Changing domain names in 2016: 10 easily overlooked steps that can save SEO

I help a lot of companies with the SEO aspects of their website redesigns and CMS migrations.

As many webmasters know (or find out through hard experience), both redesigns and migrations can be catastrophic if not handled correctly. Unfortunately, you can run into many gremlins during a migration, from technical problems to botched redirection plans to dropping URLs. And when that happens, you can lose search equity, rankings and traffic. I’ve helped some companies that reached out to me after losing 60 to 70 percent of their traffic based on a botched migration. It’s not pretty, to say the least.

But what about simply changing domain names? If you are just moving from one domain name to another, without a redesign or CMS migration, it must be much easier, right? Well, it is easier, but there are still things that can go wrong. And the more moving pieces are involved with your site, the more variables you need to worry about.

The following post covers some commonly overlooked steps that need to be completed when changing domain names (steps that are “beyond the basics”). For example, most webmasters know that you need to redirect the old domain to the new (mapping URL to URL), but there are a number of additional and important steps that often get missed along the way. That’s what I’m going to focus on in this post.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all tasks that need to be completed when switching domain names. But based on my experience, the following steps can easily be missed and can cause serious problems down the line. Let’s begin.

1. Contact your hosting provider FIRST

Before you change domain names, plan thoroughly first. Create a checklist containing all of the steps you need to tackle (in Excel). And then call your hosting provider before making the switch. Explain that you will be switching domain names, the details of your site, any nuances you have with your setup and so on. Make sure they check out your specific site and its technical setup, then give you the green light.

They might have some excellent advice for you based on what they are seeing. And by the way, you’ll now be on their radar, which is a good thing, considering you’ll be making an important technical change soon. Also, try to get the name of a technical support specialist who can help you if you run into trouble. You might just need that person after pulling the trigger (and quickly). Unfortunately, Murphy’s Law for SEO is real.

For example, I had a client that switched their domain name, and they planned to switch from their current domain to one that was already being used as a vanity domain (It was 301 redirecting to their current domain and had been for years). Easy switch, right?

Wrong! There was a secondary redirect set up on the server that my client’s dev team didn’t know about. So when the domain name change happened, the new domain did not resolve properly. It simply looked like a 404 (at every URL on the site).

That’s until the support specialist at their hosting provider dug in and fixed the problem. It took 15 minutes for the support tech to fix, when it might have taken much longer for my client to hunt down the problem. And that’s if they could find that second redirect at all.

2. Verify all versions of the new domain in Google Search Console (GSC)

Too many people forget to do this. Don’t forget; it’s really important to do (on multiple levels). And you should do this before you pull the trigger on your domain name change, not after. You definitely want to set up GSC for each version of the new domain to ensure there aren’t any surprises sitting there (like important messages from Google or a manual action).

In addition, you absolutely want to track the progress of the domain name switch via GSC. You should track the old domain and the new domain to ensure all is going well. So, you should verify the www, non-www, https, and non-www https versions of the new domain in GSC.

3. Change the setting for WordPress address (and site address)

Are you using WordPress to power your website? Don’t forget to change the domain name in your WordPress settings. And if you have multiple installs running on your website, make sure you change all of them.

Note: I’ve seen WordPress seize up in certain situations when changing domain names. That’s usually when there’s a complex setup (or multiple installs). That’s why it’s incredibly important to have your site backed up (in several places). I’ll cover that next.

4. Mod_rewrite or ISAPI_Rewrite changes

You will probably have a number of redirects set up for your old domain (URLs you removed over the years that now redirect to other URLs on your site). To clarify, I’m referring to redirects set up prior to the new domain name change. For example, you might have other domains you own that redirect to your core (older) domain, you might have specific URL redirects set up and so on.

If you do, make sure you first back up your current .htaccess file (if you’re using mod_rewrite) or httpd file (if you’re using an older version of ISAPI_Rewrite), and then refine those entries. For example, change the redirects to your new domain versus old domain.

There’s no reason to send users and Googlebot through unnecessary redirect chains. And make sure there aren’t any redirect loops, either. For example, redirecting from old domain to new domain and then back to old domain (by accident). That can get messy, especially if you have many URLs that end up behaving that way.

5a. Back up your site BEFORE you pull the trigger

If you can, I recommend having your hosting provider back up your entire site, including your WordPress install and databases, on a nightly basis. If you do, then you can always roll back your site to a previous version. That can be done relatively quickly and can save you a lot of grief. In addition, you can use WordPress plugins and/or services to back up your site.

For example, you could use something like UpdraftPlus to back up your site each night, which can automatically upload those backup files to cloud storage. If you do that, in addition to having your hosting provider back up your site, then you can rest assured that you can always roll back to a previous version of your site. It’s like digital insurance for SEOs and webmasters, and it’s well worth the additional cost.

5b. Edit backup plugin settings after the domain name change

If you are using a third-party backup plugin or service (as I recommended above), then make sure you edit the settings to reflect the new domain name. Recently, a client I helped with a domain name change thought daily backups were occurring via a third-party service. But they weren’t.

When I checked the account settings for the backup service, including the plugin settings, the last backup was the day before the domain name migration. A quick change to the settings, and then reconnecting the plugin, meant we were back up and running. Backups began running that day again. If we hadn’t caught that, and something had happened to the site, the company could have been in a tough situation (not having backups of the site that they could roll back to). Disaster avoided.

6. Submit a change of address in Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT)

Once you trigger the domain name change, make sure you submit a change of address in both GSC and BWT. The change-of-address tool can absolutely help Google and Bing understand that you are officially moving from one domain name to another (and that the change was implemented by a verified user that’s redirecting the old domain to another verified site in GSC or BWT).

Gary Illyes also has commented on Twitter that the change-of-address tool is very effective. Don’t skip this step.

Many webmasters forget that there’s a change-of-address tool in Bing Webmaster Tools, as well (but it’s called “Site Move”). It’s easy to use and works just like the change-of-address tool in GSC.

7. Change all internal links

Here’s a little-known fact: Some SEOs’ heads have exploded when thinking about changing all internal links to a new domain name. Okay, I’m kidding, but it’s not far from the truth. The thought of changing all internal links on a website sounds crazy, but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be painful. Actually, it can be extremely straightforward.

If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, there are some plugins that can help with the change. For example, I’ve used the Better Search Replace plugin in WordPress, which enables you to easily change all instances of the first domain name to the new domain in one fell swoop. You have a lot of control, as well. You can make changes to all tables in the database, and you can test a “dry run” to see what will be changed.

So, instead of manually working through changing links on every post and page, you can automate that task with a plugin like Better Search Replace. By the way, it doesn’t just handle links. It can change links to resources as well (like images you are pointing to with the old domain in the URL). I highly recommend looking at using a plugin like this versus trying to do it manually. You might lose your mind if you don’t.

8. Edit Google Analytics settings and add annotation(s)

This is another step that’s easy to forget. In both your property and view settings in Google Analytics, you should change the domain name to your new domain (in the field for default URL). If you don’t, your reporting can be impacted when you make the switch to a new domain name. It shouldn’t take long to complete, and it’s important to do.

Also, you should add an annotation in your Google Analytics views with a note about changing domain names on the specific date you switched. You can also add annotations as you notice anything interesting or strange before or after the domain name switch happens. This will be greatly helpful if you need to troubleshoot a problem down the line.

9. Apply advanced settings in Google Search Console (GSC)

Not every site in GSC contains the same settings. For some sites in GSC, webmasters might have customized their settings. For those situations, it’s extremely important that you apply those settings to your new domain name in GSC.

For example, are you using international targeting to target a specific country? Have you edited your URL parameters? And last, but definitely not least, are you using a disavow file? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you should apply those changes to the new site in GSC (for your new domain name). Those are important settings and can have a big impact on your rankings and traffic if they aren’t set up correctly.

10. Reconnect Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA)

When you connect GA and GSC, you can view query, landing page and geographic data from GSC directly in Google Analytics. I highly recommend setting that up. But when you switch domain names, GA will be connected to the old site in GSC. That means you will stop seeing data the day the domain name change occurs.

To rectify this problem, make sure you hop into the admin settings for Google Analytics and connect to the right GSC site. You will find the option to connect GSC to GA in your property settings at the bottom of the options available. You will see a section titled “Search Console” and a button labeled “Adjust Search Console.”

Once you change the GSC site that GA is connected to, data will start flowing in again. This is something many webmasters forget to complete, and then it’s easy to freak out when data in the GA report is missing. There’s no warning this will happen. You just have to be prepared.

Bonus: Gather intel prior to changing domain names

In order to have a solid feel for how the migration goes, it’s important to understand your current state. So, before making the switch to a new domain name, make sure you download all of your organic search data from across tools.

For example, search analytics data from Google Search Console (GSC), top landing page data from Google Analytics, current rankings and search data from a tool like SEMrush, inbound link data from GSC, Majestic, ahrefs and so on. You can use this data to crawl important landing pages and check search rankings before, during, and after the domain name change goes live.

You can follow my tutorial for running a quick SEO health check to learn more gathering, deduping and crawling top URLs. And if you have a lot of landing pages (tens of thousands or more), then be sure to check out an easy way to export that data from Google Analytics to Excel via Analytics Edge. I published a tutorial explaining how to do that.

Last, if you are using rank tracking, make sure you set up a new project using the new domain name (while keeping the old project active). Then you can check rankings prior to, and then after, the domain name switch happens.

Summary: Don’t forget these commonly overlooked steps when changing domain names

Changing domain names might sound simple, but there are a number of steps that should be completed to ensure all goes smoothly with the switch. Although setting up redirects is the most important element to tackle, it’s not the only one that needs to be addressed.

In this post, I included 10 commonly overlooked tasks to add to your checklist when migrating to a new domain name. I highly recommend going through those steps in detail if you are planning to change domain names in the near future. The list might just save you some frustration (and your organic search traffic). Good luck.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Source

http://searchengineland.com

5 ways to maintain your SEO ranking

Generating a consistent source of website traffic is the foundation of every online business. If you don’t have visitors coming to your website, it’s impossible to convert them into prospects and loyal, long-term customers. When you establish yourself as an authority through the lens of Google, it will increase your visibility in search engine queries.

But what happens after you’ve earned yourself a top spot in Google search results pages?

Contrary to popular belief, ranking for particular keywords is only half the battle. The core tenets of SEO are constantly evolving, and marketers need to stay up to date with the latest trends.

Today, I am going to talk about how you can sustain the keywords for which you’ve worked so hard to achieve rankings. These strategies will also help safeguard you from any potential algorithm updates.

1. Update your site

This sounds intuitive, but it’s one of the most common mistakes in the internet marketing niche. Google takes into account  content freshness as part of its ranking algorithm, so keeping your site current is a great way to maintain your position.

Antiquated strategies such as “text only” articles can potentially hinder your search engine rankings. If you want to maintain your keywords, you should update your content by adding an assortment of videos and images to your articles. This will enhance the experience of your readers and entice other people to link to your site.

Take the time to improve the visual appeal of your brand. Optimizing the layout of your site will reduce bounce rates and increase the likelihood of your visitors engaging with your content.

2. Speed up your site

Site speed has long been a ranking factor in Google search, yet many websites still don’t load very fast — especially on mobile, where a majority of searches now take place. Keep in mind that there are over two million blogs posted each day, so if your website isn’t loading fast enough, your visitors will most likely resort to an alternative solution.

Google urges webmasters to get their page load time down to less than one second for mobile devices, which is very fast. However, even if you can’t get it that low, consider that every second you shave off of your page load time reduces page abandonment.

Fortunately, making your pages load faster shouldn’t require you to hire a tech expert in your niche. Below are three easy to implement steps that will improve the speed of your website:

• Switch to a faster, more reliable hosting service.
• Enable compression on all images on your website.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to increase download speeds.

If you’re still having issues with your loading speed, then you can also try out a tool called Google PageSpeed Insights, which will help identify the specific issues slowing down your website load time and suggest ways to fix them. You can read more about Google’s page speed suggestions here.

3. Expand your link building

One of the most common mistakes that marketers make is focusing on the quantity rather than the quality of their backlinks.

If you’ve ranked for a particular keyword, there’s no need to build excessive backlinks to that page. Google can detect if a site is gaining links at an unreasonable pace. Building links too quickly can be perceived as a red flag that can potentially get your website banned.

Your rankings can also drop if you build the majority of your links to point to one particular article. Google wants their users to be able to access relevant, useful content on your site.

If you want to maintain your keyword rank, then you should expand your inbound links to all the various pages on your site. This strategy will diversify your backlink profile and increase your overall website authority from Google’s perspective.

4. Outbound and internal links

As counterintuitive as it may sound, links within your site can be just as important as backlinks to your site. Sending outbound links to authority brands in your niche helps Google determine the relevancy of your website.

Always make sure that the external pages you’re linking to provide relevant, valuable content to your readers. For example, if you’re in the outdoor survival skills niche, then you probably shouldn’t link to a Harvard University home page. Although .edu links are often considered by SEOs to be valuable, the content wouldn’t be congruent to a brand centered around survival and protection.

Internal linking, whenever you link to related articles on your own website, is another useful strategy that will help maintain your keyword rankings. When done properly, internal linking will help search engines to better understand the importance and topical focus of each page. As a bonus, smart internal linking can also keep users on the site longer by giving them easier access to additional site content.

Similar to outbound links, you want to use internal linking in moderation. Don’t overdo it by adding a plethora of links to your existing article content.

5. Build your social media presence

There’s some ambiguity as to whether social media engagement is a ranking factor in search, directly or indirectly. However, it’s abundantly clear that search engines view each major social media platform as an authority brand. Websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all possess a high PageRank in Google.

Getting links from these networks will help Google determine the relevancy of your website. The more people like and share your content, the more visibility you’ll receive from these social media channels. As you continue to garner quality backlinks, it may help to boost and sustain your rankings over the long term.

Here are a few quick tips that you can use to increase your blog’s visibility on social media:

• Add social media share buttons to the sidebar of your articles.
• Use explicit calls to action in your content (e.g., “If you liked this content, be sure to share it by clicking this button here.”).
• Offer a free piece of content to your users in exchange for a social media share.

Closing thoughts

Search engine optimization is a long-term process that doesn’t generate results overnight. Typically, you need a few months before you start noticing the fruits of your SEO labor. Implementing the above five strategies will help you maintain your authority long after you’ve ranked for a particular keyword.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Source

http://searchengineland.com

Long Tail SEO: When & How to Target Low-Volume Keywords – Whiteboard Friday

The long tail of search can be a mysterious place to explore, often lacking the volume data that we usually rely on to guide us. But the keyword phrases you can uncover there are worth their weight in gold, often driving highly valuable traffic to your site. In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, Rand delves into core strategies you can use to make long tail keywords work in your favor, from niche-specific SEO to a bigger content strategy that catches many long tail searches in its net.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re going to chat about long tail SEO.

Now, for those of you who might not be familiar, there’s basically a demand curve in the search engine world. Lots and lots of searchers are searching for very popular keywords in the NBA world like “NBA finals.” Then we have a smaller number of folks who are searching for “basketball hoops,” but it’s still pretty substantial, right? Probably hundreds to thousands per month. Then maybe there are only a few dozen searches a month for something like “Miami Heat box ticket prices.”

Then we get into the very long tail, where there are one, two, maybe three searches a month, or maybe not even. Maybe it’s only a few searches per year for something like “retro Super Sonics customizable jersey Seattle.”

Now, this is pretty tough to do keyword research anywhere in this long tail region. The long tail region is almost a mystery to us because the search engines themselves don’t get enough volume to where they’d show it in a tool like AdWords or in Bing’s research. Even Search Suggest or related searches will often not surface these kinds of terms and phrases. They just don’t get enough volume. But for many businesses, and yours may be one of them, these keywords are actually quite valuable.

2 ways to think about long tail keyword targeting

#1: I think that there’s this small set of hyper-targeted, specific keyword terms and phrases that are very high value to my business. I know they’re not searched for very much, maybe only a couple of times a month, maybe not even that. But when they are, if I can drive the search traffic to my website, it’s hugely valuable to me, and therefore it’s worth pursuing a handful of these. A handful could be half a dozen, or it could be in the small hundreds that you decide these terms are worth going after even though they have a very small number of keyword searches. Remember, if we were to build 50 landing pages targeting terms that only get one or two searches a month, we still might get a hundred or a couple hundred searches every year coming to our site that are super valuable to the business. So these terms in general, when we’re doing this hyper-specific, they need to be…

• Conversion-likely, meaning that we know we’re going to convert those searchers into buyers if we can get them or searchers into whatever we need them to do.
• They should be very low competition, because not a lot of people know about these keywords. There’s not a bunch of sites targeting them already. There are no keyword research tools out there that are showing this data.
• It should be a relatively small number of terms that we’re targeting. Like I said, maybe a few dozen, maybe a couple hundred, generally not more than that.
• We’re going to try and build specifically optimized pages to turn those searchers into customers or to serve them in whatever way we need.

#2: The second way is to have a large-scale sort of blast approach, where we’re less targeted with our content, but we’re covering a very wide range of keyword targets. This is what a lot of user-generated content sites, large blogs, and large content sites are doing with their work. Maybe they’re doing some specific keyword targeting, but they’re also kind of trying to reach this broad group of long tail keywords that might be in their niche. It tends to be the case that there’s…

• A ton of content being produced.
• It’s less conversion-focused in general, because we don’t know the intent of all these searchers, particularly on the long tail terms.
• We are going to be targeting a large number of terms here.
• There are no specific keyword targets available. So, in general, we’re focused more on the content itself and less on the specificity of that keyword targeting.

Niche + specific long tail SEO

Now, let’s start with the niche and specific. The way I’m going to think about this is I might want to build these pages — my retro Super Sonics jerseys that are customizable — with my:

• Standard on-page SEO best practices.
• I’m going to do my smart internal linking.
• I really don’t need very many external links. One or two will probably do it. In fact, a lot of times, when it comes to long tail, you can rank with no external links at all, internal links only.
• Quality content investment is still essential. I need to make sure that this page gets indexed by Google, and it has to do a great job of converting visitors. So it’s got to serve the searcher intent. It can’t look like automated content, it can’t look low quality, and it certainly can’t dissuade visitors from coming, because then I’ve wasted all the investment that I’ve made getting that searcher to my page. Especially since there are so few of them, I better make sure this page does a great job.

A) PPC is a great way to go. You can do a broad-term PPC buy in AdWords or in Bing, and then discover these hyper-specific opportunities. So if I’m buying keywords like “customizable jerseys,” I might see that, sure, most of them are for teams and sports that I’ve heard of, but there might be some that come to me that are very, very long tail. This is actually a reason why you might want to do those broad PPC buys for discovery purposes, even if the ROI isn’t paying off inside your AdWords campaign. You look and you go, “Hey, it doesn’t pay to do this broad buy, but every week we’re discovering new keywords for our long tail targeting that does make it worthwhile.” That can be something to pay attention to.

B) You can use some keyword research tools, just not AdWords itself, because AdWords bias is to show you more commercial terms, and it biases to show you terms and phrases that do actually have search volume. What you want to do is actually find keyword research tools that can show you keywords with zero searches, no search volume at all. So you could use something like Moz’s Keyword Explorer. You could use KeywordTool.io. You could use Übersuggest. You could use some of the keyword research tools from the other providers out there, like a Searchmetrics or what have you. But all of these kinds of terms, what you want to find are those 0–10 searches keywords, because those are going to be the ones that have very, very little volume but potentially are super high-value for your specific website or business.

C) Be aware that the keyword difficulty scores may not actually be that useful in these cases. Keyword difficulty scores — this is true for Moz’s keyword difficulty score and for all the other tools that do keyword difficulty — what they tend to do is they look at a search result and then they say, “How many links or how high is the domain authority and page authority or all the link metrics that point to these 10 pages?” The problem is in a set where there are very few people doing very specific keyword targeting, you could have powerful pages that are not actually optimized at all for these keywords that aren’t really relevant, and therefore it might be much easier than it looks like from a keyword difficulty score to rank for those pages. So my advice is to look at the keyword targeting to spot that opportunity. If you see that none of the 10 pages actually includes all the keywords, or only one of them seems to actually serve the searcher intent for these long tail keywords, you’ve probably found yourself a great long tail SEO opportunity.

Large-scale, untargeted long tail SEO

This is very, very different in approach. It’s going to be for a different kind of website, different application. We are not targeting specific terms and phrases that we’ve identified. We’re instead saying, “You know what? We want to have a big content strategy to own all types of long tail searches in a particular niche.” That could be educational content. It could be discussion content. It could be product content, where you’re supporting user-generated content, those kinds of things.

• I want a bias to the uniqueness of the content itself and real searcher value, which means I do need content that is useful to searchers, useful to real people. It can’t be completely auto-generated.
• I’m worrying less about the particular keyword targeting. I know that I don’t know which terms and phrases I’m going to be going after. So instead, I’m biasing to other things, like usefulness, amount of uniqueness of content, the quality of it, the value that it provides, the engagement metrics that I can look at in my analytics, all that kind of stuff.
• You want to be careful here. Anytime you’re doing broad-scale content creation or enabling content creation on a platform, you’ve got to keep low-value, low-unique content pages out of Google’s index. That could be done two ways. One, you limit the system to only allow in certain amounts of content before a page can even be published. Or you look at the quantity of content that’s being created or the engagement metrics from your analytics, and you essentially block — via robots.txt or via meta robots tag — any of the pages that look like they’re low-value, low-unique content.

A) This approach requires a lot of scalability, and so you need something like a:

• Discussion forum
• Q&A-style content
• User-posted product or service or business listings. Think something like an Etsy or a GitHub or a Moz Q&A, discussion forums like Reddit. These all support user-generated content.
• You can also go with non-UGC if it’s editorially created. Something like a frequently updated blog or news content, particularly if you have enough of a staff that can create that content on a regular basis so that you’re pumping out good stuff on a regular basis, that can also work. It’s generally not as scalable, but you have to worry less about the uniqueness of quality content.

B) You don’t want to fully automate this system. The worst thing you can possibly do is to take a site that has been doing well, pump out hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of pages, throw them up on the site, they’re low-quality content, low uniqueness of content, and Google can hit you with something like the Panda penalty, which has happened to a lot of sites that we’ve seen over the years. They continue to iterate and refine that, so be very cautious. You need some human curation in order to make sure the uniqueness of content and value remain above the level you need.

C) If you’re going to be doing this large-scale content creation, I highly advise you to make the content management system or the UGC submission system work in your favor. Make it do some of that hard SEO legwork for you, things like…

• Nudging users to give more descriptive, more useful content when they’re creating it for you.
• Require some minimum level of content in order to even be able to post it.
• Use spam software to be able to catch and evaluate stuff before it goes into your system. If it has lots of links, if it contains poison keywords, spam keywords, kick it out.
• Encourage and reward the high-quality contributions. If you see users or content that is consistently doing well through your engagement metrics, go find out who those users were, go reward them. Go promote that content. Push that to higher visibility. You want to make this a system that rewards the best stuff and keeps the bad stuff out. A great UGC content management system can do this for you if you build it right.

All right, everyone, look forward to your thoughts on long tail SEO, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Source

https://moz.com/

How To Do Your Own 5-Minute SEO Audit

If you’ve gone to SEO events, you may have attended one or more sessions where experts conduct live site reviews and make recommendations. For agencies and consultants, quickly assessing any website is a great skill to hone.

Here is how you can do your own 5-minute SEO audits.

Don’t worry if this takes you 10 or 15 minutes. This is one of those “the more you do, the faster you get” things. The important piece is having a practical framework to delve through.

If you want to do a full audit, here are three great guides to read:

If you looked at these, you’ll notice they are separated into distinct sections. During your 5-minute SEO audit, you will look at many of the same things. The big difference is you’re looking for first impressions and reorganizing to shorten your workflow.

To begin your audit, you’ll need three pieces of information:

1. Domain
2. Brand Name
3. Location (if local search is important)

Note: For the sake of this exercise, I will assume you do not have analytics or Webmaster Tools access.

1. Traffic Overview

Go to SEMRush and search for the root domain. (You do not need an account/login for this.) You’ll be presented with a graph of organic and PPC traffic, 5 top keywords  and 5 competitors. You’ll also see a pie chart displaying where traffic comes from.

• How much search volume is there?
• Is it decreasing, static or increasing?
• What are the top organic keywords and their positions?
• What are the competing sites? Does this seem accurate?

(Click to enlarge.)

Click on the Competition Graph link to see a visual graph comparing the domain you’re auditing with its competitors.

• Is your domain higher than the others?
• Is it in the middle?
• Is it lower than the others?

2. SERPs Appearance

Make the following searches

Brand Name and Brand Name + Location

https://www.google.com/#q=Brand+Name
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Brand+Name
https://www.google.com/#q=Brand+Name+Location
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Brand+Name+Location

• Does the domain appear? Is it in the 1^st position?
• Are there site links? If so, are they suitable selections? How good are the titles and descriptions that appear?
• Is there a business or Knowledge Graph listing in the side bar? How accurate is the information? What seems to be missing?
• Do any listing hurt the brand’s reputation?

Site:rootdomain

• How many pages appear in the index? Is this plausible, high or low?
• Are the titles well written and contain keywords?
• Do you see a lot of keyword duplication?
• Are the descriptions meaningful and attractive? Do they make you want to click them?

3. Technical Factors

View the root domain and www robots.txt

• Does robots.txt exist? Is there a canonical problem or do they conflict?
• Does robots.txt appear to block any content it should not?
• Is it being used improperly, for example where meta robots ought to be used instead?
• Is it showing information about the site that hackers might exploit?

Look for Canonical Issues

Go to:

• http://domain.com
• http://www.domain.com
• http://domain.com/index.html  and http://domain.com/index.html
• http://domain.com/index.htm  and http://domain.com/index.htm

Does the site appear to 301 redirect to domain.com or www.domain .com? Use the Moz SEO Toolbar or look at the source code to see if the pages use canonical tags.

4. General Appearance

Visit the Homepage

• Check the title and description in the Moz SEO Toolbar. Do they read well and appear optimized for style and keywords

• Is there a single H1 that describes the page, supports the page title and contains the page’s keywords?
• Using the Web Developer Toolbar, look at the image alt tags.
• With the Web Developer Toolbar, turn off CSS. Does this reveal any cloaked text?  Select all; does this reveal any hidden text?
• Look through the page content. Rate it 1 to 5 then jot down a few notes about why you ranked it this way.

5. Content

• Does the navigation make sense? Is it hierarchical? Do the links appear to contain unique keywords?
• Select 5 pages in the navigation and visit them. Rate each 1 to 5 then jot down a few notes about why you ranked it this way. Ask yourself, is this content compelling or sticky?
• Visit some product or shopping cart pages. Are they laid out well? Do they use unique keywords? Do they use microformats or schema.org?
• Can you easily find a blog, resources or other link worthy content? How effective does the content strike you? Would you link to anything you find? Why or why not?
• Do you see social media links? How well is social media implemented on blog or link worthy content?
• If there’s a blog, how fresh and frequent is the content? Are their comments or social media likes/shares?
• How good is the overall design and user experience?
• Are there About, Contact, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and other business operations content?

6. Authority

Visit ahrefs.com (a free account will work).

• Note the Ahrefs Domain Rank is it high, medium or low?
• How many backlinks and referring domains? Is there a 10% or better ratio?
• Look at the slopes on the graph. Do they go up or down?

Do the same for some of the competitors you identified with SEMRush. How does your domain compare?

If you have time, look at Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO to see if their numbers are similar. If they are radically different there may be a links issue.

7. Social Media

Search Google and/or Bing for

• Brand Name + Twitter
• Brand Name + Facebook
• Brand Name + LinkedIn
• Brand Name + Google+

Do these social media sites appear in the search results?

Visit each social media account.

• Is the account information complete and accurate?
• Are design elements in place?
• Is new content posted regularly?
• Is the content interesting or sticky?
• Do people interact with comments, likes, shares, retweets, etc.?

At this point you should have a good understanding of your website’s place in the Internet ecosystem and have some good ideas about what things need working on. This does not replace a complete SEO audit with elements like thorough keyword research. It will give you enough qualitative and quantitative data to hold an intelligent conversation and perhaps close a consulting sale.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Source

http://searchengineland.com

60% of local SEOs are outsourcing more tasks in 2016 vs. 2015

My SEO optimized & UI-friendly e-commerce Frankenstein

I spend a lot of time browsing e-commerce sites.

While there are some websites that are doing e-commerce incredibly well (looking at you, Amazon), there are very few that cover all of the bases: SEO-optimized, easy to navigate, mobile-friendly and fast. Generally, e-commerce websites miss out on at least one key piece of the puzzle.

That being said, if you were to sew together elements from many different websites, you could create a powerful e-commerce Frankenstein. That’s the idea of this post. I’m going to show you my ideal home page, category page, product page, blog, mobile website and site based on speed.

Read on if you dare!

Homepage: BikeBandit

It may not be “pretty,” but I like what BikeBandit has going on with their homepage. They carry a ton of inventory, which can make it tough to navigate. They do a great job of structuring the homepage with a search bar in plain sight, and the icons make it easy to pick the right category.

They have four clear reasons why you should shop with them. If you have free shipping, it’s important that the customer knows, because it’s a big selling feature. People also want to know that the parts are genuine. Give people reasons to choose you over competitors.

Trust seals can also increase conversion rates, and BikeBandit includes two: Bizrate and BBB. Along with the payment options, this increases trust for shoppers and lets them know exactly how they can pay.

In terms of SEO, I like the fact that they include a text blurb at the bottom of the page. It makes it easier to rank for long-tail keywords when you include them in text on the homepage. Google can’t read your mind. If you don’t include keywords on pages, you most likely won’t rank for them.

Category page: MyProtein.com

MyProtein has an ideal category page for usability and SEO. The sidebar allows you to narrow your category search by listing the sub-categories. The “You May Also Like” section lists complementary products which might interest the user as well.

The category content is descriptive, includes internal links to important pages, is broken up with subheadings and has references to real studies.

The product listings are super-informative and include most of the necessary information to make the sale right then and there:

• Customer reviews are in plain sight.
• Includes symbols to let you know whether the product is vegan or gluten-free.
• Key selling features are listed in checklist form.
• Coupon deals are included in the product listing.
• The price lets you know how much you save.

Product page: Rent The Runway

Rent The Runway has an ideal product page setup. A good product page sells the product and also includes the SEO basics; Rent The Runway goes beyond.

To start, their images are high-resolution in great quality. They also include actual people using their products in different sizes, which is a great user experience.

Their product descriptions provide everything you need to know. The stylist notes are useful, and the size and fit information is clearly written by a professional. This isn’t merely content put on the site to benefit their SEO.

The best thing about their product pages is the customer reviews. They’re incredibly in-depth and include information like height, age and so on, which makes it easier for potential buyers to relate.

Most reviews include pictures of the customer actually using the product, and the written reviews are very descriptive. Not to mention that all of these reviews are hard-coded onto the page, which turns a 200-word page into a 3,000+-word page. Think of all of the long-tail keywords!

Blog: Home Depot

I love the way Home Depot is handling the blog on their e-commerce site. It’s simple, but effective, with a clear navigation at the top which lets users get around with ease.

The blog posts are well structured, pleasant to read and very shareable. They are clearly going after the Pinterest crowd, and all of the content on the blog is perfect to share, with the “Save” (formerly known as “Pin It”) buttons clearly visible.

They also welcome guest posters on to the website, which does two main things:

1. It gets them free content from high-quality bloggers. Getting a spot on Home Depot is a big deal for most bloggers, so they’ll put a lot of effort into these posts. Home Depot can also pick and choose from a wide variety of applicants and select the best ones.
2. It encourages these guest bloggers to share the post with their network. The people following these bloggers are going to be interested in DIY, recipes, home renovation and so on, and they are Home Depot’s target audience.

At the end of most blog posts, Home Depot also lists the products used in the project.

This is a fantastic way to drive sales directly through blog posts. If people want to do that project, they’ll need to buy some things from Home Depot. This also drives links to deep product and category pages of the commerce site.

They even have a widget on the side which lets you print the list of the items used in the blog post. Seeing as many people will prefer to just pop into a Home Depot location, this is genius.

Mobile: Hobbycraft

Hobbycraft is a UK-based hobby store that has a fantastic mobile interface. The menu is clearly laid out with a store search, user login, cart, search bar and hamburger menu. When you expand the menu, it’s simple to navigate to find what you need.

The homepage is user-friendly and allows you to find the category you’re looking for. It’s simple to add products to the cart, and checking out is a breeze. Hobbycraft has it going on for mobile e-commerce.

Site speed: Walgreens

Page speed is important for any website, but even more so for e-commerce sites. It can have a direct impact on your conversion rate, which has a direct impact on your revenue. Not to mention that it is a known ranking signal from Google and affects user signals like bounce rate and time on page. Having a fast-loading site is an all-around win for e-commerce websites.

Walgreens clocked in for me at 1.29 seconds, which is a fantastic load time for such a large website. Part of that is due to the small page size. With the average page size of the top million websites hitting over 2 MB, Walgreens comes in at under half that. My ideal e-commerce site would load instantly, but anything under two seconds is acceptable.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Source

http://searchengineland.com

Seoul blames North Korean organization for email scams

SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — An organization believed to be run by North Korea’s government hacked into the email accounts of dozens of officials, journalists and others in South Korea this year, Seoul officials said Monday, the latest cyberattack that the South blames on its rival.

The organization sent phishing emails to government officials, journalists and professors who specialize in North Korean affairs to try to trick them into giving away their passwords, Seoul’s Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement.

The passwords for at least 56 of the email accounts were eventually leaked, according to the prosecutors’ office. Seoul authorities were investigating whether any confidential state information was also stolen, but the prosecutors’ office said there had been no reports of leakage of important information.

The email scams are the latest in a series of cyberattacks in recent years that Seoul blames on Pyongyang, but North Korea has denied the allegations. South Korea says North Korea has a 6,000-member cyber army dedicated to disrupting the South’s military and government.

Many of the past alleged cyberattacks failed to infiltrate targeted computer systems of businesses and government agencies. But in several cases, hackers destroyed hard drive disks, paralyzed banking systems or disrupted access to websites. One attack was so crippling that a South Korean bank was unable to resume online services for more than two weeks.

Troops of the rival Koreas have faced each other along the world’s most heavily fortified border since their war in the early 1950s ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. North Korea conducted a fourth nuclear test and conducted a prohibited long-range rocket launch earlier this year, inviting worldwide condemnation and tough U.N. sanctions.

Source

http://www.ctvnews.ca