s11s

mis-understood too :slightly_smiling_face:

What? We still have SEO? Why? :stuck_out_tongue:

i was looking at udemy sitemap.xml and i observed this pattern
<https://www.udemy.com/sitemap/courses.xml?p=691> -- they are using paginated XMLs of 200 pages each - whats a good number to keep? any suggestions

You might want to contact this guy. <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kothapallyarun_10x-seo-framework-ugcPost-6906434435433279488-x7gQ>

Screenshot 2022-03-03 at 5.06.25 PM.png

did the position of your link in the serp fall? did google introduce new featured snippets for specific keywords?

i can give you some more context - <http://shawacademy.com|shawacademy.com> is our prev brand and we are rebranding to <http://upskillist.com|upskillist.com> and <http://upskillist.com|upskillist.com> has practically zero organic presence and from a seo persepective - we did multiple actions
1. sitemap.xml setup
2. <http://shawacademy.com|shawacademy.com> page canonicals were updated to point to upskillist etc

i am not certain what caused the sudden increase impressions

sitemap.xml update doesn't match with the timeline though :neutral_face: Can i DM you in some time <@U02U94HSBV4>

sure, i’ll try to help as much as i can!

Few possibilities:

1. Maybe the increase in impressions is because some pages improved in ranking so got some views but wasn't high enough to get clicks. Eg. bottom of 2nd page
2. Pages dropped rankings so they're getting impressions but not clicks
3. Maybe Google rewrote your title and it isn't generating clicks
4. New pages got indexed recently and Google is testing positions to see how searchers react/behave to this change
5. Titles of others are more compelling to click than yours

<@U030SDYNX7V> did you get to diagnose? Congrats on the increase :slightly_smiling_face:

If you dm me, I can help in breaking this down. Assumptions without specific drill down is quite presumptuous and I must say might not help much. There might be something to see if you look at pages and terms that got biggest boost specifically.

Screenshot 2022-03-09 at 1.48.45 PM.png

pages were starting to index :stuck_out_tongue:

rest was the brand search which remained consistent

Heya everyone. I am writing a listicle post with list of links, about paragraph and some related info. What are some interesting formats/designs you have seen recently of the conventional listicle blog posts? would love to learn what’s working/new approaches

It's pretty decent for the price. I like it!

Great for starting off in small teams of 2-3 upto a year. Post that team ends up needing a more comprehensive tool, assuming more analysis will be done.

Well not sure about PMF and SEO efforts alignment but SEO for start ups or newly launched companies/websites differ from SEO in general(the one you read about on web).

You have to take different angles, come up with quirky strategies/campaigns to hack growth. 

But an aligned Paid ads and SEO strategy will boost your growth for sure .

with all due respect I think that the author has eaten a bit too much of his ranking for breakfast

I kind of see his take broadly but I don’t think there is coherence and anything actionable. “Paying for traffic till you get PMF and then doubling down to do SEO”, I don’t get what one will double down on , on the organic front if to the point of PMF, they only did Paid.

Definitely paid helps to get traction and traffic but it is only top of funnel, the onboarding/conversion and PMF learning post that will have its own set of factors causing success/failure.

From my pov, seeding content which is skimmable, respecting the readers and providing value (based on search intent) can drive search traffic over 3-4 months and it helps the PMF journey more and more with time.

When the content is of value, you will start ranking for phrases that you might not have thought of but lead to the solution;

you might identify blind spots in messaging; not just a limited set of phrases/keywords you bid for based on prior assumptions.

Longer conversation for sure but coming back to the post shared, I don’t see coherence in it and I either misunderstood it or totally dismiss it :slightly_smiling_face:

just an additional note, ‘investing in SEO’ in early stages doesn’t mean hiring an SEO expert or hiring “SEO content writers”; I have made those mistakes before and learnt my lessons. Investing early in it, for me is enabling founding team or interns or writers to write consistently on existing and rising search intent around phrases close to your consideration stage.

They should roughly match - sometimes they might not due to the different things they measure (<https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-console-google-analytics-data/358206/>)

However this is a huge difference. If numbers in GA is less, can you see if the below checklist helps
1. Have you implemented GA through Tag Manager or Directly? Just check if it is firing for all pages and there are no blocking triggers
2. You might have already done this but sometimes it’s just a filter I put in GA that shows me a granular view. Remove all filters and check
3. Was the error rate same for a different period of time? Compare last month to last- to - last month?
Happy to discuss over DM

Thanks <@U02PDC4883V> I will check it now.

Has your total traffic, from all sources, remained the same lately or do you also see a downfall there? Sometimes, a source can have errors and get marked differently in GA (usually the chances of that happening with GSC are low as it is a Google product). We faced a similar issue sometime back due to CSRF in Chrome browser.

Like Sid, I would also recommend to slice the data by below dimensions to see if you can isolate the problem to a particular dimension:

• Segment by Device
• Segment by Month
• Segment by Country
• Segment by Browser
• Segment by search query (GSC)
If you're not able to isolate the problem to any one of these dimensions, then it is most likely something to do with implementation of the tag or how your site is behaving.

<@U02USELSBRT> thanks. We will check all this.

can you send me the page/link that they are recommending this for with following info:
• who are you targeting
• the search intent you are targeting 

<https://www.upskillist.com/courses/business/online-excel-course/>

some quick observations/intuitions:
• The course name says ‘MS Excel Training Course Online’ so yes, intuitively it would be better to have same order of terms in slug excel-course-online
• If you have semrush or ahref or such tool, check out traction comparison between excel course online vs online excel course. I have a feeling it will be either similar. Regardless i think much of intent would be phrases like learn excel online or best excel course online? so for such terms the suggested reordering in slug makes sense. But again, this can change depending on CPC/competitiveness for the phrases that you are comparing
•  if you are seeing a dip in traction with current slug, more reasons to switch. but if this page and slug url is rising in traction, I think a switch may not be worth it if the difference is not much in search intent

for some reason they dont recommend the word "learn" in the url - i will check ahref need to learn that :slightly_smiling_face:

search term - title - slug- h1 should be aligned - correct?

as much as possible yes. Need not be exactly the same because often the actual title of post needs to be clickbaity/longer.

shorter slug but with terms in sequence as the terms in search term/phrase

<https://typeset.io/formats/nature/default-template-for-nature-articles/620837d3e9f6bf505e1416b972a67cd8>

they have 50,000+ pages like this programmatically launched and really good seo for target audience

URL is not a ranking factor and hence it doesn't matter. There is no added benefit in changing the URL.

There can be multiple smart ways but they would be so unique that you won't be able to copy anyone's idea. One unique hack that I found interesting was building a free tool/calculator or an infographic, that your target customers embed on their site and through that embed your get a do-follow backlink. The only challenge in this case is repeating anchor texts but this is still something that can work.

Another hack can be what G2 does. Create some sort of badge/ranking/rating for your target customers that they love to show on their sites (something that makes THEM look good).

Ofcourse none of these would be easy/quick but well worth it :slightly_smiling_face:

Try using platforms like HARO and adopt a strategy for digital PR. It will be a good start. 

I would say don't focus on Link Building aggressively, focus on creating a better brand online, ranks will automatically improve then. (Ofcourse with a very strategic approach to Technical, On Page SEO and content marketing)

There are multiple way to get good backlink. one such way is.
1.) Go to google and search site:<http://wikipedia.org|wikipedia.org> ‘your key phrase’ ‘dead link’ (Change key phrase with your topic or keyword). This will return all the dead link of wikipedia.
2.) Then open relevant search result according to your product &amp; check which link is dead.
3.) Write an article same as dead link and edit the link with your blog link. Boom you have wikipedia link on your blog article and then interlink your product page within article.
Reference article - <https://backlinkseo.com/how-to-find-broken-links-on-wikipedia/>

What more you can do is check backlink of that dead page in ahrefs and send email to blog/website owner that this particular link in your blog is broken, you can replace that link with   your blog article. this will give you more quality backlink.
Repeat this process with multiple dead pages.

Try joining good slack communities for link building. Haro is crowded. Try <http://Terkel.io|Terkel.io>

Research, create pieces based on research, and send it to journalists - land links from DR 90+ domains

Create stats posts. Comprehensive.

Seems it's always been there. On and off for last 7 months. Some posts get indexed, some don't.

are these blogposts getting crawled in the first place? indexing is step 2.

if not, first try <https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/ask-google-to-recrawl|manually requesting> google to recrawl these webpages. use url inspection tool or index status report to figure out any issues.

<https://www.100ms.live/sitemap.xml>
is this your sitemap? i noticed you have a lot more urls live which arent listed here

Did manual request multiple times. Many posts are not getting indexed, so not a recent issue

Did the standard url inspection. Unable to find a direction

is your sitemap updated automatically via wordpress/cms that you use?

share a blog URL that is not getting indexed.

<@U02USELSBRT> <https://www.100ms.live/blog/flutter-webrtc> this is the url from the ss above

It looks like Google has set a lower crawl frequency for your website. For example, the blog index was last crawled on 12th March even though you had new posts coming in after. I would recommend keeping up the current posting schedule and building some organic links so that the spider can revisit the website

Is this the "discovered but not indexed" issue?

Hi Kritika, adding to above points.
• Checking robot.txt files just to double check index, follow options.
• We had faced the same issue recently with one page even though website is small. The canonical tags on the page pointed to another blog. We resolved this and in a couple of days, the page got indexed.
• Interlinking to one of your top ranking pages could also help!

Added the link to the footer. 
There was a canonical issue. Fix went out a few hours back. 
Let me check robots one more time.

Screenshot_20220324-201805.jpg

Image from iOS.jpg

Right! It ought to be the canonical issue then.:point_down:

Hi <@U0309B5AYTB> 
Try installing google indexing api on your website for faster indexing and if you have wordpress website than install rankmath and integrate that with your admin account google indexing api, than you will get option to request all your urls for indexing. 
Also check your sitemap and robots.txt file and are they properly added in your file manager and gsc.
Also you can try doing internal linking of non indexed pages on indexed pages/posts, by this crawler will crawl new url from indexed pages.
If still it won't get fix than create post on wordpress with all your website urls and save that post as drafts and create few backlinks on this draft page.

All the things other than than last one, we did. Can you explain the logic behind the last one?

This is sorted. Thanks everyone for helping through this. Incorrect canonical was the root cause.

<http://www.example.com|www.example.com> and <http://blog.example.com|blog.example.com> were configured on different GA accounts?

no. it was with different UA ids in same account

if you want to retain the setup, its easy to do in GTM

*.<http://example.com|example.com> IMO should be on one property

haanji. will dm tomorrow and seek help from you

In the same GA property you can create a separate view for your new sub directory

i think he has been tracking the subdomains on separate property and wants to retain the tracking history/analytics

btw if you are not on GA4, I would suggest creating a GA4 property for all

image.png

Hey Akash - if you're using GA, you can check pageviews data under Behavior - Site Content - All Pages, and add a secondary dimension (landing page) filter containing the URL of your landing page.

Hi Rohit, thank you for your reply.

Actually, it doesn't show me the users activity (user flow).

Hey - yes, got your point. But I doubt it'll show user flow in GA for your case as they're not clicking on any link from the landing page.

Yeah right. Still looking for hope :sweat_smile:

If you want to track the incoming users than create a new view in your ga property of this landing page and use utm links to share the url of your landing page.
For outgoing clicks tracking you have to setup the gtm on your website and have to create event for outbound link and in your ga events section you can see which link is getting how many clicks and other data

If they haven't closed the first tab, the webpage in the second tab should be a part of the session and hence get tracked.

Have read it before. Amazing compilation. Also follow the author in LinkedIn, he share tips occasionally

Are there URLs on this website that contain "/wordpress/"?

I guess it’s blocking all URL’s that have the parent directory set to ‘wordpress’

Thanks! I'm trying to get more information internally. Will get back once there's more clarity.

<@U0319M1FRL2> like <@U02PDC4883V> said, the syntax here means it is blocking crawling of all urls with wordpress in it.  In my assumption, it might be blocking shady things to happen with plugins inside wordpress OR old content/posts that were hosted with wordpress as root directory. once you get more info from team, we can help further I hope

Thanks <@U031QKGPNRK>. I don't have more info but this is the link: <https://loginextsolutions.com/robots.txt>

My only concern is to verify: Does the disallow wordpress line of code mean that google is not crawling the blog page since the blog is hosted on wordpress.

Nope. Your blog won't be affected by this.

yea <@U0319M1FRL2> like Ishaan said, your blog pages seem to have blog in the url and no mention of wordpress directory so it should be good. be on the lookout for any crawl errors (in search console) for new blog posts just to be on top of the updates

Hi Vijay!
Sharing a couple of thoughts, please do check which are relevant for inspection. 

• If the domain itself has been changed like you mentioned, wouldn't that be the reason for a different score? You are essentially pointing search engines to a new address, a young domain in comparison with not much activity, so it would be like starting from scratch 
• Also, please check for page duplication issue for www and non-www version of the same page(s). It's best to stick to one and add canonical to prevent duplication. (We've stuck to non-www versions. )
• Lastly, as you know the domain authority and score are developed by individual SEO tools and mostly comes handy when folks evaluate for backlinks. A suggestion is to not be alarmed with it or use that as a strict metric of progress. But As the website scales, do monitor spam scores to ensure decent backlink hygiene! :)

do you see any issues with the impressions and CTRs as well? if not then don't worry, rankings would jump back up. although, always a good idea to post regularly. 6 months break is not ideal.

Hey aishwarya, please find my replies below,
1. Yes i understand that, but the AS was the same for a few months after changing the domain until recently we edited and reuploaded the sitemap. I guess that could've triggered the downfall.
2. This i can check!
3. :joy: got it. Sure I’ll check the spam score!

Several things can go wrong.

• Have you been updating the blog with recent knowledge? Usually Google treats recency as a ranking signal. Every content piece has a half-life and it decays with time.
• Have you seen a change in your backlink profile? Did some high DA site drop your backlink or disavowed you?
• Check the traffic your blog has been driving lately and look at what queries are driving traffic and if there is a change from the past.
• Check qualitative parameters like heatmap and scroll rate. Does it surface any issues? Even if nothing seems amiss, try adding some elements which urge people to click/engage with on-page elements. Some example can be, free calculators, videos, audio snippets etc.
• Lastly, check for technical SEO indicators. Sometimes a small harmless update to the website can potentially lead to drop in traffic.
Hope this helps.

Sure, Will check all this. Thanks <@U02USELSBRT>

-Has your overall rankings dropped, if not, then your website DA and technical indicators should be fine, if yes, then that should be your focus on why the drop
• if your overall rankings have not dropped then most probably your content just needs to be refreshed and crawled

Find out who outranked your brand in search. And how many blogs have dropped in rankings.

See if your search competitors have increased their content frequency, topical authority or tight interlinking (based on themes or hub &amp; spoke model)

Check GSC reports (impressions, clicks, avg position) for first-party data. Get the metrics for your entire blog and also for individual blog posts. See if there are any seasonal drops or a common pattern.

Just like <@U02USELSBRT> said, for some topics Google prefers fresh content - Make smaller changes like including a couple more pointers to blogs every month, adding more images, alt texts, and interlinking possibilities. Do a complete content revamp if the content type, format &amp; angle doesn't satisfy user's intent.

If you are updating or new adding blog posts, try including schema/structured data to it based on the content format. It can improve your CTR and featured snippet positions.

<@U034N0JE214> have a referral for seo consultant. Will DM deets

Aleyda’s resources are amazing and constantly updated: <https://learningseo.io/|https://learningseo.io/>

Was going to suggest the same link as <@U0325QQQALR>. Excellent resource

Not sure if these are in the Aleyda guide yet (my go to add well) but have sent this to others as well for 101/quick start needs:
For total beginners: <https://backlinko.com/google-seo-guide|https://backlinko.com/google-seo-guide>
With more detail:
<https://backlinko.com/learn-seo-fast|https://backlinko.com/learn-seo-fast>

This MOz's guide is evergreen for beginners: <https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo>

i have heard - that if you have everything - its good for domain authority score. but i have seen usage of both in top companies, so not sure

<https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/subdomains-impact-seo-performance/> more confusion :disappointed:

pick subdomain when,

• you have a different CMS for documents than your site. eg. for sales enablement or financial or internal docs
• you're okay with not using the doc content for SEO purposes or are okay to setup its own SEO with custom robots, custom sitemap etc.
pick subfolder when,

• you want to leverage document content for SEO
• you prefer easier management/upkeep in lieu of more customisability
my suggestion: pick subfolder unless you know what you're doing and why

the again - you can host on sub-domain and  proxy on main domain under a subfolder :stuck_out_tongue:

Adding to Aniruddh. 
Subdomains are useful for multi-location websites, or for specific needs like events/campaigns, or simply if you have a tonne of content that needs to be siloed for easy management*. Disney has been cited as a good example for this. 
To build subdomain authority, you need time and to put in just as much efforts as the main website. Subdirectories can help to rank sooner. 
I'd suggest subdirectories as well! :) Unless it serves a specific purpose! 

did you use the debug tool to see if tags were being fired?

The tag is being fired. So, the weird thing is I can see data populated for "USERS IN LAST 30 MINUTES". The bar graph that gets populated in the right-hand side. But nothing in the users/new users column.

I did choose to keep the "Default Reporting Identity" as device only instead of "by users Id" as it's difficult for my CRM to pass on these details to Analytics. Can this be the reason why none of the other fields have any data,  as GA is unable to understand which are new and which are returning users?

Can be. Just wait for 3 - 4 hours and check again. Happy to get on a debugging call and solve for this

Generally GA shows data only after a day.

Thanks <@U02PDC4883V> for all the help! I'll wait for a day to see if the data shows up like <@U038W1678JX> said.

Thanks <@U038W1678JX>, that might be it.

Since GA doesn't show data immediately, thats the reason for having Real-time.

Tag Google on twitter and continuously abuse them for forceing this down our throats.

i think wait for sometime, make sure no scripts are blocking data collection (debug tool would help here).

Thanks All for your input.
The reason was exactly what Anand suggested, GA takes some time to start populating data. Happy to report it is working as expected :)

Hi Yash,

Based on my understanding of your query, here are some areas I would work on:

Select United States as target location in Google search console account

You should own .com domain even if not using it

Keyword research should be done specific to US location. You will get idea on traffic &amp; competition. Create content &amp; optimize the site based on that.  

Do keyword gap analysis wrt your competitors in US location. And see the best opportunities or keyword gaps that you can fill or overthrow your competitors.

Create collaborative content with influencers &amp; thoughtleaders from US to harness their followers &amp; network for brand awareness in US.

Focus on creating link worthy content and run link building campaigns to get backlinks an improve rankings.

Create listings in local or global directories in US. 

If you've a virtual office(not just business address) in US then get your GMB profile updated to show as a verified business in US location.

From a user perspective, your website content should be localised for US &amp; cater to the US audience. For eg: US address, logos or customer stories or US$ equivalent pricing.

this is great! Thanks, Rohit. Will try these out.

Rohit has covered everything, amazing. We did quite a few of this and saw a slight increase in the traffic from US.

In my opinion you don't really need any tools for this. You can simply follow a checklist for your on-page SEO.

Here's a simple checklist that can be useful:

1.  Proper content format/structure with H1, H2, H3s in bold
2. Focus keyword in URL and make it super-simple
3. Alt tags for images
4. Keyword in SEO title
5. Keyword in SEO meta description
6. TOC - jump links, anchor links for article sitelinks appearance in search results page.
7. Tech SEO - Schema markup (FAQ, listicle, How-To, Q&amp;A...), image compression
8. Submit URLs in search console, add the URL in sitemap
9. Interlink to and from other relevant pages
10. Win featured snippet position: For paragraph snippet have a clear-cut answer with 40-50 word, within 300 characters.
11. Make sure your content type &amp; format and are in-line with current SERP.

For most websites where you want to utilise the tools' rae capabilities, RankMath or Yoast are great; I personally refer RankMath because I kept finding a lot of things we couldn't change in Yoast. If you do a lot of custom dev and have good developers, use AIO SEO instead.