SEO and Internet Marketing

August 1 is World Wide Web Day. On this date, back in 1989, the world wide web was born at the CERN lab in Switzerland. Something that started as a way to share knowledge between scientists, has grown out to something none of us can imagine life without. And because the web is such an […] The post Making the web better: an interview with Joost & Omar appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RcgVV8

In our recent post about local landing pages, we explained what they are and how you can set them up. These pages can be seen as a part of local SEO, which is focused on increasing your visibility on a local level. Today I want to discuss another factor that can help you with local […] The post Local SEO: why your site should have a store locator appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RcdLzm

Search engines are getting better and better at understanding language. Does that mean they can also understand questions? And what does that mean for the way you should write and optimize your content for questions? We’ll find out in this post! First, we’ll explore how Google understands and uses questions. Then, we’ll go into why […] The post Should you optimize your content for questions? appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RcWzMP

Our green bullets are addictive. We get that. While they help people optimize their texts for the search engines, we don’t want people chasing only our bullets and losing track of their texts. We do want to nudge them and help get that text as SEO-friendly as possible. In this blog post, I’ll tell you […] The post Beyond exact keyword matching: optimize your text naturally appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RcTpMl

Using the right keywords is essential in SEO. Because using the words your audience searches with, will help your posts and pages rank. That’s why we tell you to put some effort into finding the perfect keywords to optimize your articles for. So, after finding that perfect keyword, why shouldn’t you use it over and […] The post Why you should use synonyms and related keywords appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RcCkxb

More than half of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices (fact). So if you are ignoring your mobile site, you might be missing out on on a big part of your audience. In this post, I’d liked to go over a couple of ways you can check your own mobile sites. After this post, you’ll be […] The post DIY: Test your mobile site! appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/Rc9423

How to Read Google Algorithm Updates SEO Book     •     May 24, 2020, 9:24 am Links = Rank Old Google (pre-Panda) was to some degree largely the following: links = rank. Once you had enough links to a site you could literally pour content into a site like water and have the…

We have a new release for you: Yoast SEO 14.6. This release has some pretty cool enhancements, plus new additions for Yoast SEO Premium users. We’re continuing our run of languages that get word form support with two new ones: Indonesian and Portuguese. Find what’s new in Yoast SEO 14.6! Word form recognition in Yoast […] The post Yoast SEO 14.6: New languages with word form support appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/Rc44Qh

China Still Censoring Google, Now Globally SEO Book     •     April 28, 2020, 7:28 pm Google Gets Out of China In March of 2010 Google announced they would no longer censor their search results for China: earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google… New Version of SEO Toolbar SEO Book     •     May 4, 2020, 1:09 pm Our programmer recently updated our SEO toolbar to work with the most recent version of Firefox. You can install it from here. After you install it the toolbar should automatically update on a… Managing Algorithmic Volatility SEO Book     •     May 11, 2020, 3:30 am Upon the recently announced Google update I've seen some people Tweet things like if you are afraid of algorithm updates, you must be a crappy SEO if you are technically perfect in your SEO,… New Age Cloaking SEO Book     •     May 12, 2020, 8

As simple as they sound, landing pages might be a confusing topic for site owners. What qualifies as a landing page and what doesn’t? Is every page you land on a landing page? What about Landing Pages in Google analytics? And, can you optimize them for conversion and search engines? Let’s dive in! What is […] The post What is a landing page? And how does it work? appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/Rc1Rv6

Brands vs Ads SEO Book     •     November 8, 2019, 4:16 pm Brand, Brand, Brand About 7 years ago I wrote about how the search relevancy algorithms were placing heavy weighting on brand-related signals after Vince & Panda on the (half correct!) presumption… Favicon SEO SEO Book     •     January 19, 2020, 4:25 pm Google recently copied their mobile result layout over to desktop search results. The three big pieces which changed as part of that update were URLs: In many cases Google will now show breadcrumbs… Subscription Fatigue SEO Book     •     February 8, 2020, 4:27 pm Subscription Management I have active subscriptions with about a half-dozen different news & finance sites along with about a half dozen software tools, but sometimes using a VPN or web proxy across… Revenue Quality & Leverage SEO Book     •     March 17, 2020, 11:07 am

The Fractured Web SEO Book     •     April 17, 2019, 6:09 pm Anyone can argue about the intent of a particular action & the outcome that is derived by it. But when the outcome is known, at some point the intent is inferred if the outcome is derived from a… AMP'd Up for Recaptcha SEO Book     •     June 30, 2019, 9:47 pm Beyond search Google controls the leading distributed ad network, the leading mobile OS, the leading web browser, the leading email client, the leading web analytics platform, the leading mapping… New Keyword Tool SEO Book     •     September 14, 2019, 10:06 am Our keyword tool is updated periodically. We recently updated it once more. For comparison sake, the old keyword tool looked like this Whereas the new keyword tool looks like this The upsides of… Dofollow, Nofollow, Sponsored, UGC SEO Book     •     October 24, 2019, 5:20

How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone SEO Book     •     April 8, 2019, 3:13 am Brian McCullough, who runs Internet History Podcast, also wrote a book named How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone which did a fantastic job of capturing the ethos of the early web… Keyword Not Provided, But it Just Clicks SEO Book     •     April 9, 2019, 3:09 pm When SEO Was Easy When I got started on the web over 15 years ago I created an overly broad & shallow website that had little chance of making money because it was utterly undifferentiated and…

Grist for the Machine SEO Book     •     October 9, 2017, 6:41 pm Grist Much like publishers, employees at the big tech monopolies can end up little more than grist. Products & product categories come & go, but even if you build "the one" you still may lose… Left is Right & Up is Down SEO Book     •     November 16, 2017, 11:20 pm Probably the single best video to watch to understand the power of Google & Facebook (or even most of the major problems across society) is this following video about pleasure versus happiness. In… A Darker Shade of Gray SEO Book     •     March 13, 2019, 10:28 am Google's original breakthrough in search was placing weight on links & using them to approximate the behavior of web users. The abstract of The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web… Google Florida 2.0 Algorithm Update: Early Obs

“If only I could simply wave my wand and have a super fast website!” This has probably crossed your mind as well, right? Optimizing site speed and user experience is a lot of work and gets technical — and complicated — really fast. Most site owners or managers quickly need to talk to their developers […] The post 5 ways to boost your Core Web vitals appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/Rbmfvd

Disappearing Clicks SEO Book     •     November 25, 2016, 11:34 pm When Compete.com launched with credits-based pricing well over a decade ago I felt like a kid in a candy store using their competitive research tool. Recently Compete.com announced they were shutting… New gTLDs are Like Used Cars SEO Book     •     March 8, 2017, 8:05 am There may be a couple exceptions which prove the rule, but new TLDs are generally an awful investment for everyone except the registry operator. Here is the short version... Imagine registering a… DMOZ Shut Down SEO Book     •     March 21, 2017, 7:49 pm Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in… Rank Checker Update SEO Book     •     April 26, 2017, 6:54 pm R

A blog can be a great marketing tool for your eCommerce site. It gives you the possibility to tell readers all about your brand, products, and company. Plus, by blogging on a regular basis you’ll increase the chances of your site ranking in the search results. That being said, coming up with new ideas can […] The post 5 blog topic ideas for your eCommerce site appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RbhmBW

Penguin 4.0 Update SEO Book     •     September 25, 2016, 10:13 am On Friday Google's Gary Illyes announced Penguin 4.0 was now live. Key points highlighted in their post are: Penguin is a part of their core ranking algorithm Penguin is now real-time, rather than… Google & Facebook Squeezing Out Partners SEO Book     •     November 7, 2016, 1:56 pm Sections Just Make Great Content... Search Engine Engineering Fear Ignore The Eye Candy, It's Poisoned Below The Fold = Out Of Mind Coercion Which Failed Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Dumb Pipes, Dumb…

As you might know, Google is rolling out mobile-first indexing as we speak. In September 2020, all websites will be ported over to the mobile-first index. But what does that mean for your ranking? Should you be worried? Should you do anything? Google has been pretty vocal on mobile-first indexing. This post serves as a […] The post 5 things you need to know about mobile-first indexing appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/Rbdd74

Some time ago, Google caused quite a stir by announcing a new ranking factor for 2021: page experience. User experience has always been an essential part of building the best site out there, but now, it will play an even bigger role in helping you build awesome sites for your customers. All this is powered […] The post Learn about the three Core Web Vitals: LCP, FID & CLS appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RbYpKx

So you’ve decided to write a blog post. That’s great! Now let’s make sure your efforts pay off and it turns into an awesome post that also ranks. What do you need to write that post? What steps do you need to take? You can use this blog post checklist to make sure you’ve got […] The post Blog post checklist: how to optimize for search engines appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RbYpKj

Some of the pages of your site serve a purpose, but that purpose isn’t ranking in search engines or even getting traffic to your site. These pages need to be there, as glue for other pages or simply because regulations require them to be accessible on your website. If you regularly read our blog, you’ll know […] The post Which pages to noindex or nofollow on your site? appeared first on Yoast. http://dlvr.it/RbYpGD

Late Funnel SEO Profits Before the Panda update SEOs could easily focus almost all their energies on late funnel high-intent searches which were easy to monetize without needing to put a ton of effort into brand building or earlier funnel informational searches. This meant that SEOs could focus on phrases like [student credit cards] or [buy earbuds] or [best computer gaming headphones] or [vertical computer mouse] without needing to worry much about anything else. Make a good enough page on those topics, segment demand across options, and profit. Due to the ability to focus content & efforts on those tiny subset high-intent commercial terms the absolute returns and CPMs from SEO investments were astronomical. Publishers could insert themselves arbitrarily just before the end of the value chain (just like Google AdWords) and extract a toll. The Panda Shift / Eating the Info Supply Chain Then Panda happened and sites needed to have stronger brands and/or more full funnel user exp