I am pretty sure that one of the dreams from the “Top 10 list of SEOers dreams” is to get data from Google itself. Google shares invaluable insights with site owners through Google Analytics, Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, etc. Your task is to interpret the data and get insights.

How using Google Search Console for SEO will improve your business

With the help of the Google tools you can:

• See what channel is the most profitable for your business (organic search, PPC, referrals, email newsletters, GDN, etc.).
• Define what user segments are the most valuable for you.
• Draw paths users follow when they arrive on your site.
• Check whether a Googlebot can crawl your site.
• Find the most popular pages of your site, or what queries lead users to your site, etc.
• Get information on how your site is seen on mobile devices and how fast it is either on desktop or on mobile devices.

How you benefit from connecting Google Analytics & Search Console with WebCEO

Information from your Google Analytics will drastically change how you select what keywords to target and what pages to optimize these keywords for. With Google Analytics connected, your decisions will be really data-driven.

Your keyword strategy will be data-driven

1. Get keywords from Search Console

Go to the Keywords from Google Search Console report and connect your Search Console. Now you will know how many times your site was shown in Google search results for a specific keyword, the number of times web surfers clicked on your site, the click-through rate and the average position of your site for each keyword. Add keywords with high avg. positions but low CTR and keywords with high CTR and low avg. positions. These keywords are your prospect workhorses.

2. See the number of organic visits in the Keyword Basket

If your keyword strategy is backed up with data, you are halfway to success! Go to the WebCEO Keyword Research tool Settings and select the “Organic visits” option. If your Google Analytics is not connected yet, you will be asked to do it.

When done, check how the Keyword Basket looks now. You will see a new column “Organic visits” where you can see how many visitors have come to your page with this search term. Use this data to refine your keyword basket and pay more attention to keywords that already work for you.

You will know what pages to optimize to get more traffic

3. Optimize popular pages

How do you select what pages to optimize? One of the most profitable tactics is to find pages that are already shown on the SERPs and fine-tune them to get even higher results and higher CTR.

The Most Popular Pages report will show how many times your site pages were shown in Google search results, the number of times web surfers clicked on them, the click-through rate and the average position of your site pages. To get this report, connect your Google Search Console with WebCEO.

Remember that the first result in Google gets almost 33% of the traffic while the tenth result gets less than 5%. If one of your pages with an avg. position of 11.9 gets 5,700 impressions with 10% CTR, you can expect to double impressions and clicks if the page makes it to the first page of the SERPs.

4. See how many visits your landing pages get

The Landing Pages Overview report helps you to keep track of your landing page progress. When Google Analytics and Search Console are connected, you can see the number of visits your pages get and the avg. position of each page. The data is compared with the previous results so you can easily see if the trend is positive and notice if any of the pages needs more attention.

5. Check how much traffic your high-ranked keywords bring

Another report that benefits from integration with Google tools is the Rank Tracking report. Make sure that the Visits from other SEs and Visits from Google options are selected in the Settings of the Rank Tracker (go to the Columns tab). When done, you’ll see the number of visits brought by a keyword from various search engines. This information is crucial for successful traffic prediction.

You will find out how to tune your SMM

6. Monitor how much traffic social networks bring to your site

With the reports from the Social Engagement tool you can analyze how effective your social activity at Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest is. Use this data to fine-tune your SMM and get the most from it.

Search engine optimization is meticulous work based on data and analysis. Google itself provides you with valuable data that can be combined with data from the best-of-breed SEO tools by WebCEO.

Sign Up for a Free 14-Day Trial
and Get the Most from Your Available Data!

The post 6 Ways to Empower Your SEO with Google Search Console appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

In my childhood, there was a popular poetry book with the subtitle “for naughty children only!” From this book you could learn that it is OK to jump out the window with your mom’s umbrella, or that you can draw a portrait of your granny on a wall as a birthday present for her. “There are naughty children who always do exactly the opposite of what they are told to do. For these children the book has been written.”

I found this book when I visited my parents on Christmas vacation and immediately had an idea for a blog post! Let’s imagine what fake SEO advice your competitors would be happy to give you.

1. Test your site on your own monitor only. If your site looks good on your own computer, it will look good on all devices.

No, it won’t. Today desktop screen resolutions vary widely, and that’s without mentioning mobile devices! You should ensure your site visitors have the best experience using your site on their devices. To do this, go to your Google Analytics → Audience → Browser & OS. Here select “Screen resolution” as a primary dimension and “Browser size” as a secondary one.

This report will show what screen resolutions your visitors have. Now you can see your site through their eyes. If you use the Chrome browser, as I do, you can use the Resolution test plugin or any other tool that lets you imitate different screen sizes.

2. Make the website load slowly to make your visitors spend more time on it.

Slow pages annoy both search engines and visitors. The content of your site is the power that can involve users and keep them on your site. How will you know if your site pages are fast enough? Use WebCEO’s Website Audit Tool and check the Speed Optimization report.

The best advice is: “Check the page speed score for all your important pages and fix the issues WebCEO has found.”

3. Give your visitors more choices.

Well, this one is tricky. Having choices is considered a good thing. However, the more choices a website offers, the harder it is for a visitor to choose something.

Hick’s Law says that increasing the number of choices will increase decision time logarithmically. A user overwhelmed with choices often decides to leave. The “jam experiment” provided by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper proves this. If you are not familiar with the experiment I will retell you in brief: it was found that consumers were 10 times more likely to purchase jam on display when the number of jams available was reduced from 24 to 6. More choice, fewer sales.

How to use this knowledge on your site:

• If you want your readers to share your content, give them a limited number of ways to do so. Just pick the most important social sharing icons and not clutter your site with the rest.
• On a landing page, don’t try to make the entire sale; instead, convince visitors to take one action. Remember, that a single offer asks customers to make one decision.
• Don’t try to display all your options on a home page. Leave only the most important ones.

4. Optimize different pages for the same keywords.

Keyword cannibalism is still a thing. The problem of having multiple pages targeting the same keywords is as awful as it sounds. Why is it a problem?

When each page of a website is focusing on the same set of keywords, search engines need to choose which page is more relevant for optimized query and decide what page to show in SERPs. This means that pages that should convert visitors into clients will compete with the whole internet and even other pages of your site!

To avoid keyword cannibalization, decide which pages on your site you should optimize for which keywords. WebCEO’s Keyword Research can help you to find the most effective keywords that will enhance your website’s visibility, attract a targeted audience, and improve your search engine rankings.

5. Use more & more pop-ups to grab visitor attention.

In 2004 pop-up windows were called the most hated advertising technique – 95% of users asked by John Boyd from Yahoo! and Christian Rohrer from eBay rated this technique the most negatively. Over the past few years, pop-ups have re-emerged as a popular marketing tactic for growing email lists, promoting content and lead generation.

Do you need those passive-aggressive pop-ups to get more subscribers? Some AWeber research shows that a pop-up subscription form drove 1,375% more subscriptions.

Surely we do not call to sacrifice site performance for user experience. We call you to create only user-friendly pop-ups that convert users!

• Think about how people interact with your site and show pop-ups only when they are appropriate. For example, you can suggest that visitors subscribe to new blog posts when someone scrolls down the page as she reads the content.
• Offer something valuable. You can offer a free ebook or a coupon code for a person who spent a specific amount of time on your pages.
• Don’t ruin the mobile experience. Pop-ups are so distracting on mobile devices that Google even promised to penalize sites for using them.

Share your best “fake SEO advice” in comments!

The post 5 Instances of Fake SEO Advice Your Competitors Will Be Happy to Give You appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Set aside 10 minutes of your time to read the latest cutting-edge news in SEO, Tech and Social Media that happened this Spring.

Google News

Google has greatly improved its Analytics service. Dated March 9, Google announced a new report in Beta, called User Explorer, which can be found in the Audience section. It provides detailed insight of the number of sessions, bounce rate, revenue, transactions, and your specific goals conversion rate associated with an individual Client or User ID. Once you click a User or Client ID, you get an individual timeline view of this client behavior, including acquisition date, channel and device category, along with the history of activities and interactions with your site or service. The report is a goldmine for those who want to analyze prospects’ behavior and improve an overall customers’ user experience on a website. Learn from Google about use cases of the User Explorer report.

In May, Google made another change in the Google Analytics reporting features. Google made a deep  integration of its Analytics and Search Console services. Now, if you log into your Google Analytics account, you can find the Google Search Console metrics under the Acquisition tab, as the substitution of the Search Engine Optimization. There are 4 sections in the newly added Search Console report: Landing Pages, Countries, Devices, Queries. The Search Console reports are complemented by additional acquisition metrics like Impressions, Clicks, CTR and Average Position which help to analyze your organic traffic performance more effectively.

At the end of May, Google announced the expansion of ad texts and the ability to bid by device, which will be coming to AdWords platform in the next several months. In the new ad format campaigns advertisers will be allowed to compose:

–  2 headlines with up to 30-character limit for each title (instead of one 25-character limit headline);

–  A 80-character description line (instead of two 35-character description lines).

Will this update result in a higher click-through-rate? Yes! Early figures indicate a 20% increase in CTR.

Mobile Search News

A year ago, on April 21^st, Google rolled out its Mobile-Friendly Update, aka Mobile Apocalypse (targeted to the websites which don’t give due consideration of such things like responsiveness, mobile-friendly URLs,). One year on, Google announced that starting from May, they will boost the effect of the mobile specific ranking signal in order to bring more relevant mobile-friendly search results.  But this is not the last change made to the Mobile-Friendly Ranking algorithm. According to Gary Illyes, Google will add page speed as a mobile-friendly ranking signal.

Tip for SEO beginners: If you are a mobile device geek and in search for “FREE SEO tools” for your website from your smartphone, be sure to find our mobile-friendly website and service on the 1^st page of Google and sign up for a FREE forever plan:). Moreover, you can use our Website Audit Tool to check how well your website is optimized for mobile devices.

Bing News

Bing showed dramatic increase of the search market share in April. According to ComScore explicit numbers, desktop searches on Google sites dropped by 0,2%, while searches on Microsoft sites rose by 0,2%. The reason for the change in search market share may be the increase of Windows 10 usage with its Hey Cortana voice search feature. This means that those who bet money mainly on Google should reconsider their marketing strategy and include Bing advertising into their website search engine promotion.

LinkedIn will be integrated into the Microsoft Office ecosystem. The breaking news on Microsoft acquiring LinkedIn for $26,2 billion has caused a lot of discussions. But one thing is clear for sure, Microsoft wants to start positioning itself as a cloud-based software as a service.  In the joint presentation, Microsoft and LinkedIn reveal the following advantages of the acquisition which will make Microsoft users more productive:

• Access to an individual user’s profile data across all apps and programs, like Outlook, Skype, Office etc.
• Intelligent newsfeed that will help users to stay connected with their professional network, industry news and trends.
• More intelligent digital assistant (Cortana) at your disposal that will be help you connect the dots between your professional network connections and help you effectively manage your daily tasks and meetings.
• Deep integration of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM and LinkedIn Sales Navigator for effective sales management on LinkedIn.
• Integration of the LinkedIn Learning hub into the Office programs that will enable users to learn new skills at the right time without having to leave the Office workplace.

Facebook News

Facebook has reinvented itself from a non-profit Social Media network to eCommerce Digital Marketing platform by collecting 500 terabytes of personal data a day and juggling it to commercial ends. Facebook already provides comprehensive targeting options for advertisers, enabling publishers to hit local-specific audiences, retarget website visitor traffic, show ads to lookalike audiences etc. That’s seems not good enough for Mark Zuckerberg & Co.

On May 26, the company officially set Facebook ads float freely across the web. It means that if you are not a Facebook user, you will also be shown Facebook ads anywhere on the internet and 3d party websites. It’s a game changer for those advertisers who have non-Facebook users and want to retarget them outside Facebook.

Facebook introduced Facebook 360, a new option for publishers to upload 360 photo and videos. Moreover, Facebook allows running 360 photo and video campaigns.

We are done! Now it’s up to you to start exploiting the new trends we have shared with you in this post:)

The post Get Reading: Top 8 Internet Marketing Updates for Spring ‘16 appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Today’s controversial (speculative) post is dedicated to Google services, specifically the Google Structured Data Helper tool and Google Analytics code and the issue that we faced in the process of using them. Before we discuss the problem, let’s provide explanations to some terms which might be new to you.

What is the Google Structured Data Helper tool and what does it serve for?

The Google Structured Data Markup Helper tool is a tool for the proper implementation of schema markup on your site which helps search engines better understand your content.

Structured data is sensitive information on your site organized and imbedded into the page’s HTML tags. Every time you search for something you can see search engine page results patterned with rich snippets (instant display of specific information near a search result) generated from structured data on sites. Structured data helps searchers evaluate a website’s credibility and get quick access to important information like addresses, phone numbers, ratings etc.

Put it simply, structured data helps your site listings look more attractive in search page results and increase the click-through rate to your site.  The information you can add to structured data patterns includes:

• Your business NAP (name, address, phone)
• Review ratings
• Video description and thumbnail
• People (name, age, photo, job title, address etc.)
• Recipe specs (preparation time, ingredients, ratings, image etc.)
• Product specs (name, description, product ID, color, model etc.)

Learn more on how to decorate SERPS with structured data from your site.

What is the Google Analytics Tracking code and what is it used for?

The Google Analytics Tracking code is a snippet of JavaScript that collects and sends visitor traffic data to Google Analytics from your website. This code is automatically generated in your Google Analytics account and you will need to copy and paste it into every page of your site in order to start tracking your website visitor traffic performance.

What a mess! Is the Google Structured Data Markup Helper tool incompatible with Google Analytics?

Considering the fact that Google may start using structured data in its ranking algorithm in the future, we decided to run an experiment in order to see if the rankings of one of our websites would improve in the long run.

We started to add schema markup to some pages of one of our websites via the Google Structured Data Markup Helper tool and found an unexpected flaw in the generated tags. The Markup Helper erased the Google Analytics snippet code that was inbuilt into the HTML head tag of pages.

In order to demonstrate the recurrence of the issue, we created an HTML sample page with the Google Analytics code. After having added the page to the Markup Helper we generated and inserted tags into our HTML page. The issue occurred again! The schema markup tag that we generated lacked the original GA code in the head.

The original HTML head tag with the GA code looked like this:

And here is what we got after generating a schema markup tag via the Google Structured Data Markup Helper tool:

You can see that one Google service gets pwned by another Google service. It seems like Google doesn’t care about the consistency and compatibility of its services? It’s not the first case of a Google services inconsistency. A similar problem occurs while testing websites via both the Google Mobile-Friendly tool and PageSpeed Insights.

Structured data markup improved our website rankings! Is it a coincidence or a pattern?

In the meantime, when we added schema markup manually, we also added a note about this SEO action as an SEO Event in the WebCEO Journal of Events. The event was automatically displayed on the Historical Data report graphs of the Rank Tracking tool, where it coincided with an uptick in rankings! With the help of the Journal of Events you can easily see how your SEO actions or Google Updates affect your website ranking trend. Have a look at an example of an SEO action marked as an event on the ranking data graph:

Pending issue

We tried to reach out to Googlers and webmasters in order to hear from the horse’s mouth about the inconsistency of their services but they have so far seemingly stonewalled.

Question to you, guys: Has anybody come across the same issue?

Question to Google: Let’s please see a recognition of the problem.

To monitor how changes to your website affect its performance in search rankings, check WebCEO’s Online SEO Tools to track your site’s SEO performance and make informed decisions.

The post How We Revealed the Inconsistency between Google Services appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

One of the primary reasons startups fail is a lack of capital. The overhead that comes with getting a successful business going is often more than the average entrepreneur can handle. The result is a 90 percent failure rate for startups.

While you can’t guarantee your business will be a success, you can work on lowering your expenses and keeping things affordable. Here are a few tools that will help you do just that.

1. Squarespace

Whether you need to build a great website or need a basic logo to get your business some recognition, the Squarespace platform can get you what you need with both free and paid options. Other CMS platforms may be more comprehensive, but check them out.

2. ClickBooth

ClickBooth has been named the #1 affiliate network in the world, and they’re continuing to grow that reputation as they bring both startups and major companies a cost-per-action (CPA) advertising platform that any firm can afford.

3. Google Drive

With 15GB of free storage at your disposal, not to mention excellent editing, collaboration, and sharing capabilities, GoogleDrive is your one-stop-shop for your collaborative needs.

4. MailChimp

Email marketing campaigns are made easy with MailChimp, which allows you to send and create scheduled emails, manage contacts, and track analytics. Sending some emails to a few contacts is entirely free, but it’s very affordable to upgrade to a larger package.

5. Buffer

Buffer allows you to organize and run multiple social media accounts, all from the same place. It’s a great, free way to maximize efficiencies on your social campaigns.

6. Trello

Most startups do their fair share of collaborating, and Trello is free project management software that can keep everyone on the same page with time stamping, multiple user interfaces, budget tracking, and more, for both mobile and desktop.

7. Square

Before you have the capital to install a commercial, all-inclusive point of purchase system, Square is a secure, easy-to-use alternative. It accepts payments through phones and tablets with highly secure processing. Once you download the app and purchase the hardware, it’s free to use.

8. Fiverr

When you need freelancers, consider this website that offers services for just five dollars. Fiverr has freelancers from more than 100 countries, and you may find some great people offering high quality services at an affordable price. Do not, however, purchase dishonest services such as backlinks or fake social media attention! You could, thus, destroy your business before it has a chance to get off the ground.

9. Kickstarter

Unless you’ve been lucky enough to land an angel investor that continually sends money, crowdfunding on Kickstarter could be your best option for raising funds. Kickstarter has helped fund more than 94,000 successful startups, and helped to keep thousands more in business.

10. Canva

Imagery and infographics are essential for a successful content marketing campaign, and Canva can deliver customized images at a great price. They’re also good for building templates and other features for unparalleled web design.

11. Google Analytics

The suite of free Google tools startups can use is remarkable, and Google Analytics is one of the best for understanding organic and referral traffic performance, customers, and advertisement campaigns through a collection of data, charts, and other tools.

12. WebCEO

Once you have launched a website for your startup business, you will want to measure and improve its SEO performance, including keyword research and analysis, targeted keyword rank tracking, backlink analysis, on-page SEO audits and competitor analysis. The WebCEO SEO Platform with its Startup plan will provide you with 15 SEO tools for $99 per month (Sign up for a free 14-day trial so you can test the platform).

13. SumoMe

Grow traffic through list building, heat maps, popup email boxes, and more through this comprehensive, free, website-enhancing tool. SumoMe is one of the many affordable tools your startup can use on your way to greatness.

The post Baker’s Dozen of Tools Startups Can Actually Afford appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Have you heard about the Pareto Rule? This principle was named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who analyzed the Italian land market and found that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the population. Eventually people started to apply the Pareto principle to other spheres of life, including business, technology, culture, education, management etc. The rule helps in balancing your business inputs-outputs in the most effective way: set business priorities, find the 20% of the most profitable segments of your business, what your business is good at and minify your spends on the aspects which take a lot of your time and resources and bring less profits.

Here are some common 80/20 rules which construct a paradigm of success in the Business and Digital Marketing world:

• 80% of your website traffic come from 20% of channel sources
• 80% of searchers visit 20% of website pages
• 80% of traffic is generated by 20% of your content
• 80% of profits come from 20% of your clients
• 80% ofsales come from 20% of your products
• 80% of social traffic come from 20% of social media sites

What about the Pareto rule when applying it to SEO and Internet Marketing? Considering the correlation 80/20, the key objective that most of the webmasters face is the optimization of SEO activities in order to reach the perfect correlation – 20% of inputs should bring 80% of outputs.

Let’s focus on what 20% of your inputsthat result in 80% of outputs. The aspects uncovered below are not absolute numbers of the formula of success, but a rough concept that can help you set priorities for a successful SEO Strategy.

20% of Your Niche Keywords Drive 80% of Traffic

Mighty content dandelions grow from little keyword seeds. You should focus on the best…a few dozen keywords in order to build a strong and authoritative blog pieces or landing pages. If you have not yet performed detailed Hummingbird-friendly keyword research or did it too long ago, give it a second wind.

 Keyword Research 

Start with keyword research of your niche in order to pick a list of keywords and phrases that is highly descriptive and relevant to your website theme.

Help tools: the WebCEO Keyword Research Tool → Get Suggestions

 Competitive Research

Dig into your competitor keyword analysis in order to narrow your list of targeted keywords and enrich your keyword basket with the most popular terms you want to compete for

Help tools: The WebCEO Keyword Research Tool → Spy on Competitors

 Search Queries Analyitcs 

Strengthen your keyword pattern with the search queries your website is mostly searchable for.

Help tools: Google Analytics → Search Engine Optimization → Queries + Google Search Console → Search Traffic → Search Analytics.

Update your content and research new keywords once you see a decrease in traffic or once you see your competition performing better than you. Don’t bother to post 7 days a week. Focus on producing the 20% of helpful, creative and timely content that will bring 80% of targeted traffic, quality leads and loyal customers.

20% of Landing Pages Drive the Attention of 80% of Users

When optimizing your website, you should bear in mind that only 20% of your website pages will drive 80% of overall traffic. These 20% of pages are your landing pages, – targeted pages which are critical to the buying process. Landing pages are a kind of accelerant for users to take actions and the efficiency of this depends on the transparency of the areas that users interact with in order to complete actions. That’s why you should focus on optimization of key aspects of your landing pages such as user experience and on-page SEO (keywords and internal links).

Landing Page SEO

If your website already receives some traffic, sit and analyze what pages of your website perform better than others. As soon as you find the pages visitors are mostly engaged with, dive deep into their on-page SEO

Help tools: Google Analytics → Search Engine Optimization → Landing Pages + Google Search Console → Search Traffic → Search Analytics.

Bonus tool: Web CEO Google Search Analytics provides you not only with analytics on your top pages found in search, but also allows you to mark the best performing pages as landing pages in order to further work with them in the Landing Page SEO tool of WebCEO.

User Experience Optimization

The interface and design of a landing page plays a critical role in the customer acquisition process. In order to find what 20% of page areas cause 80% of user actions, conduct the visualization and optimization of a page heatmap with the help of website heatmap tools.

Help tools: Crazy Egg.

Internal Links Analysis and Optimization

The Internal Links Structure of a website is critical both in the context of user experience, search visibility and SEO. An in-depth and user-friendly internal links map can significantly improve your landing page click-through rate, help search enginesindex and understand deeper pages of your site quickly, and thus increase your visibility and rankings.

Try to improve your website navigation in order to tie visitors to each of your landing pages and help them take actions on your site with the help of a robust internal links optimization.

Help tools: the WebCEO Internal Links Optimization tool

20% of Your Inbound Links Pass 80% of Link Juice

The quality of content is responsible for the quality of your backlinks. The better the content, the better the backlinks. But you should be aware of the fact that only 20% of your backlink profile passes the 80% of link juice that really affects your SEO. Of great importance is the type of backlink, its placement, anchor text and the source it’s put on.

In order to gain more benefits from the backlinks you build, you should first examine which of your external links bring the most value to your website. Then you can try to earn more of this type of backlinks. Analyze your competitors’ backlink profile for further link prospecting

Help tools: the WebCEO Backlink Quality Check tool + the WebCEO Competitor Backlink Spy tool + Ahrefs

Sign Up for the WebCEO all-in-one SEO platform in order to minify your SEO inputs.

If you have applied the 20/80 system to your SEO and marketing strategy and are ready to share your experience, feel free to share it using the comments section.

The post Pareto Rule in SEO: What 20% of Your Inputs Bring 80% of Outputs appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Are you the one who wants to change or the one who wants to fall behind?

It’s time for our quarterly SEO news recap.  WebCEO has carefully picked for you the hottest news and updates that happened in the fields of SEO, PPC and Social Media.

What’s new in SEO and PPC?

Starting from January 23rd, Google made it easier for advertisers to compare the cost of Google Adwords data with other data in Google Analytics with the help of automatic currency conversion.

The Bing Ads platform continues to improve its competitive ad analysis. On February 18^th, Bing Ads released the Competitive Bid Opportunities feature in its ad optimization toolbox for U.S. advertisers. With this new feature, Bing marketers will be able to see the number of keywords that their ads could show up more often for in comparison to their competitors’ ads.

On March 11^th, Google announced a new report in the Google Webmaster tools called the Blocked Resources report. Now, every webmaster can see the list of CSS, image or JavaScript resources that are not accessible for GoogleBots because of being blocked. Besides, now, when you use the Google Fetch and Render tool you are provided two side-by-side screenshots of how your page is seen by Googlebots and by a typical user.

At the beginning of March an SEO rumor started to run that Google is working on a new ranking algorithm based on a site’s truth score instead of its popularity score. This means that in the near future websites that host contradictory or “false” information will be ranked lower than those that have established trust with Google.

On March 16^th, Google announced the release of a new ranking adjustment aimed at better handling of doorway pages in search results. It is considered to be a red flag for website owners and webmasters to build multiple doorway pages in order to maximize their search footprint.

During the last three months, Google has been strongly advising webmasters and website owners to make their sites mobile-friendly for the sake of a better mobile user experience. They have pointed to an upcoming Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm release. To make mobile optimization easier for us, the Google team keeps on developing its Mobile-Friendly Testing tool, Mobile Usability report and step-by-step webmaster guides. Before it is too late, jump to the WebCEO Mobile Optimization reporting tool and fix all the mobile usability issues you have in order to get your website ready for a mobile-friendly ranking boost.

What’s new in Social Media?  

Facebook is considered to be the most powerful social media platform for communication and business promotion. It continues to walk the talk by adding new features and tools for a better user experience from both personal and business page owners.

One of the latest updates (January 7th) on Facebook, for marketers and business owners, was the incorporation of additional call-to-action buttons at the bottom of business page covers. At the moment, 7 call-to-action options are available:

On January 27^th, Facebook updated its advertising platform by adding conversion lift. Conversion lift works as a kind of A/B testing and helps to measure the impact of Facebook ads on the bottom line of your business. Then, in the middle of February, the ad relevance score and product ads were added to the Facebook Ads.

On March 13^th Facebook informed us about acquiring the top shopping search engine, the Find. Facebook explained that the goal of the acquisition was to improve the quality and relevance of ads for users.

On March 17^th it was announced that those who use Facebook for communication or freelance soon will be able to send or receive money via Facebook Messenger in an easy, no-cost and secure way. Speculations are that the payment system within Facebook won’t become popular among users because of a potential lack of trust of users in the social network. Learn about how marketers can use some of the newly added features on Facebook.

On March 2, Google declared the official death of Google+, sorry, its reorganization (LOL).  Google+ will never be the same again. It will roll into Google’s Photos and Streams product.

Another major event in the social media world is the announcement about a Google-Twitter partnership. On March 20^th, it became known that Google and Twitter reached an agreement about providing the search engine giant with access to Twitter’s stream, Firehose. This means that Google will now be able to index the huge number of tweets (9,000) per second in order to provide users with timely global information. In the past (2009), Google and Twitter used to work together and started the so-called Real-Time search on Google, but the partnership ended in 2011. Let’s see how long their partnership will last this time.

These are the biggest updates of the first quarter of 2015. Remeber, the best way to improve your marketing strategy is to keep up with the changes digital marketing brings.

The post Digital Marketing News Recap: What Is New in SEO, PPC and Social Media? appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

When you blog regularly, you see blog post ideas everywhere. Your morning coffee or a walk may inspire you; you can read some interesting facts or notice your ranking changes so you can suggest that a new Google update happened. Finally you can read an interesting post and share your thoughts on the topic.

However, the times of writing content for the sake of content have gone. Now the content should engage, should attract attention and earn natural links. Web Analytics is here to help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Your Google Analytics

The most evident way to know what topics your audience searches for is to check what site’s pages get the most visitors.

Log into your Google Analytics account and go to the ‘Behavior’ group of reports. Expand the ‘Site Content’ reports and click on ‘Landing Pages’. Here you will get the list of the pages your visitors landed on. Check the most visited ones and you will know the list of topics your audience wants to read about.

From the WebCEO Blog Google Analytics, I figured that you are now most interested in the various ways of spying on your competition. Please, move to the next piece of advice.

Your Competitors Activity

If you read our blog on a regular basis, you will know how useful your competitors can be, if you know how to retrieve information about them.

1. When you read your competitors’ blogs (if you still do not, start immediately!), write down what posts and articles provoke discussions or get the most comments.
2. Check what types of content your competitors share on social media sites. Pay attention to the posts that get the most likes, shares and comments.

Your Social Media Profiles

I recommend using the new  ‘Social Citations‘ report you can find in the WebCEO Social Metrics tool. This report (available within all WebCEO Plans without limitations) will help you to find out what pages of your site are in posts that get the most Facebook shares, likes and comments, Google +1’s and tweets.

The pages with the most social engagement are the pages your audience love the most. Consider creating more content on the most shareable topics to attract new readers and make your current readers more loyal.

Bonus tip: Funny and outstanding images or other visual content make your posts more sharable and attractive (just be sure to include links to your domain in the posts). Our next blog post will be devoted to the places where you can find data for infographics, charts and other visual content. Do not miss this!

The post 3 Best Sources to Mine Topics Your Audience Will Love appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.

Measure → Analyze → Improve

Google is getting more and more critical to your website optimization work, as all of us have noticed. Yeah, I’m talking about all these Google-noodle updates bringing your websites up and down in the rankings. Does this remind you of anything?

Google is, at least, very attentive to its users and now provides everyone with powerful free tools and apps that make optimization work easier and more effective. The most powerful app that Google ever created is still Google Analytics. There are a lot of reports in this app that should be reckoned with.

If you are obsessed with finding answers to the following questions then Google Analytics is the source you need.

• Who is my targeted audience?
• Where do I look for my targeted users?
• Is my website user-friendly enough?
• How well does my content perform?
• What are the channels my audience finds me through?

Google Analytics reports are split on several blocks of  metrics: Audience, Traffic (Acquisition), Content (Behavior), Social.

Audience analytics

If you want to rank high and get high visibility for your content on any type of device and in any area, then make your website competitive in mobile search results and conduct local SEO  to make your site appear in local results and on local listing sites.

The most essential reports in this block are:

1. Geo metrics

– Language

– Location

These metrics are useful since they give a vision of what language your users speak and their location. This kind of information helps you decide whether you should conduct multi-language website optimization (creating subfolders of the site to target multi-lingual people). When you are aware of the location of your visitors, you can then also work on creating local versions of a website and make use of local search optimization to get more traffic and increase your rankings.

2. Behavior metrics

– New vs Returning

– Engagement

These types of reports show you the correlation of new visitors to those who have already visited your site before. Make an analysis of the bounce rate.

3. Mobile metrics

– Overview (what type of device is used)

– Detailed device information

This kind of report is a must-to-track.  In the era of mobilization it’s important to analyze how well your website is displayed on different types of devices, including tablets and smart phones. Is your website mobile-compatible and well optimized for mobile? If your website is not yet responsive, you had better make this happen quickly.

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Traffic (Acquisition) analytics

4. Channels/All traffic metrics

This report shows a site’s overall traffic sources. Here you can see organic search traffic from different search engines, paid search, direct search and website referrals.

5. Referrals metrics

This report evaluates the websites that send visitors to your site from their website. Clicking on each of the website URLs, you will be directed to the links of the pages your website is linked from. Take a look at the sessions, bounce rate, pages/session and average session duration. Are there backlinks that have a high bounce rate, a low number of pages/session and low average session duration? Do you want to get a closer look at these backlinks and find out what is the issue with them? Web CEO will help you to claim a deeper insight of your backlink profile, including analysis of a linking domain and linking page analysis, as well as a detailed overview of anchor texts. As a result, Web CEO will help you to detect low quality links within the Toxic Links report.

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6. Keywords metrics

– Organic

– Paid

Here you can see the keywords that were used by users to find your website, whether these are organic or paid search keywords.  This type of data is not fully accurate because Google now has a “not provided” policy for those who search while being signed in to Google. Analyze the effectiveness of your tracked keywords and complement your analysis with a Queries report provided within the Search Engine Optimization section of Google Analytics. This type of keyword analysis shows the popularity of this or that search term or long-tail phrase used by users to reach your site.

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Find out what of your pages perform best of all in the Landing Pages report.

Content (Behavior) analytics

7. Behavior flow metrics

This report is shown in the form of traffic map interaction by visitors.

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8. Site Content metrics

Here you can find a lot of useful data metrics that will help you to measure the success of your content. Take a deeper view of:

– All pages report

– Landing pages

This report shows your website’s landing pages’ performance metrics (i.e.: total number of sessions and new sessions, bounce rate, average pages depth/session, conversion data per goal etc.)

– Exit pages

This is a valuable piece of data showing the number of exits taken by users from particular pages of your website. A high number of exits may indicate poor on-site optimization. Check if you have some on-page issues and make a deep SEO audit of those pages that have a high exit rate with the help of the Web CEO Content Optimization tool.

9. Site Search metrics

This block of reports is a must-track set of metrics that every Ecommerce website should take into account. Do you have an idea of how well your website internal search converts into sales? Those website owners who have an internal search option (search box) on their site can draw a lot of useful information that would help you to customize your website experience, product pages information and improve your inbound marketing efforts.

Social analytics

Here you can measure the success of the social media activity that includes mentions of your website (content) and monitor the interaction of users with your content both on site and off site.

Here you can find quite a solid block of reports.

10. Social Overview metrics

Take an overall view of all the networks your content is shared on and all the pages that were shared on social platforms.

11. Network referrals

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12. Data Hub Activity

This is a social mentions report that reveals the conversations your brand (website URL) has had via mentions. Here you will see only those social media platforms that are integrated with Google Analytics (Social Hub Activity partners).

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13. Landing Pages

Click on each of your landing pages to see what social channels it was shared on.

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14. Conversions

Here you can see the number of conversions that were completed via this or that social platform

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One of the most powerful features you should use to track positive and negative fluctuations is the date range filter that is easy to set in any of the Google Analytics reports. You can compare today’s data to a previous date of performance tracking

You can also make annotations where some drastic changes took place (e.g. some promotional, PPC or Social media campaign etc.)

The most important dimensions within each of the reports are:

Sessions/New sessions/New users 

These data rows show the overall number of visits to your site and the unique visitor flow for a particular period of time.

Bounce rate

This data row can upset you, but on the other hand, a high bounce rate can make you stronger and your site better, if you interpret it in the right way. Look at your bounce rate together with your traffic trend changes. The ideal picture is when your website traffic increases while the bounce rate decreases. But when the bounce rate increases together with traffic, it’s a kind of an alert: the new people coming to your site aren’t finding what they intended to find (and maybe your new visitors were not targeted properly). To lower the bounce rate, make sure your Meta description matches the content on the site. Pay attention to your landing page optimization (page navigation, anchor text usage, fit-for-purpose CTAs), as these are the entry pages of your website.

Pages/Session and Avr.Session Duration

This data row shows how deep and how long users have interacted with your site during one session. Theses insights are useful to get an idea of your website navigation and internal links structure. If users visit as a rule only one page or two pages, then maybe your website has a poor navigation structure.

Conversions

This row provides the conversion rate and the direct number of conversions per campaigns you have set (registration, sales etc.)

Another powerful feature of GA is Reports Customization

Use custom reports to measure and analyze only those metrics that are valuable for your website performance tracking. This feature is useful for huge Ecommerce websites or non-commercial websites that pursue some specific goals.

We suggest you take a deep and comprehensive analytical approach to your website optimization success. Make use of the Web CEO Online SEO tools to monitor your rankings constantly and do a once-per-quarter in-depth backlink analysis with toxic links detection.

The post Top 14 Google Analytics Metrics to Feel the Pulse of Your Website Success appeared first on SEO tools & Online Marketing Tips Blog | WebCEO.