Google has begun to push out an update to its helpful content system, this is the first big update to this update since it launched in August 2022. The update started yesterday, December 5th but it is now noticeable on December 6th, which is why Google announced this update today.

What is new. Now the helpful content update (aka system) is a global update, impacting all languages and not just the English language. This will help Google’s systems detect more forms of low-quality content created for search engines and primarily not for people.

Google also told us this system was updated with additional signals to help Google identify more content created primarily for search engines versus people.

Timing. Google said this update appeared for a tiny amount of queries late on December 5th but on December 6th it became a more notable update, being more visible.

Rollout. The rollout, like most other Google updates, should take about two weeks to completely roll out.

Google wrote it “released the December 2022 helpful content update, which improves our classifier and works across content globally in all languages. The rollout may take up to two weeks to complete.”

More on the helpful content update. Google’s helpful content update specifically targets “content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people.”

This algorithm update aims to help searchers find “high-quality content,” Google told us. Google wants to reward better and more useful content that was written for humans and to help users.

Content written for the purpose of ranking in search engines – what you might call “search engine-first content” or “SEO content,” has been frequently written about lately and discussed across social media.

In short, searchers are getting frustrated when they land on unhelpful webpages that rank well in search because they were designed to rank well.

Google’s new algorithm aims to downgrade those types of websites while promoting more helpful websites, designed for humans, above search engines.

Google said this is an “ongoing effort to reduce low-quality content and make it easier to find content that feels authentic and useful in search.”

What to do if you are hit. Google has provided a list of questions you can ask yourself about your content. Read through those questions as we posted over here, and in an unbiased manner, ask yourself if your content is in sync with this update.

Note, if you were hit by this update, it can take several months to recover, if you do everything right and make changes to your content over time.

Google told us that if a site is no longer seen as unhelpful, it might see a positive change as soon as the current update has finished. However, a site might not see a positive change if there are other areas where it needs improvement. So always be working on making your site more helpful.

Why we care. If you notice any ranking and visibility changes in Google search over the next two weeks or so, especially if those were big changes, you can likely attribute it to this update. Read Google’s advice, make the necessary changes, and hope for a recovery in the upcoming months.

We hope you all will benefit from this update and if not, we hope you recover quickly.

The post Google helpful content system update rolling out now (December 2022 update) appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Microsoft has just announced new products and features, beta tests, upcoming features, and the expansion of two exiting products already in their portfolio.

Why we care. Microsoft continues to adapt and introduce new features and products to compete with Google with the advertiser experience in mind. Advertisers on Microsoft should test the ever-expanding suite of ad offerings

Now available

Auto-generated remarketing lists. There are now three types of lists to boost performance. Microsoft says “Smart remarketing lists have been proven to drive increased performance across the Microsoft Search and Audience Networks. Advertisers who leverage these lists see a 92% increase in click-through rate (CTR) and a 45% reduction in cost-per-acquisition (CPA) when they use these lists on the Microsoft Search Network.1 On the Audience Network, we see a 67% improvement in CTR and an 11% reduction in CPA.”

Ad schedule now with a calendar view. There is now a new calendar view in the ad scheduling section of the Microsoft Ads dashboard. This provides you with a clear overview of all the times when your ads will serve with your default bid (0% bid adjustment), a positive bid adjustment, a negative bid adjustment, and all the times when your campaigns will not deliver.

Expanded coverage of Hotel Price ads and Property Promotion ads. Hotel ads are now in 147 markets, and in 138 markets for Property Promotion ads. With Property Promotion ads, Microsoft has also expanded significantly beyond Bing Maps, and they are now shown on the Microsoft Bing SERP, in Microsoft Bing Images, Microsoft Bing Videos, and on Microsoft Bing Travel.

Flyer extensions. Available globally, Flyer extensions allow you to showcase your image flyers next to text ads. Advertisers can create up to five Flyer Extensions per account, and the system will uniformly keep them in the rotation. The extensions are only available for text ads right now but could soon also be available for shopping.

Coming soon

New folder capabilities within Asset Library. This month, there will be new folder functionality to help you better organize your assets.

In beta

Online conversions update—retract and restate. With this new functionality, you can either update (restate) the revenue value associated or delete (retract) the conversion. This is useful in scenarios like returned or cancelled orders, partial returns or reduced conversion value, or correcting a data error, allowing you for more flexibility and accuracy.

Not new

Video ads on the Microsoft Audience Network. Last month Microsoft announced that video ads were now being supported within the audience network. Those video ads are now generally available in the US, CA, UK, FR, DE, AU, and NZ. 

Performance Max imports. Performance Max imports were introduced a couple of months ago. But earlier this month, Microsoft made the functionality available globally. Advertisers will know it’s been enabled when you see a notification in the top right corner of your screen on Microsoft Advertising online.

Sunsetted

Auto-apply APIs. Microsoft is sunsetting some specialized Auto-apply APIs that are available in common Campaign & Bulk APIs. For more information on this, check out out their help section.

Dig deeper. You can read the full update on the Microsoft blog.

The post 4 new Microsoft features, and 5 other December updates appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Google is now rolling out the new search refinement-related topics feature in the top bar filters under the Google Search bar. Google previewed these search refinements at the Search On event a few months back and even saw Google testing it before that, and now they are rolling out.

What do these refinements look like. Here is a GIF of these refinements in action. In short, Google displays this scroll list of related topics alongside these filters at the top of the search results page. The list should contain useful topics related to the query to help you refine your search.

Topic refinements that you can add to your query have a + symbol in front of them.

Google’s example above is if you’re searching for “dinner ideas,” you might see topics like “healthy” or “easy.” Tapping on a topic adds that refinement to your query, helping you quickly refine your search results with less typing.

The topics Google adds here are dynamic and will change as you tap, giving you more options and helping you explore new areas.

How dynamic topics work. Google said Google’s “systems automatically display relevant topics for you based on what we understand about how people search and from analyzing content across the web.” Google added that both the topics and the filters are shown in the order that “our systems automatically determine is most helpful for your specific query.”

Rolling out now. Google said this is now rolling out over the coming days to searchers in English in the U.S. on the Google app on iOS and Android and the mobile web.

Why we care. These search refinements might lead to more or less traffic to your site, depending on if these refinements lead to or distract from queries your site ranks for. Keep an eye on your top-performing queries to see if these dynamic topic refinements have rolled out for those queries.

The post Google Search rolls out new search refinements for top bar filters with related topics appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Imagine walking into a grocery store, list in hand, and all of the store’s products were randomly strewn on tables displayed throughout.

Odds are good that you would U-turn and make the drive to a store where things were better organized. You wouldn’t want to spend the rest of your life sorting through all the products to find the things on your list.

The same is true for your ecommerce website. Organization is critical for a good user experience and good SEO.

Also, imagine having “toilet paper” on your list, but the signs on the various rows say no such thing.

And according to this imaginary grocery store, “toilet paper” is called “tissue for your bottom.” 

Does anyone have “tissue for your bottom” on your list? 

No. We simply call it “toilet paper.”

Ecommerce mirrors in-store browsing and buying

From studying traffic patterns, grocery stores learned long ago that aligning “like” products makes the shopping experience easier. 

As we all know, everyone seems to be there for milk so stores keep them in the back. (“Let’s make sure that folks have to walk past all the other items before getting to the milk!”) 

What you call “Products” and where you have them on your ecommerce site (i.e., information architecture and taxonomy) matter quite a bit in SEO. 

This hypothetical grocery store is akin to the ecommerce website with “Shop” in the navigation. 

• Once you’ve clicked through, you get a list of every product available on the website. 
• Things need to be organized (categorized). And again, the categories need to make sense.

For many years, my agency handled SEO for a leading HVAC manufacturer. 

Back in 2005, when we first engaged, they called their air conditioners “cooling products.” Unsurprisingly, they did not rank in Google for “air conditioners.”

User experience needs to consider the customer journey

It’s often been said that SEO and UX are linked, and it’s never been truer than when we think about how you organize an ecommerce website. 

That one product you have may have several categories that fit within. Easy enough – make sure that the product is associated with those other categories. 

Just like you might find the hot sauce in the Mexican aisle, you’ll also find that there’s a display near the chips.

Make it good for the user, and you’re most likely also making it good for Google and the searcher.

So, where do you start?

The following tips for organizing your ecommerce site and promoting your products will help you get more traffic and sales.

1. Build a solid site taxonomy

Start by creating your main categories. If you’re unsure where to start, learn from your competitors. 

Verify that they are successful in their SEO efforts through a Semrush audit and see the breadth and value of their organic keyword presence. 

Your main navigation should present your main categories. A great example of solid architecture is Wayfair:

You can see here that although Wayfair offers products across a wide spectrum, they have intuitively broken these out into what they consider to be their main categories. 

And, if you were to click into any one of these, you would then see their sub-categories:

2. Explore use cases for product searches 

Once you have a foundation of main and sub-navigation (the basics), you can explore the various use cases that users might have for these products and how they search.

Do people search by price? Perhaps categories for pricing? 

For example, “Beds under $1,000,” where you list your beds that fall into this range.

Perhaps people search by style? 

Let’s say you offer adjustable beds. You’d be inclined to build a category page for this, as there are approximately 47,000 searches per month in the U.S. for these products.

Perhaps people search by brand? 

If you offer Craftmatic, you’d be inclined to build a category page for Craftmatic adjustable beds, with an estimated 1,900 searches per month.

Here’s another way to look at this. Say, for instance, you only have one category page for “Furniture.” 

In this case, you are targeting a keyword with a large monthly search volume (~588,000 searches per month).

But it is also a highly competitive keyword that is less likely to get you a top-ranking position.

Even if you went to the next level and built one sub-category page for “Beds” (with ~112,000 searches), you’d still be attempting to rank for something that would be very difficult to achieve. 

However, if you keep drilling down, you’ll begin to uncover relevant opportunities. 

Consider “targeted” keywords that may not have a sizable search volume but have a manageable competition level.

(People searching “Craftmatic adjustable beds” know what they’re looking for and are probably closer to conversion.)

The kicker is that by building this into your site structure and content plans, you reward your website visitors with a better user experience (matching content to the searcher’s intent).

And – almost by default – you will have improved your organic rankings. 

That one product can now be represented in several categories/areas of your website (Furniture/Beds/Beds Under {Price Point}/Style/Brand). 

You are merchandising your products much better than simply listing them on one page.

Now that you have this built out, consider how you might cross-promote (through internal linking) within your website. 

These category and subcategory pages can also be used for paid search, like Google Ads or Shopping Ads, where landing page relevance determines the Quality Score, which in turn impacts the cost per click.

---

---

3. Merchandise your products

Merchandising in brick-and-mortar typically refers to things like the endcaps, the small hanging display of pot holders next to the cookware display and signage.

In ecommerce, merchandising represents many more opportunities for product promotion. 

On your product page, you might have:

• Other products from the same brand.
• Other products people also bought.
• Products commonly purchased together.
• Similar products from competing brands.

You might highlight “Top brands” on your home page so visitors can quickly associate your site with reputable brands.

Building brand pages is a natural way to optimize for many “brand + product name” keywords. Your manufacturing/vendor partners can also use these pages to link from their websites. 

Many of these manufacturers have site sections devoted to “Distributors”, “Partners,” or “Where to buy” call-outs.

Perhaps the person who’s buying a bed would also be interested in a mattress pad? Do you sell these? 

If so, let’s be sure that we have opportunities to cross-sell these things and make sure that it’s intuitive with the product they’re looking to buy. 

Once again, Wayfair shows how this can add value to the user experience.

When you merchandise your products better to improve the user experience, you grow the number of ways searchers will find you.

It’s a win-win! Users find what they’re looking for, and you are gaining relevant visitors who are more likely to convert.

You are expanding your keyword breadth, which is always good for SEO as you’ll have several other opportunities to maintain your organic traffic. (You never know when you might lose that top 3 ranking for “Beds.”)

Take it from Wayfair, which has 1.7 million non-brand keywords ranking in Google’s top 10 results, according to Semrush.

This includes:

• #2 for “Furniture” and #1 for “Beds.”
• 253 keyword variations of “Adjustable beds” ranking in the top 10.
• Rank #8 for “Craftmatic adjustable beds.”

4. Leverage shopping deals and seasonal promotions

Merchandising also takes into account the way the product is promoted. 

In brick-and-mortar retail, this would be the shelving, shelving signage, aisle signage, floor signage, packaging, price labels and promotional pricing labels. 

In ecommerce, you can also take advantage of shopping deals and seasonal promotions.

Walmart has the yellow tag sales, which they use as a sub-brand.

Leading up to Thanksgiving, they promoted their Black Friday “Deals for Days,” which was included in the main navigation, a promo banner and main header elements above the fold.

Then further down the page, they had another content section to highlight more Black Friday offers.

All of these content sections must be planned out and coordinated, so you also need a flexible CMS to support these temporary content sections and dynamically pull in the right products with all the correct pricing.

You also need to have a Deals/Discounts section on the site to capture search demand for those types of search queries.

For price-sensitive shoppers, many different keywords signal that they may not need to spend full retail. These include:

• Discount.
• Sales.
• Deals.
• Clearance.
• Closeouts.
• Markdowns.
• Used.
• Coupons.

There are also sometimes seasonal variations of some of these:

• Black Friday deals.
• End-of-year sales.
• After-Christmas sales.
• Presidents’ Day sales.

I recommend setting these up with an evergreen URL since they are annual events that will consolidate page and link signals. Doing so also helps reduce internal linking errors.

Get more sales with better site organization and product merchandising

These are just a few of the items you need to consider when building an ecommerce site and figuring out how to merchandise or promote specific products. 

Many of your decisions will depend on relationships with your vendors, seasonal promotions, and other factors. 

An SEO team with ecommerce experience can help you navigate through these items – maximizing your organic exposure based on what customers are searching for and which information they need to help them buy from you.

The work that you put in here can contribute to:

• Many long-tail keyword rankings.
• Improved user experience.
• Higher conversion rates.

Additionally, a particular product category or a seasonal promotion can provide the type of content that could earn links. 

Remember – the higher you rank in Google, the more likely someone searching for related content will find your website.

Happy merchandising!

The post Ecommerce SEO & UX: 4 simple tips to boost traffic and sales appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

There once was a time when marketing was more art than science. Understanding whether or not your creative asset, display ad or even a TV spot was driving customers to your business took a lot of work. And there was little to no data to tell you what was working and what wasn’t working. That has since changed. It’s now as much science as it is art.

When using analytics to deploy targeted campaigns for specific marketing groups, your organization can increase your awareness of your products and services among the right individuals. And by understanding your consumer pain points, purchase preferences and shopping habits, your specific marketing campaigns can speak much more effectively and directly to that intended audience.

It’s almost impossible to work in marketing and not be concerned about marketing performance – the metrics and the outcomes that marketing departments look at to determine how well their marketing activities are doing to achieve their goals within their marketing plans. This is where that mention of science comes into play once again.

Learn more by joining Wrike’s Olivia Gartz, senior sales engineer, and Shannon Riley, industry principal – marketing, in their informative SMX Next session. They will teach you how their tool, Marketing Insights, can empower you to supercharge your marketing ROI, monitor success in real-time and make critical decisions to attribute revenue back to your best-performing campaigns.

After this session, you’ll be able to:

• Understand how measuring your marketing performance can improve your execution strategy
• Know which metrics are the most important to drive your campaign budgets
• Maximize your budget to allocate dollars to your best-performing campaigns

You’ll also learn how to define marketing performance measurement and the critical measurement metrics you should always include as part of your campaign performance data.

Watch the session now and arm yourself with the knowledge to sift through the data to identify which contributed directly to your bottom line.

The post Supercharge your marketing ROI for success appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Within the last few months, service area business (SAB) websites started to see rank fluctuations aligned with the rollout of Google’s helpful content and spam updates around late August through October.

Chatter around those fluctuations picked up in the local SEO community during this period in various forums, including the Google SEO Mastermind Facebook group.

The common theme with sites that were impacted the most seemed to be related to duplicate content, specifically location pages – in other words, doorway pages.

However, sites weren’t getting directly penalized by rank. Instead, pages were being automatically deindexed, which in turn caused ranks to drop for queries related to the corresponding location pages.

Deindexing of location pages

Schieler Mew, admin of the Google SEO Mastermind group on Facebook, posted this video explaining what he saw with over 200 SAB sites.

In the video, he explains that sites with relatively low authority or a lack of helpful content throughout the site saw a deindexing of their “duplicate content” location pages en masse.

Scheiler and I jumped on a Google Meet, where he shared some data and screenshots below of what had happened in Search Console to these sites.

The first thing that was noticed was a large shift in the middle of September regarding indexed pages. This seems to line right up with the completion of the helpful content rollout.

Digging into it, the next screenshot is all the pages that were deindexed seemingly overnight.

Finally, the report on the timeline of the affected pages.

The mass deindexing of pages that heavily contributed to geographic ranking vanished, taking the rankings with it.

This seemed to be the case for numerous other pages, although there were a few outliers.

Websites with seemingly higher authority or location pages that used unique content weren’t deindexed.

This leads me to believe that the helpful content and spam update algorithm seem somewhat unfinished. In this case, it tackled the easiest target – duplicate content location pages on sites with low authority.

---

---

How the helpful content and spam updates contributed

Most SEOs were under the assumption that these updates were targeting AI-generated content. (Recall that in an office-hours hangout in April, John Mueller referred to it as “spam” and made it clear it was against Google’s policies.)

On November 7, Danny Sullivan squashed this in a tweet, stating:

• "We haven’t said AI content is bad. We’ve said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue."

We haven't said AI content is bad. We've said, pretty clearly, content written primarily for search engines rather than humans is the issue. That's what we're focused on. If someone fires up 100 humans to write content just to rank, or fires up a spinner, or a AI, same issue...

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 7, 2022

This is when I started putting two and two together.

SAB sites are dropping in rank right around the rollout of both the helpful content and spam updates, and we know it’s primarily targeting pages that have content written for search engines rather than humans.

What kind of pages would a local SAB have that almost every SEO in the industry creates?

Location pages.

Understanding doorway pages

A doorway page is essentially what Danny Sullivan was talking about in the above tweet. It’s a page written to rank for a specific keyword but provides little to no value to a user.

An example of doorway pages in the local SEO industry is location pages. In other words, a page that exists for the sole purpose of ranking [city #1] + [service A] multiplied by the number of cities and/or services the business is trying to rank for.

These can be created faster if the content is duplicated and only the keywords are swapped out. Additionally, you can write custom content for each page, but it’s still a doorway page.

SEOs in this sector hate to admit it, but location pages are doorway pages. Mueller confirmed this in February.

That's a common way to make doorway pages, but it's not the only way.

— John Mueller is mostly not here (@JohnMu) February 9, 2022

Doorway pages have always been against Google’s policies, but there had never seemed to be a way to suppress these algorithmically.

The only punishment seemed to be manual actions, and until this year, SABs seem to have been put on the Google backburner – so no one really ever saw any consequences for doing this.

Recent Google updates to local SEO

In the last few months, waves have been made within the local SEO community, not just with doorway pages, including:

• Google Business Profiles requiring video and photo verification.
• Reviews going missing.
• Complete profiles being suspended for seemingly no reason.
• Plummeting rankings.

For the most part, Google has addressed a few of these issues, such as the suspended business profiles and reviews hovering in purgatory – usually giving credit to “bugs.”

At some point, SEOs have to ask themselves why suddenly there are so many bugs in a specific sector.

Aside from the bugs with GBP profiles, Google has also made some obvious and strict changes to how profiles are now verified.

It started with the default verification method switching from postcard to video. Then, in some instances, video being the only way to verify.

This, mixed with business profiles suddenly being suspended over minor issues, started to raise flags that Google was finally tackling the SEO spam in the SAB community.

Fast forward to September this year, SEOs in communities and forums started to see declining rankings for location-dependant keywords and pages.

All of this being said, it looks like Google is seriously cracking down on local businesses that are violating their spam policies.

Can location pages still work?

The short answer is, “yes”, but it’s only a matter of time before location pages fade into archaic SEO practices like hidden text or meta keyword stuffing.

Google deindexing duplicate content location pages is just the first step in the conquest to punish sites for using doorway pages that don’t benefit humans.

It’s unclear whether or not Google will institute rank penalties for doorway pages in the future or continue to not index the pages.

My theory is that this is a temporary fix. Location pages are something local SEOs should be leaving in the past.

At the end of the day, Google wants content to exist to provide a positive user experience, not to influence rank.

As a consumer, I’ve never found a location page to benefit my user experience. This is how we should think when creating pages and content.

First, think about how it can help the user and then how it can be optimized to help your rank – in that order.

Alternative optimization options to rank in nearby cities

Suggesting that location pages may be coming to an end isn’t cause for local SEOs to throw their hands up on optimizing for neighboring cities and areas.

There are alternative things we can do that put the purpose of the content back in the direction of helping humans first.

Target your primary service area in your H1s and page titles

Chances are you or your client have a number one area they want to target.

Make sure this city is mentioned in your H1s and page titles. This will make it clear to Google from a content standpoint where your primary area of service is.

Make sure to have a general service area page

Make sure to have a general page that tells users where you or your client serves.

List out all counties, cities, or neighborhoods and include a map that visualizes that service area.

Create project pages

This is my favorite. If you or your client have project-oriented work like landscaping, roof repair, construction, etc; create pages for specific projects that were completed.

Treat it similarly to a blog or gallery. Add before and after pictures, explaining the job or project details.

Mention what city it was located in, how much it cost, some challenges, etc.

This method will not only show potential customers what your company is capable of and the type of work you do, but it’s also a great way to rank your service and the city where it was performed.

An example of a project page for a landscaper could be titled “Modern Highland Stone Retaining Wall in Minnetonka, MN.”

Local newspaper press releases

Reach out to local newspapers in the surrounding areas and issue a press release.

Brag about your company regarding a past or upcoming charitable contribution or discount you give. Newspaper and local publishing sites typically link back to your website.

Join multiple local Chambers of Commerce

These typically have an annual fee associated with each one you join, but each city you or your client is targeting has one.

If it’s in your budget, join them for the location-relevant links and geographic authority.

Where do we go from here?

Google’s enforcement of service area businesses is long overdue, but it seems like the action is now being taken. 

Some location pages still work as long as the site has high authority and good overall content. It’s duplicate content location pages that are getting deindexed.

Overall, SABs are now under Google’s magnifying glass. If SEOs aren’t getting hit with penalties yet, I would put money on it being something that will be happening in the very near future.

It’s important to remember that Google is always evolving. Even though something like unique content may still work for location pages, I bet that Google will tackle this next.

Google’s SpamBrain AI is updated every now and then. This time, it may be evolving to target easily distinguishable doorway pages.

It’s only a matter of time before it understands a location page as a standalone doorway page with unique content.

As SEOs, we must review our local business sites, stick to the core principles of local search,  and do some housekeeping per Google’s policies – before their algorithm team pays us a visit. 

The post Location pages in Google’s crosshairs after October spam update appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Customers have grown to expect tailored, timely offerings and marketers are challenged with delivering these real-time, personalized experiences to respond to their needs.

As a result of this shift, enterprises are leveraging customer-centric strategies to drive smarter engagement across the full customer journey, capture revenue opportunities and foster long-term loyalty. Those that are truly succeeding are making access to data a movement across their organization, not just a marketing initiative.

Learn how The Washington Post is executing personalized customer experiences as a key engagement driver to power use cases from acquisition to win back.

Register today for “Drive Smarter Engagement with Hyper-Personalization Across the Customer Lifecycle,” presented by ActionIQ.

---

Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.

The post Webinar: Drive smarter engagement across the customer journey appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Google is now rolling out continuous scroll on the desktop search results. Google initially brought continuous scroll to mobile search in October 2021 and now it is here for the desktop search results.

Continous scroll is like infinite scroll but it does not go on infinitely, it stops after a few pages or so – which is why Google does not call it infinite scroll but rather continuous scroll.

What continuous scroll looks like on desktop. Here is a GIF of continues scroll in action on desktop search:

Google statement. “So starting today, we’re bringing continuous scrolling to desktop so you can continue to see more helpful search results with fewer clicks. It’s now even easier to get inspired with more information at your fingertips,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

“Now, when you scroll down you’ll continue to find relevant results so that you can discover new ideas. When you reach the bottom of a search results page, up to six pages of results will be automatically shown until you see a “More results” button if you wish to continue further.,” Google added.

US English. This is now rolling out today throughout English search results in the U.S. and may take some time to be fully rolled out for all U.S. users to see.

Why we care. This may (or may not) encourage searchers to look beyond the first few results and scroll more through more results. This may impact your Search Console data because searchers may scroll more or less.

The post Google brings continuous scroll to desktop search results appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

Google has shut down Duplex on the Web and has retired its web crawler, DuplexWeb-Google. Google posted a notice of this in this help document saying “Duplex on the Web is deprecated, and will no longer be supported as of December, 2022. Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date.”

Duplex on the web. Google called this feature “Duplex on the web,” and it allowed users to use the Google Assistant for new reservations and other purchase categories. It would call a restaurant, for example, to book a table reservation for dinner, when you asked Google to book you a reservation.

It worked for movie tickets, assisting with checking out for online retail stores, food ordering, flight check-ins, password changes and discount finders.

DuplexWeb-Google crawler. With the deprecation of Duplex on the Web, Google has retired the DuplexWeb-Google web crawler. Google posted in this other help document, about the deprecation of this web crawler.

Google also added a new section to the Google crawler document for retired crawlers:

Why we care. If you saw crawling activity from DuplexWeb-Google, that should stop going forward. Also, it makes you wonder if local businesses will be receiving calls from Google’s Duplex or other systems in the future or not. It seems not? And if not, why has Google been quiet about this announcement?

The post Google shut down Duplex on the Web appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.

If your content isn’t performing as well as you expected, or old pieces you published a few years ago are no longer relevant or pulling their weight, it’s time for an update.

Specifically, it’s time to optimize your underperforming content.

This is the process of updating, tweaking, editing, and rewriting old content that’s not pulling in ROI. The goal is to improve the content so it will eventually start:

• Ranking in search.
• Getting read.
• Gaining engagement such as shares or comments.
• Earning conversions.

Often, optimizing your underperforming content is a cost-effective method to improve your content marketing overall. By optimizing, you won’t need to invest in creating completely new pieces – you can just rejigger what you already have and make it better.

It’s a good practice for any brand with content (especially as part of a content audit), as it ensures every piece continues to work toward your goals (versus hindering them).

First, you’ll need to identify your underperforming content – what pieces aren’t living up to their potential – and then take steps to improve and optimize it.

How to identify underperforming content

How do you know which content pieces are underperforming?

You’ll need to look at specific metrics to find them.

Use tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, or Ahrefs to look at this data and find your underperforming content.

Search ranking metrics:

• Organic keywords 
• Average position

To identify content pieces underperforming in search results, look at your organic keyword stats, especially the average position of your content in Google. Pay attention to:

• Anything ranking #5-10: Optimizing these further could potentially lead to increased rankings.
• Anything ranking #11 and below: Optimizing further or rewriting these could help you eventually reach Page 1, depending on the keyword.

Traffic and engagement metrics:

• Page views
• Sessions
• Bounce rate
• Time on page
• Social shares
• Comments

Which pages are losing traffic? 

Which pages get little to no engagement (i.e., people aren’t spending enough time on the page to read the content)? 

These are great candidates for optimization.

7 questions for optimizing underperforming content

After you find your underperforming content that’s prime for optimization, ask yourself the following questions to understand how to fix it.

1. Are the keywords you’re targeting actually winnable?

If your content isn’t performing, first consider whether the keyword you’re targeting is, in fact, winnable for your brand.

For example, if you targeted the keyword “content strategy” in a piece and it’s languishing on page 5 of search results, that might be a result of two factors:

• You’re a small or new brand that’s still building online authority.
• The competition for “content strategy” is incredibly stiff, with well-known, authoritative names like HubSpot, Content Marketing Institute, and even the U.S. Government ranking at the top of Google.

It’s doubtful that a new or low-authority site could crack the top 10 results for this keyword. 

If that’s the case, consider switching keywords to target what you can actually win. Especially for newer or smaller brands, long-tail keywords are usually easier to rank for. They also generate 70% of all traffic.

For example, instead of targeting “content strategy,” try targeting “content strategy for beginners” or “content marketing strategy for SEO.”

Going long-tail is generally a win-win because these keywords are more specific and target searchers with more specific intent. 

These searchers also may be more willing to convert because they’re actively looking for solutions – not just browsing.

2. Have you optimized the content with enough keywords in strategic places?

If a piece is already well-written and optimized for a winnable keyword, consider whether it’s optimized enough.

Google has stated that the key best practices for improving your SEO include: 

• Using the right words people would use to search for your content.
• Placing the right words in prominent locations on-page.

Placement and use of keywords matter a ton to how well you’ll rank in search. 

If you haven’t given Google enough signals that say, “Hey! This keyword is the focus and topic of this page!” it’s not going to get the memo.

Some tips for keyword usage and placement in your content:

• Include your focus keyword in all of these places for ideal optimization:
  • In the H1 heading (a.k.a., page title).
  • In the meta title and description, ideally near the beginning of both.
  • In the first paragraph.
  • In at least one of the H2 headings.
  • In at least one of the H3 headings.
  • Sprinkled naturally throughout the body text.
  • Inside image alt text (for images that appear on the page).
• Include synonyms and variations of your focus keyword in these places:
  • In at least one H2 (depending on how many appear in the content).
  • In at least one H3 (same as above).
  • Sprinkled naturally throughout the content.
  • Inside image alt text.
• Never keyword stuff. Always aim to add keywords that are descriptive and helpful for readers.
• Always structure and organize your content with keyword-optimized headings. These make it more scannable and thus easier to read. Headings also give search engines crucial clues about your page and whether your content is relevant to the search query.

---

---

3. Are your headings, subheadings, meta title, and meta description strong enough?

Many people overlook little details (e.g., writing a solid meta title and description or crafting strong, descriptive headings). And that's a mistake.

These little pieces do a lot of hard work. The meta title alone can entice searchers to click your link among extremely similar results – especially if yours is more thoughtfully crafted or descriptive than the other options.

For example, if I search for "how to make caramel popcorn" in Google, the results are almost identical. However, only one mentions "easy" in their meta title. That's enough of a differentiator to make me want to click it.

With that in mind, take the time to craft strong meta titles, descriptions, and headings for your underperforming content.

These elements can pique your readers' curiosity or interest, pulling them further into the piece, which can positively impact its performance.

A few tips:

• Lengthen your headings. Longer headings and sub-headings are more descriptive, more creative and engaging, and are prime spots to include keywords.
• Think of headings and metas as hooks. Your headings can do much more than just split your content into sections. They can also serve as little hooks that pull your reader down the page. The same goes for your meta description – it can act as a hook that grabs the reader and makes them want to click your link in the search results. 
• Speak to the reader. So, what makes a good hook? Speak directly to your reader. Imagine they're sitting across from you; address them. Address their concerns. Make their lives better.
• Learn to write good headlines. If you're shaky about crafting any of these pieces, first learn to write a solid headline. That knowledge can be applied to writing metas and headings, too. This article by Brian Clark of Copyblogger is a great place to start.

4. Are your statistics, facts, or links outdated?

This is one of the easiest ways to optimize underperforming content. Make sure it's up-to-date and relevant to modern readers!

For example, are the statistics cited in the content from 2016 or earlier? That's too old, especially since companies usually update studies (or conduct new ones) every few years.

A good rule of thumb: If the statistics in your content are more than five years old, find new ones unless the stat is ground-breaking or foundational in your industry. 

If a statistic comes from a unique study that hasn't been updated or replicated, then it should be OK to cite it.

Next, what about the links? Are the links that point to other sites and resources still relevant? Do they point to the correct pages (and are the pages still there)? Are the links high-quality and authoritative? If not, update.

Finally, check your content for relevance. For example, if the year 2020 is mentioned multiple times in an otherwise evergreen blog, update those references so they're current.

5. Is the content quality up to snuff?

Let's say the content piece you're optimizing is relatively short and thin when you'd expect it to be meatier. 

Maybe the piece doesn't fully address the topic it's trying to cover, or it delves into irrelevancies. 

Perhaps the topic calls for supportive statistics or data that help add weight to the piece, but it doesn't have any. 

Or, maybe it has a bunch of spelling or grammatical errors, or it doesn't have any images.

These issues are all related to content quality – how helpful, relevant, accurate, and informative/entertaining/empowering the content is for your particular audience.

Luckily, in all of these scenarios, a few updates will improve the quality without requiring a complete rewrite. For example: 

• Add on to the piece with additional information to make it more exhaustive and useful. 
• Trim irrelevant sections and add better information that's more relevant to your audience's concerns. 
• Find some pertinent images to add to the content to increase engagement.

6. Does the content need a complete rewrite?

Sometimes you can't save poor-quality content.

Instead, some pieces may need total overhauls. This means you'll delete everything and start over.

How do you know when your content requires a complete rewrite?

• It's poorly written with no structure (read: headings) or logical flow.
• It completely misses the point of the topic and what readers are looking for when they search for it.
• It focuses on the brand instead of the brand's audience.
• It focuses on an event or date that has long since passed.
• The targeted keyword is still winnable for the brand and is worth the investment/effort of rewriting.

7. Do you have site issues hindering readability or crawling?

Finally, don't forget to zoom out to look at the bigger picture when you're optimizing underperforming content.

Your site may be contributing to your content's poor performance in a few ways.

• Readers are having a hard time viewing your site as a whole.
• Search engines can't crawl it to index it.

For example, if your site loads extremely slowly, that can affect your rankings and engagement. People won't wait to read a webpage that doesn't load quickly. 

Or, maybe your site isn't optimized for mobile browsing, so people trying to access your content on smartphone browsers can't even read it.

A poor site design can interfere with its readability as well. Make sure there's enough contrast between the text on your page and the background for comfortable reading. 

Avoid long paragraphs, too – those are hard on the eyes when reading from a screen. 

Last but not least, ensure Google and other search engines can crawl your pages to index them. 

Sometimes a silly error can lurk under the surface, such as a "noindex" tag accidentally placed in the code for one of your blogs ("noindex" tells search engines not to include the page in results). 

Optimize underperforming content and improve your ROI

Optimizing your lackluster content is a great way to get the most ROI from it.

Each piece of content requires a certain amount of investment (the effort, money, and time spent to create it). When you take the time to optimize and update it, you'll stretch that investment further.

Even better, content that starts performing will bring in heftier positive returns.

That means you'll get more longevity out of your content assets, and they'll keep performing into the future to bring in passive traffic, leads, and conversions.

It's crucial to repeat the optimization process regularly as part of your content strategy to get the best results. This will ensure all of your content keeps working to reach your goals. 

The post How to optimize underperforming content appeared first on Search Engine Land.

a message brought to you by Wayne Vass SEO

This article first appeared on: The post %%POSTLINK%% appeared first on %%BLOGLINK%%.