On Site Optimization Archives - SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines https://seo-hacker.com/category/seo-school/on-site-optimization/ SEO Hacker is an SEO Agency and SEO Blog in the Philippines. Let us take your website to the top of the search results with our holistic white-hat strategies. Inquire today! Tue, 08 Aug 2023 09:01:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://seo-hacker.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/cropped-favicon-32x32.png On Site Optimization Archives - SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines https://seo-hacker.com/category/seo-school/on-site-optimization/ 32 32 Elevate Your SEO with AI-Generated and Optimized Images https://seo-hacker.com/image-ai-seo-optimization/ https://seo-hacker.com/image-ai-seo-optimization/#respond Thu, 06 Jul 2023 09:30:19 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=207694 In today’s digital world, visuals are everything. Captivating images have the potential to convey messages, create a powerful appeal to your audience, and of course, engage users. In SEO, they have an additional benefit: helping you stake a spot in Google’s image results. But finding the right images to attach to your content is time-consuming–but […]

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How To Optimize AI-generated Images For Your SEO

In today’s digital world, visuals are everything. Captivating images have the potential to convey messages, create a powerful appeal to your audience, and of course, engage users. In SEO, they have an additional benefit: helping you stake a spot in Google’s image results.

But finding the right images to attach to your content is time-consuming–but that’s where the potential of AI (Artificial Intelligence) comes to play.

By leveraging the power of AI, you can effortlessly craft the perfect images, and take your optimization efforts to the next level. Let’s go over the best ways to enrich your images and unlock new possibilities for your SEO.

Understanding AI-generated Images’ Role in SEO

AI images are those created by using AI tools, which analyze massive amounts of content, datasets, and prompts to generate them. It can also understand and extract features from existing images, can recognize objects, and even understand the context or thought of the image itself.

But why is all of this important? Well, it’s because images are becoming just as important as your content when it comes to SEO. Not only are they major visible parts of your website, but they also influence the rankings and visibility of your content in Google.

And similar to content, AI tools make the job of image SEO much easier–and much cheaper in the long run. They allow us to generate relevant images that align with our content with a few prompts and clicks. Other capabilities of these tools also help you optimize your images, with minimal effort.
How to Use AI for Image SEO

Using AI for image SEO can be a game-changer. But how can you use it? Let’s look at how you can use these tools to create or enhance images for your websites:

Create Images with AI Technology

AI algorithms have the remarkable capability to generate images from scratch, incorporating selected data or parameters. And, they can make these images as high-quality and realistic as actual photos can be.

They can even create images of things that don’t technically exist. This is possible because AI models are trained on millions and millions of images, and use this as a basis to generate entirely new and realistic-looking ones. This opens up endless creative possibilities in your content, and enables you to create highly-customized and optimized pictures of various subjects, including objects, people, and scenarios–basically for anything your website needs.  

You won’t have to spend time and money setting up a photo shoot for your next campaign. You’d just have to prepare the right prompt for your tool, laying out all the essential details it needs to include, and let it do its thing. 

Image Enhancement Using AI

Image enhancement is all the edits we have to make to one photo so that it’s perfect for where we want to use it. The good news is that AI tools can also be used for this purpose.

Restoration and Upscaling

You can upscale low-resolution images while preserving and enhancing the important details. This technique is sometimes referred to as Super-Resolution. AI can handle this for you whenever you want to use old or low-quality images that are relevant to your content but aren’t as clear or crisp as you need them to be.

Compression

On the other hand, AI can also be used to reduce your image file size, without damaging their visual quality. Optimized image sizes can speed up your page loading times, which we know affects your page’s ranking. 

Object Tagging and Recognition

AI can also analyze and identify objects, scenarios, and even people in the images. Then, they can use that data to optimize the image’s filename, alt text, and captions for you. It can even insert relevant keywords if you ask it to. 

These tags help Google better understand what your image is showing users, which helps it to categorize your images properly, making sure it shows up in relevant image search results. As a result, this can boost your visibility in the SERPs.

Background Removal

Ever wanted to showcase a specific product or model, but the background of the photo is too distracting and noisy? Or, did you want to make an item your icon, but are having a hard time removing everything else in the photo? AI can help with this, and remove the background for you. 

Image Composition and Cropping

AI algorithms can now also analyze and suggest proper image compositions, sizes, and patterns for the images. They can also suggest visually appealing or well-balanced layouts that are suitable for your website pages.

Benefits of AI-generated images for SEO

Optimizing your images is an essential SEO practice that often gets overlooked. Let me tell you why it’s so crucial.

Improved User Experience

We touched upon it earlier, but things like page speed, visual appeal, and layout composition are improved by using AI. These things affect user experience, which plays a vital role in customer retention, engagement, and traffic. 

Basically, using AI to optimize your images can help your website be more appealing and usable for your audience, which can keep them on your website for longer. 

Increased Visibility in Search Engines

Using unique, properly tagged, and descriptive images–which is easy with AI image tools–you’re optimizing your visual content for Google’s image search. In short, these tools make image SEO a walk in the park. 

From this, you, of course, improve your pages’ visibility. You might even snag a few featured image snippets for your pages. Using AI to enhance all aspects of your images, even their metadata, is a good practice to ensure Google understands the context and relevance of your images, so it’s more likely to show your images to users. 

How to Use AI to Create Images

How to use AI in this scenario really depends on the tool you decide to use, but most use a pretty standard process. I’ll cover each step as well as a few tools you might want to try. 

Image Selection and Creation

If you’re using existing images as a guide or basis for these tools to generate new ones, make sure you’re using the right ones. 

Check that your images are high-quality, original, and relevant to the content you want them to be added to.

Creating AI Prompts

If you’re working from scratch, then you need to know how to craft the perfect prompt for your tool. This will lessen the back and forth with the tool to generate the images you’re looking for.

I recommend following these considerations when writing your prompt:

  1. Mention important, specific details.
  2. Use brief, easy-to-understand sentences.
  3. Include an image reference or artistic style.
  4. Decide between creative and realistic.
  5. Use photography terms.
  6. Use AI to generate prompts.

Let’s get into each step:

Mention important, specific details

Mention everything–and I do mean everything–you want this image to have. Be as detailed as you can get. Be as descriptive as you can be too, since AI can now understand things like emotions and tone. The less the AI needs to infer or interpret, the more accurate the photo will be to your vision. 

Use brief, easy-to-understand sentences

Being descriptive and adding all the details you can think of helps. But remember to keep each sentence short, and to use proper punctuation and grammar, so you can avoid confusing your AI tool.

Include an image reference or artistic style

If you can feed the AI images or visuals as a reference, do so. If not, you can describe the subject, context, and composition you want. This can be the styles of well-known painters, animators, photographers, or other artists you want your generated images to feel like. You can even include cinematography examples if you want it to have the same aesthetic and overall mood. 

Decide between creative and realistic

AI can get really liberal with the stuff it creates, so you have to decide early on whether you want it to do that, or to stick to a more realistic interpretation of your prompt.

Use photography terms

You can also use photography terms and even reference specific camera models if you’re trying to generate realistic photos. Set things like your aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and terms like “candid,” or “award-winning” to create more specific images.

Use AI to generate prompts

You can teach other AI, specifically text-generators like ChatGPT, to learn how to make these kinds of prompts for you. You can further prompt them to create templates specific to the AI image tool you want to use. Priming them can help you generate extremely detailed and precise photo prompts to make the whole process even more time- and effort-efficient for you. 

AI Image Tools

There are a few options for you to choose from, and I rounded up three tools that I personally think work pretty well. I did a quick review of each and included their pros and cons. 

DALL-E 2 by OpenAI

Pros: Quick responses, the user owns the copyright, simple and accurate results, and higher resolution options than the original DALL-E. Can also edit the results in the application itself.

Cons: Not yet very proficient with compositionality. Fails at times with simple prompts. Possible legal issues may arise due to potential infringement of intellectual property laws.

Price: 115 Credits for $15.00

Midjourney AI

Midjourney AI, an image-generating AI you can use on Discord.

Pros: High-quality results. Easily understands provided style and references. Provides multiple versions of your prompt, with the option to refine the selected version to perfection with additional prompts.

Cons: Available only through a discord chatbot. The free trial usually encounters errors. Every image generated is displayed in public chat. Lacks in customer service and privacy.

Price: $8.00-$48.00 per month

Dream Studio

Dream Studio, an image-generating AI

Pros: High-quality results. The user interface is easy to navigate. Lets users customize the prompt result in various ways. Free credits with no interruptions. Can purchase credits on an as-need basis, instead of subscribing to a plan.

Cons: Needs very lengthy and descriptive prompts to generate the right image. At the time of writing, it only uses a beta site.

Price: $10 for 1000 credits

Key Takeaway

AI plays a crucial role in optimizing images for SEO. From image selection to file optimization, alt text and metadata automation, image accessibility, and responsiveness. We SEO Specialists cannot deny that incorporating AI in our image optimization strategy can help us effortlessly improve our website’s appeal, usability, and even our search visibility.

So, don’t overlook the potential of AI in optimizing your images. Embrace these powerful tools, craft compelling visuals, and watch as your website rises in the ranks of search engine results.

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Can Internal Links Help Build Topical Authority? https://seo-hacker.com/internal-links-topical-authority/ https://seo-hacker.com/internal-links-topical-authority/#respond Wed, 14 Jun 2023 08:30:07 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=207630 Here’s a straightforward answer. Yes, internal links CAN help build topical authority for your website. Internal linking is a very important aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that helps build topical authority on your website. Here’s what you need to know, and how to use them strategically. What is Internal Linking and Topical Authority?  Internal […]

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Can Internal Links Help Build Topical Authority?

Here’s a straightforward answer. Yes, internal links CAN help build topical authority for your website.

Internal linking is a very important aspect of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that helps build topical authority on your website. Here’s what you need to know, and how to use them strategically.

What is Internal Linking and Topical Authority? 

Internal linking is when you link to the other pages on your website within your content. Topical authority in SEO refers to the establishment of your website as an authoritative source of information on a specific subject or topic. 

For example, if I’m writing a blog post that mentions the best SEO tools, I would link to another post where I discuss them in detail. This helps your readers find more relevant and useful information for your website. 

By using links strategically, you can signal to search engines the relevance and importance of your content, which can improve your ranking and visibility in search results. 

Internal Links vs External Links

The differences between the two are as their names imply: internal links are those that go between pages of the same domain, while external links direct you toward different sites. We call external links pointing from other sites to your site backlinks. See my posts on link building techniques if you’re interested in also optimizing the external links pointing to your site.

Why are Internal Links Important?

You should care about the internal links on your site because they’re pretty valuable to your SEO. 

As advanced as the Google algorithm is–and how demanding their core updates can be–there are still fundamentals that, once optimized, will give you an immediate boost in topical authority, and subsequently, rankings and traffic. Internal linking is one of them. 

Types of Internal Linking

There’s only two types: navigational, and contextual. The first are the links you see in headers, footers, and any other navigational bar or menu on a website. The second are in-text links, which point users from one page to another. This kind of link includes anchor links in your articles, a related posts section, and any other relevantly linked URLs. 

How Internal Links Improve The Topical Authority of Your Website

By using internal links effectively, you can improve the topical authority of your site in the following ways: 

  1. Internal links help create a logical and hierarchical structure within your website. By linking to related pages and topics, you show search engines that your site has extensive coverage of a specific subject. This organization improves user experience and makes it easier for search engines to understand the context and relevance of your content. 
  2. Internal links allow search engine crawlers to discover and index your content. If search engines find internal links when crawling your website, they can follow those links to access and index additional pages. This helps search engines understand the depth and breadth of your content, resulting in better visibility in the search results. 
  3. Internal linking allows you to distribute the authority of the highest-ranking pages to other pages on your site. When you link to a page that needs a boost in visibility from a page with high authority, you are giving some of that authority to the linked page. This can improve the topical authority of the linked page and improve its chances of ranking well in search results. 
  4. Internal links make it easier for the user to navigate within your site, allowing visitors to easily access related content and explore different aspects of a topic. When users spend more time on your site, interact with multiple pages, and find value in related content, it sends positive signals to search engines about the quality and relevance of your site. 

How To Use Internal Linking To Build Topical Authority in SEO

So how do you use internal linking to build topical authority in SEO? It’s not gaming the system, it’s not gray hat, and it’s not a sly trick. It’s also definitely one of the easiest things to do for your website. 

Here are some best practices to follow:

  • Use descriptive anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text that links to another page. Instead of using generic phrases like “click here” or “read more”, use descriptive words that tell your readers what the page is about. For example, instead of saying “Click here to learn more about this topic”, say “Learn more about using anchor text effectively for your SEO.” See what I did there?
  • Link to relevant pages. Don’t just link to any page on your site, link to pages related to the topic of your current post. For example, if you’re writing about how to grow tomatoes, don’t link to a page that talks about how to knit a scarf. Link to pages dedicated to gardening, tomatoes, or farming tips.
  • Link to quality webpages. Don’t link to pages that have low-quality content, outdated information, or broken links. Link to pages with high-quality content, up-to-date information, and working links. This improves the credibility of your website and its user experience.
  • Link strategically. Don’t overdo it with internal links, or you could annoy your readers and weaken your topical authority. Only link when it makes sense and adds value to your content. For example, don’t link to the same page multiple times in the same paragraph, and don’t link to all pages on your site in a single post. Link strategically and with a grain of salt.

What is the Optimal Format for Internal Linking?

For more bonus tips on how to do internal linking right, you might want to read our in-depth post about the do’s and don’ts of internal linking

By following these tips, you can use internal linking to create an up-to-date SEO authority and boost your site’s performance. Internal linking is a powerful technique that can help you create a better user experience, grow your traffic, and increase your authority.

What is the Best Internal Linking Strategy?

Now that you understand the best practices when it comes to internal linking, you’re ready to see the basic steps to setting up your internal linking strategy:

  1. Determine the structure you want for your site. Think of your website in terms of categories, then work your way down to subcategories (and even sub-subcategories, if needed). Keep internal links within categories.
  2. Figure out your cornerstone content. A.K.A. your landing pages, these are the most important content on your site, and the ones that you want users to find when searching for your industry, products, or niche on Google. Direct most of your internal links toward them.
  3. Add contextual links. If you already have tons of posts on a certain topic, then you should try linking them together. You can use in-text links or recommend topically related posts for reading at the end of your post.
  4. Work down from the hierarchy you establish. Link parent pages to child pages, and sibling pages to each other. Parent pages are those at the top of each category you create for your structure. 
  5. Use navigational links. I highly recommend adding links to your most important pages from your homepage or adding them from your navigation menu. This denotes importance in Google’s eyes and gives them a lot more link value. 
  6. Insert links to your most recent posts. Adding links to newly published posts from existing content on your website is a good way to improve topical authority.
  7. Insert links in your most popular posts. Since these posts draw in the most traffic, adding links from these posts to related ones can also improve your topical authority. 
  8. Create umbrella posts. If you’re on a roll with writing for a specific topic, consider making an umbrella post. This can be used to interlink all of the posts you’ve written for the topic so far, boost topical authority, and serve as a catch-all of sorts for related keywords. Take, for example, our technical SEO guide, which references a bunch of our other technical SEO topics.

Setting up the right internal linking strategy depends on what you want to do with your website and your SEO goals. But, these steps are a good place for you to start.

Key Takeaway

Do take note that while internal linking can add to the topical authority of your site, it should be done carefully and naturally. 

Focus on being intentional about your strategy, making meaningful links between relevant pages, and steering clear of spammy linking practices to reap the most benefits possible while avoiding penalization. 

Ultimately, providing valuable, well-organized, and interconnected content is key to building topical authority over time.

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4 SEO Tips and Strategies for the 2022 Holidays https://seo-hacker.com/seo-tips-strategies-2022-holidays/ https://seo-hacker.com/seo-tips-strategies-2022-holidays/#respond Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:28:20 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=207381 As the holiday season is just around the corner, you should be prepared for all the opportunities it comes with. This time of the year is when people will be taking a break from their usual 9 to 5 jobs and will be on vacation. This means that they will have more time to spend […]

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Tips-and-Strategies-for-your-Holiday-SEO-2022

As the holiday season is just around the corner, you should be prepared for all the opportunities it comes with. This time of the year is when people will be taking a break from their usual 9 to 5 jobs and will be on vacation.

This means that they will have more time to spend on the internet, the question now is – are you going to be visible to them?

In this article, you will find out key things you should be focusing on to improve your online visibility this upcoming holiday season!

Study Last Year’s Trends

In preparation for the upcoming holiday, you should be looking at the trends and keywords that performed well for you and your website last year. Through this, you can analyze if you are sticking with the old strategies and keywords from last year or if you are going to research and find new ones that could further improve the quality of your SEO for this year’s holiday season.

The bottom line here is that the keywords you select should drive a fair to a high amount of traffic while still being relevant to your brand.

As an example, here are the SEO trends for 2021:

  • Optimize for Core Web Vitals and Page Experience
  • Focusing on User and Search Intent
  • Verify Website on Google Search Console
  • Utilize AMP
  • Apply Schema Markups

You can check out this article we wrote about the SEO trends of 2021.

Research about Seasonal Keywords

One of the most critical things about SEO is keywords, that’s why trying to rank for the seasonal keywords can be a big boost for your website for the upcoming holiday season.

For example, this Christmas season brings in keywords such as:

  • Christmas decorations
  • Christmas foods
  • best Christmas gifts
  • top Christmas destinations

Another holiday is the upcoming New Year which brings another set of keywords:

  • New Year firework show
  • New Year countdown party
  • best foods for New Year

In short, you will have a hard time being visible in the search results if your brand or website does not include seasonal keywords on your product pages, landing pages, blogs, or articles. That’s why you should always do your keyword research to find out the keywords that are most used by searchers and consumers during the holiday season.

Here are some tools you could use for your seasonal keyword research:

  • SERanking
  • SEMRush
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Google Suggest

Create Content for the Holiday Season

Content is king!

Content that attracts and engages audiences can definitely help boost your website traffic during the holidays, so use creative content as leverage during this time of the year. Write how your brand can make this holiday celebration more special, you could provide gift ideas, or even share celebration stories with your readers!

You can also create a specific landing page on your website and add some design or flare that will make them feel more the essence of the celebration. This makes your website look festive and cheerful even for a short period of time but can make a lifetime impression on your audiences.

Here’s a checklist for a good content strategy:

  • Always have a 1-3% keyword density for your focused keyword/keyphrase
  • Engage with your target audience by writing long-form holiday content
  • Avoid keyword stuffing; try using related phrases and keywords and spread them throughout your content.
  • Create visually appealing content, and add videos, images, infographics, or even GIFs!

Optimize Your Website’s ‘Basic SEO’

In your goal to create content and be visible during the holiday season, you might overlook the basic SEO of your website. Here are the technical things you should be checking to ensure your website has a good SEO foundation:

  • Review and resolve pages with error ‘400’ for the deleted or broken pages
  • Fix the 301 redirects for broken links and lost landing pages
  • Optimize your page speed – both desktop and mobile
  • Check your server if it can handle high-load traffic
  • Clear and Visible Call To Action (CTA)

There are many tools out there, but one of the most reliable tools that I personally use in tracking a website’s SEO is Screaming Frog.

Key Takeaway

As the holiday season is just around the corner, it is never too late to optimize your website to be visible during this time of the year. Make use of these tips and strategies not just for this season but also to help jumpstart your website’s SEO for the new year!

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How to do SEO for E-commerce Websites https://seo-hacker.com/e-commerce-seo/ https://seo-hacker.com/e-commerce-seo/#respond Thu, 12 Dec 2019 09:55:59 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=17923 If you own an e-commerce website or doing SEO for one, let me tell you, it will give you a lot of headaches. Doing SEO for e-commerce websites takes a lot of time and effort because of the size of these websites. E-commerce SEO puts a heavy emphasis on technical and on-page SEO. If your […]

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If you own an e-commerce website or doing SEO for one, let me tell you, it will give you a lot of headaches. Doing SEO for e-commerce websites takes a lot of time and effort because of the size of these websites. E-commerce SEO puts a heavy emphasis on technical and on-page SEO. If your website has hundreds or thousands of pages, the first thing that you have to remember is that each page presents an opportunity for SEO optimization.

If you’re reading this article, you are either planning on creating an e-commerce website or you are in the process of optimizing your current website but don’t know where to start. In this post, I’ll try to simplify the process of doing SEO for e-commerce websites.

Website Structure

Having an e-commerce website can be messy. I have seen a lot of businesses where they just keep on uploading new products until they realized that their website structure is so unorganized that it is almost impossible to untangle it. If you’re just planning on creating a new website, lucky for you. But if you’re already lost on your website’s structure, it could still be saved, but it will require you a lot of time.

Website structure for e-commerce websites uses the same principle for other websites. Your most important pages should be accessible in just 1 or 2 clicks. It should reflect in your website’s main navigation bar. 

In this case, aside from your landing pages, your product categories should be accessible with just one click from your homepage and your sub-categories and product pages should be easily accessible after that. This helps search engine crawlers understand the hierarchy of your website’s pages and it also makes it easier for users to navigate around your website.

Here’s a good illustration of how your e-commerce website should be:

Keeping a website structure like this also ensures that link juice is spread throughout your website. Most backlinks of e-commerce websites are pointed to the homepage. So you have to make sure that the homepage is linked to the important pages and so on. 

Keep in mind that the deeper your website gets, the authority of links gets diluted for pages toward the end of your website structure. Pages that are more than 3 clicks away from your homepage will receive less authority from pages 1 or 2 clicks away. 

Build your Keyword List

A good keyword strategy for e-commerce SEO is to divide your keywords list into three: Informational keywords, Transactional keywords, and Commercial keywords.

Informational keywords are what users use to look for news, facts, tips, and other information. Commercial keywords are queries where users are browsing their purchasing options but there is no intent to buy yet. While transactional keywords are used by users with the intention of purchasing. You could read more about keyword intent in this other post.

So how would you know which is which?

You could use the search results to give you clues on how Google understands the intent of a keyword.

Usually, informational keywords are long-tail keywords that ask questions like “how” or “what” and it will serve you articles or blog posts.

Commercial keywords are those that include terms such as “affordable” or “best”. This means that users are looking for a list where they could do some research first before they consider to purchase.

And last, transactional keywords include general product categories and product names. Users are already ready to purchase and Google will return product pages or product category pages in the search results.

The reason why you should diversify your list of keywords is that each type of keyword presents different opportunities. Having an e-commerce website means thousands of pages to optimize for keywords and each opportunity should not be wasted. We’ll talk about it more in the next sections.

Optimize Product Meta Tags

For e-commerce SEO, there are limited places you can put keywords on in your product pages and your main opportunity here is the page title. Your page title should include the keyword you are targetting for a specific product or category.

Yes, you read that right. Each page should have its own target keyword. Remember what I said in the intro about each page presents an opportunity for SEO? This is it right here.

To give you an idea, here’s an example. For a website that is selling vitamins and supplements, rather than just using Vitamins and Supplements for sale in the title tag, I placed keywords in each of the product category pages.

This gives the website more opportunities in the search results.

It is also important that you optimize meta descriptions for click-through rates. Without setting your own meta description, Google will randomly pull up texts on your product pages and it wouldn’t look good in the search results.  

Write Compelling Content

Even if the main focus of an e-commerce website is to sell products, content is still vital and you still need it to boost your rankings. 

Writing blog posts that target informational or commercial keywords will bring in traffic to your websites and you could use a call to action to drive people to purchase from your website. 

You could also use internal linking to bring users from blog posts to product pages and keep them on your website to get a higher chance of converting them.

Have Important Pages in the XML Sitemap

It goes without saying that your XML sitemap file should include all the important pages of your website. An XML sitemap helps Google identify which are the pages it should give priority when crawling.

One common mistake I see people make is that they don’t put their single product pages in their sitemap. You should always have your main product category pages and single product pages in your XML sitemap. You could leave subcategories behind. Always remember that for e-commerce websites, each page brings more opportunities so you should definitely let Google crawl them more frequently and with priority.

You could create a separate sitemap for products and content so you could better organize your links. You could then submit both sitemaps in Google Search Console to make sure both of them get crawled.

Use rel=canonical for Duplicate pages

Having many product categories or sub-categories can cause duplicate pages for your products which can hurt your SEO.

If a product is labeled in two or more sub-categories, some content management systems will create one page for each sub-category it is in and produce multiple URLs with the same content inside. You have to choose one page as the main/original content and use rel=canonical on the other pages.

Make your Shop Mobile-Friendly

E-commerce website owners would always want their shop to be virtually appealing to drive in more people, but virtually appealing does not mean efficiency.

When creating an e-commerce website, you should not compromise speed for the design, especially for mobile. A huge chunk of e-commerce sales is made from mobile and having a website that does not adjust well on mobile is a lost opportunity.

Apply Schema Markup

Having a proper schema markup for all of your product pages allows Google to display your product and its details in rich results. Using the product schema markup can make your products visually appealing in the search results and Google images to attract more people to go to your website.

If you accept reviews on your website, you could also apply the AggregateRating schema inside your Product schema so Google could show star ratings in the search results.

To get the proper schema markup accepted by Google, you can view this guide on how to apply product schema. You could also use plugins to automate your schema application. After the application, you’ll be able to see your valid product pages or errors in your schema markup in the “Product Report” on Google Search Console.

Optimize Images

E-commerce websites contain a ton of images, sometimes multiple images per product. Unoptimized images can heavily affect your website’s loading speed.

When uploading images, always try to compress your images to reduce its file size without decreasing its quality. You could also use tools to automate this process for you for images that are already uploaded by using tools or plugins so you won’t have to re-upload each image again. There are a lot of plugins out there but I regularly use EWWW Image Optimizer for our websites since we mainly use WordPress.

Another thing you should optimize is alternative texts for images or alt text. This is a good opportunity for image SEO. You could place keywords on your product images to help them appear in Google images.

Bonus: Submit your Products on Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is a platform created by Google that allows business owners to upload their product details and allows it to be seen by users across Google’s other platforms such as Google search, Shopping Ads, and Shopping Actions.

It is really easy to upload your products and its an easy way of selling your products globally. You should definitely check Google Merchant Center out.

 

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Google Adds Video Reports in Search Console https://seo-hacker.com/video-reports-search-console/ https://seo-hacker.com/video-reports-search-console/#respond Thu, 10 Oct 2019 11:10:40 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=17624 Videos are rapidly changing the way people search. The thing is, it’s not just about YouTube anymore. Google recently added a new report in Search Console for Video content that allows webmasters to see how their own videos perform on search results and errors in their structured data markup. Currently, there are three ways videos […]

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Videos are rapidly changing the way people search. The thing is, it’s not just about YouTube anymore. Google recently added a new report in Search Console for Video content that allows webmasters to see how their own videos perform on search results and errors in their structured data markup.

Currently, there are three ways videos appear on Google; on the main search results, in the Videos tab, and on Google discover.

The three ways videos appear on Google

Video Performance Report

In Google Search Console, you could see how your videos perform by going to the Performance Report and clicking Search Appearance. If you want to go into more detail, you could also check the keywords your Videos appeared for and the specific pages that appeared. This data is really useful as you would know the exact keywords to optimize your video content.

Video Performance Report

Video Enhancements

Structured data is not a ranking factor but it can enhance video your videos in the search results to make them more appealing for searchers. If you have video content on your website that is marked up with the Video structured data, you will start to see errors, warnings, and pages with valid structured data.

When this feature rolled out, Google sent out thousands of emails to webmasters informing them of errors in their Videos markup. We also received an email regarding this error.

Video Enhancements

When I checked the errors on Search Console, it was a little bit confusing because the pages that have errors in them contained links toward YouTube videos that I linked to. I don’t own any of those videos and it’s impossible for me to give these YouTube videos a proper structured data markup. Since the feature is new, I think this is one thing Google overlooked.

Errors in google search console

How Google Crawls Video Content

Now that we have this report integrated into Google Search Console, it adds more reasons for webmasters to properly markup their video content. In the Search Console Guidelines, Google mentions 3 ways they extract video content from websites:

  • Google can crawl the video if it is in a supported video encoding. Google can pull up the thumbnail and a preview. Google can also extract some limited meaning from the audio and video file.
  • Google can extract data through the webpage’s text and meta tags the video is in.
  • If present, Google uses the VideoObject structured data markup of the page or a video sitemap.

Also, Google requires two things for videos to appear in the search results:

  • A thumbnail image
  • Direct link to the video file

Google highly recommends the use of structured data. They mentioned that structured data is best for pages that they already know about and are being indexed. The best way to go about it is to have a video sitemap file, submit it in Search Console, and markup your pages.

Sample Video Structured Data Markup

If you want to markup your video content, here’s the code for a standard Video Rich Results:

<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “VideoObject”,
“name”: “Title of Video Here”,
“description”: “Full description of Video Here”,
“thumbnailUrl”: [
“https://linktothumbnailimage1.jpg”,
“https://linktothumbnailimage2.jpg”,
“https://linktothumbnailimage3.jpg”
],
“uploadDate”: “2019-10-10T08:00:00+08:00”,
“duration”: “PT10M30S”,
“contentUrl”: “https://videofilelink.mp4”,
“embedUrl”: “https://seo-hacker.com”,
“interactionCount”: “700”
}
</script>

You could further optimize this structured data markup by adding Video Carousel markup if you have a page with a full gallery of videos or by adding Video Segments markup so users can see a preview of your video in the search results. If you want a full list of video rich snippets, check out Google’s Video Markup Guide here.

Key Takeaway

Videos are changing the way webmasters create content. It helps users engaged and increase dwell time. Currently, video snippets are dominated by YouTube videos and I’m interested to see if this update to video content will help webmasters who are publishing videos on their own website get their videos in the search results and draw more clicks. Hopefully, this update encourages more webmasters to use their own platforms when uploading videos that they create and we see a more diversified video search results.    

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What Happened to Dublin Core as an SEO Factor? https://seo-hacker.com/happened-dublin-core-seo-factor/ https://seo-hacker.com/happened-dublin-core-seo-factor/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2015 12:03:37 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=10432 There was a time when Dublin Core was the craze of on-site optimization. And then, it just faded away. As if it never existed. There were no write-ups on what happened to it or if it still works. This is what’s left of Dublin Core as I rummaged through the cracks. What is Dublin Core? […]

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Dublin Core

There was a time when Dublin Core was the craze of on-site optimization. And then, it just faded away. As if it never existed. There were no write-ups on what happened to it or if it still works. This is what’s left of Dublin Core as I rummaged through the cracks.

What is Dublin Core?

Long story short, Dublin Core is like the earlier version of the now widely known and search-centric Schema.org. It is a metadata schema that originated way back 1995 in Dublin, Ohio.

How was it supposed to be implemented for SEO?

Dublin Core is a metadata schema that you implement much like how you would implement Schema.org. Here’s an example of the Dublin Core code:

<meta name="DC.Format" content="video/mpeg; 30 minutes">

<meta name="DC.Language" content="en" >

<meta name="DC.Publisher" content="SEO Hacker School" >

<meta name="DC.Title" content="HYP" >

So what’s the difference between Schema and Dublin Core?

Basically, Dublin Core and Schema.org are both metadata schemas but Dublin Core was created a long time ago and is used across many domains languages and business models while Schema.org is more prominently used on the web.

Schema.org is also created and heralded by the biggest search engines in the world today so naturally, Schema.org is their preferred metadata. I won’t be surprised to see sites with Schema.org ranking higher than ones with Dublin Core (there are no recorded experiments of this).

What happened with Dublin Core? It’s as if it suddenly disappeared?

Dublin Core has not disappeared. And if you’ll pay attention, you’ll still be able to see websites that have Dublin Core in them. It’s a matter of paying attention. Right now, Dublin Core is mostly used in libraries, universities and document-heavy fields such as law.

How does Google see Dublin Core now?

Dublin Core is still honored by Google because of its several important endorsements such as IETF, RFC, ISO Standard, NISO Standard. Although Schema.org is still the favored metadata schema when it comes to SEO.

Should you Implement Dublin Core in your Site? Will it help?

Yes and (maybe) no.

Having both Dublin Core and Schema.org in your website is assumed to help although this has never been tested. Some even go so far as to discourage it due to an assumed negative effect because of duplicate metadata concerns.

Thus far it has all been theory but no real testing. I personally would love to see a documented experiment of how having both Dublin Core and Schema in one site affected a website’s rankings – compared to having just one of each.

Where do you get the Dublin Core Code if you still want to try and implement it?

There’s the Simple Dublin Core generator that’s very handy when you’re planning to implement this on your site.

If you’re planning to study Dublin Core with its core elements, here’s the Index of Terms directly from the site.

Here’s the breakdown of its 15 Core Elements:

Term Name: coverage 
Label: Coverage
Definition: The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant.
Comment: Spatial topic and spatial applicability may be a named place or a location specified by its geographic coordinates. Temporal topic may be a named period, date, or date range. A jurisdiction may be a named administrative entity or a geographic place to which the resource applies. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the Thesaurus of Geographic Names [TGN]. Where appropriate, named places or time periods can be used in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of coordinates or date ranges.
References: [TGN] http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/index.html
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#coverage-006

Term Name: creator 
Label: Creator
Definition: An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.
Comment: Examples of a Creator include a person, an organization, or a service. Typically, the name of a Creator should be used to indicate the entity.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#creator-006

Term Name: date 
Label: Date
Definition: A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource.
Comment: Date may be used to express temporal information at any level of granularity. Recommended best practice is to use an encoding scheme, such as the W3CDTF profile of ISO 8601 [W3CDTF].
References: [W3CDTF] http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#date-006

Term Name: description 
Label: Description
Definition: An account of the resource.
Comment: Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the resource.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#description-006

Term Name: format 
Label: Format
Definition: The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource.
Comment: Examples of dimensions include size and duration. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the list of Internet Media Types [MIME].
References: [MIME] http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#format-007

Term Name: identifier 
Label: Identifier
Definition: An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context.
Comment: Recommended best practice is to identify the resource by means of a string conforming to a formal identification system.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#identifier-006

Term Name: language 
Label: Language
Definition: A language of the resource.
Comment: Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as RFC 4646 [RFC4646].
References: [RFC4646] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt
See: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#language-007

Term Name: publisher 
Label: Publisher
Definition: An entity responsible for making the resource available.
Comment: Examples of a Publisher include a person, an organization, or a service. Typically, the name of a Publisher should be used to indicate the entity.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#publisher-006

Term Name: relation 
Label: Relation
Definition: A related resource.
Comment: Recommended best practice is to identify the related resource by means of a string conforming to a formal identification system.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#relation-006

Term Name: rights 
Label: Rights
Definition: Information about rights held in and over the resource.
Comment: Typically, rights information includes a statement about various property rights associated with the resource, including intellectual property rights.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#rights-006

Term Name: source 
Label: Source
Definition: A related resource from which the described resource is derived.
Comment: The described resource may be derived from the related resource in whole or in part. Recommended best practice is to identify the related resource by means of a string conforming to a formal identification system.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#source-006

Term Name: subject 
Label: Subject
Definition: The topic of the resource.
Comment: Typically, the subject will be represented using keywords, key phrases, or classification codes. Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#subject-007

Term Name: title 
Label: Title
Definition: A name given to the resource.
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#title-006

Term Name: type 
Label: Type
Definition: The nature or genre of the resource.
Comment: Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the DCMI Type Vocabulary [DCMITYPE]. To describe the file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource, use the Format element.
References: [DCMITYPE] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-type-vocabulary/
Type of Term: Property
Version: http://dublincore.org/usage/terms/history/#type-006

Tips for Keeps: Don’t take my word for it. Try out Dublin Core for yourself – either in a test site and see if it helps your rankings!

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How Optimizing Old Posts Increased Our Traffic by 884% https://seo-hacker.com/optimizing-post-increased-traffic-884/ https://seo-hacker.com/optimizing-post-increased-traffic-884/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2015 02:51:31 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=10220 There are 2 kinds of marketers, as Pamela Vaughan described it. The first one hunts for one big idea, while the other one grows through pervasive optimization. We used to be the hunters. However, as content drastically grew in terms of amount while the demand remained static, it has become harder to be the hunter. […]

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Optimizing Old Post

There are 2 kinds of marketers, as Pamela Vaughan described it. The first one hunts for one big idea, while the other one grows through pervasive optimization.

We used to be the hunters. However, as content drastically grew in terms of amount while the demand remained static, it has become harder to be the hunter.

“The supply of content is growing, but demand is static.” -Paul Hewerdine, Earnest

That’s when we learned to take advantage of what we already have.

The backstory

In August 31, 2012, we published one of our epic posts, The Ultimate Guide to Youtube SEO, in which during that time was ONE BIG IDEA because very few knows about SEO, moreover Youtube SEO.

And even though the blog was new and had very few traffic, we noticed that we’re getting good numbers of visits through that post.

We were happy and contented – we thought that’s more than enough.

Fast forward to January 2015, we decided to enhance three of the most successful guides (including the guide to Youtube SEO) we have ever published.

  1. How Does 301 & 302 Redirect Affect SEO?
  2. The Ultimate Youtube SEO Guide
  3. Optimizing Site Speed: Asynchronous and Deferred Javascript

The results

After modifying the posts, we saw a tremendous increase of pageviews.

1. How Does 301 & 302 Redirect Affect SEO?

Published date: October 24, 2011

Eight months since the post was published, from 4,193 pageviews (or 1.89% of the overall website traffic), its traffic grew to 23,116 pageviews – a whopping 412.02% increase.

Redirect Increase

2. The Ultimate Youtube SEO Guide

Published date: August 31, 2012

This post traffic from August 31, 2012 to April 30, 2013 reached to 5, 684, and increased by 283.36% from January 19, 2015 to September 19, 2015.

Youtube SEO Increase

3. Optimizing Site Speed: Asynchronous and Deferred Javascript

Published date: July 20, 2013

Its traffic for eight months since it was published reached to 3,498 (or 2.41% of the overall website traffic) and grew to 10,110 pageviews – a 189.02% increase eight months after the update.

Speed Increase

What we thought is enough traffic can actually be doubled, tripled or even more!

How we did it?

1. Identify the top performing content

The first step is to always find your top performing content, as you’ll more likely to see results from content that is gaining good amount of traffic. Also, if huge chunk of your traffic is coming from an old post, you know that it’s worth updating because people are still visiting it.

It doesn’t makes sense to update a content if people aren’t visiting it anymore, unless you will republish it, which is a different case.

2. Update the post

The second step is to update your post. Review your top performing content and check if there are outdated information and then update them.

You can also add supplementary media to make the post more recent. In our case, what we did is we added infographics.

For example, this is the original look of Optimizing Site Speed: Asynchronous and Deferred Javascript before it was updated.

Original Post

And this is the updated version:

Optimized Post

3. Conversion optimize the post

Aside from adding infographics, we also put popups that will allow visitors to download it. Like this:

Popup

And this:

Popup Two

Also, in the end of the post, readers can get the embed code if they want to use the infographic in their website or webpage.

4. Click the update button and promote

It may be an old post, but after you hit the ‘update’ button, it will be as amplified as a new content.

Share it on your social media pages and online communities, update those people who originally shared or linked to your content, and email your subscribers. Go crazy!

Why is this effective?

1. Google values freshness

Google wants to improve search because they want to give the best results to searchers, and they give importance to content that is not just written well, but is also fresh.

2. People are visual

You can update your content by just editing necessary information. However, because we know that people are visual, we decided to improve it the best way we can – including infographics.

3. We like free stuff

Giving away free infographic is not so bad, especially if you’re gaining traffic and recognition. It works for other companies too that gave away e-books. The point is we like free stuff, and we find it easier to give back when we received something.

So if you can give something to your audience, expect that they will give something to you too – like visiting your site over and over again.

4. It enhances the quality of content – we like quality!

We do like quality content! And Google likes it as well. In a fast paced world, with tons of available contents online, we can only give attention to content that is worthy of our time, and that is quality content.

Final thought

You can do the same thing for your posts. But before you do, here are a few good reminders to keep.

  1. This isn’t for everyone. Make sure that you have significant traffic to see significant results.
  2. This should only be one of your ‘many’ strategies, not the only one.

There’s nothing wrong with looking back. After all, our goal is to produce evergreen content, and one of the best ways to do this is to keep updating our old posts, making them like new. Because as long as your idea is gold, even though it’s old, it’s going to get sold.

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Why Schema is the Future of On-Site SEO https://seo-hacker.com/schema-markup-future-seo/ https://seo-hacker.com/schema-markup-future-seo/#comments Thu, 22 Aug 2013 19:30:49 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=7016 Believe it or not, this statement is accurate. Schema has been the project of major search engines since 2011. Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex have thought it over – and they’re using Schema markup even today. Let’s go through its benefits – SEO and otherwise – and how you can apply it for your website, […]

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Schema.org

Believe it or not, this statement is accurate. Schema has been the project of major search engines since 2011. Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex have thought it over – and they’re using Schema markup even today. Let’s go through its benefits – SEO and otherwise – and how you can apply it for your website, in this post.

Webmaster’s note: Before you go on, why don’t you check out our previous post on Why Schema Might be the Next BIG Ranking Factor (Written June, 2011) to enlighten yourself about the Schema code and where you can find more information about it. This entry is an update to that post.

Questions that will be answered in this entry:

  1. What makes Schema so special?
  2. How does it affect SEO?
  3. How can I apply it in my website?
  4. Bonus: Some Schema tricks

So let’s head on to the topic, shall we?

What makes Schema so special?

Schema is simply a markup that will help major search engines become smarter by feeding them data in a structured manner. It’s like feeding chopsuey to a 10 year old kid and asking that kid to identify each vegetable – it’s really tough (and not just because kids don’t like veggies!). But if you identify each vegetable to the kid, what it’s for, and then feed each one individually, the kid would be able to identify the veggies much easier.

Search engines want to be fed in a structured manner where you would identify each ingredient to it. How Schema does it, is that it would categorize items in your website that it can describe to the search engines to categories. Let’s take the “Thing” item for example:

Thing

The most generic type of item.
Property Expected Type Description
additionalType URL An additional type for the item, typically used for adding more specific types from external vocabularies in microdata syntax. This is a relationship between something and a class that the thing is in. In RDFa syntax, it is better to use the native RDFa syntax – the ‘typeof’ attribute – for multiple types. Schema.org tools may have only weaker understanding of extra types, in particular those defined externally.
description Text A short description of the item.
image URL URL of an image of the item.
name Text The name of the item.
sameAs URL URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item’s identity. E.g. the URL of the item’s Wikipedia page, Freebase page, or official website.
url URL URL of the item.

 

Note: You can click on the links to check out their correlated properties and to know further details on how you can use these properties.

This item type has properties such as additionalType, description, image, name, sameAs and URL. These properties are used to further describe to search engines what the item is all about. It also tells the search engines where to find more relevant information about the item by linking to the page that contains that specific info.

Take for example the property image – this is a URL that points to a source of the image of the item. A normal HTML code of an image will look like this:

<h2>Site Speed</h2>
<img src="/Speed-up-your-website-with-CDN.jpg" />

Wherein integrating the Schema code, will make it look like this:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">
<h2 itemprop="name">Site Speed</h2>
<img src="/Speed-up-your-website-with-CDN.jpg" 
itemprop="contentURL"/>

What’s the difference?

The normal HTML code will tell the search engine that this is generally an image and its most probably about site speed and the file name of the image is speed-up-your-website-with-cdn.jpg. While the Schema code will tell the search engines that this is particularly a segment about an image and the name of the image is exactly “Site Speed” and the actual URL of the image file itself is “/speed-up-your-website-with-cdn.jpg

Notice the difference? There’s one where the search engines would have to guess and rely on its semantic intelligence rather than being told particular details about what, where, when, how, etc. Making guesses from its semantic intelligence’s data gathering is not something that search engines would like to conclude from and therefore display to end-users. Search engines would rather have the particulars and facts – and show these to the end-users.

Schema is exactly for that purpose. It makes search results richer and surer for the average searcher.

This is an important development because it makes the web a more comprehensive place for search engines. If Schema will continue on and become the norm in the code of all websites, it will make the search engines wiser by feeding it more data in a structured manner. It’s already happening now. Schema is being implemented in a good number of websites. You should too.

How does it affect SEO?

Consequently, search engines will be able to serve users better by churning out the structured data they’ve gathered into their search results page – usually in the form of rich snippets. Here’s an example of an event Schema in action:

Schema Events Rich snippets

The Schema code helps the average searcher by showing the scheduled event dates and locations right in the search results page and you can click on the specific event date and/or location that you want to attend to. How this affects SEO is by first increasing your Click Through Rate with users. Rich snippets show relevant results in a manner that is useful, easily digestible and quick (the info is right on the SERP).

Another way that Schema affects SEO is a direct ranking increase. Basically there’s a claim that feeding the search engines structured data, therefore helping them understand your webpages quicker, will result it ranking increase.Read Jay Jersey’s case study on Schema microdata here.

How can I apply it to my website?

There’s the easy, not-so-hard, and hard way. The hard way is by studying Schema documentation and hardcoding it in your HTML. Here are some resources to get you going:

Getting Started with Schema

Different types of Schemas

Schema FAQs

Schema Data Model

Schema Discussion Group (Updated: This has been shut down since Oct. 2011 but you’ll still be able to find some good information about Schema in the discussions here)

From there, you can know the Schema markup and apply it in your website’s code Mano-a-mano.

The not-so-hard way to implement this is by using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.

Google Structured Data Markup Helper

It’s not that hard if you know your HTML, really. You just need to select your structured data type, enter your URL and start tagging.

Highlight and Tag
Once you’ve completed your tagging, the right sidebar will look like this:

Google Schema ToolClick on the Create HTML button on the upper-right and scroll down to the parts with the yellow highlights in your scrollbar.

Scroll to GSDM

Copy the parts with the yellow highlighted code. That’s your Schema markup. Then paste it at the place where it should be located as indicated by the demo source code you’re seeing. It’ll be easier if you simply download the HTML source but if you’re using PHP and other scripts in your page, you might just want to install the code manually.

Copy Schema Code

After you’ve entered the code, make sure to check if your Structured data is read correctly by Google through their Structured Data Testing Tool.

The easiest way to apply Schema in your website, however, is through plugins. Since most people are using WordPress, here’s a sweet tool that will take off all the burden of manual coding for you:

Schema Creator by Raven looks very promising. Get it here.

Schema by Raven

And then there’s All in One Schema which you can get here.

All in one Schema

Some Schema tricks to leave you with

Schema.org & Genesis 2.0 – Joost De Valk talks about tricks using Schema with Genesis theme.

Schema Markup: How to Make Your Content More Clickable and Shareable – Ana Hoffman’s take on Schema and how you can make the best out of it.

One Schema tool you should try out

Wordlift –  A tool that has the ability to process structured data markup automation, Wordlift allows you to create content using words and phrases identified by the tool’s artificial intelligence. Along with being able to create entities that help users know more information about content, Wordlift also allows you to add schema markups, which makes your content more searchable by becoming a part of search results.  When it comes to optimizing to create well-defined and searchable content, Wordlift is the best schema tool to use.

Tips for Keeps: Those who are serious with their On-site Optimization should strongly consider implementing Schema NOW. It’s time – and everyone’s getting into it.

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The Creative Side to On Site Optimization https://seo-hacker.com/creative-side-site-optimization/ https://seo-hacker.com/creative-side-site-optimization/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:42:47 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=5642 On Site Optimization doesn’t have to be all about codes. There’s more to it than that. It’s also split up to have a creative side – a side for artists. No, you don’t have to be a Michelangelo to have a dashing, creative side to on site optimization (but that might help), you just need […]

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Creativity

On Site Optimization doesn’t have to be all about codes. There’s more to it than that. It’s also split up to have a creative side – a side for artists. No, you don’t have to be a Michelangelo to have a dashing, creative side to on site optimization (but that might help), you just need to make things a little nicer to look at, and perhaps a little nicer to read.

Creativity in Words

It’s not too hard to be creative in what you say – some people have the innate talent to form and manipulate words, some don’t. Like every skill in life, it takes practice. In on site optimization, you have to be content-creative in two things

– Article Title

The title of your article has to draw a person’s attention immediately. It has to speak volumes, ignite curiosity, maintain enthusiasm – all in two seconds. People browsing on the internet have an attention span of roughly 2 seconds for every title that pass their eyes by. If you do not capture their attention enough for them to click through to your entire article, you’ve lost a whole opportunity of letting that person know who you are, what you’re trying to sell (or tell), and a whole chunk of user activity with it.

While it is true that using a title that targets keywords or keyphrases that you want to rank for, it’s JUST AS IMPORTANT to make it intriguing, exciting, and emotionally enticing – and that takes a huge amount of creativity.

– Wordplay

Word Play

After reeling them in through your title, the next thing they will look at is your content. How good is your use of words? Are you using the simplest, easy-to-understand words? Are your sentences phrased in such a way that they have a clear-cut, no-nonsense approach or are your audiences asking, “Where’s the beef?” The point is, write in a clear, concise way that you’re wonderfully delivering what your visitors came for and nothing else.

Don’t be a Doppelganger (Consistency)

People read and develop loyalty to the author mainly because of how he writes, what he writes about, and how he publishes and promotes his stuff. Change even one of those things and chances are, you lose a certain amount of readers. Consistency in your writing style connotes discipline in your creativity. This is also followed by branding.

– Writing Voice

Writing VoiceThere is that intangible factor that we all have as writers – we have a writing voice. And to each, his own. I personally think that no two writing voice is the same. And our audience can distinguish that voice if they’ve been around long enough. It’s pretty weird if you’ll see my name as the author and yet the writing style seems to be that of a lawyer – with a lot of mind-blowing words. That just ain’t me – and you won’t like it.

– Communicative / Experiential (what suits your niche)

People like to be talked to. People like stories. People like it when they can relate. So talk. Communicate. Tell them what it’s like. And tell them that you’re human. You feel – and you’ve been there once. The best writing voices have this in common: they don’t just write. They communicate. They connect with their audience.

On site optimization doesn’t have to be about counting keywords. It has to be about making a connection with your readers in an emotional and perhaps, experiential level. That will keep them coming back – and that is much more important than measuring and optimizing keyword density.

A Thousand Words in 300 x 300 px (Pictures)

I think all websites should have images. Images make a page more beautiful and it also makes the long lines of text less boring. It’s easy to mistake images as something that will be able to directly increase your rankings by hiding keywords in the ALT text. This should not be the case.

– Attractiveness / Quality

Image Alt text is good. You might pop up in Google image search once in a while. But what really matters is, is your picture really good to look at? Is it beautiful? Even if it pops up in an image search result, chances are, it will not be clicked if it doesn’t attract the eyes. The quality of your picture speaks a lot about you as an author too. You have the freedom to choose your images – why not pick the best one? I sometimes spend an hour just to look for a really good image to go with my post – and I think that’s a huge reason why people love reading my blog entries (especially at God and You).

– Relevance to the topic / Paragraph

Of course, your beautiful picture, even if it’s on a Mona Lisa level, will not have any meaning to it when it is not relevant to what you’re talking about in that page. The picture has to be relevant – one way or another. You can’t just pick any good looking photo out there. Pick a relevant one. I usually use a photo because a long article can be boring to look at. Check out this entry – it has a lot to say. So I put three pictures relevant to each paragraph beside it in order to make it more entertaining to look at – even if it’s just on a peripheral scale.

That Classy Ambiance (Blog Theme)

CoffeeIsn’t there a nice, warm feeling when you walk into a homey restaurant or coffee shop? The food is pretty much the same with other restaurants. The coffee tastes and smells like the one next door – but then there’s something about the place that you’re more drawn to it. Let’s face it – ambiance is a factor with most people. How do we define ambiance? It’s simply the look of how things are arranged. In your website, that amounts to your theme.

– Clean / Neat

Make your website as clean as possible. Put only the links that are necessary. Put only the sidebars that are necessary. Fix the width and length of every side so that your website would have that clean and neat ambiance. Who likes drinking coffee (no matter how wonderful it tastes and smells like) in a messy, dirty-looking coffee shop? I’d rather do a drive-through or take-out.

– Can communicate who you are in your ‘looks’

The way you dress yourself tells a lot about who you are. The way you design your website SHOULD tell your audience about who you are. This is branding. And branding is very important. The big international companies know it. I know it. You should know it too. Especially now that the search engines are putting a lot of indirect (human emotional filter) ranking-weight on branding.

Inspiration

As any artist would have an inspiration, you have to link to the articles that are relevant to, or has inspired the other article. Do not do interlinking just for the heck of passing over internal linkjuice to a landing page. The right way to do interlinking is to be creative about it and be helpful about it. I usually use phrase-match anchor texts to link to another one of my articles that is relevant. Study how I did it in this article – get the hang of doing it that way.

All these creativity is funneled towards a goal – to impact the human emotional filter (which is entirely impossible to manipulate with technical SEO) and gain a much better user activity profile in your site. Technical SEO can go a long way – but it is limited, unfortunately, to the code, structure and perhaps the loopholes of Google’s algorithm.

In the end, it’s the creative side of on site optimization that can put you up the ranks from your competitors. The good news is, creativity isn’t easily replicated – it has to be inborn, honed, or hired. Which makes it extremely valuable.

Plus, you get a lot of natural links if you are able to master the creative side of on site optimization because hey, every post you make, has a beautiful factor – and that makes it a potential linkbait.

All the time.

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How Google’s Authorship Markup affects SEO https://seo-hacker.com/google-authorship-markup-affects-seo/ https://seo-hacker.com/google-authorship-markup-affects-seo/#comments Sun, 16 Sep 2012 19:05:12 +0000 https://seo-hacker.com/?p=4809 Rel=”author” is Google’s authorship markup where authors link their page content on their Google profile. Google’s authorship markup is one of the most popular on site optimization factors. It shows up in the search engine results page as an eye-catching picture, it connects all your published works, it leverages trust in you as an author […]

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Google Authorship

Rel=”author” is Google’s authorship markup where authors link their page content on their Google profile. Google’s authorship markup is one of the most popular on site optimization factors. It shows up in the search engine results page as an eye-catching picture, it connects all your published works, it leverages trust in you as an author and much more. So how does it affect SEO?

Leveraging Trust in the SERPs as an Author

Putting a Rel Author tag in all of your published posts would mean that you’re putting your reputation on the line. People will see who published this entry right from the search engine results page.

1) They will be able to see your picture as an author

Google Authorship pic

 

Update: Google had removed all author photos and Google+ view counts from search results both from desktop and mobile. Although this update had rocked many SEO specialists, it doesn’t mean you have to stop implementing authorship markup. It still helps with author credibility, and maybe one day with author rank.

2) How many people are following you on Google+

Google Authorship Followers

3) What other articles you’ve written

Google Author Written articles

It is a direct connector to who you are as an author. The more information of yourself as an author you give out to the public, the more trust you will be able to gain. Of course, this means that you shouldn’t publish sucky, negatively controversial content that might hurt your reputation as an author.

Increased Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Consequently, having your authorship information publicly out in Google’s Search engine results page can lead to a higher click-through rate. People like to know who wrote an article and if the article is any good. There are two clear-cut factors affecting this:

1) The number of people in circles – Because people see this immediately and if they’re wise, they would check how many people are actually following you because of what you publicly publish.

2) Your picture and smile – Who doesn’t like being smiled at? Friendly and strong-colored pictures attract attention.

Having a higher CTR can directly affect your SEO. Higher CTR means a more relevant title, description, URL – and now, your authorship tag affects it by displaying your Google+ profile picture and circles too! Here’s a case study that claims his CTR increased by 38% after implementing the Rel Author tag in his entries.

Checking out Other Published Entries

Clicking on the ‘More by(author name)’ link on the SERP snippet will take the user to a page where all of the author’s other published entries are displayed. This means that the user can check out your vertical mastery of your topic, your writing voice in your other published articles, other websites where you write in, etc.

Google Authorship More

 

Know what this means? This means that if the person likes your stuff, you can get this person to add you in his or her circles or follow you elsewhere – in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. I usually put one or two of my social profiles in my Author bio so that people can add me up.

This also means that if you have any content that sucks, they would find out.

Connector to your Google+ Profile

Having the Google Authorship markup means that people who click on your author byline in the SERPs will be taken straight to your Google+ profile page.

Google Authorship byline

Which means that they can see what you post in your Google+ stream and they can directly add you to their circles.

Google plus Page

It’s a cycle – if people add you up in their circles, your Authorship information will look better because you have more people that included you in their circles (Check out how your Google Plus Page affects SEO), you get to have more people check your Google+ page out  plus you get to have a higher CTR to boot!

How to Implement Google’s Authorship Markup:

  • Your own Google+ profile
  • About page in your website
  • A good recognizable Google+ profile photo (headshot)

Implementing Google Authorship Markup without using Email:

1) Create a link to your Google+ profile from your About page and put the rel=”me” tag in the link:

<a href=”https://plus.google.com/113834493623295339552/aboutrel=”me”>Sean Si</a>

2) Link to your About page from your published posts and put the rel=”author” in the link:

<a href=”https://seo-hacker.com/about-seo/hackerrel=”author”>Sean Si</a>

We usually put this in the Author bio section of the page where the post is published.

3) Link to your About page from your Google+ Profile. To do this, go to your Google Plus About Page and then click on ‘Edit Profile’.

Google Plus About Page

After that, scroll down a bit and click on the ‘Contributor To’ Section to edit it.

Google Plus Contributor

Put in your About page Link in the URL text area and put in a label. I put in ‘About SEO Hacker’ in my label.

Edit Google Plus Contributor

Now that everything’s done, check if the code can be successfully read by Google. In order to do this, go to Google’s Rich Snippets Testing tool. Put in your URL in the text area and click on ‘Preview’

Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool

This will return a set of Rich Snippets data for your perusal. If your Authorship markup works properly, you will be able to see something like this:

Google Authorship Verification

If you’re seeing something like this then congratulations – you’ll be seeing your picture in your Google SERPs soon!

Implementing Google Authorship Markup via Email

Google Authorship Email Verification

  1. Check that you have an email address (for example, you@internet.com) on the same domain as your content (internet.com).
  2. Make sure that each article or post you publish on that domain has a clear byline identifying you as the author (for example, “By Sean Si” or “Author: Sean Si”).
  3. Visit the Authorship page and submit your email address to Google. No matter how many articles or posts you publish on this domain, you only need to do this process once. Your email will appear in the Contributor to section of your Google+ profile. If you want to keep your email private, change the visibility of your link.
  4. To see what author data Google can extract from your page, again, use the Rich Snippets Testing tool.

Tips for Keeps: Google’s Authorship Markup affects SEO indirectly by increasing CTR and leveraging on your Google Plus profile for trust indicators. If you haven’t implemented this for your blog or website, do it now!

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