seo

How To Export All Search Queries From Google Search Console To Compare Clicks And Impressions After An Algorithm Update (using Analytics Edge)

When experiencing a traffic drop due to an algorithm update, redesign, migration, or some other event, it’s important to dig into the drop to understand the queries and landing pages that saw the biggest change. When you do, you can have a strong feel for the pages impacted and the queries leading to those pages … Read more

The February 7, 2017 Google Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings From A Significant Core Ranking Update

The fall of 2016 was an extremely volatile time from a Google algorithm update standpoint. Actually, I believe it was the most volatile fall I have ever seen. We saw numerous updates from Google, including partial rollbacks. For example, we had Penguin 4 in late September and early October, and then massive volatility in November (with … Read more

Google’s Algorithms Can Ignore Rel Canonical When URLs Contain Different Content. Here’s Proof.

Can Google ignore rel canonical? Yes, that can happen if Google believes the urls are not equivalent. Google’s John Mueller explained this in a recent webmaster hangout video and I have seen this happen a number of times while helping clients. My post below contains John’s comments along with a case study. Last year I … Read more

Google’s Mobile Popup Algorithm Launches – First Examples of Negative Impact (Updated)

Update 2/8/17: We are now a full month into the rollout of the mobile popup algorithm and I am still not seeing widespread impact. I did surface a few examples of urls being impact during the first week of the rollout, but there are still many sites employing mobile popups or interstitials that have not been … Read more

How Breaking News Impacts Google Featured Snippets – The Algorithm Is Getting Faster, More Dynamic, and Personalized

{Update: It happened again. I just surfaced a featured snippet for “eagles uniforms” that was based on the color rush uniforms they wore in last night’s game (12/22). So it seems this was not an anomaly, but something that can happen based on breaking news. I’ve provided a screenshot below in my post.} I’ve been … Read more

The Updates Continue – The November 30, 2016 Google Algorithm Update (And The Algo Tremor on December 6)

Summary: Yes, it’s happening again. There was a significant Google algorithm update on 11/30/16, following an update on 11/10/16 that was partially reversed on 11/18/16. And the 11/30 update is showing a connection to previous quality updates (AKA Phantom). Let’s explore what’s going on in Google Land. When writing about the November 10, 2016 Google … Read more

November 10, 2016 Google Algorithm Update – Was It A Core Ranking Update, The Mobile-first Index Being Tested, or Both? (Updated)

{Update: Saturday, November 19, 2016 – I saw reversals starting yesterday, November 18 (both recoveries and drops), which supports my theory that this was the mobile-first index being tested. I have provided more information below at the end of this post about what I’m seeing — including screenshots.} The fall of 2016 has been one of the … Read more

How To Set Up Adjusted Bounce Rate on Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Using Google Tag Manager

Understanding if people engage with your content is important on several levels (including SEO-wise). For example, if someone searches Google, visits your page, spends 2 seconds on the page, and then returns to the search results, that can send horrible signals to Google. That’s called low dwell time and I’ve mentioned that many times before … Read more

How To 301 Redirect Images During a Website Redesign or CMS Migration – The Most Forgotten Step When Changing URLs

Website redesigns and CMS migrations can be challenging from an SEO standpoint. And that’s especially the case on large and complex websites, where there are a lot of moving parts. In those cases, business owners and webmasters need to be methodical and meticulous to avoid negative impact. I’ve written a number of posts about migrations … Read more

UTF-8 BOM and SEO: How to find, clean, and fix an invisible character in your robots.txt file

I’ve written in the past about how a robots.txt file could look fine, but actually not be fine. For example, maybe you add your directives, a sitemap file or sitemap index file, and then upload it to your site. You think all is good, but you find that directives are not being adhered to, maybe … Read more

How To Save Social Shares In WordPress When Changing Domain Names, Moving To HTTPS, or Switching Permalinks (Using Social Warfare)

It’s no secret that changing urls can be dangerous SEO-wise. In the past, I’ve written heavily about the dangers of website redesigns, migrating to a new CMS, and changing domain names. Basically, whenever you mass change urls on your site, you can run into serious SEO problems. And that includes migrating to https (which many … Read more