Industry Updates PPC

Google Expands Same Meaning Close Variants – So, What Does That Mean?

Jane Brady

Just when you thought Google couldn’t make things more confusing – they done did it again. 

Google has just announced the launch of “same meaning” close variants to broad match modifier and phrase match keywords, in addition to the exact match close variants that rolled out late last year. …

The post Google Expands Same Meaning Close Variants – So, What Does That Mean? appeared first on Seer Interactive.

Google+ Local

Why Brands Should Be Worried About the Local Scroll Pack

Mike Blumenthal

On mobile, local brand searches on Google have long been mundane affairs largely focused on the brand that the consumer searched for. They delivered up nearby locations, a logo, an about tab and typically highlighted pages from the brand site. It was a straight up recovery search by a customer that your brand owned.  Even … Continue reading Why Brands Should Be Worried About the Local Scroll Pack →

Amazon ads Google google keyword planner Keyword Research Negative Keywords PPC ppc management Search Engine Watch search intent SEO SEO tips serp Uncategorized

Effective Amazon PPC Management: How to get the most of a limited budget

Francis Ejiofor

According to research, Amazon ranked first with average monthly users of about 197 million. Tools, tips, and key details for Amazon PPC management.

The post Effective Amazon PPC Management: How to get the most of a limited budget appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Bing SEO Search Engine Roundtable Uncategorized

Bing: Never Seen A Case Where Negative SEO Was Attributed To Ranking Decline

barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

Bing’s spam fighter, Frédéric Dubut, said on Twitter “I haven’t seen any case where a change in rankings would be provably attributable to negative SEO only.” We know Google has mostly said that negative SEO doesn’t really work with Google, although they have been a bit wishy-washy on that. Here is Bing kind of saying the same thing.

Programming for SEOs – Whiteboard Friday

PaulShapiro

Posted by PaulShapiro

Maybe it’s crossed your mind once or twice before: You know, this would be a lot easier if I just knew how to program. But it’s an intimidating subject, especially if you’re not sure of your technical expertise, and there’s so much to learn that it’s hard to know where to start.

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, master technical SEO Paul Shapiro shares why it’s so important for SEOs and marketers to take the programming plunge, explains key concepts, and helps you determine the best course of action for you to get started when it comes to leveling up your technical prowess.

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

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Paul Shapiro here, Head of SEO at Catalyst. I’m here to talk to you today about programming for SEOs and marketers. 

Why should you learn how to program? 

I think there are really several key benefits to learning how to program.

1. Improved developer relations

First, being developer relations. As SEOs, we’re constantly working with developers to implement our recommendations. Understanding why they make certain decisions, how they think is really pivotal to working with them better. 

2. Become a better technical SEO

Understanding how to program makes you a better technical SEO. Just understanding the construction of websites and how they operate really helps you do a lot better with your SEO. Automation. As marketers, as SEOs, we all sometimes do very repetitive tasks, and being able to cut down on the time spent to do those repetitive tasks is really key.

It really opens up the opportunity to do things and focus more on strategy and the other things that you can’t leave to automation. 

3. Leveling up your data analysis

If anyone is familiar with this number, 1,048,576, that’s the row limit in Microsoft Excel.

As marketers, we’re swimming in a sea of data. It’s very easy to work with a dataset that well exceeds that. I often work with hundreds of millions of rows of data. Utilizing a program language like R or Python is a really good way of handling that amount of data. 

4. Literacy

It’s becoming really, really more common in the States to be taught how to program in elementary school. So by learning how to program, you’re on equal footing with the children of the world, people that may enter the workplace in the future. So you don’t even have to learn how to program in depth. But I do recommend you at least understand the concepts and logic behind programming.

Which language should you learn? 

Oftentimes I hear people say, “I did a little bit of programming in college or high school. I learned so-and-so language.” To them, I say, “You’re in great shape. Stick to whichever programming language you’re comfortable with.” You don’t have to start from square one.



A lot of the programming languages share a common logic. But if you are starting from square one and you need to just decide on which programming language I’m going to learn today, I have two recommendations. 

Python

If you’re going down the path of data analysis, your primary reason for learning how to program is to work with data and do more sophisticated things with data, then I think there’s no better language than Python.

Python is very well-equipped. There are lots of libraries designed specifically for data analysis, and it’s a very much more robust language than something like R. 

JavaScript

If you’re going down the path of web development, you want to be a better technical SEO, you want to understand how websites are constructed, JavaScript is an incredibly robust programming language that has boomed in usage on websites over the last few years.

It’s also very capable of doing backend web development with a language like Node.js, which is just a variant of JavaScript. The only issue with learning JavaScript is I would say that you need to learn CSS and HTML first. So there’s a little bit more of a learning curve than say learning Python.

Example concepts

Now I want to go through some basic programming concepts so that you walk away feeling a little bit more comfortable with the idea of learning a program so it’s a little less intimidating. 

Variables

The first concept I want to go through is the idea of a variable. These are just like algebra, like basic algebra.

So you can assign x is equal to 2 or any other value, and then we can use that later. So x plus 2 is 4. Variables can have any name. We’re using Python syntax as an example. So the first variable we have is a variable called “animal,”and it’s equal to the value “cat.”

This is a string, which is just a bit of text that we assign to it. Now variables could be of many different types. So the variable “number” can be equal to 2, an integer. Or the variable “colors” can be a list, which is a type of Python array. Arrays are just variables with multiple values. So in this instance, colors is equal to red, blue, and green, and it’s just denoted with the brackets.

Conditions

The next concept I’d like you to understand is conditions, so if/else being a basic condition that we would work with. It reads a lot like English. So if the variable “animal” is equal to “cat,” which it is, print out the text “MEOW!” If “animal” wasn’t equal to “cat,” say it was equal to “dog,”then we would print out “Woof!”

Then the output, since “animal” is equal to “cat,” is “MEOW!” Loops. There are many different types of loops. I’m going to use a for loop as an example. Again, it reads a little bit like the English language. So we have a variable “colors,”which we know is equal to red, blue, and green.

So we want to say for every value in that variable “colors,”print out that value. So for x in colors, print (x). It will go through each one, one at a time and print it out. So the first value is red. It gets printed out. The second value is blue. It gets printed out.

Functions

The last value is green. It gets printed out, and the code ceases. Now the last concept I want to explain is functions. Functions very simply are reusable snippets of code. So we have a very basic function here, which we define as moz, so the function moz, which has the value one line of code print (“WBF!”) for Whiteboard Friday.

If we execute the function moz, it will print out the value “WBF!” So all these concepts in themselves aren’t very useful. But when you start really programming and you start stringing them all together, you’re doing all sorts of sophisticated things, and it becomes very, very powerful building blocks to doing much greater things.

Learning resources

So now that you understand programming and why you should do it, I want to leave you with some resources to actually learn. 

Lynda/LinkedIn Learning

The first resource I recommend is Lynda. It got rebranded LinkedIn Learning. The reason why I recommend Lynda is because many, many public libraries offer you a subscription for free.

There’s a ton of different programming classes in there. You can certainly get a Python class. Many levels of advanced Python and JavaScript. You can also learn other things, which I think is pretty cool. So I definitely recommend Lynda/LinkedIn Learning. 

Codeacademy

When I was learning to program originally, I actually went to the library and had to take out books and try to do it myself. Nowadays, there are tons of other resources, like Codecademy.

Codecademy is fantastic. It’s completely interactive. So it will go through all the various concepts, and one by one it will ask you to sort of perform them in a very logical manner so you learn it in an optimal way. I definitely recommend Codecademy. They have both a JavaScript and a Python module. The MOOCs online.

Coursera

If you are the person that needs a more traditional classroom environment, you can learn for free, replicating that classroom environment at home. These are websites like Coursera. A lot of the major universities offer them. There are courses there. W3Schools, which is very valuable for any sort of web development, they have very good, very basic tutorials on JavaScript and CSS and HTML and anything you might need to learn web development.

Python for Data Analysis

It also acts as an invaluable reference guide. If you’re interested in learning Python for data analysis, there’s one book that I highly recommend. It is “Python for Data Analysis” by McKinney. That’s an O’Reilly book. McKinney was the creator of Pandas, which is a very well used Python library for data analysis. So hopefully you’ve walked away a little less scared of programming and are excited to learn.

Bonus: FreeCodeCamp

Another great free resource for learning web development and JavaScript is FreeCodeCamp.org. 

Leave your comments in the section below. Thanks for watching. Till next time.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Google Webmaster Blog Uncategorized

What webmasters should know about Google’s “core updates”

Google Webmaster Central
Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our search results. Most aren’t noticeable but help us incrementally continue to improve.

Sometimes, an update may be more noticeable. We aim to confirm such updates when we feel there is actionable information that webmasters, content producers or others might take in relation to them. For example, when our “Speed Update” happened, we gave months of advanced notice and advice.

Several times a year, we make significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems. We refer to these as “core updates.” They’re designed to ensure that overall, we’re delivering on our mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers. These core updates may also affect Google Discover.

We confirm broad core updates because they typically produce some widely notable effects. Some sites may note drops or gains during them. We know those with sites that experience drops will be looking for a fix, and we want to ensure they don’t try to fix the wrong things. Moreover, there might not be anything to fix at all.

Core updates & reassessing content

There’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to a manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines. In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall. These changes may cause some pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better.

One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before.

The list will change, and films previously higher on the list that move down aren’t bad. There are simply more deserving films that are coming before them.

Focus on content

As explained, pages that drop after a core update don’t have anything wrong to fix. This said, we understand those who do less well after a core update change may still feel they need to do something. We suggest focusing on ensuring you’re offering the best content you can. That’s what our algorithms seek to reward.

A starting point is to revisit the advice we’ve offered in the past on how to self-assess if you believe you’re offering quality content. We’ve updated that advice with a fresh set of questions to ask yourself about your content:

Content and quality questions
  • Does the content provide original information, reporting, research or analysis?
  • Does the content provide a substantial, complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
  • Does the content provide insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
  • If the content draws on other sources, does it avoid simply copying or rewriting those sources and instead provide substantial additional value and originality?
  • Does the headline and/or page title provide a descriptive, helpful summary of the content?
  • Does the headline and/or page title avoid being exaggerating or shocking in nature?
  • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
  • Would you expect to see this content in or referenced by a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
Expertise questions
  • Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it, such as through links to an author page or a site’s About page?
  • If you researched the site producing the content, would you come away with an impression that it is well-trusted or widely-recognized as an authority on its topic?
  • Is this content written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?
  • Is the content free from easily-verified factual errors?
  • Would you feel comfortable trusting this content for issues relating to your money or your life?
Presentation and production questions
  • Is the content free from spelling or stylistic issues?
  • Was the content produced well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
  • Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
  • Does the content have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
  • Does content display well for mobile devices when viewed on them?
Comparative questions
  • Does the content provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
  • Does the content seem to be serving the genuine interests of visitors to the site or does it seem to exist solely by someone attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?

Beyond asking yourself these questions, consider having others you trust but who are unaffiliated with your site provide an honest assessment.

Also consider an audit of the drops you may have experienced. What pages were most impacted and for what types of searches? Look closely at these to understand how they’re assessed against some of the questions above.

Get to know the quality rater guidelines & E-A-T 

Another resource for advice on great content is to review our search quality rater guidelines. Raters are people who give us insights on if our algorithms seem to be providing good results, a way to help confirm our changes are working well.

It’s important to understand that search raters have no control over how pages rank. Rater data is not used directly in our ranking algorithms. Rather, we use them as a restaurant might get feedback cards from diners. The feedback helps us know if our systems seem to be working.

If you understand how raters learn to assess good content, that might help you improve your own content. In turn, you might perhaps do better in Search.

In particular, raters are trained to understand if content has what we call strong E-A-T. That stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Reading the guidelines may help you assess how your content is doing from an E-A-T perspective and improvements to consider.

Here are a few articles written by third-parties who share how they’ve used the guidelines as advice to follow:

Recovering and more advice

A common question after a core update is how long does it take for a site to recover, if it improves content?

Broad core updates tend to happen every few months. Content that was impacted by one might not recover – assuming improvements have been made – until the next broad core update is released.

However, we’re constantly making updates to our search algorithms, including smaller core updates. We don’t announce all of these because they’re generally not widely noticeable. Still, when released, they can cause content to recover if improvements warrant.

Do keep in mind that improvements made by site owners aren’t a guarantee of recovery, nor do pages have any static or guaranteed position in our search results. If there’s more deserving content, that will continue to rank well with our systems.

It’s also important to understand that search engines like Google do not understand content the way human beings do. Instead, we look for signals we can gather about content and understand how those correlate with how humans assess relevance. How pages link to each other is one well-known signal that we use. But we use many more, which we don’t disclose to help protect the integrity of our results.

We test any broad core update before it goes live, including gathering feedback from the aforementioned search quality raters, to see if how we’re weighing signals seems beneficial.

Of course, no improvement we make to Search is perfect. This is why we keep updating. We take in more feedback, do more testing and keep working to improve our ranking systems. This work on our end can mean that content might recover in the future, even if a content owner makes no changes. In such situations, our continued improvements might assess such content more favorably.

We hope the guidance offered here is helpful. You’ll also find plenty of advice about good content with the resources we offer from Google Webmasters, including tools, help pages and our forums. Learn more here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search