SEO
SEO Flowcharts To Support SEO Decision Making
Aleyda Solis provides some easy to read SEO Flowcharts to help you with SEO decision making across many common scenarios. Here are some examples:
- Should you prioritize an SEO Opportunity/Issue Execution?
- What to do when hit by a Google Core Update?
- Should you prune or optimize a page from your site?
- Should you migrate a Page to the New Web Version?
- Should I index a Sub-Category/Faceted Page?
7 SEO Crawling Tool Warnings & Errors You Can Safely Ignore
How can you tell the difference to avoid prioritizing a fix that doesn’t need to be done? Olga Zarzeczna discusses 7 errors and warnings that can be ignored after using an SEO crawling tool.
- Indexability Issues (Noindex Pages on the Site)
- Meta Description Too Short or Empty
- Meta Keywords Missing
- Images Over 100 KB
- Low Content or Low Word Count Pages
- Low HTML-Text Ratio
- XML Sitemap Not Indicated in robots.txt
Absolute or relative URLs, which is better? #AskGooglebot - YouTube
In this episode of AskGooglebot, John Mueller explains the differences between absolute and relative URLs and if there is a preference in how a search engine crawls and indexes them.
- Absolute URL - https://yoyao.com/keyword-research/
- Relative URLs - /keyword-research/
Spoiler alert: Google doesn't treat them differently.
youtube.com
Tools and Resources
Great Deals Out There for Niche Site and Content Creators
TopicMojo - Do topic and keyword research across all sorts of social media and websites. If you want search volume and other data, they also have a SEO Data Add-On that's currently $9/month, but will increase to $15 in 9 days. It's also on AppSumo for the same price, but TopicMojo gets a smaller cut from them, so supporting the little guys here. Here's a tutorial walkthrough video by Alston Antony, so you can get a idea of its usefulness.
Hide My WP Ghost - Looks like a combo alternative for Wordfence and WPS Login. For extra protection and enhanced security against attacks like SQL injection, brute-force, and more. The UI/UX looks user-friendly. From the Squirrly SEO team.
Visual Sitemaps - Ends in 3 days. Generate visual sitemaps with screenshots of any website. This is helpful when you're checking out your competition. Good tool to view their design, content and site structure, as well as to keep up to date with their page updates.
Nozzle - Ends in 10 days. Rank tracker that provides an incredible amount of data. I've been using it and there's a bit of a learning curve navigating through the data, but it's manageable if you like data.
Simplified - A combo Canva and AI Writer. If you're using an AI content generator for the copy in your graphic designs, this is an all-in-one solution. You won't need multiple solution
VectorGrove - Ends in 3 days. Over 2.1m vectors and graphics for only $29. Great deal if you like to create infographics and other graphic designs for your niche site. Also good to use for print-on-demand designs and selling those printed products.
growthidx.com
Content
What is a Topic Cluster for SEO? (14 Questions and Answers)
Samuel Schmitt wrote one of the better articles on creating a topic cluster about a year ago. Now he answers 14 common questions about Topic Clusters. Learn all about the who, what, when, where and why of topic clusters and how to create them. Some of the sections include:
- How to choose the right keywords for your Topic Cluster?
- How to publish and promote your Topic Cluster?
- What tools can help me to cluster keywords?
- How to link pages within a Topic Cluster?
- What mistake to avoid when creating a Topic Cluster?
- When do Topic Clusters NOT work?
- Great Examples of Topic Clusters
- How to create a Topic Cluster with WordPress?
20 Sites Offering FREE Photos For Blogs In 2021
Where can you find the best free photos for blogs? Here are the best 20 free image sites online. Commercial use without attribution too!
Keep in mind that since these are free, many people have access to them and they might be used in lots of places. Doing a Google image search will help there. I prefer the paid images like when Deposit Photos has a deal, because they're used less. Wait a month or so for Black Friday deals.
nichepursuits.com
Link Building
How To Do A Backlink Audit: Plan Link Building Like A Pro
Matt Diggity shows how to do a backlink analysis. A backlink audit tool (Ahrefs) provides a backlinks report comprising important metrics and information about all the links pointing to your website.
Since Ahrefs offers a free plan where you can analyze your own websites, you'll be able to do this for free. You won't be able to analyze competitors though on a free plan.
diggitymarketing.com
8x Ways To Build Powerful Edu Backlinks
I'm going to show 8 ways to build powerful edu backlinks to help you boost your rankings and increase your organic search traffic. Here are half of the 8 tactics he gives:
- Get Listed On Resource Pages
- Offer Discounts To Staff & Students
- Create A Scholarship For Students
- Interview Prominent Faculty Members
Shoot Your Shot: A Guide to Effective Cold Outreach - SparkToro
Amanda Natividad discusses how she gets at least 80% response rate from her cold outreach, even 100% from one batch of emails. She sums up her approach with:
I invest serious time qualifying my lead list and researching my audience before I send messages. This requires extra energy and effort, but if you’re seeking results, the payoff is worth it.
There's a video of how she does it, as well as a summary in the blog post. Worth a read if you're doing outreach for backlinks.
sparktoro.com
Education
SEO Office Hours - October 8, 2021 - Onely Blog
Summary of Google Search Central's Office Hours with John Mueller. Some good topics covered, including:
- The number of indexed pages vs. site authority
- Evaluating a website’s primary purpose
- Redirection of links
- Recovery from core updates
- Links in guest posts
- Product price as a ranking factor
- Moving URLs between sitemaps
How To Change The EPMV On Your Website
Learn what causes EPMV to change on your site and how to improve it using this interactive article that will help you generate the reports you need.
If you're with Ezoic, this is some useful information. If you're not with Ezoic, this can also be useful to help you understand why RPMs are different.
ezoic.com
Sources Google is citing in Knowledge Panels
Google's 'knowledge' is garnered from multiple sources. Confirmation is drawn for multiple sources. Wikipedia is important, but is not the be-all-and-end-all.
From Kalicube, here is a list of sources Google cites in knowledge panels. Jason Barnard from Kalicube discusses their list in this short video snippet that's part of a longer interview. This can help give you an idea of sites that Google considers trustworthy. Top 5 sites:
- wikipedia.org
- crunchbase.com
- linkedin.com
- bloomberg.com
- reuters.com
How to Write Title Elements and Meta Descriptions for Google Search
The Google Search Central team updated a couple of their best practices posts in the Advanced SEO section.
You can help improve the quality of the title link displayed for your page in Google Search by following these general guidelines.
google.com
News
The Website Flip has acquired DNGeek
Mushfiq at The Website Flip announced the acquisition of DNGeek.com, a nice blog on buying and selling domains from Sean Markey.
Check out his Twitter thread on how he did his analysis of DNGeek and what made him acquire it.
twitter.com
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Yoyao - Niche Surfer