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Showing posts from January, 2021

Pro Tip: How to find and fix 404 errors that really matter to win your traffic back - Search Engine Land

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There are many ways to find 404 errors: Google Search Console, crawlers, third-party tools. But none of them shows which external sources link to your website with the wrong URLs. These sources can be bringing you a sufficient amount of traffic, yet you have no idea they're linking to 404 pages. In this post, I'll share 7 actionable steps that will help you to quickly identify these low-hanging fruits and win your traffic back. Note: you'll need access to Google Analytics. 1. Go to any 404 page and check its title tag. Most likely, it will be something like '404,, 'Page Not Found,' etc. 2. Log in to Google Analytics and navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. When you're there, choose 'Page Title' as a Primary Dimension. This report will show you the title tags of all the pages users have visited on the website. 3. Search for the 404 page's title you found in the first step. Say, you identified that the tit

Google: There's No Timeframe For Out Of Stock Product Pages Soft 404ing - Search Engine Roundtable

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Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that there is no specific timeframe for when an out of stock product page on your e-commerce site will end up resulting in a soft 404 in Google Search. A soft 404 is when Google thinks a page should return a 404 server status code but technically is not. Google has said that product pages that are out of stock should likely return a 404 status code. And Google has also said that if it does not, Google will likely soft 404 those pages anyway. John said in November 2020 "out-of-stock or not available pages generally tend to end up as soft 404 pages. And when they go into soft 404 state then the landing page disappears from search and with that the image is also kind of lost." I asked John if there were any timelines around when an out of stock product page would be soft 404ed. Like if a product goes out of stock on the 10th of the month and Google discovers it on the 11th, does it take a few crawls, does it take a month? John sa

SEO: Search Console Is an Untapped Source of Keyword Data - Practical Ecommerce

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In October 2011, Google made a significant change that impacted search engine optimization. To improve security, Google updated its SSL, encrypting search queries. The result was much less info about searchers' organic keywords, the blue links they clicked, and the subsequent landing pages. In analytics, the keyword stated, "[not provided]." Search optimizers erupted. How could we know which keywords to focus on? Which keywords drove profits? Our anger turned to conspiracy since Google passed similar keyword data to advertisers, suggesting that if you want data, you have to buy Google ads. How could we know which keywords to focus on? The months after that update were tough. SEOs had to explain to their bosses and clients why new organic-search campaigns took longer since the targeted keywords were unavailable. Instead, we looked at rankings data assembled by third-party tools — which, incidentally, Google has always discouraged because of the scraping methods u

Internal Links for SEO: The Definitive Guide (2021) - 99signals

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Internal links are links from one page that point to other pages on the same website. Internal linking sounds as interesting as washing your dishes, but it's one of the most important on-page SEO strategies you can use to give your site an immediate boost. Yet internal links are not given due respect in the SEO community. They are almost an afterthought, often eclipsed by backlinks, a more rewarding SEO activity. But here's the truth: Without internal links, Google will find it difficult to index your site's pages. A poor internal link structure can impact your site's search visibility. In this post, you'll learn the importance of internal links in the grand scheme of SEO tactics and how to create an optimized link structure for your website. In this guide, I'll cover: Why internal links are important for SEO Internal linking best practices to optimize your internal link structure How to audit your internal links for issues By the end of this

Google Explains What URL Removals Tool Does - Search Engine Journal

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Google's John Mueller answered a tweet about the URL Removal Tool and why it wasn't working how it was expected to. The question was in the context of a site that was hacked and generated Japanese spam pages. Google Search Results Show Hacked Pages One of the most frustrating things to happen to a site is to get hacked. The frustration is compounded when Google shows non-existent spam URLs in the search results. That scenario is exactly what the person who asked the question was dealing with. They tried using Google's URL Removal Tool but it seemed to not have the expected and desired effect. According to the person asking the question: "A website gets attacked "Japanese Spam", the owner cleans the code, optimizes and secures the website but search results will take their own time to offer neat results." Advertisement Continue Reading Below They next described the problem: "Even after removing URL'S from SERP through

Google updates the Search Console coverage report - Search Engine Land

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Google announced it has made substantial updates to the coverage report within Google Search Console. Google wrote the company is "rolling out significant improvements to this report so you're better informed on issues that might prevent Google from crawling and indexing your pages. The change is focused on providing a more accurate state to existing issues, which should help you solve them more easily." What is the coverage report. The coverage report can be found in Google Search Console, and it shows the indexing state of all URLs that Google has visited, or tried to visit, in your property. What changed. Google said it added more fine-grained index coverage statuses to the report. You can expect Google to relabel some categories with the new, more specific categories. Google wrote the list of changes include: Removal of the generic "crawl anomaly" issue type – all crawls errors should now be mapped to an issue with a finer resolution. Pages that we

SEM / Google Specialist - Pedestrian TV

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About Eva: Eva wants to help fill your home with beautiful, functional and affordable furniture. With our laser focus on design, marketing and customer-centricity, we want you to jump on board as we accelerate towards becoming Australia's leading digital furniture company. APPLY HERE: https://apply.workable.com/eva-mattress/j/68B17E3ECD/  Overview of the role: High performance. Fearless experimenter. Data-driven decision-maker. If these words resonate with you, we needed you to apply, like yesterday. We have an exciting role for a search expert to join our marketing team and lead our paid search and SEO efforts. Marketing-speak like  'growth hacking ' and  'finding your north star'  is most welcome here and we're open to learning more buzzwords if you are. Of course, the day-to-day stuff like actively launching, managing and optimising Google campaigns across search, display, shopping and YouTube comes second nature to you – but your specialist expert

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is Powerful... and it's Free - Search Engine Journal

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Ahrefs launched a free SEO tool that offers SEO and site diagnostic data. It's called Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. I took a test drive of the tools and I have to say I'm very impressed with the usefulness and of the on-page and off-page SEO data. What it is: It's a tool that is limited to providing on-page, off-page SEO data for a verified site. Privacy Concerns Some folks thoughtfully began asking questions about possible privacy issues and if Ahrefs would seek to use customer data. So I asked Ahrefs about this. 1. The GSC verification is just for verification? Yes. GSC verification was released a few weeks ago and it is a very convenient method to verify website without adding DNS records or uploading files. 2. Is Ahrefs currently using any data from free accounts? No. 3. If Ahrefs decided to use the data, would they anonymize it? Using anonymized data is just an idea. We are considering using anonymized data… and look only at keyword, position, imp

Location broker X-Mode continues to track users despite app store bans - TechCrunch

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Hundreds of Android apps, far more than previously disclosed, have sent granular user location data to X-Mode, a data broker known to sell location data to U.S. military contractors. The apps include messaging apps, a free video and file converter, several dating sites, and religion and prayer apps — each accounting for tens of millions of downloads to date, according to new research. Sean O'Brien, principal researcher at ExpressVPN Digital Security Lab, and Esther Onfroy, co-founder of the Defensive Lab Agency, found close to 200 Android apps that at some point over the past year contained X-Mode tracking code. Some of the apps were still sending location data to X-Mode as recently as December when Apple and Google told developers to remove X-Mode from their apps or face a ban from the app stores. But weeks after the ban took effect, one popular U.S. transit map app that had been installed hundreds of thousands of times was still downloadable from Google Play even though

How to sideload apps on your Android TV without the Google Play Store - Android Authority

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Credit: Adamya Sharma / Android Authority The Android TV platform is one of the most diverse ones out there when it comes to app availability. Just like your Android phone, you get access to the Google Play Store on your Android TV to download apps and games of your choice. However, not all Play Store apps are available for Android TV. Take for instance Google Chrome. If you would like to access the web browser on your Android TV, you won't be able to install it from the Google Play Store like other apps. That's where sideloading comes in handy. What is sideloading? Sideloading apps is a method that allows you to install and use applications that you can't find through the Google Play Store on your Android TV device. It's a lot like sideloading apps on your Android phone. What's great about the Android TV platform is that unlike other smart TV operating systems, LG's WebOS for instance, you have the option of installing an Android Applicatio

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