Ahrefs, which provides what it calls an “all-in-one SEO toolset,” has stepped up in a big way to help support Ukraine. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Ahrefs began a fundraising effort on Feb. 24. As of today, the company has raised more than $1.5 million.
How they raised it. Ahrefs added a banner linking to a list of approved charities on its product dashboard. Here’s what it looked like:
Ahrefs told its customers they would extend a subscription for double the amount of whatever was donated. So if someone paid the equivalent of a one-month subscription, that person would get extended to two months.
Some people who donated didn’t want anything in return from Ahrefs – they just wanted to help. So that $1.5 million number may be low because the numbers from Ahrefs are based on people who sent in receipts for account credit.
On the first day, Ahrefs said they got hundreds of donations from worldwide (in various currencies, from Bitcoin to U.S. dollars), totaling $94,342. On Feb. 28, $125,068 was donated, the biggest single-day total. That was when we learned of Russia’s attacks on Kharkiv and Kyiv.
Why Ahrefs wanted to help. Dmytro Gerasymenko is Ahrefs founder and CEO. He is also Ukrainian. Ahrefs employs 29 Ukrainian people.
Where the money is going. The $1.5 million is all going to Ukrainian charities. Most of these provide humanitarian help for civilians – delivering water, food and medicine; evacuating and transporting older citizens; and helping find temporary homes for relocated citizens.
What else Ahrefs is doing to help Ukraine. Starting March 3, Ahrefs blocked Russia and Belarus from accessing its tool. Ahrefs also extended Ukrainian business accounts by six months.
Ahrefs is now blocking all access from Russia and Belarus.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not stopping. Our colleagues, friends, and families are in shelters; taking up arms to defend their communities; at risk of losing their lives at any moment.
“The taxes that companies pay in those countries directly finance the bullets and missiles that killed 160 Ukrainian children and God knows how many thousands of civilians who did not intend this war,” said Daria Samokish, head of public relations at Ahrefs. “Continuing to allow access to the toolset in the countries that invaded or provided their territories for the invasion will respond neither to our ethical conviction nor our logic of economic relations.”
What Ahrefs is doing to help its employees. Ahrefs is providing free psychotherapeutic help to all of its team members. Samokish said the Russian invasion brought a lot of grief to the entire team.
“Our Ukrainian teammates have been through a lot, from hiding their small children in bomb shelters from Russian attacks to evacuating parents who left their homes and whole lives behind them,” Samokish said. “Some of us lost family members and friends in this war. The horrible news of war crimes toward civilians in Bucha and Irpin was the last straw for many people. Even for those coping well enough to continue working and taking care of families.”
Why we care. Our community helps each other in times of trouble. It happens every day in small ways (everything from job losses to deaths), but this is a great example of what we can do together. When members of our community need help, those who can help step up and donate – in this case, monetarily to help support Ukraine people.
Google is testing some significant changes to featured snippets. Both will give searchers a more diverse set of sources in the coveted featured snippet position.
From the web. A typical featured snippet features text from, and a link to, one website. In this From the web test, Google shows brief excerpts from two or three different websites, linking to each source separately. Google also includes the site’s favicon.
Here’s an example screenshot (shared via Twitter by @vladrpt):
Other sites say. There’s also another variation of this featured snippet test where Google groups three sites beneath the typical paragraph-style featured snippet, under a heading of Other sites say.
Why we care. If you own featured snippets for important keywords, you potentially could see your traffic reduced, as clicks could go to competing pages. Rather than owning the valuable SERP real estate outright, your site might end up sharing a featured snippet with at least one or two other sites (the number of sources could even be higher in the future, depending on whether this change rolls out permanently and how Google judges the success of the feature). On the flip side, if you don’t currently own a featured snippet, this gives you two additional chances to get there and potentially drive some more traffic.
Their design is archetypal. Their position on the page is seemingly obvious. For years they have proven their value for SEO. And yet, as we have moved to mobile-first indexing, many sites get breadcrumb navigation wrong or have no breadcrumb trail at all.
That is a mistake.
Breadcrumbs are beneficial for SEO and usability when optimally implemented for mobile devices. Here’s everything you need to know to get them right.
What is breadcrumb navigation?
Typically, breadcrumbs navigation is a line of contextual links that indicate where the user is on a website. They are a form of secondary navigation, allowing users to trace their path in the site hierarchy.
When should you use breadcrumbs?
Not all websites benefit from breadcrumbs. They aren’t necessary for sites that:
Do not contain many nested navigation levels.
Have no logical hierarchy or grouping.
Are designed as linear experiences.
For such websites with flat structures where much of the content comfortably sits on the same level, breadcrumbs would offer little value as they wouldn’t contain more than two levels.
This can be true even for large websites. For example, a business news site may offer many topics and thousands of articles, but wouldn’t need multiple levels of navigation.
On the other hand, for sites based on complex hierarchical structures breadcrumbs are essential. The classic example is ecommerce, but their application is much wider.
The question is how to make breadcrumbs helpful to both users and Google. This is an art of its own.
For SEO, there should be only one: hierarchical breadcrumbs. This is why.
Path-based breadcrumb trails display a user’s unique steps leading to their current page.
Showing a user’s previous click path is not best practice for SEO or usability.
It replicates functionality offered by the browser back button.
It is useless for users who land on a page deep within the site.
It is often long, repetitive and ultimately confusing for the user.
Since breadcrumbs are dynamic and unique to each session, search engines won’t process the internal links.
Breadcrumbs should show hierarchy, not history.
Attribute-based breadcrumbs are encouraged when the content on a particular page belongs to multiple categories and attributes. For example, a shoe may be a black, ankle-length boot with a heel.
There is no logical hierarchy for these characteristics. So there is a question of in what order to display the breadcrumbs. Should the breadcrumbs trail look like:
Home > Boots > Heels > Black > Ankle Length
Or
Home > Heels > Boots > Ankle Length > Black
Or some other combination.
I’ve seen recommendations to designate a primary path based on attribute usage or query volume. Or personalize the breadcrumb trail so that it will reflect each user’s individual path within the site hierarchy. Both are the wrong approach.
Rather than trying to force the linear structure of breadcrumbs on something innately polyhierarchical. Ditch the requirement for them to be within a breadcrumb trail. Rather display the attributes in a format suited to their nature as filters options.
That leaves us with hierarchy-based breadcrumb navigation. These visualize the depth of the site architecture, starting with the broadest top-level category and progressing down through more specific, nested subcategories before arriving at the current page.
Hierarchy breadcrumbs are the most commonly used, most intuitively understood and the most powerful for SEO. As such, will be the only type considered for the remainder of this article.
SEO benefits of breadcrumb navigation and structured data
Breadcrumbs are an essential element to support wayfinding – orientating the user and offering one-click access to relevant, higher-level pages. This is especially important when a visitor lands on a page deep within the website hierarchy. For example, on a product page after clicking on a long-tail query Google search result.
But it’s more than website usability. Breadcrumbs support every step of the SEO process.
1. More crawling
The internal links generated by the breadcrumbs help to expose all levels of the hierarchy to search engine crawlers. This is especially important for lower levels, which may not be reached or when reached may not achieve a high enough priority in Google’s crawl queue without such signals.
The benefits can be measured by a reduction in “discovered – currently not indexed” exclusions in Google Search Console and increased crawl frequency.
2. Better indexing
Hierarchical links help Google to contextualise content and correctly associate pages in the site structure. If Google only sees URLs through a sitemap file, they don’t understand how the URLs are related to each other.
This causes difficulties when Google tries to understand how relevant a page is in the context of the site. Breadcrumb links support the formation of topic silos, which are becoming increasingly important with entity-focused indexing.
The benefits can be measured by an increase in valid URLs in Google Search Console and a faster indexing speed.
3. Higher ranking, SERP clicks and organic sessions
Breadcrumbs support ranking in two ways:
Strengthens the internal link architecture: Allowing link equity to flow between thematically related pages.
A natural way to include keywords above the fold: This is unlikely to show impact on highly competitive queries, but can make a difference in the long tail.
The benefits can be measured in decrease in average position as well as increase in impressions in Google Search Console. Increased rank will increase clicks and thus organic sessions as a matter of course.
On-site breadcrumbs vs. schema markup breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs displayed on page and breadcrumb schema markup are separate things. Just because there are breadcrumbs on site, doesn’t mean there is breadcrumb structured data.
The fastest way to understand if your site has valid breadcrumb schema markup is to check the breadcrumbs report in Google Search Console. If you see errors, review the BreadcrumbList structured data.
For optimal impact, it’s best that both not only exist but corroborate one another’s message about site structure. This will further support Google to contextualise content, again leading to better indexing.
Also, breadcrumb structured data may assist organic performance by changing the URL path to a breadcrumb path in the SERP snippet. Although Google can display a breadcrumb path even without the breadcrumb markup.
Conversely, as with most markup, the mere presence of schema markup doesn’t guarantee the change and it can at times result in suboptimal breadcrumb path outcomes, often depending on length. So track the impact carefully. But for most sites, breadcrumb structured data is a best practice.
Best practice breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumb navigation has previously been a staunchly consistent interface component. Likely because of their relative simplicity.
There are hierarchical links, and they are separated by some sort of a delimiter. But then mobile-first arrived and things got complicated. The historical best practices needed to be modified for the smaller screen.
So, what are breadcrumbs best practices for UX for mobile?
The key user experience best practices are:
Consistently available: Breadcrumbs should be present on every relevant page. Relevant meaning they add significant wayfinding value that is worth the prime placement.
Logical location: Position breadcrumbs directly underneath the primary navigation menu and above the H1. This is where users expect it. Put anywhere else, you will not reap the full usability benefits and if low on the page will reduce their internal linking power.
Clear start and end: Breadcrumbs should show the journey from the homepage to the current page. The homepage acts as an anchor giving a strong sense of orientation to the users. Showing the last item as a non-clickable and as such visually distinct element confirms to the user what page they are currently on.
Symbolic separator: The optimal delimiter for separating hyperlinks in breadcrumb trails remains the ‘greater than’ symbol (>) as it is concise while indicating the relationship between pages. Other options such as slashes (/) or pipes (|) do not denote hierarchy. While options such as » and -> take up unnecessary space.
Sized just right: Keep breadcrumb design simple and unobtrusive using a small font, although large enough and padded enough to be a tap target, in a style consistent with text links on the rest of their website. Don’t clutter the line with unnecessary text such as “You are here” or “Navigation”.
And, what are breadcrumb SEO best practices for mobile-first indexing?
It’s a no-brainer, but so many sites get this wrong. Have breadcrumbs visible on mobile in the same design as desktop.
Like any critical SEO element, these must be rendered on the server side and crawlable without JavaScript enabled.
Include the full navigational path down the hierarchy to the current page. Link all these pages, except the last item to avoid the confusion of a self referencing link reloading the page. Don’t shorten breadcrumbs by omitting steps or truncating intermediate steps with “…” or including only the last levels. These all negate the breadcrumbs SEO power.
The question then becomes, how to include all links without breadcrumbs wrapping onto multiple lines on mobile. Not only because a multi-line breadcrumb trail does not illustrate the structure of the chain well. But more importantly, because it eats up precious space on the small screen.
To achieve single line breadcrumbs without sacrificing design or usability, leverage overflow. This allows users to swipe to see the entire trail, which can be encouraged with the inclusion of a swiper assistant or horizontal scroll bar. However, it is imperative that the overflow is implemented with CSS to remain SEO friendly.
Just because breadcrumbs are now sitting pretty on a single line, doesn’t give a licence to make the user work at scrolling. Keep anchor text succinct and keyword relevant.
Don’t feel you must mirror the page heading in breadcrumbs. It’s nice to have, but not at the expense of them becoming long or repetitive. And don’t ever cut page titles off using ellipses. Rather decide on a clear short name to use.
For example, on a property portal, if you base it on title, you may end up with the breadcrumbs:
Home > Property for sale > Houses for sale > Houses for sale in London > Houses for sale in Islington > 3 Bedroom houses for sale in Islington
Rather than the concise:
Home > Sale > Houses > London > Islington > 3 Bed
Breadcrumbs are essential
Breadcrumbs are an essential form of secondary navigation for hierarchically complex sites. They support wayfinding, improving usability and decreasing pogo-sticking from Google SERPs.
Additionally, it boosts SEO due to facilitating crawling, contextualizing content for indexing and providing internal link equity. Archetypal styling with a mobile-first twist of the entire breadcrumb trail fitting on a single line thanks to CSS overflow will show the full power of breadcrumbs.
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Google seems to be sending out notices through Google Search Console for sites that have intrusive interstitials. The notice tells the site owner to remove those intrusive interstitials in order to “improve page experience” for your site.
What the email says. We spotted a copy of the subject line of the email in the Google Webmaster Help forums and it reads “Improve your page experience by removing intrusive interstitials from domain.com.” We have been unable to find the full email or a screenshot of this notice yet.
What are intrusive interstitials. Google says “intrusive interstitials and dialogs are page elements that obstruct users’ view of the content, usually for promotional purposes. Interstitials are overlays on the whole page and dialogs are overlays only on a part of the page, sometimes also obfuscating the underlying content. Websites often need to show dialogs for various reasons; however, interrupting users with intrusive interstitials may frustrate them and erode their trust in your website. Intrusive dialogs and interstitials make it hard for Google and other search engines to understand your content, which may lead to poor search performance. Equally, if users find your site hard to use, they are unlikely to want to visit those websites again, including through search engines.”
What is page experience? Google has a detailed developer document on page experience criteria. In short, these metrics aim to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page: considerations such as whether the page loads quickly, if it’s mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive ads and if content jumps around as the page loads.
Desktop also. This can be an issue for desktop as well since the page experience update is now live for desktop pages.
Why we care. While this does not appear to be a manual action, intrusive interstitials do impact your overall page experience signals and can impact your rankings in a super lightweight manner. So if you get this notice, try to remove the intrusive interstitials from your website.
I am what might be called a veteran search engine optimizer. I have many years of experience speaking at multiple SEO events (conferences, webinars, training and so forth). I often get involved in controversial SEO debates on various social media outlets.
I have also had my share of bullying.
However, I have also learned much from other SEO veterans. They have been outstanding role models for people in our industry.
In this article, I want to share what I’ve learned from participating in so many SEO events and my experience on social media platforms. Here is what I have learned about handling unprofessional treatment.
1. Listen to multiple perspectives on any SEO or SEM topic
I know this might seem counterintuitive. If you are in a real-time situation, it is perfectly normal to have an initial defensive reaction.
Go past this reaction. If you listen, you will likely learn things you might never have thought about or encountered. Listening to and reading about different approaches to SEO can make you a more effective SEO.
I learned this from Danny Sullivan, now Public Liaison for Search at Google. Whenever he put together a session for one of his conferences, he always included a panel of experts with diverse opinions.
At first, I thought Sullivan was nutso. However, once I realized he was showing his journalist side by doing thorough research, my viewpoint also changed.
I wasn’t initially the greatest at keeping my opinions to myself. In fact, Sullivan pointed out to me, privately, that I was shaking my head when I sometimes disagreed with a fellow panelist. I was not consciously aware that I was doing it. Yet it allowed me to stop myself in order to pay attention to what other speakers were communicating.
I did not necessarily have to agree with others’ perspectives. Nor do you. However, listen to others’ perspectives. Try to understand each point of view. It will help you become better at SEO.
2. Be courteous when taking notes
If you are at a real-time or recorded event, learn how to mute your keyboard, even if you have a quiet keyboard. The sound will distract attendees from speaker content, especially if multiple attendees are typing at the same time. Mouse clicks can also be a distraction.
This tip might seem obvious given high school, college and university settings. With professional events, however, the point is to listen to the speaker, not to distract him or her.
My note-taking would become quite vehement whenever I heard the word “facet.” Faceted navigation leads to duplicate content delivery. The same content is organized in many different ways. The more facets you place on your website, the more costly it is to manage duplicate content delivery to both web and site search engines.
I learned this tip from Michelle Robbins, former Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief. I once took notes on my tablet when I was on panels. It looked unprofessional even though I was only taking notes. Using my tablet gave the impression that I was ignoring the other panelist, not paying attention even though the opposite was true.
As of this writing, the COVID-19 epidemic has limited in-person events. Nevertheless, do your best to be civil and courteous when taking notes once we return to in-person events.
3. Show common courtesy when asking for clarification and challenging an opinion
Nobody has the exact same frame of reference as another person. For example, my frame of reference for SEO is viewing it as a form of communication among content providers, searchers, and search engines. I believe that SEO is optimizing for people who use search engines. People first, technology second.
In my previous definitions of SEO in my books, I used different definitions. These definitions emphasized the marketing aspect of SEO more than the communication aspect. So my frame of reference has evolved. In fact, I once was miffed at the U.S. Congress for not having basic knowledge about web search.
That doesn’t mean that others have the same SEO definition that I have. It also doesn’t mean that my approach to SEO is the same as others. For example, I have never spammed search engines. I never will, either. I feel it is biting the proverbial hand that feeds you.
It’s okay to challenge an SEO opinion. Our world would be quite boring if we all agreed with each other. I learn more from challenging opinions than blindly accepting everything I read and hear.
What do I mean, really? Do not label people unfairly. Do not be rude or condescending. Avoid stereotypes. Whenever I hear name-calling or personal attacks, it means that my point of view is likely correct because an antagonizer does not challenge my research. He or she resorts to personal attacks.
Stick to your facts, data, and research. Don’t take the “unfairness” bait.
4. Follow people you disagree with on social media
This piece of advice also might seem counterintuitive. Again, my point is to learn from other people. That means learning from people who have different perspectives than you have.
It has helped to follow SEOs who disagree with me. I want to know reasons why we disagree. It might be something as simple as our perspectives on search engine spam. I do not do it. Other SEOs believe it is up to a company or organization to take the risk. Different approaches, different business models.
I’ve learned that many SEOs consider taxonomy to only be hierarchical. When in reality, a hierarchical-only taxonomy can lead to orphans and silos, two things that negatively impact search engine visibility. Link building guru Eric Ward taught me so much about silos. So did information-architecture guru Peter Morville.
SEOs who don’t understand IA often misunderstand IA as a part of SEO. The information architecture (IA) process should begin before actual SEO on a website. In fact, a search-engine friendly and accessible labeling system should be a part of a website’s style guide.
Following them on social media, reading their books, and implementing their suggestions have proved invaluable to me both as an SEO professional and as an information architect.
I should note the contrary situation. One colleague who disagreed with me on just about every SEO topic would constantly challenge my points of view. She did not hesitate to stereotype me to colleagues and her friends. Nevertheless, I still followed her on social media. I wanted to learn why she treated me so poorly.
I learned the reason. Somehow, she “looked down” on my education and training. Granted, I do not expect my colleagues to go to the extent that I do for formal education. Ph.D. programs are not for everyone.
My education is my choice. My selection of training and certification programs is also my choice. My choices do not have to be others’ choices.
Whenever I am challenged at a search event, I often provide resources: books, articles, training classes, certification programs, and so forth. I provide sources of my information and data.
Lesson learned? I unfollowed this particular colleague. Her posts and articles did not add to my search knowledge. I gave her a fair chance.
Don’t be afraid to give colleagues who disagree with you a fair chance. You will often learn things that never occurred to you.
5. Give SEO colleagues each a fair chance
I am grateful to two specific people for this tip, Barry Schwartz and Bill Slawski. I used to disagree with both of these gentlemen for years.
Now? I have a deep respect for what they have done for the SEO industry. They have become SEO archivists. (I once wrote about SEO and archiving here.)
If you need information about SEO and patents, Slawski is the best go-to person. If you need information about algorithm updates, Schwartz’s articles are an outstanding resource.
I admit I wasn’t always supportive because I initially did not understand that both Slawski and Schwartz were becoming two of the best SEO archivists in the industry. However, I kept giving them fair, objective observations over the years. Once I realized that it was my perspective that needed adjusting? I did it.
Now I do not hesitate to refer to both of my colleagues for support and even jobs – ones where I believe they are more qualified than I am.
Ignore your initial defense mechanism when being challenged
Here is a quick summary of how to handle unprofessional SEO treatment:
Genuinely listen to multiple perspectives on any SEO or SEM topic.
Be courteous when taking notes.
Show common courtesy when asking for clarification and challenging an opinion.
Follow people you disagree with on social media.
Give SEO colleagues each a fair chance.
You can professionally disagree with other SEO colleagues. While doing so, you might learn things that are crucial to your SEO career. You never know. You might just learn information from them that never otherwise would have occurred to you.
SEO can be a costly investment, so, understandably, you’d want to do everything to get the most out of your investment. But, to do so, you need to be aware of common roadblocks that can hinder SEO success.
In my experience, nine things have historically kept my clients from getting results. Knowing these roadblocks can help you get in front of them and prevent them from creeping into your campaign and derailing your progress.
1. Not defining campaign goals
If you don’t know what goals you’re trying to achieve through SEO, measuring success is impossible.
Likewise, if you’ve set goals but haven’t identified any key performance indicators (KPIs), it’s hard to know how successful you’ve fulfilled your campaign objectives.
There’s nothing worse than having a number in someone’s head (e.g., add 100 new leads per month via SEO) and not finding out until months into efforts and finding that you aren’t performing to that expectation.
Defining goals and KPIs and communicating these with your team will help you have a successful campaign and meet your bottom line.
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Working with a lack of resources is extremely frustrating, and it can hinder your SEO success.
Below are some examples of resources you need to run a successful campaign and what can happen when you don’t have them.
People: A lack of human resources dedicated to SEO can stall your campaign and keep you from making your desired progress. SEO is a commitment that requires consistent work from a dedicated individual or team. You can just work on SEO when you feel like it or have a few extra minutes if you want to see success. Additionally, you’ll often need resources for content, UX, IT and other areas beyond SEO to implement SEO recommendations and plans.
Money: A lack of financial resources can drastically slow your campaign. You need an SEO budget that can accommodate paying a staff member or agency to manage the campaign and purchase the necessary tools to conduct fundamental SEO research and monitor your success.
Tools: There are various research and reporting tools needed to properly optimize your website. Although there are free options available, and you can make do without having a plethora of tools at your disposal, you’re likely to hit a plateau that can slow SEO progress.
Data: Analyzing data is an important part of an SEO campaign at literally every stage. You might be left in the dark without the information needed to inform key decisions without full access to SEO data.
3. Poor patience
SEO is a long-term investment. It isn’t something you can rush, no matter how many resources you use.
Businesses get frustrated when they don’t see significant gains in the first few months. They may question their investment, decide to scale back their efforts or pull the plug entirely.
Please don’t assume your SEO efforts aren’t working because your site isn’t top of the search engine result pages in the first month. That takes time and consistent efforts.
Truthfully, even when an SEO specialist does work, it can take months or even years to see impressive results. So as hard as it may be, you must be patient and trust the process.
4. Broad targeting
When working on an SEO campaign, it’s important to define the niche you want to target. This includes both your geographical market and your client base.
Defining a niche at the beginning of your marketing campaign helps you attract your ideal customers in your unique corner of the market. Furthermore, the more specific you get with your niche, the easier it will be to rank well.
Your niche’s topic groups and keywords may get less traffic than more general ones, but they also convert better and are valuable to both target and track.
Now, I am not suggesting you choose a niche with no search volume or one that is not closely tied with your products or services. Just look for one that is reasonable to target based on competition and trends in your industry.
I realize it may be frightening to choose a specific niche, especially if you want everyone to have the opportunity to find your site. But, you must remember, defining a niche does not mean that you’ll be held to it forever. A niche should evolve with time. You can expand your reach later in your campaign when it’s appropriate. You can build out topical expertise across a range of topics and niches.
5. Not thinking full-funnel
It’s important to remember that not every Google user is ready to convert upon finding your page. You have to think about users at every stage of their journey, including initiation, research, comparison, transaction and experience.
You can’t assume that every keyword or topic you target will convert. That’s simply not realistic.
Instead, you must choose targets that pertain to the language used by a potential user at every stage of the funnel and provide the right content and level of engagement they seek during their consideration and customer journey.
For example, if someone has just become aware of their need for a new type of insurance for their business, they likely are starting their journey by researching their options and the types of companies that provide it. They aren’t necessarily ready to fill out a form or make a call and start a sales process until they do some research and start moving down the funnel.
6. Ignoring SERPs
Many people just beginning their SEO journey don’t understand how a search engine results page (SERP) works. So they may not even realize that there are multiple sections on the SERPs and that the organic results are typically buried under ads, news, map packs, featured snippets and more.
It’s critical to educate yourself on the anatomy of a SERP so you understand the many ways your SEO efforts can impact the results being shown to users.
Good SEO or adjacent areas to traditional search (i.e., local SEO), has the power to get you one of the coveted spots in Google’s search features (the map pack, featured snippets, reviews, etc.). But you may need to make a few tweaks to your SEO strategy to optimize your pages in a way that gets Google’s attention.
For example, schema markup can help communicate to Google that you’d like your reviews shown under your Google listing. Likewise, having a Google Business Profile listing increases the likelihood that you’ll show up in map pack results.
7. Bad partnerships
Nothing slows progress like a bad partnership. The wrong partner can keep you from meeting your bottom line, whether with vendors, agencies, freelancers, tools, writers, developers or people weighing in on strategy and implementation.
But, termination of a bad partnership isn’t always easy, especially if contracts are involved. Before pulling the plug, discuss your expectations and how this partnership fails to meet them. Then, develop an action plan to rectify the situation.
But in the end, if your partnership is not salvageable, you must terminate it. SEO is an investment, and it doesn’t pay to work with someone who doesn’t help you meet your bottom line.
Do all the due diligence possible on the front end. Hopefully, you don’t end up in this situation.
8. Disconnection from other marketing channels
As a marketer, nothing bothers me more than working with professionals who blindly think their marketing channel is the be-all, end-all to meeting their client’s goals. In reality, marketing channels should synergize to yield the best possible results. This comes from someone (me) who started their career deep in an SEO silo.
There is a time and place for all marketing channels. For example, if you need fast results and want to skyrocket your listing to the top of Google, then paid search is a great option. But running ads long-term can be costly. That’s where SEO comes in.
SEO takes time. It rarely yields first place results in SERPs. So, working on your SEO while simultaneously running ads can attract a similar population until your site climbs higher in organic rankings and eventually, the need for a paid ad for that service or product is no longer necessary. Plus, paid and organic can work well together in some cases based on how SERPs are structured for specific topics and queries.
Beyond that, we have to know that other channels like social, email and other types of digital advertising can go a long way in working together and influencing the customer journey. Don’t put all the pressure on a single channel if you can avoid it.
I encourage my clients to think about how they can leverage all marketing channels and disciplines, including SEO, paid search, content, UX/UI, video, and more, to get the best possible results.
9. Not enough attribution
Tracking data is important. After all, it’s what shows how much return on investment your SEO efforts are yielding. However, it’s a mistake to only track SEO data and not track the business statistics and conversions related to your SEO efforts.
For example, if you have a service-based business like plumbing, you should expect to see a rise in plumbing-related keywords. However, that means little if you’re not also seeing an increase in conversions (i.e., calls or contact forms being filled out).
With digital marketing, we have the power to know whether it is working and to track it all the way through. It’s unacceptable in most cases to make assumptions when we can connect the dots from impression through conversion (and hopefully beyond).
Remove your SEO roadblocks
It’s normal and natural to want instant SEO results, but that’s not usually how it works. Achieving the SEO results you want takes time and consistent effort. Avoiding the pitfalls outlined in this article will help you get the most out of your SEO investment.
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.
