search works as a lifestyle for people.

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<p>As the Philippines undergoes a lockdown due to the pandemic, online activities have significantly increased and search trends are affected as well. Google Trends is something that we keep an eye on at this time since it helps in making sense of the volatility of the search algorithm. For those wondering how the world of search works during these trying times, here is your brief overview of how the pandemic greatly impacts search behavior and insights on what we can learn from it.

 

Timeline of the Pandemic as Related to Search Trends

<p>Looking back, the Philippines has not always been in this state of urgency. The first burst of news surrounding the virus started on the last day of 2019 but our country is just catching up on information about it. As I’ve said before, people have been holed up at home now more than ever so it only makes sense that they have been using Google to stock up on news about it.

 

First-Ever Recorded News About the Virus

December 31, 2019, is the date when China first sounded the alarm bells for the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding several cases of severe pneumonia from Wuhan, ground zero for the virus which is located in the central Hubei province. The virus is still unnamed during this time.

Search trends worldwide can be seen as a flat line since it was not regarded as a global threat back then as WHO only confirmed that it is a new virus called 2019-nCoV on January 7, 2020. The interest over time having zero data is also surprising since the COVID-19 pandemic is not the first time that the world has seen a coronavirus case. We were plagued by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) back in 2003 and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012.

China’s Cooperation with WHO

China has since shared the genetic sequence of the virus on the day of January 12 which called for the development of diagnostic kits since the cases of pneumonia in Wuhan w ruled out (SARS-CoV), (MERS-CoV), Influenza, and adenovirus as the cause.

The Philippines’ First Encounter with NCoV

<p>The first case of coronavirus has been confirmed and recorded in the Philippines on January 30. The Department of Health reported the first case of the coronavirus in the country, with the patient being a 38-year old Chinese national. This is when a spike of interest happened in search as many people sought information about this unknown virus prior to the Wuhan Outbreak in December 2019.

 

Before the first case of local transmission was even reported, people have been searching for the symptoms of coronavirus. Whether it is anxiety over contracting the disease or simply seeking information about it, we’ll never know.

Reported the First Death

The first death from the disease in the Philippines was confirmed on February 2. This has sparked a global interest in this particular case in the country since this is the first death that has been reported outside mainland China.

First Local Transmission in the Country

The first local transmission in the country was reported which gave way to the Code Red Sub-Level 1 that was raised as the virus cases continue to increase day-by-day. Search has also seen a change in behavior in the results as the interest of people who have been searching for coronavirus cases spiked up during this period.

Incidentally, this is the period when coronavirus trending topics occupied search as evidenced by these tending searches on March 9:

This is a far cry from the search trends during the first week of March since it remained consistent for topics concerning NBA games with Coronavirus related searches as minor players in the trends. Since the pandemic also affected the operations of the NBA, the trending searches for the games came to a halt when they announced that the season is suspended indefinitely due to the virus.

A snapshot of the trending search on March 3 even shows people searching for a seat sale, in the hopes of a vacation in the near future, which suggests that search went about as usual even after news broke about the virus.

With everyone staying at home now, searches have changed for interests like the ones found below:

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Staying at home means more home-cooked meals so it’s no wonder that there is an increase in the interests in ulam recipes.

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Private sectors resorted to flexible work arrangements due to the suspension of public transportation and the nationwide lockdown. There is a surge of interest for work from home query maybe from employees who would like to learn more about their new work setup.

The recipe for this frothy coffee has been making the rounds of trends nowadays. There are many people who have developed an interest in this beverage as seen on this trend interest over time, as well as social media posts for this coffee recipe.

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Of course, with the impending risk of disease, prayer should always be a part of the daily routine of the predominantly Catholic country. Since March 15, people have been searching for articles on how to pray the rosary.

Huge spikes in these queries suggest that the Filipino people have been actively seeking information at home that is fit for their current interests now.

User Behavior and SERPs During Corona

As the world grapples with this unspeakable disease, we see that priorities and behavior are drastically revamped through the search activity of the people. User behavior in search has been analyzed time and again, with RankBrain being the primary consideration for SEOs. These trending searches can mean that even if user behavior does not directly affect machine learning, it is heavily influenced by it. Google has always been about delivering information which is why at this time of crisis, they have developed a page for coronavirus with SERP features unlike the normal format before:

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Search results for health queries regarding the virus are dominated by news and government sites with the ever present Wikipedia link of course. One thing that I also noticed is the help and information section tailored-fit for the Philippines with our Health Ministry website links embedded in a snippet. Is this also the same for your country? Let me know in the comments below.

Significance of Medic Update>

Two years since Google rolled out one of the largest search engine algorithm updates, called the Medic, it is resounding in the search results now more than ever. Query intent is explicitly called for in this day and age especially since a tiny chance of misinformation can cost a life. From the search trends we have previously discussed, you can see that people greatly rely on search for information. This is especially true for the period when we do not even know what the virus entails.

This is why optimizing your site for best practices and to adhere to the standard the algorithm updates is important. Pages that perform well in the service of satisfying search intent will be rewarded with the fact that information has helped people for the better. You can also say the same about YMYL sites.

The Medic update is significant simply because it honors E.A.T. especially since the situation now calls for transparency and accountability from the right people. Reflect user behavior and intent in your content, this will go a long way even when this pandemic is over. Continue optimizing and never lose faith in this time of struggle.

Key Takeaway

Even if the world outside comes to a pause, the world of search is still very much alive. This is also one of the factors that you consider if you are thinking of cutting off digital marketing from your business. Sure, we are at a standstill but still, imagine the possibilities once the world has recovered and is in motion again. Continue optimizing for user behavior using the best practices and you will be just fine doing SEO during COVID-19 season.

I know that these are difficult times for all of us. Even though we are plagued by this disease, we must keep faith and trust that everything will be alright. If you are reading this now, just know that we will pray for you and your family’s best interest, keep safe.

Search Trends in the Time of Coronavirus posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

Supermetrics Review: Easy SEO, PPC, and Social Media Reporting

Last updated on March 26, 2020 at 02:36 pm

If you are in the digital marketing industry, you would know how crucial data is. Everything that we do online produces data that we can use to develop strategies, improve processes, know our customers better, and define the success and failure of our campaigns.

Needless to say, you need data to further grow your business.

With the continuous improvement in technology, we marketers are blessed to have all the tools that we need to gather data whether its for SEO, advertisements or social media. We have Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube analytics, you name it.

However, with all these data lying around, one common problem marketers have is how they put all of these data together. Jumping from one platform to another takes a lot of time. It’s messy, confusing, and inefficient.

Luckily for us marketers, there is a tool that allows us to compile all of our data into one place. I’m talking about Supermetrics. I’ve had the pleasure of using Supermetrics and use it to create reports for my clients and I could say that it comes in really handy. 

Just a quick note, if you want to try out Supermetrics before I get into this review, you could do so by going into this link and get a 14-day free trial. The free trial allows you to use one product and choose one integration to help you get a hold of things.

Supermetrics: The #1 Add-on for SEO, PPC, and Social Reporting

Supermetrics is a tool that is used by thousands of marketers worldwide. It helps marketers collect all the data that they need and put it all in one place for easy and fast reporting. Whether you are an agency, a business owner, or an in-house marketer, Supermetrics will allow you to save time, organize your data better, and create visually appealing reports.

Supermetrics offer 6 product options that you can choose from depending on your needs and processes:

• Supermetrics for Google Sheets
• Supermetrics for Google Data Studio
• Supermetrics for Excel
• Supermetrics for BigQuery
• Supermetrics Uploader
• Supermetrics API

How Does Supermetrics Work?

Supermetrics is an add-on which means you connect it to the reporting platform that you choose whether it’s Google Data Studio, Google Sheets, or Excel, and Supermetrics will integrate your data from wherever your data is.

You can integrate more than 50 major data sources through Supermetrics such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Linkedin Ads, Moz, SEMRush, and many more.

Using Google Data Studio with Supermetrics

The product that I am currently using is Supermetrics for Google Data Studio. Google Data Studio is a free tool by Google that allows users to create dashboards with data from other Google products but with Supermetrics, you could blend in so much more data into one dashboard.

Supermetrics was easy to set up. You don’t really have to create an account. Once you purchase a product or sign up for a free trial, it will redirect you to your Google Data Studio account.

Select create a new report, search for Supermetrics in the data search bar, and all Supermetrics connector that can be integrated to Google Data Studio will appear.

In this sample, I am creating a report for a paid ads campaign. I integrated data from Google Ads + Analytics, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Bing, and Linkedin. Now if you’re wondering what’s the difference of using Google Data Studio without Supermetrics, from the data need, I could only pull up Google Ads + Analytics.

Wide Variety of Data Options

I was really impressed with the number of data that I could choose from. There are tons of metrics that allow me to provide more granular data in my report. This was quite intimidating at first and was a little confusing but once I was able to get a hang of it, I was able to look for the data that I need faster.

Blending Data

This is where Supermetrics really shines. I was able to integrate data from Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and Linkedin into one report. This saved me lots of time rather than going to one platform to another and collecting data manually. Through Google Data Studio I could even compare the numbers from each platform to give me a large-scale perspective on where I could improve my campaign further.

Multiple Accounts

Using Supermetrics also allows you to connect multiple accounts. I personally have two Google Analytics accounts and I don’t have to pay extra if I want to connect both of them.

Free Templates

Supermetrics have a gallery of templates for Google Data Studio that you can use. I find this really useful when I need quick reports. All I have to do is make a copy of one of their templates and change the data source to my account. Here’s a link to their Google Data Studio template gallery.

Supermetrics for Google Data Studio Pricing

Supermetrics offers three packages for Google Data Studio:

Individual Connector ($39/month)

• Unlimited reports
• 1 account user
• 3 accounts per data source
• 1 data source

Pro ($99/month)

• Unlimited reports
• 3 users
• 20 accounts per data source
• Access to all Supermetrics data sources
• Cross-platform data blending

Super Pro ($299/month)

• Unlimited reports
• 5 users
• 100 accounts per data source
• Includes all Supermetrics data sources plus Adobe analytics, Adform, Criteo, Google Ad Manager, Google Campaign, Google Display & 360, Hubspot, Snapchat Marketing, Salesforce, Searchmetrics, etc.
• Cross-platform data blending

Supermetrics have different pricing options for each product. To view the packages for Google Sheets, Excel, BigQuery, Supermetrics Uploader, and Supermetrics API, check out the full Supermetrics Pricing Page.

Final Verdict

All in all, I would say Supermetrics is a marketers best friend. As a digital marketing agency, we spend hours on creating reports for our clients and Supermetrics really helped us reduce the hours we spent. If you are also working on an agency, I highly recommend Supermetrics because it really makes reporting more efficient. As for business owners or in-house marketers, I would recommend Supermetrics if you are running campaigns on multiple platforms so you could easily review your data and realign your business strategies.

Supermetrics Review: Easy SEO, PPC, and Social Media Reporting posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

How the Coronavirus Pandemic Affects Search and What SEOs Should Do

Last updated on March 24, 2020 at 05:33 pm

The Coronavirus global pandemic is still plaguing most parts of the world and it doesn’t look like recovery will happen any time soon. As the virus spreads in the world, the global economy is also negatively affected. Businesses having to close shop or potential customers not coming out of their homes in fear of being infected has made digital the primary way of interacting and satisfying the needs of the customers.

These are hard times for most, but businesses also have the capability to adapt and change their current strategy to reach out to their customers by going digital. As the reliance on digital and search continues to increase amidst difficult times, it’s not long before businesses realize the importance of going digital and having great search presence and that’s where we SEOs do our part. 

That being said, how exactly does the Coronavirus pandemic affect the way people search? Let’s find out.

Coronavirus’ Effect on Various Search Industries

Automotive Industry

The automotive industry has been experiencing a massive drop since the pandemic started. This is fully understandable since automobiles cannot be delivered straight to a customer’s house. This necessitates that people that want to buy cars have to go to the dealership personally. 

With most countries experiencing lockdowns, the automotive industry is on a standstill as well. Just one of our automobile clients experienced a drop close to 50% since the pandemic. 50% may not seem a lot, but when you take into account the price of a single automobile sold, this causes massive damage to their income as a car manufacturer or dealership. 

Ecommerce Industry

There’s certain volatility in the eCommerce industry since not all of the products being sold online are in-demand given the situation. However, for businesses that sell products that are needed by customers, massive spikes in sales and conversions can be expected. But for most eCommerce websites, there are more instances of their sales going down such as this client of ours:

But we also have eCommerce clients that have experienced massive uplifts in their sales during this Coronavirus pandemic. 

Health and Wellness Industry

For websites in the health and wellness industry, it’s more common to see uptrends rather than downtrends. Since the Coronavirus pandemic is a health and wellness crisis, users rely on search to keep updated and inform themselves regarding best practices, medical advice, and overall health and wellness info. 

This also includes pharmaceutical/drug-related websites. Of course, you have to put in the effort for E-A-T, but once things are done, users also flock to these websites during these heavy times. Uptrends are more common in these industries in search.

Google’s Initiative for the Coronavirus Pandemic

Since it’s widely known that Google is the world’s leading search engine, they created knowledge panels and even a dedicated page for all the information and resources that a user might need for the pandemic.

Their page is primarily focusing on increasing awareness and understanding of the Coronavirus pandemic. They also included resources, tips, and trends with regard to the current search terms used for the pandemic. The page can be accessed through google.com/covid19.

One feature that I liked on their page is the incorporation of data and insights using Google Trends and Google Maps as the base for the data shown on the page. 

All of these are accessible through the mobile version as well. It’s important for users to keep informed about the recent happenings and Google is doing its part to bring factual and data-based information to the users.

What SEOs Can Do Amidst the Pandemic

In the simplest terms, what SEOs can do during the pandemic is to keep doing what they’re doing. But this includes increasing efforts on tapping into different businesses that can use the benefits that SEO brings. 

Times are hard and businesses are not exceptions to the crisis. This happens to increase the importance of having a great search presence since this is the next best thing to having their customers physically go to their stores. Aside from that, search is MEASURABLE and DATA-DRIVEN. User behavior can be researched, investigated, and understood. This means that we SEOs have one of the best tools for businesses to tap into a massive market that they couldn’t reach before. 

Another thing that necessitates businesses to make the move to digital and search is that even if we’re in the middle of a crisis, users/customers still need products and services. YOUR business might be the one they’re looking for, but without being visible in search, there’s no way for the users to find your business. 

Lastly, when things go back to normal and we’ve recovered from the pandemic, the investments made by businesses into SEO will not go to waste. We’re still in a digital age where convenience, efficiency, and speed is what most users look for. So, if businesses don’t show up on the first page, that’s a massive loss of opportunity for them.

Key Takeaway

In essence, what SEOs can do is to communicate how important SEO is for a business, and what’s left is for us to continue doing what we’re good at. The current issue is proving to be more of a challenge and it’s up to us to keep businesses afloat amidst the crisis.

As SEOs, we should do our part. How has the Coronavirus affected your websites? Comment them down below and let’s talk!

How the Coronavirus Pandemic Affects Search and What SEOs Should Do posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

A Beginner’s Guide on What to Expect from CRO

Last updated on March 19, 2020 at 05:02 pm

So you’re finally ranking on Google and you have a decent amount of traffic going to your site, now what? Well, let me tell you that all the efforts leading to those results would all be wasted if you do not follow it up with a robust strategy that will increase your site’s value to your business.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is more than just a digital marketing effort, it’s more like the art and science that goes beyond the charts that show an increase in numbers. It primarily deals with user behavior and experience, areas that are difficult to quantify but don’t worry because results are displayed in the form of statistics, which is CRO’s primary foundation.

Growth Through Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization is simply defined as the process involved in converting your website visitors into customers.

CRO is one of the most underrated digital marketing techniques in the industry today. You wouldn’t see a lot of businesses investing in CRO but I think that they should. I have been in the digital marketing field for a decade now and I have seen impressive results stemming from powerful CRO strategies and execution.

I believe that this is the answer to the ultimate goal of websites who aim to generate ROI for their business. If you are thinking about converting your traffic to sales then CRO is the way to go. We have seen how CRO does its wonders as evidenced by this case study which helped us go from 0.7% to 729% increase in conversion rate just from implementing CRO techniques. What an astounding return on investment, right?

For most businesses that are active in the digital space, that is the dream. Converting your site visits to sales is a cherry on top of a fantastic effort to increase your online visibility.

SEO or CRO?

There has been a long-standing debate between SEO and CRO enthusiasts about which package is more capable of generating revenue. These digital marketing services both do their job of magnifying a website’s potential for growth but still, there are people that argue one is better than the other.

Personally, there’s no need to pit them against each other because each stands on a league of its own and the results of these services still boil down to what your business objectives are. It’s even better if you train SEO and CRO to go hand-in-hand in giving you the best online visibility that you can have for your target market.

What I like most about CRO and SEO is that these are disciplines that are flexible with experiments which allows me and my team to stay sharp to get ahead of the curve and gain results along the way. However, we stay away from relying too much on “tactics” because CRO is supposed to be approached with a process.

However, you would not feel its results if your business objectives are vague from the get-go. Digital marketing can only do so much for you if your business model is in disarray.

Design Your Goals: What Winning Looks Like in CRO

Which brings me to my next discussion, determining your purpose for CRO. As a brand with an online presence, it’s only natural that you would want to stand out from among the crowd.

As a system, CRO gives a monumental value to websites by reaching towards a method that naturally brings in maximum conversions for businesses. This is why it is important to determine your purpose in doing CRO. Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you have finally decided to start doing CRO for your site:

Making a Plan

Know what changes you are going to implement, what you aim to achieve and your projected rate of effectiveness. Always remember that CRO is a complex process so you should know how you’re going to go about its execution. A linear plan with an actionable hypothesis will be your best bet in winning in CRO. Organize accordingly and you will not encounter a problem with your project. Follow CRO best practices like maintaining a powerful web design, having only one CTA so you would not confuse users, having a clean UI and UX, optimizing your design for site speed, and more.

Document Everything

This will ensure that you never miss an element of your project. You should also properly document your research and experimentation so you would know what works and what doesn’t. Check your most viewed pages, which of those gain the most sessions and the channels that your users are coming from. It is also important that you properly document your brand’s strengths and weaknesses so you can align this with your CRO objectives.

Make Sure that You Properly Analyze Data

One common mistake that CROs are sometimes guilty of is that they do not know how to interpret the statistical data that their project has presented to them. Brush up on your statistics and always aim for the best probability for your conversion rates. This will be the best weapon you can have for CRO.

Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment

Try new stuff until you maximize your conversion rates up to the roof. It’s okay if an experiment does not work for you because you are bound to find one that does if you do not stop experimenting. Do A/B tests, measure success through data, or you can even experiment with a process that already works for you. When it comes to innovation, let yourself go nuts if it means that you will achieve the result you are looking for.

Using Google Optimize Data for Experiments

If you are a beginner in CRO, you might want to check out Google Optimize. It is the free version of its counterpart, Optimize 360, given that it has limited features but still does the job nonetheless. I highly recommend this because you can easily navigate their dashboard. The tool’s visual editor is nothing special because you can also see many other CRO tools who have that but I find it easier to change things because of it.

More and more CRO specialists see the value that Optimize can bring to their projects. I also use it because of its clear cut data and clean user interface, not to mention their reports feature is great also. The perks of being a Google product is that you can connect it to other tools so having it integrated with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager makes for a more organized reporting task. Their data is very concise as you can see here:

This is an example of what you will see from the report from Optimize. We have seen a slight increase in sessions and conversions. I enacted a button change on the site and you can see how CRO affects the data. The increase, albeit small, is a great improvement since this is a report for my client who sells an expensive product so if you look at it, 14 conversions is definitely a win already.

This section in reporting helps us see how the CRO experiment can perform for us long-term. Optimize simulates statistical data which can help you compare your previous performance to the current one. Having a projected conversion rate would be significant for your project since it will help you maintain traction in finding out what works for your CRO.

Optimize is also a generous playground for those who would like to test changes on their site. Testing is very important when it comes to experiments because it can help you know how to encourage the users to fill out a form or buy a product.

Final thoughts

CRO can bring out the best in your website, especially if you are chasing after leads. What’s great about it is that even beginners can start implementing this to your site if you have the right strategies and devices to complement it. Start a CRO project once you have reached the first page and you will be unstoppable.

Comment down below when you first knew about CRO and let’s discuss how far we’ve come with optimizing conversion rates.

A Beginner’s Guide on What to Expect from CRO posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

How to Do Keyword Research for New Websites

Last updated on March 17, 2020 at 03:28 pm

You just started a new website for your business. You poured in a lot of hard work to get it up and after a few weeks, you finally got some sleep. But after a few weeks, your Google Analytics is not looking good. What now?

If you have a new website and you want to get traffic going, you need to rank for keywords. Keyword research is a fundamental SEO process. The keywords that you choose to rank for when you start doing SEO for your new website is going to define your success or failure.

But it’s not as easy as it seems. Let’s say you own a 24/7 fitness gym. Right off the bat, you chose to target the keyword “24/7 gym”. You probably have a zero percent chance of ranking. It’s harsh, but it’s true. 

This is where choosing the right keywords is critical.

As a new website, you have to focus on two things – easy wins, but relevant wins.

How, you ask? In this post, I’ll discuss how to get the right keywords for your new website.

Think from the Customers’ Perspective

The first step in finding the right keywords for your new website is to brainstorm and think about how your users could find you. If you already have customers, you could ask them what would be the keywords that they use if they are looking for your business. If not, place yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask yourself – “what keywords would I use?”.

Build a List of Keywords Around your Services

The keywords that you target should be built around the services that you offer. If you have multiple services, you could list down keywords for each service. Let’s say you own an IT company that offers web development, hosting, and cloud management services. You could build keywords for each service to attract more users.

Scout the Competition

Taking a look at the keywords your competitors rank for is one of the easiest ways to get keyword ideas. You could use different SEO tools to help you with this task.

Ahrefs’ Organic Keywords:

Mangools’ KWFinder:

If you don’t have tools yet, you could go to your competitors’ websites and take a quick scan of the page titles of their landing page and blog posts. That way, you’ll have an idea of the keywords that they are proactively trying to rank for.

Keep in mind that this is just for getting ideas. Some or maybe most of your competitors might have been doing SEO way before you so they might be ranking for high volume and high difficulty keywords but that doesn’t mean you should go for those as well.

Focus on Low-Hanging Fruits

This is where we put easy wins but relevant wins to action. There are three types of keywords fathead, chunky middle, and long-tail keywords. I won’t delve in too much on these but what you need to know is the higher the volume, the more difficult it is to rank for. The keyword I gave a while ago, ‘24/7 gym’, that’s a fathead keyword or broad keyword. The monthly search volume for this keyword is tempting for sure. But it’s hard to identify the intent of the person searching for these types of keywords.

That’s why for new websites, targeting chunky middle and long-tail keywords are the way to go. Chunky middle keywords are phrases while long-tail keywords are very specific search queries and mostly comes in question form.

The intent of these keywords is easy to identify and the difficulty is much lower than fat head keywords. Theuse are what you want. Using the sample I used a while ago for a fitness gym, I would go for keywords like:

• best 24/7 fitness gym in manila
• affordable 24/7 fitness gym in manila
• what is the best 24/7 fitness gym in manila?

Just with these keywords, you already have an idea that the person searching is ready to purchase a gym membership. And with the right content and high-quality backlinks, you’ll be able to rank for these easily. Also, notice that I placed “manila” in the keyword? Targeting keywords with locations is highly recommended because users tend to search for businesses near them or in a specific area. Since my gym business is in Manila, getting visitors from the United States is not relevant

Easy wins but relevant wins. Take note of that.

Bonus: Keyword Research Tools You Can Use

If you’re starting out using free keyword research tools is fine, but the data you’ll be getting is limited. Google Keyword Planner, for example, shows accurate search data since it’s directly from Google, however, the difficulty is skewed because it shows the difficulty for PPC.

If you’re looking for keyword research tools that will give you more insights that allow you to better analyze competition and help you in identifying winning keywords for your new website, you could check out these tools that I personally use:

• SEMRush – Free 7-day trial
• SE Ranking– Free 14 day trial
• Mangools – Free 10 day trial

How to Do Keyword Research for New Websites posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

How to Fight Against Spammy Link Building this 2020

Last updated on March 12, 2020 at 05:50 pm

Spammy links. We’ve all had them. Some of us experienced them once or twice while some are less fortunate. Some of them are even considered as negative SEO attacks. They’re one of the most annoying and burdensome tasks that we, as SEOs and webmasters, need to avoid AND fix. Ever since the Penguin update, the number of spammy links has been cracked down and websites that had it were heavily penalized by Google. However, 9 years after the Penguin update, it’s easier for us to get lost in the different link building strategies and techniques existing in the market; therefore blurring the lines between what’s a natural, high-quality link from a spammy, potentially dangerous link. Let’s find out.

What are Spammy Links?

They are links built to (negatively) affect a website’s ranking. This could be intentional or accidental, but for the most part, spammy links are considered bad. 

The tricky part with spammy links is that there are gray areas with some types that can easily be built. We’ve already experienced times where we built links that we considered harmless but it negatively affected our rankings in the long run. So, you have to be knowledgeable about the types of links you can build that will not lead to a decrease in rankings and traffic or, worse, penalties from Google. Here are some types of spammy links you have to be wary of this 2020.

Types of Spammy Links

1. Directories

Directories are one of the easiest ways to get some traction in local SEO and to increase the places where users can know/see your brand – these are all the positives of building links in directories, but there will also be risks. 

The problem with building links in directories is that it’s easier to build in low-quality directories (quantity) than to build in high-quality directories with higher standards. However, there are also instances where even if you don’t build links in directories, some random directory links appear without your knowledge. We had this experience a while back and it was even tracked in Google Search Console – which meant the links were built without us knowing for a considerable amount of time. Here’s the screenshot from Search Console:

2. Blog Comments

One of the biggest link building techniques more than a decade ago, blog comments was the easiest and most effective strategy in the early to mid-2000s. All you had to do was set-up an account for you to be able to comment in different blogs around the web and you can incorporate a link to your website through your username or in the content of your comment. 

The problem with blog comments was that numerous webmasters and SEOs did it that it became spammy – especially when SEOs and webmasters gave an irrelevant and useless comment. The best blog comments only had one standard to be considered a good link – it added value to the blog post and it helped the users find more information/resources.

We’re not an exception to the use of blog commenting, but we always made it a point to limit it to just one or two times a month since there isn’t a lot of value in blog comments. Which is why we’re always baffled when this happens to us and to our clients:

2 of the top 5 linking sites for one of our clients come from blogs and that’s not just 1 or 2 links. So, this just increases the importance of being careful with blog commenting since it has a high chance to turn spammy and bring disastrous results to your website.

3. Paid Links

Paid links are easily understood as links that were built through a monetary exchange. Ads, sponsored content, or even a simple review that contains links to the website of the webmaster that paid is always considered as paid links. So, if you’re an avid fan of creating these kinds of links, I suggest you take a step back and stop yourself. 

First, paid links should be attributed as nofollow or sponsored which means that whatever value you were trying to get with that link is already lost (at least the majority of it). Second, if ever the webmaster gives you a dofollow link, if Google finds out that they were paid link/s, your website and the site where the link came from is susceptible to penalties. 

If you find some kind of benefit from paid links, make sure that it comes from reputable and high authority websites. If the website isn’t that authoritative and isn’t well-known, I suggest not going through with your plan.

4. Link Schemes

Back when PageRanks was first introduced, link schemes were all the rage. Building numerous links from websites were considered an effective strategy and it did work, but it obviously doesn’t work now. 

Basically, link schemes are also known as link farms or private blog networks (PBNs) where you own a multitude of websites and build links from those websites that are pointed to the single, focus website that you want to rank better in the search results. 

I’ve seen horror stories from other SEOs and websites that did link schemes/PBNs as one of their core strategies and it led to a massive penalty from Google. Most of them were not able to recover and just proceeded on to just buying and optimizing a new website. 

All of these spammy link building tactics are well-known in the industry but the primary reason why I decided to highlight them in this article is that I can still see websites doing these kinds of things. Of course, some of them are acceptable when used in moderation, but excessive links like these are detrimental at the very least. 

How to Remove Spammy Links

Ask yourself this question: Was I the one who created the link? If yes, chances are, you can still remove the spammy links and that’s the end of it. But what if you didn’t build them and the webmaster was the one who created the link? You use the tools that fit the criteria. 

I personally like to use Ahrefs so I’ll use it as an example. 

Just use the Site Explorer feature and click on “Backlinks” so you can see the list of links that point to your website:

Export the report so you’ll have a much easier time checking out all the links and determining if they’re spammy or not.

After you’ve compiled everything, manually review the links and determine if they’re spammy. 

Compile the domains where the spammy links are coming from. Go to the Disavow Links tool in Google Search Console and submit the file. 

Key Takeaway

When you want to clean up your backlink profile, the Disavow tool is your go-to solution. However, my last piece of advice for you is to properly judge if a link should be disavowed or not. Or should you even disavow the link in the first place?

You should ask yourself all of these questions since there are also instances where a disavow led to more harm than good. So, what do you think about spammy link building in 2020? Do you still experience it? Comment your story down below!

How to Fight Against Spammy Link Building this 2020 posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

How to Protect Your Paid Ads with TrafficGuard

Last updated on March 10, 2020 at 06:10 pm

Click fraud is one of the most detrimental events that can affect your Google Ad performance. Pay per click marketing is a variety of online advertising that has well-cemented the many digital campaigns we have today. The capacity of online advertising a well-calculated option to help you get closer to your audience is something that businesses flock to in the hopes that it will help them win in their respective niches. Some people think that online ads are just for vanity and display, the numbers don’t lie when it comes to its benefit for the business. Check out the reasons why you should guard the traffic coming into your online ads.

Click Fraud Prevention

Eliminating click fraud on your pay-per-click (PPC) ads is not easy. How else can you distinguish which clicks are really coming from your customers and which are from bots that your competitors deployed to drain your ads budget? This act is more detrimental than you think because apart from increasing the cost of your advertising, you will also experience low conversion rates because the clicks that should have been for your customers are exploited by these unqualified clicks.

Steering clear from this black-hat technique will cost you a lot of time and effort. You have to fulfill the necessity of going the extra mile just to detect click fraud on your ads. According to WordStream, tracking click fraud requires you to get data before you confirm that there is such activity in your ads. First, you will need to track the IP addresses of those who are clicking on your ads, you should also extract the click and action timestamp, and the user agent responsible for those clicks.

User Acquisition Increase

Sponsored results do the trick of raising brand awareness, increasing conversions going into the site, and to serve as a channel to increase user acquisition. Although, SEM is not as perpetual as SEO, availing Google Ads for your business still cuts outs the best for you. It is a simple process that can lead to new opportunities for you. Having online advertising is a sustainable acquisition strategy that will help you in the long-run

Online advertising now evolves with the times simply because technology knows no bounds when it comes to treating a person as an audience. Achieving the top spot on the search results is a fruitful investment of which you should protect. This is why you should look into more opportunities to guard your advertising and how you can maintain its benefits for your business.

Quality Audience Engagement

You do not know each and every person who engages with your ads. Heck, you don’t explicitly know the identity of your target audience. You can only have an idea of who they are. Having a tool that can help you monitor the clicks going into your ads would make a difference in the campaigns you run.

Quality audience engagement goes without saying when you optimize your ads accordingly. An investment in a sophisticated Ad fraud protection will help you create ads with confidence and less time interpreting reports since you know that you have sufficiently removed those people who are not part of your route to success. Fraud tactics are ever-present but that doesn’t mean that you should be at the other end of their dark agendas. It can mutate into different versions but you have to know how to use big data to evolve with these bad actions.

TrafficGuard: Keep an Eye Out For Your Ads

With all these efforts and requirements for your online ads, you must be thinking how the hell am I going to do all this? It sounds like a lot of work, right? Fortunately, our friends over at TrafficGuard can help you drive growth and sustain your user acquisition from your online ads. I have decided to write about them today because I was impressed by their three-level protection for ads. Their process covers these levels:

• Impression Level
• Click Level
• Event Level
• Smart Algorithm Update

The tool works even at impression level when it detects early signs of fraud mitigation. Next, it can also monitor invalid clicks in real-time which is a consequence of ad stacking and bot traffic. Events level is for post-click conversions such as installs, sales, leads, and event data. For updates, the tool continues to evolve in each case that it encounters.

Try the tool by clicking here to see how powerful your online advertising can be if you care enough to guard it against dangerous black hat tactics.

How to Protect Your Paid Ads with TrafficGuard posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

Guide to Google Manual Actions and How to Fix Them

Last updated on March 5, 2020 at 05:46 pm

Since the first search engine was born in the ’90s, people who would try to exploit search algorithms and find the easy path to the top of the search results were also born. This has become problematic for search engines trying to provide users with the best results but spam websites would come out on top.

As a result, Google made improvements on its algorithm so that it can better evaluate websites for shady tactics and easily detect spam. And to avoid these websites from ruining the users’ experience, Google started slapping spam websites with manual actions.

Imagine going to work one morning, you pull up Google Analytics and your rank monitoring tool and everything is zero. You sip some coffee and started investigating. Maybe there’s just something wrong with the tracking code right? But there’s nothing wrong with it.

Then it hit you. You realized you’ve been penalized. In a blink of an eye, months or years’ worth of work is lost. 

Manual actions can drive SEOs crazy. If there is one thing you must avoid in this industry, it’s this one.

If you’re reading this article, I hope you’re here because you want to know more about manual actions and not because you’ve been hit by one. Let’s get right into it! 

What is a Manual Action?

A manual action or penalty is given out by Google to websites that use unethical practices that are against their guidelines. These strategies are better known as Black Hat SEO and it seeks to manipulate search engine results.

To determine if a website deserves a manual action, Google employs thousands of human reviewers to check if websites comply with Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines. 

What happens when I receive a Manual Action?

Once you receive a penalty from Google, pages that are affected or even the whole website will experience a huge drop in search rankings or completely be gone from the search results. Organic traffic will completely be gone as well. The drop is quick and could happen in a few days or even overnight.

How to Check for a Manual Action?

If you are given a manual action, you will be notified by Google through the Manual Action report in Google Search Console. You will see a message similar to this:

In the report, you will see the type of issues Google was able to detect from your website and the list of pages that are affected. If you have submitted reconsideration requests, you will also be notified here if Google rejected your requests.

List of Manual Actions

Below is the list of manual actions given by Google and tips on how to fix or avoid them.

User-Generated Spam

Websites that allow user-generated content such as forums and blog comments may receive this manual action if users bombard the website with self-promoting text and links to unrelated and spammy websites.

Fix

Use the “site:” search query to check your website for malicious content from users and delete them. Sample: [site:https://samplesite.com viagra]. Also, it is better to avoid this by making sure all content from users are being moderated before being approved.

Spammy Free Host

Opting for free hosting services are good for cutting costs but it could lead to a manual action. If you’re using a free hosting service, you’re website shares the same server with other websites. Even if your website is clean, spammers that you are sharing servers with might affect the whole server and Google may issue a manual action to all websites in that server.

Fix

Contact the technical support of the hosting company you are using and inform them of the manual action. If there are no developments, I suggest that you move to a secure hosting provider.

Structured Data Issue

Google can detect if the implementation of structured data is against the Structured Data Guidelines.

Fix

Update the existing structured data markup on your website and comply with the guidelines. You could use the Structured Data Testing tool to avoid errors.

Unnatural links to your site

Receiving this manual action means that Google detected unusual linking patterns to your website that intends to manipulate PageRank. Actions such as buying links from PBNs and excessive link exchanges can lead to a penalty.

Fix

Go to Google Search Console’s link report to check for links that Google might find suspicious.  Prepare a text file and use the disavow tool. 

Unnatural links from your site

There is an unnatural pattern of outbound links from your website that might give Google the impression that you are selling links or participating in link schemes.

Fix

Identify links that are paid or affiliate links by using the rel=”sponsored” tag. 

Thin content with little or no added value

Google has strict guidelines when it comes to the quality of content. According to Google, samples of pages with thin content or has no value are :

 

• Automatically generated content
• Thin affiliate pages
• Scraped content
• Low-quality guest posts
• Doorway pages

Fix

Review if these pages can be improved and make sure these pages can provide value to users. Alternatively, you can block Google from crawling these pages through a robots.txt file or putting a noindex tag to remove it from the search results.

Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects

Cloaking is the act of manipulating the code of a page to show users a different page from what was submitted to Google while sneaky redirects lure users to be directed to a page they don’t intend to go.

Fix

Use Google Search Console’s URL Inspection tool to check how Google sees the pages that are affected. Fix the codes and content of the pages and remove any shady redirects.

Pure spam

Google detected pages on your website that are using spam techniques blatantly. 

Fix

Make sure that all pages on your website adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Cloaked images

Similar to cloaking earlier, Google serves manual action for cloaked images if it crawls an image on a page but it is shown differently to users.

Fix

Make sure that your website presents the exact same images to users as to what is seen in the Google search results.

Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing

Excessively repeating a keyword that you are targeting in a single page and/or hiding it by covering it with an image or making the text color white so it blends with the background is a black hat SEO strategy.

Fix

Check the HTML codes of the affected pages as well as the CSS styling for hidden texts and excessive repetition of keywords in the meta tags.

AMP content mismatch

AMP or accelerated mobile pages is a lighter version of a webpage for mobile users. The content of the AMP version of a webpage should have the same content. 

Fix

Make sure that the AMP page is canonicalized to the correct web page. AMP content mismatch manual action will not gravely affect your rankings but Google will drop the AMP version for mobile search results and show the original webpage instead.

Sneaky mobile redirects

Mobile users may see a different version of a webpage if its a feature that is specifically for mobile users. However, there are instances where mobile users are redirected to a different URL either through code or a script that forces mobile users to open an ad.

Fix

If you have been given this manual action and you did not place it there intentionally, check if your website is hacked or scan for malware.

What to Do After Fixing Manual Actions?

After ensuring that you fixed the problems causing the manual action, you should submit a reconsideration request to Google in the Manual Action report.

In writing a reconsideration request, be as detailed as possible on how you fixed the error. If your website has been hacked, make sure that you also let Google know about it. Regardless of the gravity of issues, reconsideration requests may take a few days or weeks. Google will inform you through email if the review is complete and you will be informed if the fix has been accepted or rejected.

Best Practices when Fixing Manual Actions

Fix all issues on all pages before requesting for a reconsideration

Since receiving a manual action will result in lost rankings and traffic, some webmasters would apply half done fixes to start the review and regain their traffic as early as possible. It is best that you be patient and make sure your website is clean from any issues that resulted in a penalty.

Make the pages accessible

Make sure that the pages affected by the manual action are not blocked from crawling through the robots.txt.

Do not send reconsideration requests repeatedly

Repeatedly sending reconsideration requests will not make the review process any faster and might just result in Google seeing you as spamming

How Long Before My Website Can Recover?

There is no way to tell how long before your website can regain its rankings and traffic. It may depend on the gravity of the penalty. If it’s just a few pages on your website, it might take a few weeks or a month. If it’s on your whole website, it can take months or maybe years. Once you fix a manual action, Google will not give you a timeline. 

What you should know is that when a webpage or website gets penalized by Google, it loses all trust and authority. You’ll be starting fresh and you need to work your way up again. 

How do I Avoid Manual Actions?

It’s pretty simple, do White Hat SEO. It is the right way of doing SEO and it should be the only way you are doing it. 

Create a holistic optimization plan for your website. Make sure you have a good user interface and user experience, optimize for mobile, and publish great content that attracts links. You have more than 200 ranking factors to work with and every day you should start looking into at least one of these factors and ask yourself – “what can I optimize today?”.

You’ll be needing a lot of patience but continuously improving your website the right way is 100% better than trying to recover from a manual action.

 

Guide to Google Manual Actions and How to Fix Them posted first on https://seo-hacker.com