Personal assistant search optimization is the phrase coined to the new art of optimizing and marketing for the new crop of voice activated digital personal assistants. Most analysts firmly believe that this is the future of SEO. This is not too surprising, if you think about where assistants like Goole Home and Siri get their information. SEO will eventually morph into optimization for voice based personal assistants. Here is what you need to know about PASO: Portability Although these personal assistants still need a lot of work, their primary draw is portability. The assistants exist on smartphones, tablets, and other computing device you carry around. Once the platform matures, typing in queries will seem like an antiquated notion. Personal Another reason that personal assistants are the future of SEO is the tailoring of results to the user. The portability provides context to the queries. Add some AI and machine learning and you have contextual responses tailored to the individual. For example a query for “where to have lunch” would return a list of restaurants in the area, ordered by price and rating with your favourite cuisine first. Results The results returned from a personal assistant are limited. Unlike the million or so results you get from Google, a typical assistant returns one to four at maximum. This has resulted in much higher click through rates than normal search. As a result, being one of the top four results is more important than...
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We have all known for some time now that links, the anchor text of those links and the number of links always played a key part in determining ranking on Google. These are part of a 200 signal ranking recipe that places varying levels of importance on each signal. We have never known how important one signal is over the other, let alone what the most important one is, until now. When a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google (Andrey Lipattsev) was asked what the top two ranking factors were, he answered: “I can tell you what they are. It is content. And it’s links pointing to your site.”. We now know that the content on your site is the most important factor followed by the links to you site. In addition to the above we also got more information on whether click through rates affect ranking: Google engineer Paul Haahr revealed some of these new signals. Specifically, Paul revealed that: 1. Google runs A/B tests with the SERPs. So if you drop or go up 1-2 spots, it may have nothing to do with links, on-page SEO, etc. It could be a test. 2. Google definitely uses click-through-rate (CTR) data as a ranking signal. This lays to rest a long held belief that Google does consider end user behavior when ranking. With this news, there will be even more focus on bounce rate, as any visitor that clicks through to your page and then clicks back could be detrimental to your ranking. It is quite possible that with these ranking signal confirmations, Google is clearly telling webmasters that better content will result in better...
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AMP is Google’s new standard for lightweight content distribution. Google, indexes sites with AMP content and serves the pages (and ads) from its servers. In some cases, Google even preloads the pages with AMP from its search results. AMP pages look basic, have no styling and use standard fonts, but make content access much faster. Here is a guide on getting AMP up and running on your WordPress installation: Plugin Getting AMP compatible pages on your WordPress installation is as simple as installing and activating the plugin from Automattic. Once you do, all posts will be AMP compatible. You can test the pages by adding /amp/ to the end of the URL of any post. Getting pages to work with AMP requires a separate plugin to install. Analytics The next step is to add your AMP pages to your analytics profile. Login to your Google Analytics dashboard and get the tracking ID from the “tracking info” section under account properties. The should begin with UA. Enter this tracking ID in the AMP plugin under analytics. Test Now that you have an operational AMP page setup, we need to test and make sure everything works correctly. The first tool you can use Is the Google Amp Rest. Go to the tool and enter your URL and hit “run test.” Another option is to use the developer tools in Chrome. Open the tools and go to the “Console” tab. Here you will if there are any validation errors for you AMP...
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One of the highlights of a new study on video ranking on both Google and YouTube was the difference between how each ranks the same videos. When comparing the same search query, the ranking between Google and YouTube was different 56% of the time. The outcome of the study is quite surprising, given that the search elements of both companies are run by the same backend. Even when the search result has only one video on Google, a different video was shown first on YouTube at least half of the time. The current theory is that the results illustrate the difference between the intentions of both services. Google exists to serve the most relevant information for the search query. The search engine’s algorithm most likely places emphasis on relevance above all else. YouTube, on the other hand, exists to entertain visitors. The end-goal is to keep a visitor on-site for as long as possible. The longer the visitor stays, the more ads they will see. These two vastly different goals probably explain the larger difference between the search results. It is also important for any organizations looking to expand their presence in video. Ranking in Google will require prioritizing relevance while ranking on YouTube will mean creating videos that are relevant and entertaining. A good video campaign should produce content for both, taking advantage of the very different audiences that visit each...
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Good organic backlinks are very difficult to get. Especially if your website is new to the space. Building up a backlink profile using social media takes time and requires a high level of constant engagement with your audience. Something that might not be suitable for all markets. There is however a way to get links, and that is by link prospecting. This involves some research and outreach. Here are some potential sources of links: Partnership pages: Relevant partner sites are likely to be willing to link to your site or relevant page in request. In some cases you won’t even need to link back. Industry resource lists: These are great for relevant links that both server and SEO purpose and also an online marketing resource for anyone looking for your services. Blog communities: Guest authors or commenters may have their own sites worth promoting to, although this should be limited in order to avoid getting penalized by Google for excessive article marketing. Backlink analysis: Sites that link to your competition can also be sources of links to you. In addition getting links that they have narrows any advantage they will get in the search rankings. Associations: View membership lists for potential prospects. Look at becoming part of these groups and you get linked back from their main site pages. Depending on the industry there are lots of groups. Social communities: Search social communities or forums for other potential link...
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