Free Digital Marketing Courses for SEOs

Last updated on April 16, 2020 at 04:22 pm

With most of us working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve got a little more time on our hands that we can spend for something else rather than getting stuck in traffic. We have more time to spend with our family, catch up on our favorite shows, and do some home cleaning. As much as it is the perfect time for leisure, it is also the perfect time to sharpen our skills as SEOs. 

There are a lot of free resources online that you could just go right now and finish at your own pace. I’ve curated some of the most notable platforms that are guaranteed to bring value to you whether you are an SEO expert, a business owner, or someone who is just starting out. 

Google Digital Garage

Website: https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage

Google Digital Garage is a free platform by Google that offers more than a hundred free courses. The course topics range from digital marketing to web development and career development. Some courses were created by Google themselves while some are from popular universities. All of these courses are free and there also certification courses that are available.

Inside the Google Digital Garage, there is also a section for webinars that you could register for. Right now, Google Digital Garage is also offering free training for those that are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. You could see it under the “Remote Work” section.

Google Skill Shop

Website: https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/

Google Skillshop is another free training platform by Google but is more catered for people who are looking to learn how to use Google products such as Google Analytics, Google Marketing Platforms, Google Ads, Google My Business, and Waze ads.

These courses are designed by Google product experts themselves and it comes in with free certification that you could add on your resume.

Moz Academy

Website: https://academy.moz.com/

Moz has a whole library of SEO courses for those who are just beginning to learn SEO or those who are already experts and would want to know more. Moz courses cost from 49 dollars to 595 dollars but right now, in an effort to help those that are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Moz has opened its library to everyone for free until May 31. Accessing Moz Academy is easy. Just create an account or use your existing Moz account (you don’t have to be a Moz SEO tool used to access this) and use their promo code “wegotthis” on all of their courses.

SEMRush Academy

Website: https://www.semrush.com/academy/

SEMRush’s free learning platform has courses that are perfect for learning the fundamentals of SEO. SEMRush Academy also includes courses on how to maximize SEMRush tools that is beneficial if you are a SEMRush user. These free SEO courses come with an official SEMRush certificate which is a great addition to your resume since SEMRush is one of the most popular SEO software in the industry.

Shopify Academy

Website: https://academy.shopify.com/

Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world and they are offering courses on setting up an e-commerce site through Shopify, SEO for e-commerce, and growing your business. 

The COVID-19 pandemic just showed how important it is to have an e-commerce website with most physical stores unable to operate due to quarantine. This is a great opportunity if you are a business owner to learn more about how you could transform your business digitally.

Hubspot Academy

Website: https://academy.hubspot.com/

Hubspot, popular for their inbound marketing, sales, and CRM software, also has a huge library of courses and certifications. You could find a wide variety of topics about SEO, inbound marketing, content marketing, copywriting, sales, and even design. All of their courses and certifications are free.

Hubspot Academy is a great platform if you want to be a well-rounded online marketer and the certifications also help in improving your career. If you are a business owner, inbound marketing is a strategy that you should highly consider in your marketing strategy and training your team through Hubspot is a great way to start.

Yoast Academy

Website: https://academy.yoast.com/

WordPress is one of the most SEO-friendly platforms if you want to build a website and Yoast is one of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. Yoast Academy has lessons on SEO and how to use WordPress for beginners. Some of the courses are free but some paid courses are accessible as well through a free trial.

SEO Hacker School

Website: https://seo-hacker.org/

I started the SEO Hacker blog to share all of my learnings from my experiments when I was learning how to do SEO for myself. 10 years later, I am blessed to still be writing and sharing my learnings through this blog. But aside from the SEO Hacker blog, our team also created an SEO school if you want more in-depth lessons. We have a lot of free courses available. All you have to do is register and you can access them immediately.

Key Takeaway

All of these resources that are listed are free and easily accessible with your laptop through the internet. These are all self-paced courses that you could finish at your own time. This gives you no reason to make an excuse to learn more and sharpen your skills.

Choosing what we do in our free time is crucial in our personal growth and career growth. We might feel like we have more time in our hands with everyone working remotely, but we still only have 24 hours a day. It is always best that we do something productive with our free time and continue to add value to ourselves.

 

Free Digital Marketing Courses for SEOs posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

How to Effectively Use Anchor Texts for Your SEO

Last updated on April 14, 2020 at 07:25 pm

The past month has created a difference in the digital marketing industry wherein more and more businesses are realizing the importance of going digital because of its availability amidst the crisis. Us, as SEOs now have the responsibility to expand our knowledge of strategies and techniques that help us win the SEO game. 

That being said, link building is one of the foundational strategies that all SEOs must know and do. There are different facets to this strategy, but one is often undervalued or abused that it leads to problems in our SEO. I’m talking about anchor texts – a simple factor that all webmasters and SEOs know. But what is it about anchor texts that make them important to our overall SEO ventures?

What is Anchor Text?

It’s simply the highlighted, clickable text in a hyperlink, usually found inside the body of content of a webpage. You commonly see it as the underlined, blue words such as this one linking to our compilation of the best SEO tools for 2020

Here’s what it looks like in code:

Different Types of Anchor Texts

Anchor texts have different types to them that you must know for you to fully utilize them to help with your SEO

• Branded – This is the anchor text that uses your brand name. So, for us at SEO Hacker, this is what it would look like:
• Exact Match – This includes the target keyword for your page in the anchor text. If your keyword is “link building strategies”, that’s what the anchor text should be.
• Keyword Variations – Unlike exact match anchor texts, you use variations of your keywords as the anchor text. So, if you have a link going to a link building guide page, you might use “link building strategies and techniques” as the anchor text.
• Generic – This includes generic CTAs for anchor texts such as “click here” or “check us out”
• Bare Links – You simply use the URL of the page you’re linking to as the anchor text as well
• No Text – This happens when an image is linking to your page, but there’s no set alt text to serve as the anchor text.
• Alt Text – Unlike the “No text” type, you’ll be using the alt text of the image as the anchor text if the image is linking to a specific page.

Why Anchor Text is Important for SEO

Google and other search engines use the anchor text to understand the context of the linked page. So, through the link I made above regarding the best SEO tools for 2020, you can understand the link as me telling you as the user AND the search engines that the page I linked through will contain information on the best SEO tools for 2020.

It’s that simple yet it’s important as well. Take for example inbound links to your site from other websites. The anchor text helps search engine crawlers understand what your page or site is about and it also signals to them how other websites understand your site as well. Of course, you have limited control over how links to your site are built, most especially if you were not the one who built those links, but what you can control are the internal links on your website. 

SEO Best Practices for Anchor Text

Be Concise and Comprehensive

Your anchor text shouldn’t encompass a whole sentence. The best anchor texts are the ones that can fully express what the linked page is all about in just a few words. Additionally, using a whole sentence as your anchor text is also disruptive for the users that see it. Some questions you should remember when creating a concise and comprehensive anchor text:

• How do I express what the linked page is all about?
• How do I summarize it to a few words?

Keyword Density

We all know about the Penguin update. They cracked down on websites that used spammy link building tactics, one of which is keyword-stuffed anchor texts. So, it’s important for you as a webmaster or SEO to decide on how you can incorporate keywords into the anchor text without it seeming unnatural and spammy.

My recommendation is to just describe the linked page – plain and simple. If the linked page’s content is properly optimized, you won’t have to worry about stuffing keywords in the anchor texts of the links you build since the keyword is already the topic of the linked page. This make it look more natural and safe. This also applies to internal links since the repeated use of the same anchor text inside a website can also look a bit spammy for Google.

Relevance

Lastly, make sure your anchor texts are relevant to the linked page. Don’t use an unrelated anchor text for linking since this could possibly affect your SEO. If you’re linking to a page about SEO, don’t use a random anchor text such as “cars for sale”. Even if the page contains a small part about how SEO can help sell cars online, the anchor text is misleading and irrelevant to the whole context at best.

Link relevancy is also a factor considered by search engines nowadays. HOW related is the linked page to the source page and how does the anchor text express that correlation? An extremely relevant link with a great anchor text can improve your SEO by leaps and bounds. Let’s use the example above. Using “cars for sale” as your link’s anchor text is bad, but changing it to “SEO helps sell cars online” is the better way of manipulating the link. But do remember, this will only work if the link you created is relevant to the source page it’s coming from. So, using “SEO helps sell cars online” as an anchor text, the content where the link is located should be talking about how to sell cars online or any other related topics.

Key Takeaway

Anchor texts seem simple enough, but there are a lot of facets you have to consider to take advantage of its capability to improve your SEO efforts. SEO necessitates constant improvement and innovation – without these, you’ll have a hard time staying on the first page for a long time. Noticing how important small details are is one of the greatest ways for us to come up with innovative ideas to test out. What about you? Do you have experience with the improper or proper optimization of anchor texts? Comment it down below!

How to Effectively Use Anchor Texts for Your SEO posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

Empowering Small Businesses to Invest in SEO

Last updated on April 9, 2020 at 02:50 pm

The Coronavirus pandemic has greatly affected businesses on a global scale since no one remains unscathed by the economic effects of the virus. One thing stays the same is that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an investment that will generate growth for businesses, no matter what niche they belong to. This is why we are going to talk about how an SEO company and a small business can team up together towards success.

For small businesses, it can be difficult to navigate this crisis without hard-hitting tools at their disposal. Social distancing is all the rage right now and businesses that primarily deal with engagement are now suffering from loss of opportunities for growth. But this will not go on forever. Everyone is hoping for a better condition of the world soon which means there are many people who would welcome your business as soon as you have recovered. All the more reason for small businesses to envision their resurgence from this pandemic, right?

SEO and Small Businesses

According to a survey by The Manifest, only 30% of small businesses in the United States have an SEO strategy in place for their marketing efforts. This is a mediocre amount for the rest of the businesses that do not see SEO as an investment seeing as this digital marketing effort is the most affordable way to increase your brand’s visibility nowadays compared to paid advertising.

And once you rank first organically, you have higher chances to stay on the first page rather than paying for your slot in the search engine results, and then get kicked off by the competition because they have outbid you or their copy is better than yours.

Organic ranking is holistic and it is fueled by quality and relevance. Here at SEO Hacker, we strongly believe in the potential of small businesses to grow in the digital market. Heck, this blog that you are reading now used to be a space for a guy who just wants to write about his experiments and strategies for SEO. Today, it has grown into a full-scale business, and we are now ranking first for the toughest and most sustainable keyword in the country, SEO Philippines. If I can do it, so can you.

Growth can start out simply, without the extravagant display of complex strategies. If you are now well-convinced about SEO as a viable investment, I would advise you to go back-to-basic.

While we are looking at recovery in the near future, considering an investment in SEO is one of the ways to cope with the losses of small businesses. How is this going to work? Read on below about the foundational strategies that will help small businesses thrive in the digital market:

Solid Keyword Research

Banking on keyword strategies will go a long way in your pursuit of digital marketing success. When it comes to solid keywords, search intent is the key. Make sure to target keywords that can help you create content for people and not search engines. Content will help your business succeed if you serve the right audience. Long-tail keywords will be most beneficial not only for small businesses but for those industries who are looking for their site visitors to convert.

Mobile Optimization

People around the globe have been staying at home during this lockdown. They have more time on their hands to surf the internet using their smartphones. This is also a primary consideration since you can reach your audience this way. The key metric in ensuring success in mobile optimization is to increase mobile usability by fixing errors detected in Google Search Console. Site speed is also a big factor so make sure to optimize for this as well. Prepare an initial diagnosis of your speed and fix issues according to the recommendations.

High-Quality Foundational Content

Small businesses that would like to do “DIY-SEO” can always start with content. Write with passion about your industry and stand out in that niche. You can be easily viewed as a blog of value if you are writing about knowledge transfers for those who are interested in what you do. Foundational content can thrive with search intent as its support. Make sure that you are not too methodological in your approach to content since your audience would want to read engaging content that they can use to their own advantage.

Backlink Creation

Once you get the ball rolling on the content that you will feature, you will also need backlinks for your site. It is important that you spend more time promoting your content than that you used to create it. Links with the anchor text that you would like to be known as an authority for will help you achieve digital marketing success. Backlinks are essential for small businesses because this is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness. If people are seeing your name as an authority in the industry, it’s only natural that they would want to do business with you.

Key Takeaway

An SEO company for a small business is the most ideal setup in generating ROI in the digital market. But for those who would like to try their hand at doing SEO for themselves, these are some of the quick strategies that you can use for starters. The ones I listed here are nothing that you haven’t heard before but many small businesses are on the path of educating themselves about digital marketing and how they can use this for their business especially in times of crisis.

How does SEO help your business grow? Comment it down below!

Empowering Small Businesses to Invest in SEO posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

How Digital Marketing Companies are Affected by COVID-19

Last updated on April 7, 2020 at 04:43 pm

The past few months have been rough as the infectious COVID-19 continues to plague the world. Countries affected are implementing lockdowns to prevent further spread of the virus and the economical effects are massive. Businesses are in crisis mode; some are able to continue to operate but with limitations while some have to completely halt operations.

A few weeks ago, I published an article on How the Coronavirus is affecting search and the negative effects of COVID-19 are evident for some industries. Due to companies losing profits, the service industry is massively affected and digital marketing companies are no exception

Fortunately, our team here at SEO Hacker was able to adjust accordingly to this crisis but I was curious to know how my fellow digital marketers are doing during these times so I asked them a few questions to further know how digital marketing companies are doing.

Work Setup

One of the advantages of working in the digital industry is that most of the resources that you need to operate are accessible through the internet. That is why most companies, as well as our team, have transitioned to working remotely.

David Langton’s team at Langton Creative Group Ltd makes use of various tools to make it easier for their team.

“We are set-up remotely with access to our server and catalog of past and present work. So much is available via cloud-services that working remotely is not as challenging as it once was. We meet weekly via Zoom to touch base and coordinate work schedules.”

Additionally, they also use some of the free time they get from working remotely to produce more materials. Langton said, “Currently, we are using this time to create new case studies, update our website and address some long-term marketing goals.” 

But working remotely is a huge adjustment for some companies that are used to having their team together in one office. Taylor Cimara, Principal and Strategic Director of Digital Third Coast said that communication takes the most adjustment needed.

 

“Our entire team is working remotely and has been since March 13th. While we let employees have flexibility in working from home, we’ve never had to have the entire team work remotely for an extended period of time. Communication is the biggest change – many more intentional touchpoints with the team, and more mindfulness with management and what everyone is going through individually at home.”

However, for some companies, working from home isn’t really new. Some digital marketing companies run their operations remotely even before the quarantine. For Juan Pablo Diaz, Founder of Krows Digital, business is just as usual.

“The quarantine didn’t have much impact on our day-to-day work as we have been working remotely since the early days of the company. We usually meet once or twice a week in a shared open space in Tokyo but now we prefer to do our meetings through Discord.”

Juan also sees something positive in the situation. Having their meetings online actually makes their meetings more productive. Juan said “In a way, it is actually a good thing for us as we tend to always talk about many things that are not relevant. Doing online meetings forces us to get straight to the point and to prepare our report presentations”.

Speaking of positivity, Graeme Barlow’s team over at Iversoft found a way to keep things fun and transition their office culture to their now fully remote workforce.

“We are fortunate to have a pretty fun culture in our office and it’s been absolutely amazing to see what people have done to bring that virtual. From pet photos to gaming hangouts to hosting video social hours, it’s been fantastic to see how we’ve translated the atmosphere from an open office to a remote equivalent.”

How Their Clients are Affected

The impact of the COVID-19 varies from one industry to another. Some may experience gains, but most industries are expected to suffer from the crisis.

According to Nate Nead, CEO of SEO.co, their clients that are in the retail industry were hit the most. Nate said,“Client budgets have definitely shrunk quickly, regardless of size. Clients hit the hardest have been local clients in retail, while larger, national clients have been more engaged, but are proceeding cautiously.”

The tourism industry is one of the most affected as well with people being forced to stay at home. Amy Draheim of ABD Creative LLC discussed that their clients are suffering from the crisis.

“Our hotel clients are experiencing extremely low occupancy. They’ve redeployed their housekeeping staff to high touch areas, and focus on deep cleaning instead of daily tidying for travelers who are still traveling (few and far between). Our restaurants are only offering delivery/take out services, and have laid off most of their employees as a result. Business is slow across the board.” 

Similar for Brogan Renshaw of Firewire Digital, clients are being affected across the board but their team was quick to react and give solutions to their clients.

“Approximately 30% of our clients’ businesses have been significantly impacted by COVID-19. A further 20% have been partially impacted by a drop in revenue. 

As the crisis was in its early stages we were proactive and offered all our clients the opportunities to pause and reduce contracts for a period of time. We wanted to be on the front foot and reduce any stress or anxiety for our clients. I would rather see clients come out the other side of all this and still be operating and for them to know we helped them get through it.” 

However, for Erika Thomas’ clients at Coveted Portfolio, there are clients that are looking to take advantage of the situation and are shifting their focus on transitioning to e-commerce.

“Some are experiencing a delay in launching their brands and physical locations in this current market, some are still “guns blazing” to take advantage of this very unique time for e-commerce. It really depends on who they are and what they can offer at this moment”.

Did They Lose Clients?

During these times, some companies are forced to cut their marketing budgets to allot the money for payroll and other operational expenses. This means digital marketing companies are in danger of losing contracts.

Aliza Sherman, CEO of Ellementa and Spark the Creative, has lost clients but made quick adjustments with their pricing to retain some clients.

“We’ve lost most of our clients. To maintain the ones we still have, we’ve reduced our fees drastically, looking at the long term relationship. We’d rather make sure we all stay in business than trying to gouge clients in the short term. If we can all support one another and weather this crisis, we’ll be stronger and thrive in the long run.”

I could say this is a good strategy because some companies are still looking to continue their digital efforts amidst the crisis. Those who can’t afford the same budget they had before may look for alternatives. Bernie Clark of Majux Marketing has the same thing in mind.

“We have had a few clients who have been forced to put projects or initiatives on a temporary hold.  We are lucky enough to have not lost any accounts so far, but we have been getting calls from businesses who had to leave their previous agency because of an over-reliance or singular offering of paid media. Nobody wants to dump tens of thousands of dollars into Google Ads or TV right now, so if that was your agency’s sole offering or the large piece of your previous agency’s strategy, you’re going to be looking for a new agency that focuses on a more balanced strategy.”

Some companies have handled the situation well. They didn’t lose any clients but contracts are put on hold. This gives them faster recovery once the COVID-19 crisis is over. Monica Smith, CEO of Marketsmith, believes that this is a time to have empathy for their clients and be good partners.

“We have not lost any clients at this time.  We are working with our clients to be the best partner we can be.  If that means extending their terms or allowing campaign shifts and pauses we are committed to that.  We specialize in bringing companies up during challenging times – we are working on strategic plans and initiatives for each client to make that possible”. 

What is Their Plan Moving Forward?

We don’t know for sure yet when this pandemic will be over but it is important to be positive and make plans moving forward. We’re also not sure yet how the world will look after COVID-19 but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be business as usual. 

Erico Franco, Senior Manager at Agencia de Marketing Digital, managed to negotiate with their current clients but they are still looking for prospects to keep their business going.

“We are cutting costs and negotiating with our already customer to see what we can do to help them and so not losing the account. We keep trying to prospect new customers even a lot of them don’t want to talk now. We don’t know how long this crisis will take but we are trying to prepare to the worst and keeping moving forward and in a positive way.”

Olga Gonzales, CEO of Pietra Communications, believes this is a good time to expand their agency’s capabilities.

“Our agency is known for our print and digital placements, but the virus really has taught us that digital is the basket to put more eggs in. Therefore, we will be looking into more ways to expand our capabilities, and continue to focus on growing editorial relationships here in “think outside the box” ways. “

On the other hand, Khaeleelah Jones, founder and CEO of Careful Feet Digital Agency is innovating that would allow them to tap more companies.

“We are in the process of creating a tool that automates many of our services, so we can offer our services at a lower price point, for companies of all sizes and budgets. It allows us to scale and democratize access while continuing to offering higher-cost boutique services for those companies that should need it.”

Because of the COVID-19 crisis, Clement Conor, COO of Smartboost, believes that companies will realize more the importance of having an online presence once the crisis is over.

“We would like to educate the market that a digital presence is now an essential aspect of the business. Transitioning your business to a digital platform now can be useful and will likely make your operations more cost-efficient. A lot of our clients will realize first hand that their ROI online is a lot better than you see with traditional marketing.”

Key Takeaway

COVID-19 has caught the world off-guard and I’m really glad to see other digital marketing companies are able to go through this crisis. It’s amazing to see that digital marketing companies are doing what they can to help their clients and I pray that we can all recover from this crisis. It is really important that we all stay positive during these tough times.

If you own or work in a digital marketing company, let me know how you’re doing in the comments and I would love to talk about it.

How Digital Marketing Companies are Affected by COVID-19 posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

Sitemap Best Practices to Improve Your SEO

Last updated on April 2, 2020 at 04:22 pm

Sitemaps – properly optimized websites have them to since they’re integral to having a proper indexing process for your site. If you have a properly set-up sitemap, it also assists crawlers to better navigate your website thereby giving your site better visibility in the search engines.

As simple as it may seem, there are a lot of technical aspects that webmasters and SEOS should understand about sitemaps. It’s not as easy as generating it once and forgetting about it. This is one of the most important aspects of improving a website’s search visibility. So, I took it upon myself to enumerate some best practices we do at SEO Hacker to ensure that a website’s sitemap is fully optimized and is massively contributing to the site’s SEO/search presence. Let’s start.

What are Sitemaps?

According to Google, a sitemap is:

“a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files: for example, for pages, when the page was last updated, how often the page is changed, and any alternate language versions of a page.”

In simpler terms, a sitemap is a file you create to assist and inform search engine crawlers the BETTER way to crawl your website. This includes the pages that you believe should be included in the search results since they’re informative and can potentially answer a user’s query. 

Why You Should Use Sitemaps

Aside from the benefits I already mentioned, some other benefits of using sitemaps are:

• Last Updated or Modified – If you regularly publish content on your website, there will be instances where you update old, informative blog posts to make it fresher and increase its value. Through sitemaps, you can give signals/information to the search engine crawlers about the pages that you just updated or modified. This tells them that the particular pages contain new information that should be taken into consideration when they rank those specific pages.
• A More Holistic View of Your Website – Sitemaps are files that can contain a massive number of URLs. This means that if you have a massive website, you won’t have trouble having most of your pages crawled and, hopefully, indexed by search engines. One example would be for e-commerce sites that have hundreds to thousands of pages for their products.
• Crawler Navigation and Discovery – Since crawlers use internal and external links to crawl the websites in the world wide web this poses problems for webmasters that are not well-versed with proper internal linking structure processes and proper link building tactics. Through sitemaps, these webmasters can inform crawlers that their pages exist – even if no other page is linking to it. But I strongly recommend constantly improving your website’s internal linking and link building processes since it’s more beneficial for SEO.

Sitemap Best Practices

Since we now all know the importance and benefits of having a sitemap, here are 3 sitemap best practices we do at SEO Hacker to ensure that our client’s sitemap is a stepping stone for SEO success:

1. Dynamic Sitemaps

A dynamic sitemap is a type of sitemap that possess a set of rules that allow them to update themselves whenever you make changes to your pages. This is extremely helpful for large websites or publishers that regularly update a large number of pages since a dynamic sitemap automatically updates itself when a rule is followed. 

Dynamic Sitemaps are also easier to access and crawl for search engine bots/crawlers and are relatively safer from being corrupted.

2. Plugin/Tools

As I’ve mentioned, sitemaps are important which is why developers around the world and even Google produced tools and plugins that assist webmasters and SEOs with sitemap generation and management.

For WordPress websites, the Yoast SEO plugin already has a built-in XML sitemap generator which is used by a large number of webmasters. You can also install Google XML Sitemaps to create them as well. 

After creation, it’s a best practice to submit the generated sitemap to Google Search Console. Click the “Sitemaps” button in the sidebar of your Google Search Console property, then just put your sitemap URL Slug in the space provided and click submit.

3. Priority Pages

In sitemaps, there’s a Google protocol where you can give scores to your page between 0.1 to 1 – 1 being the highest. Pages that have higher scores are given priority in crawling and they’re also more regularly crawled than lower scored pages.

The best practice here is to assign higher scores to pages that are more regularly updated or more important pages. Having these pages crawled more often by Google is important since you want Google or other search engines to SEE and KNOW what changes you made and how those changes added more value to the page. 

Since it’s up to you as the webmaster to assign these scores, you need to remember that it’s not a best practice to give ALL your pages the same score to give priority to all of them. Google crawlers are constantly improved and they also function through algorithmic processes. This means that they’ll have a harder and longer time understanding which pages are regularly updated as compared to other, static pages.

4. Avoid Noindexed Pages

Putting noindex tags in your pages means that you don’t want those pages showing up in the search results. This could encompass a lot of pages such as log-in, checkout, resource, or WordPress pages. This is self-explanatory but avoid including pages that you’ve labeled as noindex in your sitemap. 

Your sitemap should contain only the pages that you WANT to show up in the search results which is why intentionally or accidentally including noindexed pages in your sitemap is contradictory and causes errors in your Google Search Console coverage report. This is easily avoided by being mindful of the pages included in your sitemap and by doing regular sitemap check-ups.

If one way or another, you included a noindexed page in your sitemap, this is what it would look like after you validate the appropriate fixes:

5. Link to the Sitemap

This is a simple practice that we’ve been doing as long as I can remember. After generating a sitemap, we always link the sitemap in the website’s footer to make it a sitewide link. This is just an additional measure for crawlers to find the sitemap. Since we want it to be visible all the time whenever search engines crawl our website

Key Takeaway

Us webmasters and SEOs need to understand the importance of sitemaps and how it brings about massive benefits to our websites. It’s already considered a foundational strategy to set-up and optimize a sitemap for most SEOs since they’re a big help for improving search visibility and presence.

Use the best practices I’ve mentioned to step up your sitemap processes and thereby improve your overall SEO efforts. Do you know any other best practices for sitemap generation and optimization? Comment them down below!

Sitemap Best Practices to Improve Your SEO posted first on https://seo-hacker.com

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