Introduction

Do you have multiple offers that characterize great similarity?

A leading hospitality client partnered with us to enhance their online visibility and drive user engagement. Through our expertise and a data-driven approach, we delivered impactful results:

• Resolved keyword cannibalization on key offer pages.
• Implemented targeted SEO strategies tailored to the client’s goals.
• Boosted SERP rankings from below 20 to 3rd position (significantly increasing the likelihood of potential customers finding their website through search engines).
• Achieved 1.06K clicks, 18.4K impressions, and a 5.8% CTR, reflecting significant growth in visibility and engagement.

Insight

Do you have multiple offers that characterize great similarity? If so, you may unintentionally compete with yourself in search results. To drive business growth and maximize ROI, it’s essential to prevent cannibalization by ensuring similar offers aren’t optimized for the same keyword. Start by aligning your SEO strategy with your business goals – identify the most valuable pages and optimize them so only one appears in the SERPs for your key terms. 

Bonus Insight

For seasonal offers, focus on keywords that reflect their business value and profitability, optimizing your highest-performing pages for the most searched terms to maximize impact.

Does Google Discover bring new users?

While working on strategy for our client from the Food and Beverage Industry we achieved remarkable success:

• Generated 10K clicks and nearly 190K views in one week from a single blog post.
• Successfully leveraged #GoogleDiscover (a platform that suggests content to users based on their interests) to drive significant traffic.
• Gained valuable insights into user preferences and content performance.
• Plan to use these insights to optimize future content and boost engagement within the client’s blog section.

Insight

Did you already use Google Discover as a valuable source of new users? To optimize our presence on this channel, we’re conducting a deep dive into our past performance. By leveraging Google Trends, we’ll be tracking evolving user interests and identifying trending topics. This enables us to tailor our content to more effectively align with the needs of our audience and Google Discover’s algorithms.

When can I stop doing SEO? Never.

We confronted a challenge to optimize a local landing page for a senior care industry client.

Lastly, we achieved:

• Expanded descriptions with location-specific informational content (city life, transportation, history, events, trivia).
• Results: Improved ranking from 10th to 5th; briefly achieved 2nd position on SERP.
• Applied strategy to additional landing pages in senior care and car rental industries, yielding increased visibility across sectors.

Insight

SEO efforts never stop. The end of the year seems like a perfect time to check out the competitors’ efforts. Study competitors’ approaches and tailor the strategy to align with industry best practices. 

Bonus Insight

Ensure informational content enhances but does not overshadow the primary sales message.

How to use Google Discover to tailor strategy?

We were working lastly on the Optimization of the Blog Article “Trendy Fall Shoes 2024” for SEO and Google Discover for a client from the fashion industry.

Our goal was to create a blog article on fall 2024 footwear trends, focusing on both SEO optimization and, above all, increasing the chances of appearing in Google Discover. This required a unique approach to content, formatting, and publication timing.

Key Actions:

1. Attractive and Realistic Meta Title
   We crafted a title that was engaging for readers, maintaining authenticity and avoiding clickbait. This ensured that readers could trust the article to deliver valuable, relevant information as promised by the title.
2. Use of High-Quality Images
   We prioritized the visual appeal of the article by including high-quality images that were thematically aligned with the content and reflected the latest fashion trends. The images were optimized to meet Google Discover’s requirements, with a minimum width of 1200 pixels.
3. Publication Timing Based on Trend Analysis
   Using Google Trends, we identified the ideal publication time in line with seasonal increases in interest in fall fashion. This trend analysis for fall 2024 allowed us to time the publication to align with peak user interest.
4. Content Creation Based on Behavioral Analysis
   During content creation, we utilized insights from user behavior on similar articles. We examined which elements were most engaging, which sections captured user attention, and which areas were typically overlooked. This allowed us to structure the article to emphasize key aspects that resonate most with users, meeting their expectations and preferences effectively.
5. E-E-A-T Approach
   We focused on E-E-A-T principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), ensuring that the content was expert, reliable, and trustworthy for both users and Google.
6. In-Depth Research on 2024 Trends
   We conducted a thorough analysis of the latest fashion trends from runway shows, presenting the insights in a clear and comprehensive manner. The content was organized into short, precise paragraphs, enriched with engaging visuals—an approach especially appealing to users looking for visual inspiration.

Result:
By balancing technical SEO optimization with visual appeal and a strategic approach to Google Discover, the article successfully appeared in Google Discover. This resulted in generating around 23,000 visits to the article, demonstrating the significant impact that the right blend of content, timing, and optimization strategy can have on enhancing visibility and user engagement within the fashion industry.

Insight

To boost content reach and visibility, combine technical with strategic timing and appealing visuals. A strategy tailored to Google Discover and user behavior can significantly increase engagement, offering strong business potential.

How to know what is relevant for users?

We conducted an analysis for unexploited keywords for a client in the fashion industry, where we noticed a gap in responding to specific user intent in the men’s suits category. Based on SERP, keyword and competitor analysis, we identified phrases that were relevant to users searching for suits, but did not yet have relevant, dedicated pages or content on the client’s site. We decided to create dedicated product categories that addressed the needs of users searching for a specific assortment – color, type, or material. For each of the new categories, a category description was prepared and implemented with matching intent to the assortment. All categories were also included in dedicated internal linking sections, creating a thematic cluster with links between the main category and categories for long tail phrases.

Through these actions, the client strengthened Topical Authority around men’s suits, which had a positive impact on search engine visibility, organic traffic and matching user intent.

This action impacted the Topical Authority of the site, so that the main phrase “garnitury” (suits) increased its position from 3.66 to 1.89.

Insight

Identify and leverage unexplored user intents: through SERP and competitor analysis, you can uncover user-specific search intents that might not yet be reflected in your existing categories. By creating dedicated pages that address these intents (such as specific colors, types, or materials of suits), you can significantly enhance visibility and relevance. This approach not only drives new traffic but also strengthens your site’s authority in the broader category.

Bonus insight

Establish thematic clusters with internal linking: building a network of internal links between the main category and new, intent-focused subcategories fosters a thematic cluster around a central topic. This structure reinforces the topical authority of the site in the eyes of search engines, making your content more likely to rank for broader, competitive terms over time.

What to do with low CTR for non-brand categories and keywords?

In the case of one of our clients, we faced the challenge of a very low CTR for non-brand categories and keywords. This resulted in lower-than-expected traffic, despite a steadily increasing visibility graph for keywords. The challenge was clear: how to encourage users to click on our client’s search results?

Therefore, we took action to enhance the visibility of our client’s most important category on Google, working with structured data, among other strategies. This led to an increase in clicks, impressions, and most importantly, an increase in CTR for non-brand keywords (with relatively little change in position).

Insight

The average Google user makes a decision in 14.6 seconds, and with the current high level of competition in search results, it is essential to stand out in order to capture attention.

One brand, with multiple markets with multiple languages, how to build SEO?

Multiple languages, multiple markets? We have your back, as we had in the case of one of our clients from the beauty industry. We ensure content consistency across languages, especially in industries like beauty, where term duplication is common. Insightland’s approach includes blocking the English version from Google’s crawlers to prioritize Polish content, improving its visibility and ranking. This strategy enhances SEO performance by reducing duplicate content issues and boosting search metrics.

Insight

Suppose you run a website in a non-English-speaking country and it includes an English-language version indexed by Google. In that case, it’s important to consider how this impacts your overall visibility. In industries where certain keywords have English counterparts frequently used by local users (e.g., beauty, fashion, technology), the different language versions may compete against each other in search results. This can result in traffic fragmentation, diluting the overall traffic and potentially weakening the ranking of your main local-language version.

Contact

Our specialists

As Insightland, specialists in delivering unique insights, we approach every project comprehensively, holistically, but above all, strategically.

Anna Chwiłkowska

Operations Manager

anna.chwilkowska@insightland.org

Get in touch

You’d like to submit a request for proposal (RFP) or simply leave us a quote?

Contact

The post From success to insights – November 2024 appeared first on insightland.

How to decide which structured data to use?

Schema.org’s documentation is very extensive, and the advice contained therein allows you to implement a huge number of additional data, including those that, for various reasons, have not been placed directly on the page. Is maximizing the use of all the elements offered by Schema.org always a good idea? Definitely not!

The site content incorporated in the structured data should reflect only the information that is visible on the website from the user’s perspective. Any attempt to “smuggle in” additional information in the form of structured data may be viewed by search engines as an attempt to manipulate rankings. That’s why it’s so important to choose the right elements of structured data.

The selection of structured data can be broken down into several steps:

1. Defining the type of the website

A simple showcase website, information website or e-commerce site? In most common cases, structured data can be matched to the type of the website https://schema.org/LocalBusiness).

2. Matching attributes to on-page content

After selecting the proper documentation, it is time to match the attributes contained in it with the on-page content (e.g.: if address data has not been provided on the site, such information should also not be included in the structured data).

3. Implementation of data structured in line with documentation

Once all the data has been prepared, the next step is the implementation. In addition to the standard Schema.org documentation, you should also refer to Google official structured data documentation

4. Verification of implementation

You should verify whether the data has been implemented correctly. To do so, we recommend using Schema.org’s Validator, and also to refer to Google’s Rich Results Validator. Some structured data may not be officially supported by Google, so their validator may show a message that there are no rich results. In this case, the verification of implementations should always be supported by an additional tool.

Methods of implementing structured data

According to the official Schema.org documentation, there are 3 ways to implement structured data. These are as follows:

• Microformats – data is tagged as HTML attributes added to tags directly in the code of the website. This is the most secure method of implementing structured data from the SEO perspective. This excludes the possibility of tagging the data that is not present in the site structure.

• RDFa – is a method for implementing structured data standardized by the W3C organization. RDFa implementation, except for the labeling of attributes, does not differ from Microformats. Implementation is also done by using the appropriate attributes in HTML tags. This solution has an advantage in its versatility, as such structured data can be adapted for implementation in many programming languages.

• JSON-LD – is the most versatile method of adding structured data. The code, tagged with <script></script>, is implemented in the <head></head> section or in the <body></body> section of the website. Due to the simplicity of the structure, this is the most legible solution, both for indexing robots and people. When implementing structured data using this method, be sure not to include additional information in the JSON-LD code that is not available on the site from the user’s perspective.

The most popular methods of incorporating structured data are microformats and JSON-LD, and it is these methods that can be found in search engine documentation for structured data.

Selected structured data and its purpose

Structured data used on websites include:

Organization – used to identify the organization the website represents. Enables tagging information such as name, URL, logo, phone number, physical address of the organization, etc… There are many subtypes of structured data to help you identify more precisely the industry and type of the organization in question (e.g.: LocalBusiness); however, they all use a similar pattern as the Organization. LocalBusiness and subtypes of this structured data are also used by search engines (e.g.: Google) to support the feeding of data to Google My Business.

NewsArticle – can help improve an article’s visibility in standard search results. In addition, as Google does not require the AMP format for a site to appear in the latest news carousel, tagging a news article with this structured data increases the chance of it being featured there.

AggregateRating – tagging a blog article or product on an e-commerce website with AggregateRating structured data allows the star rating of a product or article to appear in search results. Note that this structured data can be implemented when the site has a review form, and all entries published using this form are available on the website from the user level.

Recipe – this type of structured data enables an article of a culinary nature, containing a cooking recipe, to appear in the extended results for recipes.

FAQPage – when a FAQ page is tagged with this structured data, such questions and answers can appear in search results. We can tag an unlimited number of questions and answers on the page, but it is the search engine that will decide which ones should be displayed in the SERP.

Other examples of structured data

• JobPosting
• ImageObject
• Event
• Book
• BreadcrumbList
• Course
• SpecialAnnouncement
• Quiz
• VideoObject

What structured data to use?

When choosing the right structured data, you should be guided primarily by the type of website and its content. Tagging all the information available on the website with structured data is not a good idea. They should be used to tag as much information as possible that may be useful from the perspective of search engines and indexing robots.

The post What Schema.org structured data is worth using from an SEO perspective? appeared first on insightland.

One-off measures had an effect, so the headline lies

That’s something that people who have just deployed changes to the website and are seeing some initial successes might say. Positions jumped into the top 10 or top 5 in the ranking, organic traffic increased by 10-20%, we managed to achieve satisfactory results for local phrases, which are crucial for many businesses such as hotels or restaurants. It is true that by simply implementing some changes, you can significantly improve the positioning of your website. However, to maintain this level, we cannot rest on our laurels. We need to constantly and carefully analyze the website to be where our audience is. If we are absent, our competitors will take over all the traffic, turning it into conversions, and the visibility of our website will decrease day by day. Only a combination of many one-off steps, and changing some of them into cyclical ones, will ensure a permanent and stable position for our business in Google.

Why should we constantly improve our websites?

The market, regardless of our line of business, is highly saturated and usually very competitive. It’s hard to find an underserved niche – we’ll always be up against competition, be it direct or indirect. When planning and executing measures aimed at building the position and recognition of our brand, we must keep in mind that our competitors are doing exactly the same. Paid campaigns are a good example – if we stop advertising and our competitors don’t, they will quickly take over our positions, our users and the traffic they generate. The same is true for positioning. We should not forget about our competitors’ activities, even when our website ranks first in the search results. We should remember that other websites are constantly fighting for their place in the TOP 3 and if we stop taking action, stop acquiring links or constantly improving the website, our position will sooner or later be snatched by competitive brands, and the positioning of the website and its online visibility will decline. To ensure long-term effectiveness of SEO, it is essential that we constantly monitor our performance and that of our competitors and respond quickly to even the smallest declines.

Google updates – why it just can’t stay nice for good…

It is one thing to optimize a website for Google search, monitor our competitors and take steps to get or stay ahead of them. Another thing is continuous Google updates which, over the past year, have sometimes caused confusion in positions and, consequently, in results. In the second half of 2021 alone, Google rolled out several Google Core Algorithm Updates, involving changes to its search algorithms and systems. This often significantly disrupts, temporarily or permanently, the results. Consequently, it is necessary to constantly update the website in line with current guidelines and to include new areas that will be evaluated and scored by Google. Website monitoring and analytics are also necessary to control how changes in algorithms have affected our site and its position.

Success is a path we must walk again and again

So how do we take care of a website to make it perform well all the time? The most important thing is to learn to be patient and systematically revisit areas that have already been optimized. Especially if we see even small, unfavorable changes in our website’s positions. Having worked on large projects, we have seen many times that the joy of achieving our objectives does not last long. This is particularly evident for e-commerce websites, where the pace of change is enormous, websites face fierce competition, and the difficulty of achieving high positions keeps growing. That’s why we continue to thoroughly check the technical condition of websites and implement new enhancements every month. Naturally, we also continuously work with the content – we verify the volatility of the potential phrases, add new phrases to the analysis, that grow dynamically along with the trends, and update the key content. Based on our experience, we can confirm that subtle but well-thought-out changes in headlines or metadata can contribute to significant increases.

SEO not only requires a vast amount of knowledge that is constantly updated and supplemented. It also requires accuracy, patience and determination, because only by combining these variables can we stay alert, prepare for change and fight for our clients’ small successes every day.

The post Why doesn’t one-off website optimization deliver long-term benefits to your business? appeared first on insightland.

Why you should improve your business’ visibility online

According to the statistics shared here: https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/, there are 1.87 billion pages registered at the time of writing this article. Considering that in 1992 there were only 15,000, it is easy to see that the growth is incredibly dynamic. These figures may cause some concern – no matter what business you run, the internet is full of your competitors – both direct and indirect ones, even if you don’t realize it. On the other hand, these figures clearly confirm that a website is a “must have” for practically every company, regardless of whether it operates on the local or global market, regardless of its size, product range or sector of operation. The Internet is the natural place where users usually start searching for products and services, so it is definitely worth ensuring that you enhance the online visibility of your brand, store and offering. 

Strategy for building visibility in Google 

An effective SEO strategy is based on three pillars including on-site, off-site and technical aspects. If you take care of each of them right from the start, the desired results will come faster and your visibility in Google will radically improve. 

On-site activities

On-site activities include optimizing the visible content of the website and the HTML source code. They play a vital role because Google, when checking the content of pages, establishes how relevant the results are for a particular query. If the content of your website is not rich enough and Google cannot find the right key phrases on it, it will decide that another website is more suitable to present to users.

Off-site activities

Another important piece of the puzzle are off-site activities, i.e. those that take place outside the website. They are based primarily on building a link profile, i.e. on acquiring valuable links that refer to our website. When choosing which pages to show at the top, Google considers not only the content of the website and its relevance to the keyword, but also the number of referring domains, i.e. unique sites that link to our website. The search engine is based on a number of algorithms, and one of them is PageRank, an algorithm that analyses the number and quality of backlinks leading to a website. To improve the visibility of your website, you must also consider this parameter.

Technical aspects

Technical aspects are the final element. When properly optimized, they contribute positively to how Google will find, index and comprehend a website. What matters to a search engine is how quickly a page loads, whether it is responsive and whether there are any negative factors interfering with indexation. The objective of technical optimized is to address these issues so as to improve visibility and rankings in Google.

Google’s algorithms rank websites based on a number of factors, so taking a broad approach to the topic and addressing each pillar in your SEO strategy will yield the greatest benefits, and an optimized website will be rewarded with higher positions in search results.

Tools for on-site activities

To effectively plan and carry out website optimization activities, we recommend using tools that allow in-depth research of key phrases. This should be the starting point for working on the on-site aspects. 

Tools you should know and use when working on optimizing your website include:

• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs
• KWFinder
• Semrush

They enable quick and efficient analysis of key phrases. Depending on what we expect, we can analyze phrases related to a given topic with the highest number of searches per month, phrases on which our competitors have positioned themselves and which our website is missing, or those for which the website ranks high but not high enough to generate traffic and conversions.

Google Search Console

In order to exploit the potential of this tool, you will have to implement the appropriate code in the source of the page. This way, Search Console will record clicks, visibility and average position for a selected period for phrases for which the website is displayed in Google. By analyzing the results presented, you will find it easier to plan your strategy and find out where to start. It will also help you understand the behavior of your users and, most importantly, how they search for your product. If you are just starting out with your website, make sure your data is accounted for in the GSC.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a paid tool that helps in on-site activities in a number of ways. Above all, it enables a quick yet detailed analysis of your competitors. When you go to the Organic Keywords tab, you can enter any of your competitors’ addresses and check the phrases they appear for – their potential and average positions. This will make optimization of the website significantly easier – you just need to analyze several competitors, assess their visibility and plan your efforts to cover all relevant phrases, thus overtaking your competitors in the search results.

In addition to competitor analysis, Ahrefs enables research of key phrases. Simply click on the Keywords Explorer tab and type in the phrases you are interested in, and the tool will suggest other related words to consider when planning your activities.

KWFinder

It is a tool that is less sophisticated than Ahrefs and focuses on key phrases. It is simple, intuitive and easy to use. It works in a similar way to Keywords Explorer, except that in addition to listing related phrases, it also shows changes in trends for a particular keyword and displays the results in Google (which websites and links are in the TOP 10). KWFinder runs very smoothly in many language versions, which makes researching foreign language phrases enjoyable and effortless.

Semrush 

Semrush is a true multitool among other tools that support SEO activities. In addition to the functionalities provided by Ahrefs and KWFinder, we can easily extract phrases for which our competitors are displayed, and which have not been covered by the website under analysis. It identifies strong and unique words that are extremely valuable in the context of positioning and are definitely worth using. What’s more, it suggests which topics are “trending”, what is worth writing about and how you can further optimize your sub-pages. After proper analysis of the results that Semrush provides, you can significantly improve the quality and usability of your website’s content, which will affect its visibility and increase its ranking in Google.

Tools for off-site activities

Off-site activities, i.e. those that happen outside the website being optimized, are extremely important and should not be overlooked. They increase the credibility of a website and are an important element in the evaluation of a website by Google. The tools that are useful in this area also include Semrush and Ahrefs, as well as platforms that allow PR articles to be published on third-party websites – Whitepress or Linkhouse.

Semrush and Ahrefs 

Semrush and Ahrefs are, as I have already mentioned, powerful tools designed to tackle various aspects of SEO. They often prove very helpful in off-site activities as well, as they enable analysis of competitors’ backlinks. The analysis shows websites that are worth contacting to publish articles containing links that are valuable from the perspective of our business and the sector in which we operate. 

Whitepress and Linkhouse

As an alternative to researching websites that publish articles by competitors, you can consider advertising platforms, where publishers list their offers to publish articles within their website. In addition to the listing, they also provide data such as the number of sessions and SEO parameters to evaluate and facilitate the selection of appropriate sites. 

A combination of the first and second group of tools will be the most effective option and will help you build a strong link profile in a short period of time. 

Tools that support your work on technical aspects of SEO

Technical analysis of a website is an important aspect in building visibility in search results. To get it right, it is best to use several complementary tools. These include:

• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs, Semrush
• PageSpeed Insights
• Screaming Frog

Google Search Console

This tool is useful not only when analyzing the visibility of a website in Google search results, but also when monitoring possible issues related to the website, for example those related to structural data. It helps verify technical errors and allows you to submit a site map.

Ahrefs and Semrush

These tools are also useful for technical analysis. They both enable automatic SEO audits that point out errors and opportunities for website development. They are especially helpful for those who do not perform audits on a daily basis and do not know where to start.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights analyses the loading speed of websites on desktop and mobile devices and suggests what improvements should be made to speed up page loading. Loading speed is a key ranking factor for Google, so it’s definitely worth considering the recommendations you get from these tools.

Screaming Frog

This tool is designed to scan websites in order to analyze the structure and elements that affect positioning. This tool provides precise guidance on the aspects of the website that need improvement. It indicates 404 errors, shows duplicates, headers and metadata along with URLs where this data is missing, and helps analyze internal links on the site. It is a rich and powerful tool that enables extensive analysis of the website.

When creating an effective SEO strategy, you should keep one key point in mind. The tools presented above are only a source of data, but only their in-depth analysis and implementation of well thought-out solutions will yield benefits and ensure that you will see increases in organic traffic results. 

The post What tools will help you effectively implement your SEO strategy? appeared first on insightland.

Accurate definition of measurable goals is one of the key elements of a successful SEO strategy. The goals help verify progress and indicate the next steps that are necessary to ensure the website’s growth. Measures to increase visibility in Google are time-consuming, and typically do not produce measurable outcomes right away, hence the need for constant monitoring the effects of your efforts. Doing so makes it fairly easy to determine progress, although that progress, in spite of expectations, usually does not manifest itself immediately in an increased volume of purchases. The key to properly interpreting the strategy being implemented is to understand that we measure the effects of SEO differently than those of advertising campaigns.

Organic traffic as a key SEO indicator

The objective of implementing SEO measures is always associated with the need to increase website traffic. Monitoring the number of visits from free search results is key to measuring effectiveness in this regard. If we keep track of changes based only on Google Analytics, we may simply overlook them at the beginning of our path to a perfectly optimized website. While this tool is essential to properly monitor a website’s progress, it is not the only one.

It is also a good idea to analyze visibility based on Google Search Console which shows what searches for which the website is listed in Google results and leads (or not) to clicks and visits to the website. With this tool we can easily monitor how the visibility of the website is changing, keeping in mind that organic traffic is generated primarily in the top 3 positions in search results, and the highest positions have the highest click-through rate. It is assumed that the top 3 positions accumulate up to 60% of traffic, so it is worth focusing on strengthening the phrases that are already highly ranked.

Meanwhile, organic results are often skewed by brand-related activities. We can minimize this inaccuracy with the search exclusion feature available in Google Search Console. When we narrow down the results and exclude branded phrases, we get data that is based on non-branded phrases which are largely influenced by our SEO efforts.

Organic traffic measured through Analytics, but also visibility measured through Search Console are two starting points for monitoring the effects of your efforts. But what if you’re just getting started with SEO optimization and your site isn’t generating any traffic yet? How can we track progress beyond visibility in Search Console?

Monitoring the website’s position

The analysis of the website progress should also be based on monitoring its position for key phrases. Naturally, higher rankings in search results will mean more visits to your website and, eventually, more conversions. Position monitoring allows you to check the current position of your website and verify the results in SERPs after making changes to your website. This, in turn, allows you to determine where you stand and, as a result, improve your SEO strategy by revealing the measures that produce the best results.

In addition to monitoring a specific list of key phrases, it is also a good idea to use tools that indicate the phrases for which specific subpages of the website are displayed. Today, with semantic search, a single subpage can be displayed for hundreds of phrases. It is worth to check the list of ranking words for a given subpage every now and then – it will help you plan further actions and keep improving your strategy.

Website loading time

Loading time is a parameter that determines the quality of a website, especially if you are working on its technical aspects. The PageSpeed parameter is one of the main ranking factors used by Google. This means that if a page takes a few seconds longer to load than a competitor’s page, it will rank much lower in search results. Loading time is not only important for Google and search engine robots, but also for users who quickly give up exploring a website if it doesn’t load in a few seconds. Research shows^[1] that as many as 80% of users are less likely to repeat a purchase on a particular website because of their negative experience with waiting too long for the content to load. It is worth improving the PageSpeed if you want to rank higher in Google, and tracking it if the speed is not at a satisfactory level and you want to see how the website’s positioning will improve when you work on it.

Backlinks

The number of backlinks is a parameter – much like the load time – that directly translates into the website’s ranking in search results. However, the sites that provide links may not be equal with one another. This means that acquiring backlinks from low quality sites in terms of SEO will not translate into improved visibility of the site being linked to. You should check the origin of your links, ensure a wide range of domains that provide the links and avoid toxic links, i.e. those that may harm the domain by weakening the quality of the link profile.

Google-independent parameters

Most of the recognized SEO tools that assist professionals in their daily work of continuous optimization of websites, feature proprietary parameters that serve as a converter of multiple variables. They allow for a quick comparison of the authority of a particular domain relative to all the sites included in the tool’s database. The correlation between parameters determining domain authority and the number of ranking key phrases, acquired links and their quality are very visible, therefore it is worth using this value when comparing different websites and tracking the effects of SEO activities. Most tools feature a proprietary parameter – Semrush uses Authority Score, Moz uses Domain Authority, and Ahrefs uses Domain Rating. They all use a 100-point scale, and the higher the score at the start, the less noticeable the progress – an increase from 50 to 60 is not equivalent to an increase from 10 to 20.

Monitoring the aforementioned SEO parameters is an integral factor in implementing the strategy. Changes and fluctuations in individual parameters are a signpost for further steps, so to get maximum results, it is worth taking the time to carefully analyze them.

^[1] https://blog.kissmetrics.com/app/uploads/2011/04/loading-time.pdf

The post Parameters relevant to SEO appeared first on insightland.

To position your website well, depending on the needs and your SEO strategy, we need to focus on several areas. We check the technical SEO aspects of the website, create useful, interesting content for the user, take care of quality link-building and many other aspects. The new Google algorithm update announced for early 2021 marks areas where we need to focus even harder to ensure organic website visits – regardless of whether it is an ecommerce store or an image site.

User experience as a Google ranking factor

Companies have turned their attention to the so-called “User experience” in interacting with a site, and this is a factor that is objectively difficult to evaluate. How to check if the first impression was good? How do you know if a user is frustrated when using your site? It turns out that there is a way to do it – a technical way. After the update, Google will evaluate several factors that make up the so-called “Search signals for page experience”.

Source: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html

Factor 1: Core Web Vitals. Technical measures of experience

The “metrics for a healthy site” implemented in Chrome are special parameters that will allow to assess whether the site makes a good impression on visitors and whether it is convenient to use. Core Web Vitals consists of:

– Page loading time – measures (in seconds) the perceived loading speed and marks on the page loading timeline the point when the main content of the page will most likely be loaded.

– Page interactivity – measures (in milliseconds) the time from which the user first interacts with the page, e.g. by clicking a link or button on the page, until the browser is able to respond to this interaction.

– Visual stability – measures (in points) unexpected changes in the appearance of the page, shifts of buttons and links that prevent the user from interacting appropriately (e.g. when the user wants to click on a link, but the content of the page shifts, which makes him or her click something else).

Measuring Core Web Vitals parameters requires the involvement of SEO specialists and web developers – they enter the appropriate code into the page that allows to analyze its performance and compare it with the requirements of search engines. They will also see to it that this performance improves.

Factor 2: Mobile Friendliness for a better user experience

We have already mentioned it many times before – optimization for mobile is a must-have for both user convenience and website positioning. And it will be even more important after implementing the new Update from Google.

Most web development companies, with the support of an SEO agency, make sure that mobile users can use the site in an convenient manner – without undersized images, hard-to-read texts or some elements moving out of place.

To make sure your site is doing well in this field, I recommend a simple test – entering your company’s website address here: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

If the result of mobile friendliness is good, you don’t need to worry about this key element. If not, you need an insight from a specialist who will investigate the reason. And who will later help in optimization.

Factor 3: Safe-browsing means better organic traffic

Another element indicated in the Google Page Experience Update is adequate website security. Google will evaluate your site taking into account whether it contains malware software or misleading content. Appropriate site security will become even more important.

You can learn more about the examples of problems mentioned by Google here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044101. It is worth taking care of safety not only because of the new positioning guidelines, but also simply for the comfort of yourself and the clients.

Take care of experience, get better position in search engines

We hope you understand more about the new update from Google and the issues that will be crucial for your site’s organic position. The goal is simple – take care of the users, and they will repay you with a higher position in the network.

Some of the problems on the site – such as misplaced elements or poor performance on mobile browsers – you’ll see with the naked eye. Others you can just overlook. The good news is that both can be captured and optimized. As a result, your client’s experience in interacting with the site will increase, along with its organic position in Google and the frequency of search engine visits.

The post What is user experience in SEO? The Google Page Experience Update appeared first on insightland.

Regardless of whether the website is just being created or is already running, technical SEO errors can completely block your search rankings. Many mistakes can be avoided thanks to the work on the web developer’s part planned by an SEO specialist. If you want organic traffic on your company’s website to be high, it is worth considering steps SEO specialists can take when working on its technical side. How does an effective cooperation between SEO and web development look like? What elements connect SEO and web development and should go hand in hand?

SEO & Web Development Specialists Cooperation

When creating a page

In the ideal situation, specialists in organic positioning are involved in the process of creating a website or online store from the very beginning. Thanks to this, they can propose SEO guidelines for developers regarding the technical elements of the page or the content that should be on it. Their work is needed at the stages of designing and implementing the website – they supervise whether all the elements have been prepared in line with best practices for development and will not negatively affect the positioning of the website.

– Building any web solution: a Website or an e-commerce store in accordance with the search engine rules is a must, especially now. Elements such as headlines structure, URL-s, optimization of meta tags are a part of it and cooperation with an experienced SEO specialist is crucial.

Greg Rogoziński, CEO of Cut2Code web development company

When you plan to redesign a page

It often happens that in the redesigning phase of the site, one forgets to work on SEO elements. This leads to a loss of already achieved organic traffic results and search engine rankings, and even to a decrease in CTR.

A positioning specialist takes care of the right structure and keeps a close watch on the web developer to remember about the elements important from the SEO point of view, such as a correct URL structure or setting the preferred domain. It is important that the redesigned website is not only expanded with new sections or visually attractive, but still attracts organic searches.

When your site works, but you want to improve its visibility

If a page has already been created, even if you are not planning to redesign it, it is still crucial to pinpoint all errors it may contain. The best way to do it is to perform a professional SEO audit of the website. It identifies elements that need to be optimized to improve positioning of the business in organic search results.

Here, the SEO specialist, having prepared a special document with recommendations, maps out their implementation, both on his part and on that of the web developers who watch over the site from the client.

Web Development Elements that influence SEO

Every day, when working with web developers and clients, I pay attention, among others, to the following items that are associated with the position of the page in Google results. You can treat them as a checklist or a set of tips that will allow your website to deliver better results.

Website menu

The menu structure is usually not determined by the developer himself, but by the team responsible for the appearance and business goals of the site. However, in this area, the developer may also make some mistakes that are important from the point of view of SEO, such as the use of hostile link addresses or creating a menu which will not be visible to search engine robots in the html code. An SEO specialist will be able to quickly recognise such a situation and recommend a different solution that will not affect the functioning of the menu and its appearance, but make it fully available to robots.

Mobile First Development

Mobile First Development has an impact on the ranking – the correct mobile version contributes hugely to SEO efforts. The SEO specialist should pay attention, among other things, to whether the developer has applied responsive CSS styles and whether the mobile version is in a subfolder or subdomain, e.g. M.domain.com – this is not a mistake, but it can make positioning difficult. Such elements should be discussed before the developer starts working on the mobile version.

Structured data

The use of structured data on a website has a big impact on SEO, so a specialist should recommend which of them should be implemented, and then check the correctness of their implementation. Often, there are a lot of errors in implementation, which means that Google robots are unable to read them correctly.

Staging domain

During the creation of the site, most of the development works take place on the so-called staging, i.e. the domain or subdomain of the main address. This is a working and testing environment. A common error is incorrect migration of the live website with links to working resources, which causes 404 errors or other errors in the proper operation of the website.

For example, the domain staging.domain.com contains an image which is located under the following url: https://staging.domain.com/dowloads/graphic1.png.

After migrating a site with such absolute addresses at the destination domain.com, the image will refer to the wrong address, which will probably return a 404 error if the working environment is removed after migration.

It is worth noting that there is one more serious error associated with the working environment (staging). Namely, many developers “forget” to block staging before indexing and, after launching the site on the target domain, leave staging available for possible tests. As a result, Google has the same page in its index as staging.domain.com as well as domain.com, which is a classic content duplication error and can have devastating effects on SEO results.

An SEO specialist will always check if this is the case and react quickly enough to avoid this problem.

Images

The issue of photos on the site, in the eyes of the developer, may seem like an insignificant element, but it is really significant from the SEO point of view. That’s why the SEO specialist working with the web development team will make sure that the graphics used on the site have the optimal size that will not cause slower page loading. He will also ensure that the graphics are optimized for SEO: they have the alt element filled in and the correct address of the resource, which is extremely important especially in the case of e-commerce stores, where some organic traffic can be obtained from Google graphics results.

Page speed

Absolutely important element from the SEO point of view but sometimes overlooked by some developers. You want to ensure that the website works properly and in accordance with the guidelines, which is completely understandable, whereas in the long run neglecting the issues related to fast page loading will have an adverse effect on positioning. The SEO specialist, at the stage of creating and testing the website, will report problems related to loading the page and assist in diagnosing and removing their causes. They may result from the use of resources that block page rendering, the already mentioned lack of optimization of graphics size or the existence of unnecessary fragments of HTML and CSS code.

Metadata and headers

Another element that the developer may not pay attention to, and which has a significant impact on SEO, is the implementation of SEO-optimized title and description metadata, ultimately displayed to the user in search results.

Here, however, a great deal of the work is to be done by the SEO specialist who must prepare the content of metadata for each subpage and forward it to the developer for implementation.

The situation is similar with “H” headers. An SEO specialist should provide precise guidelines on how to mark individual headers appearing on the page in the HTML code or recommend adding them if he/she decides that additional content is necessary.

Effective cooperation between web developers and SEO specialists

The cooperation between web development and SEO specialists can be very turbulent. Each of them has their own goals and wants to achieve them in accordance with their own best practice. However, the success of such an undertaking lies in the cooperation and understanding of each other’s needs and a partnership approach, without insisting on own opinions and ignoring those of the other party. In my day-to-day cooperation with developers, I emphasize that such cooperation should follow the following pattern:

• Step 1 – getting to know the project – both in terms of appearance and structure of the new website. This is the stage at which an SEO specialist should ask questions about specific functionalities and technologies that will be used to make a particular element.
• Step 2 – determining the SEO areas to be changed – having analysed the website design and technologies, a SEO specialist prepares guidelines for the developer concerning SEO-relevant areas. It is important that these guidelines contain specific information about the effect of the application of the recommendation and what devs should pay attention to during implementation to avoid errors in other areas.
• Step 3 – developer feedback – the developer, having read the recommendations, indicates which guidelines are clear to him/her and possible to implement, and to which he/she has comments or questions.
• Step 4 – SEO specialist feedback – here, in turn, the SEO specialist comments on the comments. In practice, steps 3 and 4 can be repeated until the dev and SEO specialists agree on the final version.
• Step 5 – verification of implementations – this is a very important element requiring scrupulosity from the SEO specialist and – from the developer – efficient communication with the SEO specialists. After each minor implementation, the developer should contact the SEO specialist so that he/she can verify its correctness and reply quickly so as not to block the developer’s work.
• Step 6 – final countdown – this is the last step of cooperation between web developer and SEO expert before going live with the website. An SEO specialist is supposed to re-check the list of all recommended implementations and confirm to the developer that he/she has no comments on them.

– From the web development company point of view, implementing SEO tools and recommendations before publishing the website reduces the costs and time needed to implement changes after it has been launched. That is why cooperation with SEO specialists is so important at the stage of planning coding works and development itself.

Greg Rogoziński, CEO of Cut2Code web development company.

Take care of SEO on your website

I hope that now you know how effective cooperation between web developers and SEO specialists should look like and what elements are crucial for the success of the project. Remember this while planning a creation, redesign or optimization on an already functioning page. If you are curious whether your website meets all technical criteria that enable good positioning, don’t hesitate to contact us.

The post Why do SEO & Web Development go hand in hand? appeared first on insightland.

WordPress offers thousands of plugins dedicated to both beginners and more advanced users. You will also find there SEO plugins and tools. They provide website images and graphics auto-optimization, improve website load time or calculate keywords density (user’s intent). We’ve picked the best ones just for you.

Firstly, you need to know that installing too many plugins is not recommended. They can slow down the load times, and the loading speed is significant for positioning. Still, the following plugins are must-have, because they help you optimize the speed, making the use of the website even easier. 

What are the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress?

1. Yoast SEO 

It guides you as to what needs to be changed and improved in the website in progress. With Yoast SEO, you can generate a sitemap, insert headers and add meta tags or calculate keywords density. It is very useful for building a blog on WordPress. It helps you optimize e.g. articles in terms of key phrases’ frequency and their proper location, or meta description settings, etc.

User-friendliness is a huge advantage of Yoast. It allows for a comprehensive website optimization and is also compatible with Google Search Console.

Irena Zobniów, Co-Founder & Head of SEO, Insightland

I find it one of the most useful add-ons when building a blog on WordPress. It helps me with aspects necessary for SEO, such as URLs, text optimization, canonicale, etc. quickly and intuitively. A really useful plugin.

Marcin Gaworski, SEO Expert, Insightland

2. WP Super cache 

It speeds up the website by, for example, enabling relevant caching. This reduces the server response and website load time. It can work in two ways, in Expert or Simple Mode. WP Super cache improves performance indicators needed to determine the subpages ranking in search results, as well as the user experience.

Lightening the load on hosting space and reducing the server response time significantly – these are the evident advantages of installing Super Cache. I also appreciate its ease of configuration.

Irena Zobniów

The plugin is great for configuring Cache quickly, but not only for that. After implementing and setting it up properly, which is very simple, we have noticed a significant improvement in the website speed. Personally, I use the plugin whenever it comes to working on WordPress.

Marcin Gaworski

3. Autoptimize 

Autoptimize is an additional plugin that speeds up the website by, for example, code minification, setting up critical css and JS optimization. Just like WP Cache, it reduces the load time and thus improves the website positioning in search engines.

Autoptimize makes the optimization process automatic, which will benefit less technically apt users. It is also lightweight, so it does not interfere with the system. The extra plus goes for a simple and user-friendly interface.

Irena Zobniów

This is another plugin I use and I find it necessary when working on WordPress. Its proper configuration can clearly speed up the website.

Marcin Gaworski

4. Wordfence Security 

Although it is not a plugin dedicated only to SEO, it needs to be included on the list. Wordfence Security ensures the website’s security, prevents attacks and automatically blocks hacking attempts to the admin panel, for example. Wordfence Scanner checks core files, themes and plugins for malware, dangerous URLs, SEO spam and malicious redirects.

It protects the website from the most frequent attack attempts as well as SEO spam.

Irena Zobniów

The plugin managed to block hundreds of thousands of attack attempts, when I worked on WP for my clients. It also easily helps to find infected and potentially infected files, which significantly improves the website security.

Marcin Gaworski

5. Akismet Anti Spam 

It checks the website comments and forms to prevent the publication of malicious content. It has browsing history, so you can check which comment has been detected or deleted. The reject feature blocks spam, saving disk space and speeding up the website.

Akismet Anti Spam is a plugin that works automatically. You don’t have to filter out unwanted comments manually. It will save your working time and pay off with a faster load time.

Irena Zobniów

It’s a plugin from the «invisible» series – once enabled, it automatically categorizes spam, and in 90 percent of cases I had no need to look into the spam folder, because it correctly assigned unwanted comments.

Marcin Gaworski

6. Smush – Compress, Optimize and Lazy Load Images 

The plugin checks all the images you add and those already posted on the website. It is designed to remove excess data and scale files. Smush compresses and optimizes files, allowing for faster loading of the page and a better search engine ranking. Smush allows for single and bulk compression. We can optimize up to 50 images at a time. This is a free plugin that compresses images to 5MB without any limits. Additionally, it is intuitive and easy to use.

I’d recommend working on optimizing photos before uploading them to the server. However, when too large images have already been uploaded, the plugin will bulk-optimize them. What’s more, it will help with lazy loading implementation. This way, listings with lots of images will not slow down the website significantly. Instead of loading all the photos on a given subpage right away, only the ones needed at the moment are being uploaded.

Marcin Gaworski

* 7. kk Star Ratings

Finally, a plugin from the “good-to-have” category.  Especially if you run a blog on your website. KkStar Ratings makes it possible to involve users by adding an asterisk rating for each entry. Google will display the rating in the search results. Potentially, the plugin can increase the website traffic. Its configuration is customizable and surprisingly easy: you can choose the asterisk color and where they will appear on the website.

Apart from its functionality, I think that the plugin can have a real impact on keywords positions. With asterisks optimized for microformat, they are displayed from the search results, thus increasing CTR, which in turn can affect specific keywords positions.

Marcin Gaworski

The Plugins Support a Comprehensive SEO Strategy

As you can see, with a few simple add-ons you can speed up your website load time and increase your visibility in organic searches. Remember that plugins are tools that support website positioning efforts. To see the results, you need a comprehensive SEO strategy as a basis for actions being taken. If you have any questions about optimizing websites on WordPress or using specific plugins, don’t hesitate to contact us!

The post SEO Plugins for WordPress recommended by experts appeared first on insightland.

Technical SEO is one of the most difficult aspects of SEO and most specialists are not big fans of it. Nevertheless, it is essential and for this reason, there are many tools that can help you with it. They cover a wide spectrum of purposes from identifying issues with the website’s speed to crawling and indexing. As a result, you can detect and prevent impacting the organic search performance of your website. In today’s article I will focus on the ones I used some time ago and the ones I use today. Hopefully, my subjective list of the best technical SEO tools will help some of you! Let’s take a closer look at them!

Google Search Console

This is still a primary tool for every SEO expert. Why? Because it is a suite of helpful tools from Google! But this is not the only reason. The Google Search Console allows you to set up a reporting process, which can be a big life hack for SEO agencies as proper reporting is crucial for their work. What is more, the tool lets you see whether you have duplicated metadata, how many pages you have indexed, security issues, and so much more. It simply allows you to monitor your website thoroughly. The Google Search Console helps you make performance-based changes in order to rank higher in the SERPs.

A great feature of the search console is that you can submit a new URL for inspection and manually invite Google bots to index the new URL. It just saves you some time waiting for results and you can detect any issues with the new URL almost immediately.

If you are still not convinced to try the Google Search Console, take a closer look at these advantages that it provides:

• Finding which search term made your website show up in the search results;
• Information about key phrases that bring you more traffic as compared to others you are high up in the ranking, but don’t necessarily generate a lot of traffic;
• Checking and verifying whether all essential pages like contact, products, services, etc., are highlighted in the rich snippet;
• Displaying the backlinks to your website;
• Providing a mobile version performance report.

Moreover, webmasters can use Google Search Console data and connect it with the analytics data. As a result, they will get a much more precise and accurate technical analysis of the website’s performance. The website’s maintenance becomes so much easier with this technical SEO tool!

Google Analytics

Without the proper analysis of our activities, we cannot know if the website is performing well, whether our work is being done correctly and if we need to optimize something. This is why, among technical SEO tools, the one for web analytics is essential!

Google Analytics, as a tool provided by Google, is free of charge in the basic version. It gives you much more information than we can often digest. With it, you are able to identify issues like penalties, issues with traffic, and much more. Moreover, if you set up it correctly, you can connect it with your Google Search Console. This can be helpful for webmasters that provide deep insight and the study of traffic trends on the website. The most useful features of Google Analytics are:

• Analyzing audience behavior;
• Checking the average time spent on the site;
• Checking traffic sources;
• Conversion tracking;
• Finding the devices used to access your site;
• Identifying the location of the traffic source;
• Identifying low performing and high performing pages.

With data like this, you can easily estimate the next steps for your SEO strategy to layout effective activities. Moreover, you can take a more strategic approach to every task. Clearly, Google Analytics is a must-have tool to track the performance of your website and you should include it into your technical SEO tools arsenal.

Google Page Speed Insights

The website’s loading time both for desktop and mobile devices is crucial from the SEO point of view. This is why every SEO expert needs a tool that helps them assess the page speed and things to improve in order to achieve faster loading. Google’s PageSpeed Insights should not be used as the be-all, end-all of page metrics testing, but it is a good starting point. Why? Because it doesn’t always use exact page speed, but approximations. In other words, while you may get one result with Google Page Speed, you may also get different results with other tools. Therefore, it is crucial to remember that Google’s Page Speed provides only a part of the picture.

Google’s Schema.org Structured Data Testing Tool

This technical SEO tool helps you test Schema structured data markup against the known data from Schema.org. It is a useful way to identify issues with your Schema coding before you implement it. Every page on the website has to pass on the right message to the search engine’s bots so it ranks for the particular keywords and in order to do so, you need to add the right schema markup to your website and its pages.

The Schema also helps you find the relevant markup for your website if you are not sure which one you should use. To verify it, just use this structured data testing tool!

What is more, it also allows you to check your competitors’ schema markups by simply putting the URL in the search box and running the test. There are 3 types of schema markup formats that Google understands:

• JSON-LD
• Microdata
• RDFa.

Remember to ensure that you allowed your structured pages to be crawled by bots in the Robots.txt files. This is the key advice while using this technical SEO tool.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is one of these tools that everyone in the SEO industry has at least heard about. It is just really helpful because it allows you to take a domain and crawl through its pages in the same way a search engine does. Screaming Frog crawls through the pages on the website and then pulls through almost everything you need to see what is relevant to its SEO performance into the software.

Moreover, when we bear the technical SEO audit in mind, you can highlight any areas of the site that can be an issue for its performance. This can be the incorrect canonicalization of a single page or domain level, meta robots errors, internal redirects, duplicated pages on different URLs, and a variety of other things. This is a go-to tool to conduct a thorough technical SEO audit! Take a look at how it can help you to identify problems like:

• Diagnosing international SEO implementation issues;
• Errored response codes;
• Errors in canonicals;
• Errors in URLs;
• Issues with pagination;
• Lack of page titles;
• Large images;
• Missing meta descriptions;
• Missing meta keywords;
• Taking a deep dive into a website’s architecture.

It is a lot and it definitely makes your SEO work just easier!

Although the free version of Screaming Frog is limited to 500 pages, this should be enough for small businesses. If not, the basic license is not expensive and the cost is totally worth it, in my opinion. It saves your time and more importantly, identifying and resolving websites’ issues becomes a bit more painless!

Web Developer Toolbar

The web developer toolbar extension is helpful in identifying issues with code, specifically JavaScript implementations with menus and the user interface. The extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. It runs on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, macOS as well as Linux. By turning off JavaScript and CSS, you can see where these issues occur in the browser. You can crawl your site like the search engine bots.

This change can help you recognize your website architecture issues really quickly, such as when the main navigation bar is displayed using JavaScript or when visitors who cannot accept cookies always get redirected to the front page.

You can use the Toolbar to turn off styles and images. The sudden appearance of previously cloaked text or seeing that the ‘main heading’ is actually an H4 item might suggest why a particular page is having issues. Moreover, you can also see alt text meta tag information, as well as response headers. The toolbar gives you access to code validation tools (like HTML, CSS and RSS validation from WC3). You are also able to highlight links without title attributes, or broken images (without alt attributes). That is why the Web Developer Toolbar is a pretty useful technical SEO tool!

GTmetrix Page Speed Report

GTmetrix is another page speed report card that gives a different perspective on page speed.

As I mentioned above, Google Page Speed Insights checks your website’s code while GTmetrix actually loads your website. This is why this should be your go-to tool when you want to get to know your website’s real loading speed. Moreover, GTmetrix provides you with a list of recommendations for speeding up your website. What is more, the main advantages of this tool are:

• Analyzing your site speed using 3 major rulesets (Google Pagespeed Test, Yahoo & YSlow);
• Creating a list of alerts affecting the website speed;
• Displaying the size of the page;
• Performing a speed test on desktop & mobile devices;
• Providing an average score comparing with tested sites;
• Showing you an actual website load time;
• Testing the website from various locations.

GTmetrix is also a free tool that allows you to enter your URL into the search column and run a speed test. That is to say, you can always compare yourself to your competitors. Remember, make a list of improvements that need to be implemented. Page speed is an important ranking factor for search engines. If your website loading time is under 3 seconds, it is considered to be effective and good.

Ahrefs

We mentioned Ahrefs in the 2 part of our SEO Tools Guide For Every Expert but it really is an all-in-one SEO tool! It is considered as a crucial component of technical link analysis and technical audits. And there is a reason for that as it scans the websites every 15-20 minutes to check on the real-time links associated with the website and other issues that may impact the website’s performance.

Ahrefs Site Audit tool is very helpful if you want to analyze resources like images, JavaScript, CSS, crawl logs or indexability. The data you will get might be a good starting point to optimize your website in strict technical aspects.

Using Ahrefs, you are able to identify anchor text issues that may be impacting a site using its word cloud feature. It allows you to find SEO errors – It performs an audit of your site and provides a detailed report for the same. As a result, you can see what needs your attention and improvements. Just go to Ahref’s Site Audit (Site Audit > Project > Internal Pages > HTML Tags). Then you can see a list of all on-page issues that require your attention. You can find more in this article on Ahrefs.

You can try filtering by importance, to focus on the most crucial issues at the beginning of your on-page work.

Courtesy of Ahrefs.

You can also get a quick current overview of your website’s technical condition in comparison to the previous audits you performed with Ahrefs. As a result you can check the progress you have made with the optimization work or detect new errors (in the number of “Internal URLs having errors”).

Ahrefs recommend fixing any Errors before moving on to Warnings and Notices, and I agree – these are the most important elements influencing the performance of your website. As you can see, even though I am describing the technical SEO aspects, it is not that bad with the right tools!

Sitebulb

This is a relatively new tool but after I began using it I could no longer imagine the work that regards technical aspects without it. It is desktop software. The one drawback is that you cannot share an SEO audit report but you can partially export it to PDF which is full of charts presenting the most crucial insights of your website’s performance.

I find the crawl maps feature especially useful. They help you understand your website structure, discover the internal link flow, and spot groups of orphan pages. Moreover, Sitebulb allows you to analyze:

• AMP validation;
• Code coverage report (unused CSS, JS);
• List mode (similar to the one on Screaming Frog);
• Multi-level filtering, like in Ryte, Botify, OnCrawl, and DeepCrawl;
• Statistics like First Meaningful Paint (helpful for website speed optimization).

What is more, Sitebulb integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Although it does a great job with data visualization and offers many interesting features, I have to point out some drawbacks of this tool:

• It does not inform you about H2 tags;
• If Sitebulb encounters an error while retrieving a page, it will not be recrawled;
• You cannot set custom extraction;
• You can do only one crawl at a time; other crawls are added to the queue to be crawled after the first crawl you order.

However, it is still a really useful one among other technical SEO tools. It is not free but it has a smart pricing strategy that is convincing to most SEO specialists and agencies, all the more so since it is still improving and rolling out new features!

Technical SEO Tools – Easier Choice

Technical aspects of SEO work are essential for achieving high rankings in search engines. Although they require a lot of work, with a proper arsenal of tools, it is not that bad! There are many different tools from checking your page speed through structured data testing ones to crawlers needed especially for technical SEO audits. The choice is up to you. The good one will ease your work, the bad one will make it harder. Efficiency, an intuitive interface, and the cost of the SEO tools are the main factors that helped me decide on the ones I use. Therefore, I hope my insights will be helpful for you and the technical tasks will become what you enjoy most about your everyday work!

The post The Best Technical SEO Tools appeared first on insightland.

What Is a Technical SEO Audit

To put it simply, a technical SEO audit is a document written on the basis of an in-depth analysis. The analysis is carried out to diagnose any errors that could make it difficult for search engine bots to render, crawl, or index your website.

These types of errors not only have a negative influence on the visibility of your website. But also make it difficult for users to access it. This, in turn, may cause your website traffic to drop significantly.  

The technical SEO audit our company performs covers the following areas:

• crawlability, accessibility, and indexability of the website,
• redirects and canonical analysis,
• site architecture and internal linking,
• duplicate content verification,
• page speed insight,
• HTTPS status codes,
• XML sitemap status,
• robots.txt verification,
• image optimization,
• metadata and H tags analysis.

The scope of a technical SEO audit isn’t always the same for each website. In the case of an e-commerce, we also analyze additional and characteristic webpage sections, like registration, login, shopping cart, and so on.

A technical SEO audit can be carried out manually as well as with the help of professional tools.

Although very time-consuming, a manual analysis allows to inspect elements automatic tools aren’t able to notice. Only an experienced SEO specialist is able to detect certain errors connected to, for instance, keyword cannibalism or robot.txt files.

SEO tools, on the other hand, are able to find a large number of errors that occur in specific parts of your web service. It could be even thousands of subpages in the case of an e-commerce. By automating the audit, we can generate comprehensive error lists, containing specific recommendations.

The end result of a technical SEO audit is a list of detailed guidelines and recommendations. This enables the web developer to correct the errors.

Example of a diagnosed problem, together with a recommendation: 

The Difference Between a Professional and Free Website Audit  

You must be wondering what is the sense of paying for an audit when there are so many companies or websites that offer audits for free? The major difference between a professional, detailed technical SEO audit and a free website analysis is that in the first case, you receive fully customized and precise guidelines. Unfortunately, a free and automatically generated document does not pay attention to the specific nature of your website and the technology with which it was built. It also usually analyzes only the homepage, ignoring the rest parts of your web service.

Example of a free audit recommendation:

As you can see, the same analyzed area can receive entirely different guidelines, depending on how the analysis was carried out.

A free audit often turns out to be a good way to grab the attention of clients potentially interested in SEO services. Its task is to show the general condition of a website and to point out areas that need improvement. We may compare it to visiting a GP. It examines us, tells what illnesses or other conditions need specialist treatment. But it doesn’t give a precise diagnosis. It doesn’t suggest a comprehensive treatment plan because only a medical specialist can do that. An in-depth technical audit carried by an SEO specialist entails a professional and detailed analysis.

The costs of a comprehensive technical SEO audit include not only the purchase of professional crawling tools but also many hours of work of a technical SEO specialist, whose role is to detect errors and provide precise implementation guidelines for the web developer.

When Should You Carry Out a Technical SEO Audit?

Usually, website owners discover they need a technical SEO audit the moment they notice that their website doesn’t function the way it should, e.g. lack of results, traffic drop, or low traffic quality. And anything done to improve this situation, like changing the SEO strategy, doesn’t work. In this situation, a technical audit is a last resort. Even though, paradoxically, it should be the first step to take whenever we discover that something is wrong with our website traffic.

Therefore, a technical SEO audit should precede any online activities, no matter whether we want to promote the website by positioning, with the help of social media channels or paid campaigns.

In this way, you can avoid exceeding your budget for activities that don’t bring any results, because your website isn’t optimized for SEO.

What Happens When You Ignore All the Technical Aspects and Promote Your Website Without an Earlier Audit?

It would seem that in the face of what I have written above, website owners who want to make profits from online activities would naturally carry out a technical SEO audit. However, my experience has shown that most people ignore this step because they’re unaware of the crucial role technical optimization plays in building website traffic, or because they’re wrongly convinced that their web service is properly optimized. This approach poses many risks. Here are several examples:

• SEO activities don’t bring higher ranking or increase organic traffic

Even the best optimized content or high-quality backlinks won’t matter, if it turns out that search engine bots aren’t able to index your website because of duplicate content.

• High bounce rate

You spent a lot of money on a search campaign but users still leave your website right after entering it? Perhaps your website loads to slow and causes impatient users to leave it. If you don’t want to lose website visitors, this technical problem should be solved in the first place.

• Losing the trust of users

Imagine that you visit an e-commerce website, look through the offered products or enter a product name in the internal search engine, but the website constantly displays ‘Page not found’. I’m sure that after three such attempts to look at a product, you leave the website and simply go to another one. The same thing can happen if somebody visits your page. The ‘404 page not found’ errors have several negative effects. Not only do you lose the trust of users but also of search engine bots, which waste their energy on crawling nonexistent webpages instead of focusing on the essential parts of your website.

Case Study: What Happens When You Ignore a Technical SEO Audit After Implementing a New Website

To illustrate the gravity of the problem, let me show you a case study of our client. After migrating their website to a new platform, the client noticed a systematic decrease in organic traffic, which you can see in the graph below:

The technical SEO audit carried out by Insightland detected several serious errors within the website architecture. They were responsible for reducing the website visibility in the search engine results.

Implementing all the guidelines form an 80-page document can take months of hard work, even with the full support of a technical SEO specialist. If the client had cooperated with a technical SEO specialist during website development and migration, this could have been avoided.

Buying a Professional Audit Is Not Enough

It seems that a technical SEO audit is the remedy for all website illnesses and that buying an audit will miraculously cure the entire web service. That’s not true. In fact, after an in-depth technical website analysis, the next thing to do is to implement the guidelines. In most cases, this turns out to be the most difficult step. Usually, the client has his own IT department that is responsible for all types of implementations, including SEO guidelines. We may say that this is when the work of a technical SEO specialist ends.

However, my experience has shown that, in most cases, giving recommendations for further implementation without the supervision of a technical SEO specialist, lead to disastrous effects. And it’s not about bad intentions of the IT department, lack of knowledge or incompetence, but about the very implementation process and the awareness of its relations with specific SEO guidelines.

These are the most frequent causes of improper guideline implementation that is carried out without the help of an SEO specialist:

• Dividing guidelines into separate tasks that will be implemented by several people.

Example:

In the audit, two recommendations are listed one after the other. The first suggests to delete subpages containing 404 errors from the XML sitemap. The second one advises to make 301 redirects to send users from 404 error pages to a specific subpage. If two persons correct these errors independently from each other, it may turn out that the second guideline will be implemented first – that pages with errors will redirect to the homepage. And then, that the first guideline would be implemented instead of the second. An IT specialist can click on a link that was supposed to be deleted from the XML sitemap and won’t notice the redirect. By accident, he can delete the homepage, to which an 404 error page was redirected from the XML sitemap. With a little imagination, you can guess what happens next.

• Because of the high volume of work, the IT department decides which audit implementation tasks to prioritize. Eventually, the most important tasks can be moved to the end of the list or entirely ignored. Wrong choice of priorities may lead to a situation where some tasks no longer make sense.

Example:

Let’s assume that the website’s major problem is indexing. The audit has shown that there are unfriendly URLs located outside of the website architecture. On top of that, they have noindex directives and the entire domain doesn’t have a sitemap.xml file. Separate recommendations have been made for each of these problems. Therefore, the IT department decided to solve them in the following steps: correct the unfriendly URLs, then move all the links to the menu. And finally, they create a sitemap.xml file, where the links will be placed. Unfortunately, in this whole process, the IT department omitted noindex directives connected to specific subpages. As a result, the fixed, friendly, and linked URLs still aren’t indexed. Thus, the whole process was futile because a single, supposedly unimportant element has been ignored.

• The IT department has its own idea for solving the problem. It’s a real nightmare for any SEO specialist. It is a common problem that, while implementing SEO guidelines, IT specialists create alternative solutions – solutions that are usually cheaper, less time-consuming. And although they may bring the same effects, it’s only on the surface.

Let’s look at a simple example.

The SEO recommendation advises to implement an H1 heading section with a short text on the homepage. The developer, unaware of the meaning of this recommendation, can assume that instead of coding an additional, CSS-stylized section for the heading, he can use an image containing the indicated text (which is already graphically ‘stylized’) and place it in the HTML code with an H1 tag. Supposedly the same visual effect… but not quite. It is, of course, quite an extreme case. Yet still, it’s unfortunately a real-life example.

In my opinion, it is absolutely necessary to cooperate with an SEO specialist when you implement SEO guidelines. Thanks to this, you’ll not only be able to save time but also money, which you won’t have to spend on correcting post-implementation errors.

How to Choose an Appropriate Technical SEO Audit Offer

Right now, almost any SEO agency offers an SEO audit. However, this doesn’t mean that they all offer the appropriate scope and quality of services. After all, a technical SEO audit requires specific competencies and a special kind of meticulousness. Skills not all SEO specialists have.

If you really want to have a detailed document that contains precise guidelines, which don’t require spending additional time on searching for problem solutions, you should clearly state what you need. Otherwise, it may turn out that you receive a list of correct but shallow guidelines that will still require further work from your web developer. This, in turn, entails the risk that the IT team misunderstands the problem and, eventually, implements the guidelines incorrectly.

So, before you hire a company to carry out a technical SEO audit, determine the following issues:

• what areas does the SEO audit cover and what aspects are especially important from the perspective of your business,
• in what form will the implementation guidelines be presented,
• does the company offer the support of a technical SEO specialist during the implementation of the guidelines,
• does the company offer a post-implementation verification.

It’s also worth remembering that in order to carry out a technical SEO audit, it is necessary to have access to analytical tools, like Google Analytics or Google Search Console. So don’t be surprised if an SEO company, which you have hired, asks you for logins and passwords to access the tools.

Technical SEO Audit as the Basis For Long-term Website Promotion

You can clearly see what can happen when a technical SEO audit is wrongly carried out. Keep this in mind whenever you build a new website or plan a website migration. Only with a fully optimized and search-engine-friendly website, you can start working. This allows you to catch up with your competition. It helps you to properly index your website, and control its position in the search engine results with regard to keyphrases. An SEO audit also provides you with a groundwork for planning long-term promotion strategies.

The post Technical SEO Audit – Don’t Promote Your Website Without It appeared first on insightland.