Larry Kim says, “Do you care about your organic click-through rate (CTR)? You should. Why? For one thing, pages that have a higher-than-expected CTR tend to rank higher in search results. Every three-percent increase in CTR beyond the expected for a given organic position will improve your organic rankings, on average, by one position. For another, pages with higher CTRs tend to have higher conversion rates. If you get people excited enough to click on your search listing, that excitement tends to carry through all the way to a conversion, whether it’s capturing a ead or making a sale. Do... [...]

Larry Kim says, “Rand Fishkin posted another brilliant Whiteboard Friday last week on the topic of optimizing for RankBrain. In it, he explained how RankBrain helps Google select and prioritize signals it uses for ranking. One of the most important signals Google takes into account is user engagement. As Rand noted, engagement is a “very, very important signal.” Engagement is a huge but often ignored opportunity. That’s why I’ve been a bit obsessed with improving engagement metrics. My theory has been that RankBrain *and/or other machine learning elements within Google’s... [...]

Ronell Smith says, “Here I am, seated in a Manhattan, New York restaurant, staring at corned beef hash that looks and tastes like what I imagine dog food to look and taste like. I’m pissed for two reasons: It cost nearly $25 and was entirely inedible I should have known better given the visuals depicted after doing a Google image search to find the dish, which was offered at a nearby restaurant In retrospect, I should have checked A and B on my phone before ordering the $25 plate of Alpo. And though I didn’t do that, other would-be customers will, which means the business owner... [...]

Jim Yu says, “As mobile usage increases and companies develop mobile-friendly sites to ensure the optimal user experience, developers are working hard to make the mobile web as efficient and useful as possible. Last year, developers at Google created Progressive Web Apps, an interactive experience that has features of both a website and a mobile app. During a session at Google I/O 2016, Alex Russell, a software engineer at Google leading the project, stated that Progressive Web Apps “blur the line between Web content and apps, but they keep the strengths of the Web.” Essentially, Progressive... [...]

Dawn Papandrea says, “Most marketers know that having a documented content marketing strategy and understanding one’s audience are vital for success. Where you may fall short, however, is by under-investing in media research — the type of research that will help uncover how you will distribute and promote your content before you create it. That comes from Chad Pollitt, vice president of audience and co-founder of Relevance, and author of The Content Promotion Manifesto. “Research will not only tell you who you’re writing for, it will also uncover how you’re going to promote your... [...]

Tommy Wyher says, “Having a successful website that converts the majority of its visitors requires SEO. In fact, one study shows that the majority of clicks (67.5 percent) go to the first five results on a SERP. These happen to be the sites that are well optimized. But SEO can prove difficult if being done manually”. How to Utilize Different Tools to Optimize Your Site for SEO Business.com  [...]

Will Critchlow says, “We want to be able to answer questions about why one page outranks another. “What would we have to do to outrank that site?” “Why is our competitor outranking us on this search?” These kind of questions — from bosses, from clients, and from prospective clients — are a standard part of day-to-day life for many SEOs. I know I’ve been asked both in the last week. It’s relatively easy to figure out ways that a page can be made more relevant and compelling for a given search, and it’s straightforward to think of ways the page or site could be more authoritative... [...]

Marcus Miller says, “So it happened. Google finally released Penguin 4.0 — the last Penguin update of its kind, as it now processes in real time as a part of Google’s core ranking algorithm. In this post, I want to take a look at what Penguin is, how this update affects the SEO community as a whole and how the brave and the bold can continue to safely improve their organic visibility without fear of repercussions from punitive search engine algorithms. The announcement After a few weeks of turbulence in the SERPs, the announcement that many had predicted was finally made. The Penguin 4.0 announcement had... [...]

MOZ team says, “If you’ve been stressing over how to optimize your SEO for RankBrain, there’s good news: you can’t. Not in the traditional sense of the word, at least. Unlike the classic algorithms we’re used to, RankBrain is a query interpretation model. It’s a horse of a different color, and as such, it requires a different way of thinking than we’ve had to use in the past. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand tackles the question of what RankBrain actually is and whether SEOs should (or can) optimize for it”. Optimizing for RankBrain…... [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “SEO has come a long way from being all about on-page optimization, building backlinks and creating “relevant” content. When I read popular search engine blogs, I notice a definite trend: SEO is moving toward a more inclusive strategy that goes beyond new ways of link building or content marketing. A huge part of present-day SEO practices is brand building and influencing search queries themselves, as opposed to starting with a truckload of keywords and creating content around them. Therefore, while links, keywords, content and site optimization remain the building... [...]