Announcing Zyppy List: A Next-Level Directory For Marketing Pros
With over a decade of marketing experience, we built a new type of marketing directory to help find companies with proven skills and experience. We think it’s the most honest and useful marketing directory on the web, and we invite you to apply. The Problem There are 1000s of marketing companies out there, many of
What Happens When You Disavow Every Link To Your Site?
Links, links, links Google’s Disavow tool is something I use occasionally to help sites strategically recover from traffic losses of one kind or another. Many SEOs use it to disavow “shady links.” But what would happen if you disavowed every link pointed at your website? I was curious enough to try and find out… (who needs traffic anyway?) My traffic didn’t exactly tank, but the experiment ended up surprising me more than expected. What I learned is that the tool is still very powerful. And…
I Disavowed Every Link To My Website. Here’s What Happened
Warning: Do not try this at home. I am a trained idiot SEO professional. Nearly two months ago, I disavowed every link to this website listed in Google Search Console and every link listed by Ahrefs. Trust me, it was a lot of good links. Links from high-authority sites like Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush, Backlinko, and
How Sites With Less SEO Win Google + 4 More SEO Tips
Howdy SEO Super Friend! As we spot a small number of sites recovering traffic from Google’s last round of updates, it’s becoming clearer what Google wants when it talks about “Helpful Content.” UX (Ads & popups ↓) Business Model (Review sites ↓, ecommerce & forum sites ↑) First-hand Experience ↑ Now, based on our latest SEO study, we can likely add over-optimization to that list. Google says they want to demote content that’s primarily made for search engines – but how do they know what to…
How Recent Google Updates Punish Good SEO: 50-Site Case Study
Using our database of over 4000 websites, we studied how on-page SEO factors correlated with winning or losing Google traffic. We found that Google’s Helpful Content system doesn’t seem to like many traditional SEO practices when pushed too far. SEOs need to rethink “over-optimization” Are recent Google updates now targeting SEO practices to demote informational
Link Building With HARO Alternatives + How to Implement-Ranch Style SEO
You still need links to rank in Google. For years, many SEOs used HARO for link-building and digital PR. It was free. You recieved cool emails every day. And it was really time-consuming. The old HARO is no more, but the landscape for pitching journalists and building links through digital PR is more robust than ever. If you haven’t pitched to publications in a while, here are my top 3 recommended alternatives to HARO for link building: HARO – Wait, huh? While classic HARO is gone, new owner…
Ranking Higher by Satisfying Intent Quicker + 5 More SEO Tips
Hi SEO Super-Friends,If there’s one thing we learned from Google’s antitrust trial last year and its extensive use of click data for rankings, it’s that user satisfaction is really Google’s #1 ranking factor. Google says to chase the user, not the algorithm. We had no idea how true this is. To oversimplify: Google watches what users click on and search for, then uses that data to rank more satisfying documents higher. One thing I’ve noticed working as a Google Quality Rater and examining…
Is Google Killing Listicles & How to Add IndexNow to Your Website
Hi SEO Super-Friends,Today, I’m sharing new research that you’re seeing early as an SEO Tips subscriber. What does Google mean by Helpful Content? Nobody seems to know, but new data increasingly suggests that Google doesn’t like overly-optimized titles, especially a very specific type of title: the listicle. I recently analyzed 1250 titles across Google’s HCU’s losing and winning sites. One pattern clearly stood out: losing sites used numeric and descriptive adjectives far more often in their…
A New Google Quality Rating Scorecard + Top 2024 SEO Tips
Hi SEO Super-Friends, As you may know, last year, I started working as a Google Quality Rater. I believe raters’ work influences Google’s algorithm more than most people think, and I wanted to understand exactly how they work. It’s been super SEO-educational. Now, SEO clients occasionally ask for a “Quality” audit of their website. To do this, we created a Google Quality Rating Scorecard based 100% on Google’s Rater Guidelines. Even better, we’re making it publicly available. Use it to…
Introducing the Google Page Quality Rating Scorecard
I secretly worked as a Google Quality Rater evaluating search results. I personally scored 1000s of websites according to Google’s guidelines. Based on this experience, I’ve created a scoring card based on Google’s Quality rater guidelines that you can use yourself to evaluate websites. Use this scorecard to evaluate your site on quality. The Importance
On-Page Features That Correlate With Big Google Updates + New Data on Keyword Cannibalization
Hi SEO Super-Friends, As Google “recovery” stories continue to be far and in between, does it ever seem unclear what exactly Google means when they demote a site for “unhelpful content” or one of their other ranking systems? I tried to figure a small part of it out. Taking 50 sites that saw either significant traffic gains or losses over the past several months, I looked at 50+ distinct on-page and UX signals, and then hand-collected over 2500 individual data points – yes, this took a very…
Winning & Losing Big Google Updates: 50-Site Case Study
What on-page factors are associated with sites that see big gains or declines after Google updates? Turns out it’s not author boxes. Throughout 2023, Google released a series of Core, Spam, Review, and Helpful Content Updates (HCU) that caused many sites to lose significant traffic and seemingly few to win. For site owners specifically hit
Google’s Index Size Revealed: 400 Billion Docs (& Changing)
By Cyrus Shepard Updated: It’s a big index, but faces growing pains Google rarely discusses the size of its web index—at least publicly. What exactly is Google’s index? Simply put, it’s a digital record of web pages and other documents eligible to be served in Google’s search results. If it’s not in Google’s index, you
I Secretly Worked As A Google Search Quality Rater (You Can Too)
Can’t believe they actually hired an SEO… To improve its search results, Google contracts 12,000 search quality raters around the world. Quality Raters evaluate search results and provide feedback to Google on how to improve them. They strictly rate top search results using Google’s Quality Rater guidelines that are 170 pages long and frequently updated.
How Google’s Selective Link Priority Impacts SEO (2023 Study)
What is Google’s Selective Link Priority? Selective Link Priority occurs when Google encounters multiple links on a page that target the same URL, typically with different anchor text. In this scenario, instead of using all the different anchor texts, Google is known to select only certain anchor texts for ranking purposes. While sometimes known as
23 Million Internal Links – SEO Case Study
Let’s not underestimate the power of internal links. Because indeed, when used correctly, they can be very effective, as the data suggest.
The Best Title Tag Length for SEO (Latest Data)
Do short title tags bring you more traffic, or should you go with a longer meta title? The answer isn’t so simple. Not only are titles a confirmed ranking factor, but they also influence how many people click on your web results in Google search.
10 Ways To Stop Google Rewriting Your Title Tags
Google’s practice of rewriting page titles for display in search results—which they call “title links”—is nothing new. They started doing this nearly 10 years ago but recently became much more aggressive.
Google Rewrites 61% of Page Title Tags [SEO Study]
Because titles are typically the first things users see in Google results, titles can have a large impact on click-through rates and the number of visits your site ultimately receives.
Googlespeak™ – How Google Limits Thought About Antitrust
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.” 1984, George Orwell Not long ago, those active in the SEO space may have noticed I got into a
Category Page SEO: 10 Google-Boosting Tactics
Can you actually rank category pages? There’s a crazy rumor in SEO that Google doesn’t like to rank category pages. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you search, you’ll find 100s or 1000s of examples that prove the opposite. What Google doesn’t like to rank are: Consider this category page for low-carb recipes