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...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
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...
4 months ago • 2 min read
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...
4 months ago • 3 min read
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...
4 months ago • 3 min read
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...
5 months ago • 1 min read
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...
5 months ago • 1 min read