Daily SEO Tips

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Confused about 307 redirects? Listen to today's tip to learn more about why and how to fix these redirects.

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You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode. 

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Learn more about how to optimize your audio assets in today's SEO tip.

Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.

You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode. 

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Creating a plan to rank in voice search 

Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.

In previous episodes, we talked about knowing the source of the answers is key to rank in voice search, and the vast majority of answers provided come from either Bing or Google search engines. Today we are going to talk about what it takes to rank once you’ve determined that your audience and query are being provided voice answers from Google’s ecosystem (keep in mind that with Alexa’s reliance on Bing, 41% of the time information based voice answers are pulled from that ecosystem instead).

Google voice ranking:

To be found in Google search for an information-based voice query, the result will be reliant upon:

1. The answer (URL, YouTube video, etc.) must be currently ranking #1 with a concise answer and a fast page speed (1.10 seconds). Most of the time this answer  is often in the Featured Snippet slot. One-third of the times a Featured Snippet will be used as a voice search answer. 
2. Or your brand has a strong Knowledge Graph presence.
3. Or you have Schema.org markup on your website that creates a Google action or custom Google Action that fulfills intent.

If it’s a query with commercial intent , you will need to have your product in Google’s product feed.

If it’s a local voice query, you need to claim and optimize your Google My Business listing.

How to creating a plan to rank for the Featured Snippet (if your query is info based)

To figure out if you’re already ranking in the Featured Snippet (or to track your progress), you would need an SEO Tool like GetStat, SEMRush, RankRanger, and/or Ahrefs.

If your ranking already on Google page one and want to shoot for that #1 slot, you need to ask yourself: 

• Do I have enough EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) to rank #1 for YMYL queries? 
• Does my content answer the searcher’s intent? 
• Does my content match the format Google is displaying? 
• Are my pages loading fast enough? For this you can measure your page using tools like GtMetrix and Google Lighthouse.

Creating a plan to improve your brand’s Knowledge Graph presence. 

Google and Bing’s Knowledge Graph are entity databases that are used in each algorithm. Getting your brand in the search engine’s Knowledge Graph involves ensuring that your brand and products are appropriately mentioned in databases that the search engine uses for the Knowledge Graph like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Google Scholar/Microsoft Academic, Google My Business/Bing Maps, Wikinews, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Crunchbase, etc. as well as adding structured data to your pages that will help the search engine understand the entities associated with your brand.

When you add schema.org markup to your site, you’ll want to add links out (using sameas markup)  to your Google database references. 

Both search engines use schema.org markup, but Bing also uses plain HTML markup as a part of its process of understanding your site’s pages. 

A note about editing Wikipedia...

I would recommend you DON’T try to edit Wikipedia pages. If you do, they will lock you out and revert your edits. I recommend working with a Wikipedia coach (I have one that I recommend) which will help you have conversations with editors on the talk pages in a way in which you might be able to implement changes to the pages you care about. 

Continue reading here. . .

Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.

You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode. 

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Page Experience Google update

We now have a deadline around when the Core Web Vitals measurements impact rankings - May of 2021. Let’s talk about how to prepare.

Hello! And thanks for listening to SEO tips today.

Google has announced that the metrics measured in their Core Web vitals report data will impact rankings in May 2021, as well as previous metrics like web usability, web safety,  and interstitials.

It will be an aggregated ranking signal. 

Here's the announcement:

The new page experience ranking factor will include: 

• Load Speed (‘Largest Contentful Paint’ factor from Core Web Vitals)
• Responsiveness (‘First Input Delay’ from Core Web Vitals)
• Visual Layout Stability (‘Cumulative Layout Shift’ from Core Web Vitals)
• Whether URLs are mobile-friendly
• Safe and Clean Website Code (Safe Browsing with no Malware)
• Use of HTTPS Encryption
• No Intrusive Interstitials

What are the metrics, and what are good measurements?

The three core elements are a part of Google Lighthouse and include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures the time it takes for a page’s primary content to load. According to Google, load times under 2.5 seconds are good, and over 4 seconds is poor.
• First Input Delay (FID): This metric measures the amount of time it takes after loading the page for a user to be able to interact with the page. According to Google, 100 milliseconds or less is good, and anything over 300 milliseconds is poor.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This metric measures whether items shift while loading, and the lower the CLS, the better - Google says that .1 is good and higher than .25 is poor. 

How do you go about benchmarking your existing site?

You can find these metrics in:

• Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report

And in that report, you can find recommendations for improvement using Page Speed Insights and Chrome Lighthouse.  It’s essential to keep in mind that while the report shows you a range for “good” URLs, reports have demonstrated that URLs ranking #1 in Google search had average mobile page load times of 1.10 seconds. 

And how about new sites?

And if you’re working on a new site and need to measure Core Web Vitals before launch, I recommend the following:

• Screaming Frog with the Pagespeed API
• Or Deepcrawl

Both of which run off of lab data.

And if your site allows for crawling from unknown IPs, there are a bunch of other tools that can assist and let you check in bulk, including:

Continue reading here. . .

Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.

You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode. 

Send us Fan Mail

Learn more about how academic journals can drive more traffic from organic search in today's SEO tip.

Here are the ways you can support the SEO Tips podcast.

You can send me a donation at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katherinewong. Any and all levels of donations are appreciated and will help offset the cost of producing the podcast. You should also subscribe to our newsletter so that you don't miss a future episode.