tools

M-Dot Versus D-Top: How To Hack DeepCrawl’s Test Site Feature To Compare Your Mobile And Desktop Sites SEO-wise

Last month I wrote a post covering a number of real-world mobile problems I surfaced on sites using separate mobile urls (like m-dot subdomains). With Google moving to a mobile-first index, it’s extremely important to make sure your mobile urls contain the equivalent content, structured data, canonical tags, hreflang tags, etc. as your desktop urls. … Read more

How To Quickly Remove A Rogue Subdomain From Google Using The Remove URLs Tool In GSC – And Then Make Sure It Stays Out (Case Study)

I’ve written about Murphy’s Law for SEO before, and it’s scary as heck. And that’s especially the case for large-scale websites with many moving parts. Murphy’s law is an old adage that says, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” For example, no matter how much you plan and prep for large-scale SEO changes, … Read more

How To Use Facebook Pixel Reporting To Identify Who Is Secretly Using Fetch And Render In GSC On Your Site

I can see you, and now you can see me. :) A few months ago, Dan Sharp from Screaming Frog wrote a killer post about how to use fetch and render in Google Search Console (GSC) on almost any site. Fetch and render in GSC enables you see how Googlebot is rendering any page on … Read more

How To Remove Rel Canonical From Noindexed Pages In WordPress Using The All In One SEO Plugin [Tutorial]

When performing SEO audits, it’s not unusual to surface pages being noindexed that also contain rel canonical. And that setup does’t make sense. Using the meta robots tag or x-robots-tag with noindex tells the engines to not index the page, while rel canonical tells the engines which is the preferred url for indexing. You can … Read more

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

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 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

Bitlygeddon Arrives On 6/29/16 – How To Update A Branded Short Domain Name So Your Shared Links Don’t Break

For years I’ve been using a short branded domain name combined with bitly to shorten links I share across social media. For example, I registered glennga.be as the short domain name, and whenever I share a link on Twitter, that’s the domain name in the urls for all shares. Here’s a quick example that leads … Read more

How To Create A Property Set In Google Search Console (GSC) Before A Domain Name Change or HTTPS Migration

Update: March 2019: Google has released a new type of property in Google Search Console called a domain property. A domain property will include all variations for the domain, including by protocol and subdomain. It’s a great move forward by Google and I highly recommend you set them up as soon as possible. In order … Read more

How To Hack Boosted Posts Via Facebook Ads Manager To Target Multiple Custom Audiences At One Time

Boosting Facebook posts to custom audiences is a great way to reach a targeted audience (and at a relatively low cost). Many people running Facebook pages don’t realize this, but you don’t have to boost a post simply to your fanbase. Instead, you can boost a post to any custom audience you have set up … Read more

How To Bulk Export Top Landing Pages From Google Analytics Using Analytics Edge in Excel

I help a lot of companies with website redesigns or CMS migrations (from an SEO standpoint). As part of that process, it’s extremely important to download all of a website’s top landing pages so you can check them in staging and when the redesign or migration goes live. By doing so, you can test the pages … Read more