Search Engine Optimization

Crawl rate limit: The crawl rate can go up and down based on a couple of factors: UP: If the site responds really quickly for a while, the limit goes up, meaning more connections can be used to crawl. Down: If the site slows down or responds with server errors, the limit goes down and Googlebot crawls less. Crawl demand: The two factors that play a significant role in determining crawl demand are: Popularity: URLs that are more popular on the Internet tend to be crawled more often to keep them fresher in Google index. Staleness: our systems attempt to prevent URLs from becoming stale in the index. Factors affecting crawl budget: According to Google analysis, having many low-value-add URLs can negatively affect a site's crawling and indexing. Faceted navigation and session identifiers On-site duplicate content Soft error pages Hacked pages Infinite spaces and proxies Low quality and spam content Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2017/01/what-crawl-budget-means-for-go...

We have affected and injected many low value (Spam links injection) URLs by "Japanese keyword hack" malware on my company WordPress website. It is negatively affected our website's crawling and indexing. Example: Screenshot   Solution: After the hack has been fixed, we asked Google to re-crawl our website URLs by the following crawl request methods.  Inspect the URL using the "URL Inspection tool" and requested indexing. XML sitemap: Resubmitted in Google - https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml Inserted the following lines in our website robots.txt file - https://example.com/robots.txt. Sitemap: https://example.com/post-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://example.com/page-sitemap.xml

How long does it take to see improvements in rankings after making significant changes in terms of quality? It can take months: John: How long does that take? Yeah it’s hard to say, it’s really hard to say. On the one hand, we have to recrawl the content, like if you make significant changes on your website, we have to recrawl that. And to recrawl that across a larger site, that can take a bit of time, especially if you make bigger changes like across everything, if you change the structure of your website, I would assume something like that, just purely from a technical point of view, would take, I don’t know, maybe a month. And for understanding the quality changes overall, I would see that as something where it probably takes a few months on our side to actually understand that this website has significantly changed. So not something that you can fix in a week, it’s probably more like, I don’t know, there, four months something like that if you make significant quality changes. S...

[1/14] Remember, there are situational "ranking factors" that are out of your control. You can't have a direct impact on things like: - perceived relevance - searcher habits - seasonality - competitor activity But you should be aware of them, and adjust strategies if needed. [2/14] Let's take perceived relevance. Why perceived? Because a Search Engine can only make an assumption on the searcher's meaning and intent. This is improving astonishingly, but if you're simply far away from the perceived relevance then you have no chance... [3/14] That is, unless, you: 1. Study the SERPs to better understand the perceived relevance of a query 2. Identify ways of ranking there 3. AND assess if your brand *can* rank there Easy peasy. [4/14] Actually a good quality in an SEO is someone who sets realistic expectations and knows when it's not worth time or resources hunting to rank for a query where they are likely irrelevant. Pick your battles, yo. [5/14] ...

The nature of SEO is VUCA. VUCA(volatility, uncertainty, complexity, & ambiguity) is an acronym that is used to describe the nature of a challenging situation. - Volatile: unexpected algorithm updates & daily ranking fluctuations. - Uncertain : content in the most important ranking factor but the majority of other factors are unknown. - Complex: interdependent systems(content, optimization, tech) & tasks. - Ambiguous: 'effort vs impact' not straight forward. Because of this, do you think working in SEO has made your thinking more nuanced/ make better decisions?

I recently read this book called A​tomic Habits​. The author talks about how we should focus on ​Systems instead of Goals.​ He says a goal-focused mindset can cause a rollback effect once the goal is achieved.  For example,  Goal: Lose 10 kilos (most of us would go back to old patterns once we achieve the goal) System: Workout 4 times a week.  If you think about it, SEO & Content marketing is very similar. Let’s say you have a Goal to rank for a particular keyword in position number 1, you would:  - Analyze search intent  - Do keyword/ competitor research  - Plan topic clusters  - Write content  - Influence rankings by doing on-page / off-page changes  But SEO/ Content is a continuous process that doesn’t stop once you get to rank 1.  Hence we have to set up the right processes to build backlinks, set up interlinks, refreshing old content & writing new content.  The purpose of setting goals is to win the game....

There is no Google certification for SEO , Google Partner Certificate at all. A " Google Premier Partners " status only applies to " Google Ads "(Google Paid Ads), there is NO special insight into Google search at all . It is only the Google Partner badge shows that specific Partners have passed Google Ads product certification exams and are up-to-date with the latest product knowledge. In other words, they earned it. 2 users certified in Google Ads who have admin or standard access to your company's Google Ads manager account or sub-managers. Meet a 90-day ad spend requirement of $10,000 USD across your managed accounts to show that your company has a healthy amount of activity. Requirements to be considered for a Partner badge: To maintain a high standard for Google program, Google will review companies to both receive and retain the badge. Certification: 1 user certified in Google Ads who has admin or standard access to your company’s Google A...