A hub and spoke content marketing strategy can help you boost keywords rankings, increase website traffic and enhance downstream metrics like conversions, leads and sales.
Join Conductor in a live webinar and learn the basics of a hub and spoke model. You’ll also take away a four-step process you can use to rank higher.
Every time you type a question into Google, the results page can look completely different. Think videos, images, ads, graphs, and related questions.
Today there are more than 40 different interactive elements or SERP features that can appear. These responsive results offer an improved user experience, but pose a real challenge to search engine optimization (SEO).
So, how can you know what SERP features should be at the forefront of your strategic planning? In this report, Similarweb analyzed the most popular SERP features across various industries. It covers
Best practices to help you rank for key SERP features
Important factors that influence search behavior
Varying trends and growth rates of SERP features
Which SERP features are most prominent by industry
How branded and non-branded search impact SERP
Read it now to find out the best strategies to leverage and how.
Messy SEO is a column covering the nitty-gritty, unpolished tasks involved in the auditing, planning, and optimization of websites, using MarTech’s new domain as a case study.
This installment of “Messy SEO” details my process of working with our team to analyze indexing patterns for MarTech’s pages. In Part 6, we discussed the necessity of creating pillar pages to establish a better site hierarchy and rank for our most relevant topics.
MarTech.org has had many indexing issues since its creation last year. The most pressing one lately is that Google seems to be prioritizing outdated content in the SERPs, meaning many of the (now redirected) Marketing Land and MarTech Today URLs are still populating the index. As a result, the majority of MarTech’s top-performing pages are irrelevant to our brand as it exists today.
One of the ways we’re addressing this issue is by creating pillar pages that center on the main industry topics we cover at MarTech. This will help us establish a hierarchy of relevant topics.
We’ve primarily focused on Google’s indexation throughout this process, neglecting to review the ways other search engines have treated our content. So, we decided to compare the MarTech, Marketing Land, and MarTech Today data from Google with that from Microsoft Bing – and the discrepancies were telling.
Indexing status almost a year after migration and consolidation
There have been a lot of changes to MarTech’s indexing since the migration, most notably the title change issues. Thankfully, these were largely resolved, but there are some other issues we found when comparing the content indexed on Google and that on Bing.
Google’s indexing
Despite many lingering indexing issues, Google has made some adjustments to MarTech’s indexation over the past year. The search engine removed virtually all of our duplicate URLs after we set up our redirects, and a good portion of Marketing Land and MarTech Today pages have been removed as well. However, we’ve recently noticed some interesting performance and indexing trends.
Performance. The majority of the top pages from the past three months in terms of interaction are legacy pages that have little to no relevance to our MarTech brand. Aside from the homepage, the “What is MarTech” page, and our CDP platform page, the top URLs are largely irrelevant to our target audience.
Granted, these articles have been live for years, building up authority on the Marketing Land and MarTech Today domains. But, after almost a year of MarTech being live, it’s odd that there are so many old, less relevant pages sitting at the top of our performance lists – especially when our team has published so much good content since then.
Indexed pages. Google has roughly 29,000 MarTech URLs in its index. The majority of these are relevant links we’ve placed in our sitemaps. However, there are over 7,000 URLs in the “Indexed, not submitted in sitemap” category. Many of these URLs are irrelevant — a disconcerting number have parameters that look like either tracking code or, in some cases, spam.
URLs with parameters in the index.
The prevalence of URL parameters isn’t surprising, but it’s not clear why Google is including so many of these in the index. The more alarming trend, however, is the number of Marketing Land and MarTech Today URLs that are still in Google’s index as well.
Marketing Land URLs on Google.
MarTech Today URLs on Google.
We know that there are plenty of Marketing Land and MarTech Today URLs online, both in our older pieces of content and on other websites. But it’s strange to see so many still in Google’s index.
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Bing’s indexing tells a different story. Though there are still plenty of irrelevant content pieces, they’re much less prominent in the SERPs.
Performance. MarTech’s top-performing pages on Bing look somewhat similar to those on Google. The homepage, “What is MarTech” page, and legacy pages are still there, but we also found one of our more recent news articles in the mix. The importance of the piece to our industry undoubtedly helped bring it to the forefront, but it’s peculiar that Google didn’t treat it the same way.
This newer article’s numbers are encouraging, but, just like the results on Google, our more relevant topic pages are failing to perform well.
Indexed pages. Bing has indexed fewer of our MarTech pages (roughly 17,000 URLs), which isn’t surprising, given how much smaller it is than Google. However, after analyzing these URLs, we found the ratio of relevant content to irrelevant content to be much lower. We’re not seeing a huge number of indexed URLs with parameters.
The most glaring difference between the two search engines is their indexing of our old domain pages. While Google still retains over 2,000 URLs from Marketing Land and MarTech Today, there are only 143 of these URLs left in Bing’s index.
Marketing Land URLs on Bing.MarTech Today URLs on Bing.
Yes, Bing had fewer of these pages to begin with, but the inconsistency is still shocking.
A discrepancy between Google and Bing’s indexing
Of the two search engines, it seems Bing is doing a better job of crawling our old URLs and adjusting its index accordingly. This makes sense — there are fewer pages indexed on Bing, so the search engine has less to clean up.
But why is Google holding on to so many of these old URLs? One possible explanation is that it simply hasn’t crawled all of the old URLs yet. This would mean it hasn’t found the 301 redirects we put in place, believing the old sites are still live.
This seems unlikely, however, as we migrated the site almost a year ago. Google has had plenty of time to crawl our pages. Yet, we’re still open to this possibility.
Another explanation could be that there’s a structural issue on the MarTech site that is somehow telling Google the old domains are still live. We’re conducting some deep technical audits at the moment to determine if this is true. Until we know more, we’re going to continue to create good content and do all we can to help it rank higher than the less relevant pages.
Have you noticed discrepancies in indexing between Google and Bing? How are you addressing the issue? Email me at cpatterson@thirddoormedia.com with the subject line “Messy SEO Part 7” to let me know.
More Messy SEO
Read more about our new MarTech domain’s SEO case study.
Google multisearch is Google’s latest innovative search feature that let’s you search by image and then add text to that specific image search. Google says this lets searchers “go beyond the search box and ask questions about what you see.”
What is Google multisearch. Google multisearch lets you use your camera’s phone to search by an image, powered by Google Lens, and then add an additional text query on top of the image search. Google will then use both the image and the text query to show you visual search results.
How Google multisearch works. Open the Google app on Android or iOS, click on the Google Lens camera icon on the right side of the search box. Then point the camera at something nearby or use a photo in your camera or even take a picture of something on your screen. Then you swipe up on the results to bring it up, and tap the “+ Add to your search” button. In this box you can add text to your photo query.
Here is a GIF of this in action but you should be able to try it yourself in English, in the United States:
Here is a static image of the flow of how this works:
How is Google multisearch helpful. Google said this feature can help you narrow down your searches, here are some examples of how multisearch can be helpful.
Screenshot a stylish orange dress and add the query “green” to find it in another color
Snap a photo of your dining set and add the query “coffee table” to find a matching table
Take a picture of your rosemary plant and add the query “care instructions”
MUM not yet in multisearch. Google made a comment in its blog post saying “this is made possible by our latest advancements in artificial intelligence, which is making it easier to understand the world around you in more natural and intuitive ways. We’re also exploring ways in which this feature might be enhanced by MUM– our latest AI model in Search– to improve results for all the questions you could imagine asking.”
Available in US/English. This feature is live now for me, and should be available as a “beta feature in English in the U.S.” Google said. Google also recommended you try it with shopping searches.
Why we care. As Google releases new ways for consumers to search, your customers may access your content on your website in new ways as well. How consumers access your content, be it desktop search, mobile search, voice search, image search and now multisearch – may matter to you in terms of how likely that customer might convert, where the searcher is in their buying cycle and more.
SEO can be broken down into clear, repeatable steps.
We know that:
Content is king and user experience is queen.
Google wants us to create unique, relevant, comprehensive content so that searches can find exactly what they are looking for.
Websites should load fast and make it easy for users to perform their desired actions.
The content and experience of the site should be worthy of being mentioned and linked to by other relevant, authoritative websites.
In this way, optimizing for SEO can be distilled into four stages:
Research
Audit
Create
Empower
Want to learn a repeatable, step-by-step marketing program that will allow you to develop and implement a successful digital marketing strategy? This will be the first article of a new series that will deliver just that. This article will provide a general outline of the “what” and “how.” Future installments will go into much more detail.
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Before starting any SEO campaign, you need to spend a significant amount of time researching.
Here are a few key elements to examine at the start of any campaign:
Baseline research:
What: How is the site currently performing? What keywords are you currently ranking for? How much traffic is the site receiving monthly?
How:
Semrush Domain Overview
Semrush Organic Research
Semrush Benchmark Report
Competitor analysis:
What: Start by identifying who your top competitors are. Then, perform a gap analysis to see what keywords they are ranking for and that you aren’t, and vice versa. At this stage, do some backlink sleuthing too.
How:
Semrush Keyword Gap
Semrush Organic Research
Semrush Saved Report
Semrush Backlink Analytics
Keyword research:
What: Having looked at the keywords you are currently ranking for, what keywords your competitors are ranking for, and having a clear understanding of your target audience and buying stages, it’s time to build your keyword list.
How:
Semrush Keyword Magic
Semrush Keyword Gap
Semrush Organic Research (Competitors)
Google Search Console
Google People Also Ask
Google Search Suggestions
Target audience research:
What: Who is your target audience, and what do they look for at every stage of the buying process? At this stage, you’ll want to create buyer personas and map out their buying journey.
How:
Customer Service Data
Google Analytics Demographic Data
Surveys
Audit (analyze, align, activate)
Now that all the background research is complete, it’s time to move on to the auditing stage. You’ll need to perform several audits to ensure your site has all the correct elements.
Technical SEO audit:
What: You’ll need to run the site through several tools to understand how the code is built and how it impacts performance and rankings. You can use multiple tools to get a comprehensive list of data points and then send these findings to the relevant team members.
The number of data points in performing a technical audit could be endless, so we will focus on some of the most important ones that will make a significant difference when optimizing for Google.
How:
Tools:
Semrush Audit
Screaming Frog
SiteBulb
Critical CSS
Cloudflare
GTmetrix
Pingdom
Website Auditor
Google tools:
Google Lighthouse
URL Inspection
Structured Data Markup Helper
Rich Results Test
Chrome Dev Tools
Content audit:
What: Unless you’re launching a brand new website, you will likely inherit a lot of “content baggage” when you do SEO for your website. Your website may have hundreds of outdated pages or pages that are not receiving any traffic and bog down your content score.
It’s common for people to cannibalize content, which means they have multiple articles targeting the same keywords. Thin content is also very common, including pages with little to no text or does not cover a subject comprehensively.
How: Use Screaming Frog or Semrush to create a list of your site’s page, add metrics and analytics data, and label pages to keep, delete, revamp or consolidate.
E-A-T audit
What:
Expertise: topic expertise for an author
Authority: inbound links, social followers, inbound links, citations, social shares, topic authority
Trustworthiness: SSL, contact info, privacy and disclaimers, refund policy, about us page, links to authorities, credentials on about page
Does your site have toxic backlinks? Do you have a disavow in place? Has your site been the victim of a negative SEO attack? If you have toxic backlinks, your rankings could be suppressed.
How:
Semrush backlink audit: Start by running the links using their filters and send every link to the disavow or whitelist. Once done, review any that weren’t part of a pattern. Finally, run both the whitelist and disavow list through a metrics finder so you can check if any can be moved over. When done, export to disavow and upload to Google Search Console.
Analytics audit:
What:
Is your GA set up properly? Are you tracking conversions and/or goals? Do you have funnels set up? Do you have call tracking installed and working? Are you a/b testing and launching the pixels correctly?
How:
Review your Google Analytics account and make sure all of the above is set up properly.
Create (captivate, capture, compel)
Now that all of the foundational research is in place, you can move on to the fun part: creating captivating, compelling content.
Build your editorial strategy:
What:
Create an editorial strategy including the keywords from your KW research, trending topics, and content that addresses each target persona’s top, middle, and bottom of the buying stages.
How:
Plan:
Determine Cadence: How often will you publish?
Determine Resources: How many writers/editors are available?
Determine Formats: Micro-posts, Long-form posts, infographics, video graphics, ebooks, tutorials?
Trending Topics: Use Feedly, BuzzSumo or Google News to create a list of relevant, trending topics.
Editorial calendar:
Based on the cadence, assign a keyword or topic to each deadline/due date. Make sure you cover all target personas, buying stages, and relevant keywords.
Manage:
Editorial workflow
Add details to each content order: Primary and Secondary keyword, URL/meta title/H1, length, content type, author, author due date, scheduled to publish date.
Review content for readability, check for keyword inclusion, add similar keyword variants and check for the use of bullets and paragraphs.
Check for duplication of content.
Review for on-page SEO elements.
Make sure there are outbound links to authoritative sources.
Add links to other relevant pages of your site.
Publish
When publishing, make sure the article doesn’t have any formatting errors and that all of the on-page SEO elements are in place.
Track:
Create an experiment/annotation with the publish date to track the article’s performance at 60, 90, and 120 days.
Optimize:
Trending up/down: Perform monthly and quarterly audits where you optimize your pages that are trending up and down.
Consolidate: Content that isn’t performing can be consolidated with content that is doing well.
Update Meta Titles for CTR optimization using GSC
Outreach
Link Building:
What:
With all of your content assets in place, you can start outreach to promote your content with other publishers, websites or editors. Use direct email and social media outreach to connect with other relevant sites. Offer them an incentive to get them to agree to link to your site.
How:
Manual: Build a list of targets by searching for relevant sites in Google, grab their email and social profiles, offer a content piece, link exchange, or just ask for the link, follow up on all conversations.
Tools:
Pitchbox
Linkedin
Influencers and Brand Ambassadors:
What:
Many people already have popular sites that attract your target audience. Reach out to them and negotiate a partnership.
How:
Manual: Build a list of influencers and target them via email and social media
Tools:
Izea
Buzzsumo
Media:
What: Reach out to the media to promote your content, events, or campaigns.
How: Use Cision or other PR software to identify media members you can connect with.
Empower (engage, enthrall, earn)
Finally, you have all the building blocks to watch your website thrive and watch your traffic grow. You should be watching your site traffic, rankings and revenue increase at this final stage. You’ve done all the hard work and can now build on your success. At this final stage, you’ll want to focus on empowering your customers to trust you and become your customer.
Data analysis
What:
This stage is all about data-driven analysis and insights. You’ll have data coming from various sources. You want to focus on using that data to empower your consumers, buyers, brand ambassadors, sales team, and marketing teams at the empowerment stage. You’ll want to use data to determine the best keywords to focus on, campaigns that are resonating, brand ambassadors gaining traction, and more.
How:
GSC: Find pages or keywords trending up or down and optimize with additional content, keywords, inbound links, and visual assets.
BuzzSumo: What pages/articles are getting lots of social shares? Create more relevant/similar ones, or do outreach on those
Backlinks: What pages are getting lots of natural backlinks? What about your competitors? Look at these and surface those for increased outreach. Use Semrush backlink analytics to get this data.
Conversions: Which pages are converting best? What elements do those pages have that you can replicate? Use Google Analytics to determine this.
Conversion rate optimization (CRO):
What:
Conversion rate optimization is critical at this stage. You want to start getting into the weeds of how users are interacting with your content, landing pages, and checkout process. Run continuous experiments so you can maximize all of your existing traffic and improve your bottom line.
How:
Vwo
Optimizely
Figpii
Hotjar
Heap.io
Monitor trends
You can never rest on your laurels when it comes to your SEO strategy. It’s important to continuously build content, outreach and monitor the performance of your website. Google is constantly changing its algorithms, so it’s important for you to keep monitoring trends and to modify your website accordingly.
Here are some of the biggest shifts:
Voice and question-based queries. Smart devices, such as watches glasses and wearables advance, interactions with search engines may increasingly take place via voice. You should always be using questions as keywords and optimizing for voice search. Answers would come from the Featured Snippets and Knowledge Panels, so it’s increasingly important to get your pages ranking in these Google features.
Quality over quantity, based on crawl prioritization. Crawl priority will become increasingly relevant and important as more content is consistently created and indexed. You may choose to produce fewer pieces of content but make sure those pieces provide the best, most comprehensive user experience. Promote your articles to build links as often as you publish content so that your link growth velocity is congruent with your content publishing ratio.
User engagement signals, especially SPEED. Google introduced Web Core Vitals to break down the elements of site load speed, from “how quickly a page loads” to “how quickly do users see the first thing on the page”? How quickly is the page interactive? How quickly is the page fully functional?
Indexing and crawl prioritization: The number of pages indexed grows exponentially, and Google is moving away from indexing everything to indexing quality content. They are prioritizing crawls to pages that are trusted and authoritative.
Link building: Following their overall shift towards authority, receiving mentions from media and trusted sources will become increasingly important. If your friends all say you’re the best chef, everyone knows this can be biased. However, if people that don’t know you say you’re the best chef, this has more weight and value. Focus primarily on gaining authoritative links that your competitors don’t already have.
Deep dive
This article has given you an outline of the elements required to establish a successful SEO campaign. However, the devil is in the details.
The articles to follow in this series will go through each of the elements mentioned above, with in-depth information and processes to accomplish each of these stages.
Google has rolled out a new mobile search interface that allows for a more visual look at some search results. A Google spokesperson told us this new interface helps “surface relevant information related to an image, so users have a deeper understanding of the results they’re seeing.”
Mobile only. The new interface is currently live for mobile searches on Google for select queries. You can try it for the query [hand tattoos] or [game room design] on your mobile device.
What it looks like. Here is a cropped screenshot of the new visual look, that shows images in a grid-like interface. If you want a full size screenshot, click here.
Two position ones? I asked Google if the top two results would be counted in Google Search Console performance reports as position one, or if the one on the left is position one and the one on the right is position two? Is that flipped for languages that go from right to left like Hebrew and Arabic? We will update this story when we hear back.
Why we care. This new layout in mobile search may help your site get more (or less) exposure in the search results. In these types of queries, you now have two side-by-side results, possibly from two different sides sharing the first position in a grid format.
This may impact your site traffic, click through rates and performance reports in Google Search Console.
Google Search has reduced the irrelevant results shown in Google Search by over 50% in the last seven years, the search company announced. With that, Google also dropped another nugget of information saying they have seen a more than 60% increase in natural language queries.
Irrelevant results. Google is constantly making changes to Google Search. In 2021, Google said it made more than 5,000 improvements to search and ran more than 800,000 experiments. For comparison, in 2020 Google revealed it made 4,887 changes to search.
Google’s changes and experiments are all aimed at improving search quality and relevancy. Google said that the 50% decrease in irrelevant search results over the past seven years is measured based on internal metrics based on quality rater data. There is no independent source for this metric, but these are internal metrics Google uses to measure the relevancy of its own search results.
Natural language queries. The other metric, that there is over a 60% increase in people entering queries into the Google search box using natural language is interesting. Google said that they have “seen people’s search queries evolve, too.” “Since 2015, we’ve seen a more than 60% increase in natural language queries in search,” Google wrote.
So if you write your content, like people normally write and speak, then you should do well in Google Search. Google wrote “this means people can find what they need more easily, and using language that’s closer to the way we normally write and speak.”
Why we care. One thing we can expect from Google is constant change. This change is not for the sake of change itself but rather for improving search quality and relevancy. That means the bar for ranking your site high in Google Search continues to be raised.
SEO and search have evolved over the past 25 years, shortcuts are hard to come by these days. Working hard on quality, writing like humans are reading that content and providing the best user experience and content is something that should not be laughed at in 2022.
Google Search has rolled out the “refine this search” and “broaden this search” in the US based English search results, a Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land today. These features were previewed last year at the Search On event last September.
Google did say that while some are noticing the things to know/consider being tested, this is not yet fully live in Google Search yet.
Refine this search. Google spoke about this feature at Search On claiming the “Refine this search” features enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics. You can now see it come up for a number of queries, here is a screenshot I saw on my mobile device for this feature:
Broaden this search. The “Broaden this search” features also enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics, Google said. You can now see it come up for a number of queries, here is a screenshot I saw on my mobile device for this feature:
Things to know/consider. Google told us the things to know and things to consider feature is not live yet in Google Search. Google is indeed testing it, as we pointed out above, but it is not fully live yet.
US English. Google said the “refine this search” and “broaden this search” have rolled out in English in the US Google Search results.
MUM. It is hard to know if Google is powering these features off MUM right now. Danny Sullivan of Google just posted on Twitter that the Things to know feature is not currently using MUM, so it is not clear if these other features are or not. We have followed up with Google to find out if these features use MUM.
Google has confirmed that these features do not yet use MUM, but Google did tell us “we anticipate that applying MUM for ’things to know’ will enable us to uncover even deeper insights and help people explore information more easily.”
Why we care. These new search features may lead to searchers finding more ways to discover your site in Google Search. Or it might distract searchers from clicking on your snippet in the search results they are looking at. In any event, Google is constantly trying new search features and staying on top of what went live in Google Search is useful for many search marketers.
Google will roll out vehicle ads to all U.S. advertisers beginning this month, the company announced Friday.
An example of vehicle ads in the Google search results. Image: Google.
Vehicle ads will roll out to advertisers in more countries at an undisclosed “later date,” Google said in the announcement.
How vehicle ads work. Vehicle ads are designed to allow auto advertisers to promote their entire vehicle inventory to potential customers on Google.com. This format includes an image of the vehicle, make, model, price, miles and the advertiser’s name (shown in the example above).
Google matches users with vehicle ads by using the details included in the advertiser’s vehicle inventory data feed (more on that below).
When a user clicks on a vehicle ad, they’re taken to the vehicle description page on the advertiser’s site. There, they can learn more and fill out a lead form. Advertisers can select which actions to measure, such as leads or store visits, and assign them a value.
Advertisers cannot use vehicle ads to promote vehicle parts, accessories, tires or services.
How to get started. To use vehicle ads, advertisers must create a vehicle inventory data feed and connect it to Google Merchant Center. This feed includes data on makes, models, prices, mileage and condition.
Image: Google.
Since this is done through Google Merchant Center, advertisers can track metrics like clicks over a given time period.
Why we care. Car prices have remained high as a result of supply shortages associated with the pandemic and increased consumer demand. And, last year, 16% of new car buyers purchased their car online, up from just 1% three years prior, according to Google.
Vehicle ads may help advertisers get in front of high-intent audiences. “Advertisers who complemented their existing Search campaigns with the vehicle ads beta saw a +25% average increase in conversions,” Google said in the announcement.
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Google’s not the only one with vehicle ads. Advertisers in this vertical may also be interested in Microsoft Advertising’s Automotive Ads, which also use data feeds to match ads to users’ searches and shows similar information.
Google’s search results for Russian search queries related to Ukraine are almost entirely dominated by a handful of known Russian pro-Putin propaganda publications, such as Izvestia, Russia Today and Ria News.
How is this happening when several credible Ukrainian and Western publications deserving to rank? And how is this happening when Google has stated its commitment to fighting disinformation?
Here’s why Google needs to fix this.
Why Google’s search results matter for Russian speakers
For many Russian language speakers of all ethnicities and nationalities, accessing credible news that’s free from pro-Putin propaganda is difficult – even outside of Russia. And it seems even on Google.
I count myself among this group. I live in Canada and speak Russian. And yet, I was shocked to see publications that broadcast the state-sanctioned narrative ranking so well on Google:
Russian-language Google search results for Украина (Ukraine)
Again, this was just me searching on Google for “Ukraine” results from Canada. Not Russia.
It’s critically important for Russian speakers, many of whom might already find themselves isolated in information bubbles filled with propaganda and conspiracies that justify the war, to have access to accurate, vetted and balanced information about the war when they search for it. That isn’t happening right now.
Sold as a “liberation” and “peace-keeping” mission, the war has a 70% approval rating in Russia. Propaganda fuels a greater ideological divide, with grave consequences.
Russia’s state narratives dominate the Russian web
Russia’s disinformation campaigns are common knowledge. In recent days, western media and tech platforms started scaling back their operations with Russia or cutting ties altogether.
Facebook restricted access to the accounts of Russia’s top media publications, such as Zvijazda, RIA News, Sputnik, Russia Today, Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, and others. TikTok is said to have started to remove video content posted to the platform by RIA News, one of Russia’s largest news channels.
One would think that with more than 160 million Russian speakers globally, these restrictions might be a signal to seek better, more credible information elsewhere. But it appears that that “information divide” is also linguistic.
What’s most shocking? Many critical searches related to the events in Ukraine that are executed in Russian on Google return results filled with pro-Putin propaganda.
Among the highest ranking of these publications are RIA News (with more than 1,200 pages indexed for the term “denazification” in Google), Iz.ru, Russia Today, and Ukraina.ru.
Search query comparison: “Ukraine” vs. “United States”
There is a vast difference in the type of ranking content when you compare “Украина” versus “United States.”
An exact match Google search for “Украина” (Ukraine in Russian), returns a SERP where, aside from Wikipedia, almost of the results from Russian news sites. This is surprising, as one would expect more results that provide general information and are from Ukrainian domains.
These are the top 10 URLs that rank in Google’s organic results for the search query “украина” (“ukraine”):
Data via Ahrefs
And these are the top 10 results for the search query “United States”:
Data via Ahrefs
Search query: “что происходит на украине” (“what is happening in Ukraine”)
This is a less obvious search query, but search volume has risen within the past two weeks. It has also shown up within Google’s related searches and search suggestions. While there is occasional diversity in the video results, the top organic results are RIA, Izvestia and Russia Today.
Translated Google search results for [what-is-happening in ukraine]
Search Query: “украина новости” (“ukraine news”)
Search queries related to Ukraine news are beginning to see more Ukrainian sites appear in Google’s SERPs, but three out of the five top results are still Russian sites, including RIA and Izvestia.
Translated Google’ search results for [ukraine news]
A closer look: why are these sites ranking?
Did you notice that the ranking pages from Russia’s news sites have one thing in common? They are archive pages for tags that match “Ukraine,” not content pages. It’s generally an accepted SEO best practice to noindex archive pages. Many other news websites rank well with their journalistic content. But virtually all of the high-ranking Russian news sites have pursued the strategy of deliberate promotion and link building to their archive pages.
The pages from RIA News, Izvestia and Russia Today dominate the space for search queries (as well as variants and misspellings) of “Украина” (Ukraine), “новости украины” (ukraine news), and “что происходит на украине” (what is happening in ukraine). There is no significant difference between SERP positions based on location (Russia, Ukraine or United States).
RIA News
The best performer, RIA News, has a bare-bones archives page that includes article headlines, images, and other tags, and comes across as an internal linking tactic in itself. There are 20 headlines and over 100 links on the page. No other content.
RIA News organic keywords data via Ahrefs
Izvestia
Izvestia is also an archive page, but it contains more content than RIA. While there are no images, the 15 article snippets include headlines and descriptions. There is a right-hand navigation, as well as a header content block with the tag description, in this case, mentioning that modern Kyiv is in “confrontational relations with Russia” as well as the “military special operation aimed at protecting the civilian population of Donbas.” The page loads intermittently but is accessible via the WayBack Machine.
Izvestia organic keywords data via Ahrefs
Russia Today
An established entity with a global presence, Russia Today has the look and feel of a quality news site with good UX, large article snippets that include a headline, description, and image, as well as links to additional content in the right-hand menu.
Russia Todayorganic keywords data via Ahrefs
Ukraina.ru
This publication contains a mixture of original content and articles syndicated from other Russian websites. The mission statement that appeared on the site early in its existence, 11 years ago, said that the purpose of the project was to fill the gap in the minds of Russians about Ukraine and to allow Russia to “move West.”
Are there no relevant Ukrainian sites for Google to rank?
Is there any relevant content from Ukrainian sources that could compete with Russian results? Absolutely. Not even counting Russian language sites by BBC, Deutsche Welle and other credible news sources, there are many Ukrainian news websites that publish in the Russian language.
Microsoft Bing is far more inclusive of Ukrainian sites in its SERPs than Google. Five of the top six Bing results for “Ukraine News” (are Ukrainian (either in .ua TLD or owned by Ukrainians and otherwise located outside of .ru TLD).
Shouldn’t YMYL be a factor for Google?
In 2014, to fight disinformation, Google introduced YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content category to its search quality rater guidelines. YMYL is a term used to describe pages and content that can potentially impact one’s happiness, health, finances, safety and more.
Quality thresholds are considerably higher for this type of content. Google states that “YMYL pages should come from reputable websites, and the content should be created with a high level of expertise and authority.”
According to Google, news publications are expected to measure up high journalistic standards, adhere to clear editorial policies, and present clearly researched, vetted and trustworthy information.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (September 2019) is very explicit about its instructions for content that is harmful to specified groups (7.2), as well as pages with harmfully misleading information (7.3).
Google needs to clean up its harmful, misleading results
Well, Google, it’s time to hold yourself to the same standards you want media and news publications to meet. It’s time for you to remove the Russian propaganda from your search results. And give Russian language speakers the trustworthy content and information they need.
