seo

More Findings From Google’s Phantom 2 Update (“The Quality Update”) – Panda Overlap, Long-Term Approach, URL Tinkering, and More

  {Update November 2015: Google rolled out a significant algorithm update on November 19, 2015 that had a strong connection to Phantom 2 from May 2015. Many sites that were impacted during Phantom 2 in May were also impacted on November 19 during Phantom 3. And a number of companies working to rectify problems saw recovery … Read more

Phantom 2 – Analyzing The Google Update That Started On April 29, 2015

{Update November 2015: Google rolled out a significant algorithm update on November 19, 2015 that had a strong connection to Phantom 2 from May 2015. Many sites that were impacted during Phantom 2 in May were also impacted on November 19 during Phantom 3. And a number of companies working to rectify problems saw recovery and … Read more

From SEO Tools To Emulation To Devices, How To Check Smartphone Rankings As Google’s Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Rolls Out

We are now ten days into the mobile-friendly algorithm rollout, and to be honest, the impact has been somewhat underwhelming. I’ve been tracking many websites across categories and countries as the algorithm rolled out and it has been interesting to how some verticals were impacted, while others experienced no change. I didn’t personally see any fluctuations until … Read more

Now We Have Liftoff: The First Examples of Google’s Mobile Friendly Algorithm In Action

4/21/15 was a date marked down in every SEO’s calendar with a giant red star next to it. That’s the day Google planned to roll out its mobile-friendly algorithm. They preannounced the update, which is rare, and Google explained it would have a significant impact on the smartphone search results. But then 4/21 arrived and … Read more

Sinister 404s – The Hidden SEO Danger of Returning The Wrong Header Response Code [Case Study]

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a small business owner about my SEO services. And what started out as a simple check of a website turned into an interesting case study about hidden SEO dangers. The company has been in business for a long time (30+ years), and the owner was looking to boost the … Read more

How To Identify A Mobile Rankings Demotion Using The New Search Analytics Report in Google Webmaster Tools

{Update: The Search Impact report was renamed to “Search Analytics” during the beta. The screenshots below will show “Search Impact” when the new report in Google Webmaster Tools is labeled “Search Analytics”.} April 21, 2015 is an important date. That’s the day when Google will begin using mobile friendliness as a ranking signal. There’s been a … Read more

When The Hammer Falls – Analyzing Lyrics in the Google SERPs and Its Impact on Traffic [Case Study]

Summary: In the fall of 2014, both Bing and Google began surfacing song lyrics directly in the search engine results pages (SERPS). Since users could now find lyrics immediately in the SERPs, many wondered what would happen to lyrics websites that provided the same information, but required a click through to view the lyrics. This … Read more

Insidious Thin Content on Large-Scale Websites and Its Impact on Google Panda

If you’ve read some of my case studies in the past, then you know Panda can be a real pain the neck for large-scale websites. For example, publishers, ecommerce retailers, directories, and other websites that often have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of pages indexed. When sites grow that large, with many … Read more

XML Sitemaps – 8 Facts, Tips, and Recommendations for the Advanced SEO

After publishing my last post about dangerous rel canonical problems, I started receiving a lot of questions about other areas of technical SEO. One topic in particular that seemed to generate many questions was how to best use and set up xml sitemaps for larger and more complex websites. Sure, in its most basic form, … Read more

6 Dangerous Rel Canonical Problems Based on Crawling 11M+ Pages in 2014

Based on helping clients with Panda work, Penguin problems, SEO technical audits, etc., I end up crawling a lot of websites. In 2014, I estimate that I crawled over eleven million pages while helping clients. And during those crawls, I often pick up serious technical problems inhibiting the SEO performance of the sites in question. … Read more

Panda Analysis Using Google Analytics Segments – How To Isolate Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet Traffic From Google

In previous posts about Panda analysis, I’ve mentioned the importance of understanding the content that users are visiting from Google organic. Since Google is measuring user engagement, hunting down those top landing pages can often reveal serious content quality problems. In addition, I’ve written about understanding the devices being used to access your site from … Read more