Posts

SEO in 2025: Experts reveal key trends and insights

/0 Comments/in , /by

We love to say that SEO is always changing, and 2024 proved that true. There’s hardly been a year more challenging and exciting than that. But as we’re heading into 2025, we’re sure we have not seen the last of it. With everyone banking on AI, search, and the search industry are set for another sea change. In this post, we hear from seasoned SEO experts for their predictions on the future and how you can prepare.

Table of contents

A look back at SEO in 2024

2024 was a year with many newsworthy developments. We won’t review everything here, as that would need a book, but maybe someone will make a documentary about life as an SEO in 2024. Or maybe life at Google, as the search giant was central to almost all the big news.

Google deemed a monopoly

Let’s start with the biggest: Google faced a significant legal ruling when a federal judge declared it a monopoly in August. This landmark antitrust case found that Google’s dominance in the search engine market violated antitrust laws. Since then, there have been many discussions about potential regulatory changes and impacts on the broader search and tech industry. Currently, it looks like the DOJ will ask Google to sell off Chrome, among other things.

Google launched AI Overviews

In May, Google launched AI Overviews during its I/O event. This new feature uses AI to generate concise summaries in search results, aiming to make searches more efficient and user-friendly. This integration marked a significant advancement in using AI within search engines. AI Overviews are now available in most markets, but not the EU.

Google search documents leak

Around the same time, a massive leak of Google’s search API documentation occurred, revealing over 2,500 pages of internal documents. Although the leaked documents do not contain the algorithm’s secret recipe, they provide valuable insights into Google’s inner workings.

Core updates keeping everyone up at night 

Throughout the year, Google’s core updates led to significant swings in search rankings and notable traffic changes for many websites. For many of us, it remains an ongoing challenge to adapt to evolving algorithms quickly.

Keep up to date with the Yoast newsletter
SEO is ever-changing. It can be hard to keep up with the latest changes and decide what’s best to focus on. But as a Yoast newsletter subscriber, you no longer need to worry! You’ll receive weekly emails with practical SEO tips and insights to help you quickly improve your site.

Sign up now!

The end of Parasite SEO?

Additionally, in March, Google banned Parasite SEO, a practice that exploits high-authority domains for quick ranking. Google uses this ban to improve search quality and eliminate manipulative practices within its search ecosystem. This policy affected major sites like Time, Forbes, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, as they were penalized for not adhering to Google’s guidelines.

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Search

In non-Google news, OpenAI introduced a search feature within ChatGPT in October, which was another groundbreaking development. This addition allows users to access up-to-date web information directly through the chatbot. As a result, OpenAI became a direct competitor to traditional search engines and offered a new way to find information online.

These were just some of the big events that happened in 2024. SEO is one of the most dynamic industries — there is never a dull moment! But this also means that you must stay informed about SEO trends for 2025 and be able to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

The SEO experts in this article

Jes Scholz

Consultant and SEO futurist

Kevin Indig

Independent Growth Advisor

Lily Ray

VP, SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive

Kyle Risley

Senior SEO Lead at Shopify

Aleyda Solis

SEO Consultant, Speaker & Author

Jo Turnbull

Founder and Consultant at Turn Global

Arnout Hellemans

SEO & Analytics Consultant

Gareth Hoyle

Managing Director Marketing Signals

Mark Williams-Cook

SEO Director at Candour

Gus Pelogia

Senior SEO Product Manager at Indeed

Carolyn Shelby

Principal SEO at Yoast

Alex Moss

Principal SEO at Yoast

Johnny Herge

Digital Marketer at Amsive

Main trends and SEO insights for 2025

We’ve asked several trusted experts for their predictions of what’s happening next in SEO in 2025. We’ll present their answers in themes, starting with the biggest one: the role of AI in SEO.

AI’s role in SEO

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how businesses and professionals approach SEO. As AI tools become more advanced, they offer both opportunities and challenges.

Content generation and strategy

Arnout Hellemans (independent SEO consultant) believes AI will “massively” transform SEO strategies. However, he says, “The issue is that search engines will leave loads more content out of the index because it’s generic content already there.”

This means businesses must focus on creating unique and valuable content rather than relying solely on AI-generated text. AI can help keep content updated and assist in research, but human oversight remains critical. Hellemans suggests that while AI advances rapidly, “human oversight and rewriting is still really needed.” This balance ensures content remains relevant and engaging.

Streamlining content creation

Lily Ray (VP, SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive) points out that AI can make content creation much more efficient: “More and more companies will find ways to integrate AI into their content creation and optimization strategies. Outside of using AI to generate content, AI can create major efficiencies that streamline the content creation, such as analyzing and summarizing data, producing insights and text content at scale; generating metadata and structured data, and much more. While mass-producing AI content on a large scale can present SEO risks in some cases, using AI creatively and intelligently can dramatically speed up and improve the content ideation and creation process.”

Using AI for more than just content creation

Lily’s colleague Johnny Herge added that content writers will start using AI tools to do more than just produce content. “A new way many SEOs will succeed in 2025 is by using AI to help with the final product besides the copy itself. Coding is made infinitely easier with AI. Using AI will allow writers to make data analytics scripts or scripts that organize data and pull insights that would have previously required a writer to have a different skillset entirely. This likely will lead to writers being able to put forward much further quantifiable insights. ”

Kevin Indig (independent consultant) agrees: “AI + no-code offers SEO and other marketers powerful new workflows around building systems instead of working on single campaigns. I expect us to see many more examples of “systemization” next year, which will lead to smaller SEO teams with larger impact.”

AI and SEO tools will improve

As AI and SEO tools evolve, they will become much smarter. They don’t just identify issues but suggest fixes, making them incredibly valuable. Kyle Risley (Senior SEO Lead at Shopify) predicts, “SEO tools will evolve to be more proactive, shifting from merely identifying issues to offering comprehensive solutions. For small businesses with limited time and resources, these recommendations can help improve site quality, even without specialized SEO knowledge. Instead of simply noting “Your title tag is too short,” tools will suggest “Your title tag is too short. Click here to implement a better one.”

AI agents and AI brandbuilding

Jes Scholz (independent Growth Marketing Consultant and SEO Futurist) says, “AI agents will be all the hype, but very few SEOs will actually change their strategy. Only the bold will have the buy-in to take tactics to the cutting edge. But this will be needed as LLM-powered surfaces (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, etc.) start slowly but steadily eating into traditional search. Quick win AI visibility tactics, like best of listicles, will rise and fall like the meta keyword tag of old. Brand building on popular RAGd platforms will likely emerge as a dependable strategy. But no matter what, now is the time you can win the HoM/CMO/CEOs attention.”

Google’s AI Overviews will evolve

Kevin Indig predicts that Google’s AI Overviews will evolve: “I expect AIOs to morph into other formats next year, similar to how they contain products in shopping. Right now, they look like Featured Snippets, but I expect Google to keep iterating. I also expect them to roll AIOs out even further to monetizable queries, widening the gap between what’s measurable and what’s happening in the search results even more.”

Mark Williams-Cook (SEO Director at Candour) adds: “We’ve long seen the trend of Google trying to keep searchers on their SERP, and with their recent announcement they have reduced the cost of generating AIOs by 90%, I think it’s obvious we’re only going to see more of them. However, AI in the form of LLMs does open new doors, especially with content creation, without falling into the no-value trap of having AI write your content for you.”

Yoast SEO expert insights for 2025

Carolyn Shelby – Principal SEO at Yoast

The balancing act of SEO professionals
In 2025, the big shift in SEO will be balancing diversified visibility with unified messaging. As AI-powered platforms, alternative search engines, and social discovery tools like TikTok, ChatGPT Search, and even Reddit increasingly influence how users find information, businesses can no longer rely solely on Google to drive traffic. Success will come from creating a consistent, authoritative presence across these fragmented ecosystems.

SEO professionals will need to ensure brand messaging remains cohesive and trustworthy across all channels while adapting to each platform’s unique requirements. Structured data, multimedia content, and a deep understanding of user intent will become critical to connecting the dots between platforms and maintaining a seamless user experience. In 2025, SEO will evolve into an integrated marketing discipline where visibility and messaging work hand in hand to build lasting trust and engagement.

Adapting to zero-click searches

The rise of zero-click searches is changing how businesses approach SEO in 2025. Getting clicks can be harder as users find answers directly on search result pages. Here are our experts’ predictions on this challenging topic.

Maintaining visibility

Arnout Hellemans suggests that you “start looking at other platforms (both search engines and AI interfaces) and try to understand how you can be included in their answers (think Claude, ChatGPT, Bing, Brave search engine). By doing this, you can ensure your business remains visible even when traditional clicks decrease.”

Building a brand following

Building a strong brand presence is essential. Arnout advises businesses to focus on “proper marketing, such as building a following or fans. Visibility will start shifting away from Google; I think this is where we will find plenty of opportunities.” Engaging with your audience on social media and other platforms helps maintain interest and loyalty, even if users don’t click through to your site directly.

Leveraging AI and alternative channels

Kyle Risley says, “As clicks become harder to come by in organic search, there are pretty much two options for organic acquisition: hang on to as much of your remaining click share as you can and activate new traffic acquisition channels.” This could mean looking at channels like TikTok and YouTube. These platforms are gaining traction as starting points for user journeys. Businesses can create engaging content on these channels to reach new audiences and drive traffic.

Becoming a source for AI Overviews

Gus Pelogia (Senior SEO Product Manager at Indeed) notes that being a source in AI Overviews can be more relevant than getting clicks: “Imagine searches displaying a brand’s blog as a source (e.g. software listicles). If one of the players is the main source for AI Overviews, they’ve more control over the message vs competitors. Could they change the wording to say better things about them? 

“I’d guess many people will see an AI answer mentioning a few brands and what’s being said about them, and later, they will move to each brand’s website to evaluate their options. That specific search was a zero-click, but there’s a new one happening directly to your company’s website.”

“It’s interesting that clicks will decrease, but since AI Overviews are a RAG (AI answers validate with sources), many pages will still have a reason to exist since they’ll validate the AI answer. This is intent-dependent. Many informational, common-knowledge queries won’t require new articles or have a brand impact.”

Reddit is not going away; make use of it

Kevin Indig doesn’t expect Reddit’s growth to slow: “Searchers want connection and a non-commercialized space. I expect Google to improve at showing Reddit posts that are not outdated or thin. The implication is that domains must compete for one less spot since Reddit takes up many top spots in the search results. On the other hand, it becomes a valuable pool of audience insights and engagement. Brands that develop a playbook to grow their visibility on Reddit have a chance to improve their sentiment and create loyal customers.”

Expand your data tracking

Aleyda Solis predicts that tracking pixels, SERP features, and clicks vs. no-clicks will become fundamental: “Start monitoring your overall SERP visibility and click behavior: Your SERP features shifts — AI overviews included — pixel visibility from the top, as well as clicks (and no-clicks) shifts per content type and SERP feature, to focus your SEO strategy accordingly.”

Yoast SEO expert insights for 2025

Alex Moss – Principal SEO at Yoast

The evolving role of the SEO: It’s more than just “SEO”
As an SEO professional, I’ve witnessed a dramatic shift in our field, particularly in 2024. While the traditional “SEO” title remains, it has become an increasingly outdated term. Our role is expanding, becoming more multifaceted, and demanding a broader skillset. We’re no longer solely focused on optimizing for Google; we’re becoming Discovery Optimization Experts responsible for ensuring brands are found across the entire digital landscape.

Several factors drive this shift, including the rise of AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity and the growing importance of platforms like TikTok and Reddit as legitimate discovery channels.

Furthermore, the perception of SEO as purely a marketing function is misguided. SEOs bring a unique understanding of the digital ecosystem far beyond traditional marketing. We should be more involved in high-level business decisions that shape a company’s online presence, influencing everything from website design to content strategy to product development.

The future of SEO is exciting, but our value still tends to be underrated. Our skillset will need to expand further yet again, practicing through experimentation.

The rising importance of video content

Video content is becoming a key component of SEO strategies in 2025. Its engaging nature offers a unique way to connect with audiences.

Video-first approach

Mark Williams-Cook says, “I expect we’ll see many smaller businesses take a ‘top-down’ approach with content now, meaning they will go video first – and I think this is really smart. Video content is cheap, fast to make, and a natural way to pull real insight out of people. With the tooling we have now, it’s easy to automatically produce transcripts, which in turn, LLMs can rewrite into a more traditional ‘article’ style. This approach means you’ll get the video to share over multiple platforms, which is not only hard for AI to replicate but how a lot of people prefer to engage in content.”

Google’s focus on video content

Lily Ray confirms that “video content is increasingly essential, as Google prominently features YouTube and sometimes TikTok across various surfaces, like Search, Discover, Google News, the Video tab, Short Videos, and more. Site owners should be well-versed in changes to how Google indexes video content and expands their text content into visual formats.”

“As it relates to video indexing, Google now requires that a video be the focus of an indexed watch page for the video to get indexed (“Google indexes videos only from indexed watch pages.”) Using YouTube to host the video is another way to ensure that the video is indexed, but be sure to use VideoObject structured data to “connect” your watch page to the YouTube video for the watch page to get video rich features in search results.”

Interactive engagement

Gareth Hoyle emphasizes that “video will also continue to gain importance due to its interactive nature and engagement. AI video will continue to grow, but like the EEAT signals above, curated and well-engaged real video will help businesses showcase themselves to Google’s algorithm and their current and potential new customers.”

E-commerce SEO shifts

The landscape of e-commerce SEO is evolving, particularly with changes in how Google handles shopping queries. Businesses need to adapt to these shifts to stay competitive. These are some of the predictions our SEO experts had to share.

Google Shopping tab focus

Kevin Indig expects “the new Shopping Tab experience to become the default experience for shopping queries. As we’ve seen before, Google often tests a new experience in the shopping tab and then moves it to the main tab. The implication is that e-commerce SEO becomes more about optimizing product pages as Google becomes the new category page.”

Optimizing product pages

As Google will likely integrate more e-commerce features directly into search results, businesses must optimize their product listings. With the emphasis on product pages, businesses should ensure that these pages are detailed and informative. This includes high-quality images, detailed product descriptions, customer reviews, and clear pricing information. Structured data markup can enhance how products appear in search results, increasing visibility and click-through rates.

Product feed accuracy

Accurate and organized product feeds are crucial. Kyle Risley highlights the importance of having “well-organized and error-free product feeds” as search engines increase the visibility of organic product listings. This requires regularly updating product information and ensuring consistency across platforms.

Adapting to new channels

As consumers begin their shopping journeys on platforms like TikTok and YouTube, businesses should consider expanding their presence on these channels. Creating engaging product videos and leveraging social commerce features can attract new customers and drive traffic.

Sign up for our monthly SEO news webinar
Learn more about the SEO trends and predictions of 2025 with insights from industry experts. Join our free monthly installments of the SEO Update by Yoast to learn strategies that drive results. Reserve your spot today.

Sign up now!

Building brand authority

Today, brand authority is vital if you want to perform well in search results. As search engines evolve, they will develop new ways of determining how valuable your brand is. Building a good — human — brand is one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd.

Targeting branded queries

Aleyda Solis emphasizes that it’s all about brand optimization: “Brand optimization becomes key. It’s clear that Google wants to feature real, authoritative brands at the top of the SERPs, which is also helpful for increasing CTR and optimizing conversions. Grow your brand authority by understanding your company brand positioning and considering it in your SEO strategy: Target your branded queries, specify your brand details with structured data, optimize your knowledge panel details, etc.”

Focusing on EEAT

Gareth Hoyle highlights the importance of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) referenced content: “As Google continues to improve its ability to weed out low-level, auto-produced AI content, EEAT-referenced content will become increasingly important and visible as Google increases trust based on what it knows about the author rather than just the words on the page. I am sure it will be an ongoing battle as spammers and content sites continue to churn out page after page of content, but the personal brand will help the cream rise to the top.”

Local SEO trends for 2025

Local SEO is essential for small and medium-sized businesses attracting nearby customers. As we move into 2025, businesses should focus on a few key areas.

Google Business Profile optimization

Keeping an updated and complete Google Business Profile is essential. Freelance SEO expert Arnout Hellemans emphasizes that a “regularly updated Google Business Profile and a fully completed profile will be extremely important.” This means ensuring that all business information is accurate and up-to-date. Regularly adding new photos, responding to customer questions, and posting updates can make your business more appealing to local searchers.

The power of reviews

Customer reviews significantly impact local search rankings. According to Arnout, reviews with the “right sentiment,” particularly those discussing “the services received and results,” are crucial. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, highlighting their experiences with your services. Responding to positive and negative reviews shows that you value customer feedback and are committed to improving your business.

User experience (UX) enhancements

Improving user experience is key to boosting SEO performance. A smooth and intuitive website keeps visitors engaged and encourages them to explore more.

Form validation and friction reduction

Arnout Hellemans highlights the importance of “proper form validation on lead forms and checkout.” Ensuring that forms work correctly and are easy to use can prevent user frustration. Make sure users can easily fill out and submit forms without errors. 

Removing distractions is also crucial. Arnout advises focusing on “the removal of distractions like pop-ups on every page.” Pop-ups can be annoying and disrupt the browsing experience. Limiting their use or ensuring they’re relevant and easy to close can help maintain user attention.

Leveraging SEO communities

Joining SEO communities can be a game-changer for people looking to enhance their knowledge and network. These communities offer support, insights, and opportunities that can drive growth.

Growth of global SEO communities

Jo Turnbull (Founder and Marketing Consultant at Turn Global) mentions that by 2025, there will be “the growth of global SEO and digital communities.” This growth is particularly beneficial for smaller brands aiming to build authority. Being part of a community provides access to shared experiences and advice from peers facing similar challenges.

Jo says, “We have seen a growth in members of some communities such as Women in Tech SEO, The FCDC and the DMU (a community for freelancers) over the past few years and many communities will continue to grow in 2025. SEO Office Hours has had over 60k views and regularly has between 30 and 40 live attendees per episode. As of November 23rd, there have been 50 episodes.”

“The International Search Summit, run by WebCertain, has grown to over 600 attendees, but when it first started in Barcelona, there were just 50. Search London has been running for nearly 14 years, and we have grown to now run events in Barcelona. They sold out of tickets just by promoting on social media and within our network.”

Support and learning opportunities

SEO can often feel isolating, especially in smaller companies where one person handles most of the SEO tasks. Jo notes that these communities help individuals who “look for external support” as they navigate frequent updates and changes in SEO. Participating in events, webinars, and online forums provides valuable learning opportunities and informs members about the latest SEO trends and techniques.

Building networks and careers

Being active in an SEO community can also open doors to career opportunities. Networking with other professionals can lead to collaborations, job offers, and new projects. Jo points out that people join communities to “feel and be supported,” learn from one another, and advance their careers.

Conclusion to SEO in 2025

As we move into 2025, staying on top of SEO trends is more important than ever. The events of 2024 have shown us how quickly the landscape can change, from legal rulings and algorithm leaks to shifts in digital strategies. These changes underscore the need for you to remain agile and informed.

Join our monthly SEO news webinar to keep up with these changes and gain deeper insights. Alex and Carolyn — our resident SEO experts — talk you through all the latest developments. It’s a great opportunity to stay informed about the latest trends and strategies. Please sign up today and learn how to navigate SEO in 2025. Let’s continue to learn and adapt together.

Do you have any thoughts or predictions about SEO in 2025 to share? Please comment on this post!

The post SEO in 2025: Experts reveal key trends and insights appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

Crawling December: HTTP caching

/0 Comments/in , /by

Allow us to cache, pretty please.
As the internet grew over the years, so did how much Google crawls. While Google’s crawling
infrastructure supports heuristic caching mechanisms, in fact always had, the number of requests
that can be returned from local caches has decreased: 10 years ago about 0.026% of the total
fetches were cacheable, which is already not that impressive; today that number is 0.017%.

Read more at Read More

Features of the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

/0 Comments/in , /by

Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) offers more than just a list of links. Its layout can change based on what you’re searching for, presenting various SERP features tailored to your needs. You might see different elements like featured snippets, shopping options, or local listings and also AI Overviews. Understanding these can help you navigate the results more effectively. This guide will help you identify and differentiate between the paid and organic results you encounter.

Table of contents

What are SERP features?

Search features are elements on a search engine results page (SERP) that provide information beyond the standard list of links. They include things like featured snippets, image packs, and knowledge panels. These features make it easier for users to quickly find answers and relevant information in search results.

an example of how rich google search is based on a search for footballer cody gakpo
Google Search is really rich with information these days

A new SERP feature: Google AI Overviews

AI Overviews are a new feature in Google’s search results. They use artificial intelligence to create concise summaries that answer user queries quickly. These summaries appear at the top of search pages, providing immediate information without the user needing to click through links, although links are provided. This feature helps users find the information they need faster and increases the visibility of diverse websites.

google ai overviews are a new type of feature, here showing results for yoast seo
Google AI Overview provide a new way of accessing information from search

It depends on what you’re searching for

What the result page looks like largely depends on what you are searching for. If you’re searching for a product you can buy, Google will show shop results on the SERP. For example, when we searched for hockey equipment for an eight-year-old, Google showed us this:

an example of a product search on Google, showing listing for hockey equipment
An example of a product search on Google

This results page starts with shopping results, with images on top. On the left-hand side, you will see all kinds of filters to fine-tune your product search as well. To enter the Sponsored section, you must pay Google – note the word ‘sponsored’ in the upper left corner. After those results, the first is an ad, which is another paid result. And then the organic results start.

However, if you’re searching for information about the planet Neptune – because your son is writing an essay about that – you’ll encounter a different-looking SERP:

an example the serp features for the search term neptune planet
Different searches show different SERP features on Google

These search results do not show any paid or sponsored results. At the top, you’ll see an AI Overview for the topic, and on the right, you’ll notice a knowledge graph with lots of information about the planet Neptune. There’s even an interactive diagram to learn more about what Neptune looks like.

Read on: What is search intent? »

Browsing through the result page

The default page of Google’s search result is a page on which different results appear. Google decides which results fit your search query best. That could be ‘normal’ results, but also news results, shopping results or images. If you’re searching for information, a knowledge graph could turn up. When you’re searching to buy something online, you’ll probably get lots of shopping results on the default result page.

the google bar serp feature gives you quick access to images, news, videos, shopping, maps, forums and more
Google Search has many options than just regular search

You can apply some filters on the search results yourself if you want to. You can, for instance, click on ‘images’ if you’re searching for an image. This allows you to browse through images only. You can also choose ‘shopping’, ‘maps’, ‘forums’, ‘videos’, ‘news’ and ‘more’.

Keep on reading: How to get your Shopify store on Google »

Sponsored results and ads

Google shows both paid results and organic results. It can be pretty hard to notice the difference between the two. The ads usually appear on top of the search results. Sometimes it’s only one ad, but Google can show more ads as well. This depends on how many people search for a certain search term and who wants to pay for it.

an example of a sponsored ad on google for the term holiday home south of france
There are many sponsored listings in Google

You’ll recognize the paid result by the word Sponsored shown in front of the link to the website. The shopping results in Google are also paid results: a company pays Google to appear in the shopping results. If you want to advertise on Google, you should check out Google Adwords.

Organic results

Google’s organic results are all non-paid results. According to Google’s algorithm, the organic results shown first are the best fit for the user’s search query. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) improves the chances of ranking in organic search results.

Snippets

The search result page consists of a number of snippets. A snippet is a result Google shows to the user in the search results.  A ‘normal’ snippet usually looks like this:

an example of a regular snippet in google
A regular Google snippet

Google shows the title in blue, the URL in grey, and a description of the page. You’ll also encounter rich snippets on the SERP. A rich snippet shows extra information between the URL and the description. A rich snippet looks like this:

an example of a rich snippet in google showing a recipe with image and star rating
A rich result as shown in Google search

In this snippet, a picture of the ice cream is added. You can see the recipe’s rating and the time it takes to prepare this type of ice cream. A rich snippet contains much more information than a normal snippet does.

Read more: What are rich snippets? »

Other elements on the SERPs

Besides snippets, images, videos, news results, shopping results and maps, Google also shows some other elements on the SERPs.

Knowledge Graph panel

The Knowledge Graph Panel appears on the right side of the search results. According to Google, this information is retrieved from many sources, including the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia. Information from the Knowledge Graph is used to answer spoken questions in Google Assistant and Google Home voice queries.

an example of a serp feature known as a knowledge graph panel, this case about minecraft
An example of a knowledge graph panel Google search feature

People also ask

This box appears somewhere between the organic search results. It’ll suggest questions related to the search query you typed in. You’ll encounter these related questions in the organic search results if you’re searching for Minecraft. Clicking on one of the suggestions will directly answer the specific question.

an example of a feature on the google search results pages known as people also ask
Google’s People also ask search feature

Featured snippets

A featured snippet, aka answer box, is a highlighted search box that answers the question you type in the Google search bar. This featured snippet box is situated above the regular organic search results. Featured snippets often appear as a paragraph or a bulleted list, accompanied by an image.

an example of a serp feature known as a featured snippet
Featured highlight answers directly at the top of the Google search results

Keep reading: How to get featured snippets »

Local 3-pack

When you search from something locally, the Local 3-pack can show up to highlight three related local businesses. It’s a Google search feature that provides information such as business names, addresses, phone numbers, and customer reviews. This feature is often integrated with Google Maps. It helps users find directions and learn more about local businesses.

a serp feature called a local three-pack after searching for best spaghetti seattle
This search feature shows three local result based on the query

Image pack

The image pack search feature shows a collection of images related to a search. Typically shown in a grid or carousel format, they allow users to quickly browse visual content without leaving the search page. For some searches, images are a better fit than just regular links or other SERP features.

an example of a google search results page showing an image pack for the search space needle photos
An example of an image pack in Google’s search results

Top stories

Top stories is a search feature on Google that displays the most recent and relevant news articles. This section typically appears near the top of the search results, highlighting breaking news and timely updates. It includes headlines, publication names, and often images to quickly inform users about current events.

a serp feature called top stories in google
Google’re Top stories feature shows the most important news

Conclusion about SERP features

Google’s search engine results pages can show various elements: the search results (so-called snippets), AI Overviews, a knowledge graph, a featured snippet, an answer box, images, shopping results, and more. Some of these elements will show up depending on the type of query and the data Google finds. You can add structured data to your page so Google can show a ‘rich’ snippet, providing more information about your product or recipe, for instance.

You can pay Google to make the snippet of your page end up high on the search results page as an ad. Or, you can optimize your pages for the search engines – and users! – so it will rank high organically. That’s SEO, and that’s what we write about!

Read on: Yoast SEO: how to make your site stand out in the search results »

The post Features of the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

Improve local SEO with Google My Business/Business Profile

/0 Comments/in , /by

Every business owner with a website is looking for ways to get noticed in the search results. There are loads of tactics to rank well as a local business, but unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. As with most things SEO, this is a combined effort. One of the ways to get noticed is by offering customers up-to-date information like opening hours and contact information. You can do this using Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business. But what is it exactly, and why is it so important for local SEO?

Table of contents

What is Google My Business?

Before we start, it’s good to know that Google recently changed its name from Google My Business to Google Business Profile. But even with its new name, Google Business Profile is still your one-stop shop for managing your business information and how it will be presented in the search results. It is an essential tool to adjust how your business is shown in Google Maps, the Knowledge Graph, and organic search results. According to the most recent edition of Whitespark’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, Google My Business remains the biggest driver of local SEO success, with reviews coming in second place.

You can manage your business listing by adding NAP details, opening hours, photos, etcetera. There are even unique options to show multiple ways to shop (delivery or curbside pickup). In addition, you get many other options, like managing the reviews your customers leave behind. As you might already know, reviews should be a critical part of your local SEO efforts.

Want to learn more about local SEO and how to get higher rankings in the local search results? Our Local SEO training helps you improve your online presence and attract more online and offline visitors.

How does it work?

Getting started with Google Business Profile is easy; you make an account and claim your business. After filling in your details, you need to verify your business. You can choose between receiving an automated call or text with a verification code, or receiving a real-life postcard from Google at your specified address with the verification code. Some businesses may need to verify with a video. You may have to verify with more than one method. So, why does Google want you to verify your account? They want to ensure that you’re telling the truth and that you’re the business owner listed at the address. Google has a special page that helps you check your verification status.

Once verified, you can fill in all the necessary details and check how your listing is doing. You can get regular insights to see how many impressions, clicks, and subscribers your listing got over time. It’s a great way of getting a feel for how Google and customers perceive your business.

Keep in mind that Google My Business (or Google Business Profile) is not the catch-all tool for your local SEO. It has to work in tandem with your other off-page and on-page SEO efforts. You probably won’t climb the charts if your profile is inaccurate, but you won’t reach the top without a well-optimized site and localized content. These things go hand in hand.

Ranking factors

Google Business Profile uses many factors to determine rankings for businesses. We’ll highlight the three most important ones:

  • Relevance
  • Distance
  • Prominence

Relevance

Relevance determines how well your business fits the search intent of the customer. Is your focus identical to what the customer needs, or are you a bit opaque about what your company does? Vagueness doesn’t rank or sell. Be as clear as you can be, and keep your focus. That way, Google knows what people can expect from you and will be more inclined to show your business in the search results.

Tip: When setting up your profile, Google offers you common services that you can add to your category of business. It’s smart to include these, because they will help your business get found. We’ll talk about these in more detail later on.

Proximity

Proximity is a well-known factor for ranking local businesses. And quite logical when you think about it. You can’t rank in a local search for dentist in Philadelphia when you have located your company in Manhattan. However, the exact way Google determines which businesses to show in a local search is unknown, and it can be pretty hard to rank in a given area. Other factors play a significant role as well. It helps to say you are located in a particular area and show it by having local-oriented content around your business on your site. Google uses what’s known about the searcher’s location to present the most relevant local businesses.

Prominence

Prominence is all about the activity around your listing; this could be the number of reviews, events, local content, et cetera. It also helps to have loads of quality links to your site. It is somewhat hard to determine what prominence means exactly, but one thing is for sure: no one likes inactive profiles. You have to keep it updated with new photos and manage your reviews. As said before, this goes hand in hand with your site, so make sure both listings align and publish content focusing on your local area(s).

Screenshot of Google Maps for the search question "dentist in Seattle". The highlighted listing is Dental Care Seattle.
It is vital that you keep your business listing accurate and up to date

Optimize your Google Business Profile listing

Any business with a bona fide brick-and-mortar location or an online outlet is eligible for a Google Business listing. But what if you operate your business out of your house and don’t want people to know your address?

If you don’t operate a walk-up brick-and-mortar location but visit your customers in a particular geographic area, you’re called a “Service Business.” Service businesses include plumbers, carpet cleaners, and courier services. In this case, you’re still eligible for a listing. However, you’ll want to choose “Service business” when Google asks what kind of business you have.

Google asks what kind of business you are operating

Verifying your location

Google tries to make sure that only legitimate businesses are represented in GMB. It requires anyone claiming a Listing to verify their association with the company. The easiest way to start the process is to perform a desktop search on Google for your business name (for example, “Kido Chicago”). You’ll see a link in the panel on the right-hand side of the page that asks, “Own this business?”

Before you click that link to begin the verification process, make sure you are either not signed in to Google (you can create an account in the next step) or are signed into a Google account for your business instead of your personal Gmail. It’s not a requirement; however, sharing access to your listing with employees or other company agents from a business account will be much easier.

Screenshot of a listing for a coffeehouse. Highlighted is the "Claim this business" at the bottom of the screenshot.
Click on Claim this business to claim the profile of this business; if you are the owner

Once you fill out the most basic information (see below for what these details are), if it can corroborate your address and phone number, Google will call and ask you to enter a PIN on the screen. If it hasn’t previously seen a business with the phone number and address you submitted, you’ll be mailed a postcard within a week with instructions on how to PIN verify.

Verify with video

Some businesses may need to verify with a video. If you own a physical store, you will need to record your location by showing street signs, your business exterior and interior, and you need to show that you’re authorized to represent this business. You will need to show all these requirements in one continuous recording, so no editing.

If you own a service business, like a plumbing or landscaping business, you don’t have a physical store. That’s why you’ll need to show street signs or the surrounding area where your business is located, your business card or a branded vehicle or business tools, and finally a proof of address. Again, this needs to be done in one continuous recording.

Primary business information

Name, Address, and Phone

This sounds simple, but it’s surprising how many business owners overthink these core attributes or try to “optimize” them. Your Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) are your thumbprint online. If they don’t reflect your business accurately in your Google Business Profile, Google—and your customers—lose trust that you are who you say you are. They will stop sending business your way.

  • Do NOT stuff keywords in your business name. Represent yourself as you would answer the phone or welcome a customer into your store. You probably see spammers doing this and succeeding all the time, but it’ll come back to bite them at some point. Google is monitoring for these kinds of abuses all the time, and they’re getting better at blocking the abusers.
  • Submit the same address you use on your website. If you’re a Yoast user, this should be the address you enter in the Yoast Local SEO plugin. Even if you’re a service-area business, you’ll have to submit a physical address, not a PO box or other mailing-only address.
  • You’ll see a map displayed just alongside your address. Zoom in and double-check that the pin is in the correct place on your business. Google’s pin precision for U.S. addresses is typically pretty good, but it can be spotty in other countries.
  • Don’t use a tracking phone number to segment customers coming from Google vs. other sources. There are ways to do this, but they’re pretty advanced. Implementing tracking numbers incorrectly can do tremendous damage to your local search rankings.

Choose a category for your business

From a rankings standpoint, the business category is the most important attribute you can optimize in your Google Business Profile. In our experience, it’s best to keep an eye on Google’s advice on categories. Remember that advice has changed frequently over the years and might change again.

Start typing, and the categories magically appear. You can add more later on

Google maintains a taxonomy of several thousand categories to describe local businesses. You’ll probably find a match pretty closely by typing in a few characters of a keyword that describes your business.

Google suggests “using as few categories as possible,” as well as categories that are “as specific as possible.” And while it’s true that Google can and does “detect category information from your website and mentions about your business throughout the web,” our advice is to specify as many relevant categories as possible on your Google Business Profile listing.

Google’s automated review system may remove one or two from your listing, but this is not spam—provided you select relevant categories. It helps you show up for as broad a range of searches as possible.

Services businesses can add the specific services you offer

Add your website

In the process, there’s a field to add your website URL, but it doesn’t have to be your “website” per se. In particular, if you operate in more than one location, you may want to enter the page on your website corresponding to the location you’re submitting to Google—rather than your homepage. Opinions are mixed on whether listing your homepage, or a location page will help you rank better, so do what’s best for prospective customers. If you think your homepage will give them the best initial sense of your business, submit it as your “website”. If a location page—or even some other page—will give your audience a better sense, submit that instead.

Add a business description

Later on, you can add a business description to your profile. It’s essential to take a moment and find an excellent way to describe your business on Google. The business description field gives you a maximum of 750 characters to convince people to visit your business. This might be the first thing people read about your business, so make it unique and exciting. Describe what your business offers precisely and how you set yourself apart from your competitors. You can also talk about your history and anything else that’s helpful for customers.

Keep the description short and sweet, and don’t try to push promotions or deals you have running. You also shouldn’t include URLs or HTML code. Give it a think, write a few descriptions and pick the best one!

A unique business description can make you stand out from the rest

More business information

After entering the attributes above, you’re asked to verify your listing. But don’t stop there. There are a few other attributes that are well worth your time to add.

Photos and images

Photos may be the most neglected attribute in all local SEO. The success of Instagram, Pinterest, and any lesser-known apps indicates how visual our internet culture has become. Consumers often select—or reject!—a business because of its photos. Not only on the content of the photos, but consumers also judge the quality and professionalism of the photos.

Photos are essential in the mobile ecosystem that Google Business Profile powers (including Google Maps), where they dominate a business’s representation in Google’s user interfaces. Try to add authentic photos instead of stock photos, and make sure the pictures reflect your business.

As with all local media or social media sites, Google Business Profile has its image format requirements. Take some time to review them and make sure you have high-quality assets for each format. You can find more on improving your images in our image SEO guide.

Business hours

Selecting your opening hours is pretty straightforward. Google has dramatically improved its interface for telling customers when you’re open over the past several years. Hours will be front-and-center wherever customers interact with your business on Google, so they should be accurate. You can even daypart multiple times during the day and add specific hours for holidays and special events.

While you can’t control it, you may be interested to know that Google now displays the busyness of your business in real time. This is based on aggregate location-tracking visitors with Android phones and iOS Google Maps users with location services enabled.

See when a business opens and when the most popular times are

Restaurants can add menus

Specific categories of businesses will have the option to add their menu. Suppose you’re lucky enough to be in one of these categories. In that case, we highly recommend adding this, as it gives Google an additional set of keywords that your business should consider relevant.

Accept messages for more leads

By default, this feature is turned on. It will add a messaging feature to your Business Profile, and it can be a great way to generate more leads. Of course, you need to keep this chat feature in mind and check regularly for any messages. If you respond quickly and helpfully, you’ll probably turn visitors into customers.

A screenshot of a Levi's store Google Business profile. The chat function is made bigger to highlight where it is on the page.
The chat function

If you’re slow to respond to customers, however, Google might disable this feature for you. So, if you’re not sure you’ll be able to keep track of this feature, it might be better to turn it off.

Share posts on your Business Profile

The Posts feature is a very useful way to communicate with your customers from your profile. With posts, you can connect with existing and potential customers through your Business Profile on Google Search and Maps. You can create and share announcements, offers, new or popular items in stock, or event details directly with your customers. Use this to promote your sales, specials, events, news, and offers. You can even add videos and photos to posts to make them more interesting!

A screenshot of the Seattle Children's Museum post on their Business Profile about their prideful playdate event in July.
Example of the post feature

Many options

Since Google Business Profile has grown quite a bit over the years, there are many more options to explore. You don’t need to use all of them, but some are valuable. For example, the Products feature to highlight your products in your listing is a great way to get people interested in what your offer.

Another great option is the possibility of getting potential customers to ask questions that you can respond to. Keep in mind that others can also answer these questions, so keep an eye on this. When it works, it can be a real help in turning visitors into customers.

And, as always, get reviews for your business! With a Business Profile, you can even respond to these reviews. It doesn’t have to be a message. Nowadays, you can also quickly respond with an emoji, like a heart or fire emoji.

Ranking factors beyond your control

There are two significant local search and local SEO ranking factors over which you have little control. They both have to do with the physical location of your business.

The location of your potential customer

The first is the proximity of your business to the location where your prospective customer is performing their search. All other things being equal, Google will display a company closer to the searcher than one farther away from them.

In the early years of Google, its algorithm favored businesses close to the center of a given city or its “centroid.” This was partly because Google wasn’t as good at detecting the location of the searcher as they are now. It defaulted to showing businesses in the areas with the highest population density.

Nowadays, this factor has declined in importance. Especially for mobile searches where Google has a precise idea of where you are. Google has also partially improved at detecting desktop searchers’ location information through surreptitious collection means.

A physical store in the city of your customer’s search question

The second factor is having an address in the city in which your customer is searching.  If your customer is searching in Seattle, your Tacoma or Bellevue-based coffee shop won’t appear. This is simply because it’s irrelevant to the customer’s search.

Short of opening additional locations to target areas where high concentrations of your customers are searching, there’s not much you can do to optimize for these ranking factors. Still, you should be aware of their importance.

Google Business Profile Insights

Google provides a free, lightweight analytics package as part of GBP. This gives you a basic sense of how customers and potential customers view and interact with your listing.

Insights show how often your listing appears in plain old search vs. Google Maps. It also shows the number of clicks to your website, requests for driving directions, phone calls, and more.

There’s also a breakdown of how many customers see your listing for direct searches (for your business specifically) vs. discovery searches (for businesses in your category). While no one outside of Google is entirely sure how they calculate the discovery number, it’s probably as good a barometer for the overall strength of your local SEO as any, mainly if you track it over time.

Troubleshooting listing issues

The most typical GMB troubleshooting issue continues to be duplicate listings for the same business. While it’s gotten harder to detect duplicate listings, it’s much easier to close them.

The first step to identifying duplicates is to search for your business name on Google. If it looks like multiple listings refer to your business, select the one you’d like to report as a duplicate and click “Suggest an Edit.” Follow the suggestions to have the listing marked as duplicate.

Google support staff are generally responsive to these reports within a reasonable time. If you continue to have trouble, ask multiple people—co-workers, friends, family members, or relatives—to report the same problem, and it’s more likely Google will look at it. If your issue seems particularly thorny, you’re most likely to get a response by tweeting @googlemybiz, the official Twitter support channel for Google Business Profile.

A tool to manage your reviews

Some time ago, Google added a new feature to the Google My Business dashboard. A feature that allows you to manage your reviews and report reviews for removal. You can also check the status of reviews you’ve already reported here. Keep in mind that Google will only remove reviews that violate their policies, such as irrelevant or offensive content.

Structured data and Yoast Local SEO

Google increasingly depends on structured data to determine what your site is about and which elements represent what. This is true for your business information, including the information that Google Business Profile uses. Make sure you add the correct structured data to your site. Enhance your NAP details, opening hours, reviews, product information, et cetera, with Schema.org data. This will make it much easier for Google to determine the validity of your listing. Several tools can help you with this, including our Yoast Local SEO plugin.

Local SEO is critical, even with Google Business Profile

So, you should activate and maintain your Google My Business account and make it awesome. But to get the most out of your listings and to get good rankings, you must have your site in order as well. Optimize every part of it. Create local content for your chosen keyword and business location and get quality local backlinks to build a solid link profile. Ask customers to review your business onsite or on My Business. Make sure your listing is active and attractive; as we said, inaccurate profiles are no good.

Read more: The ultimate guide to small business SEO »

The post Improve local SEO with Google My Business/Business Profile appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide

/0 Comments/in , /by

Do you have a website or maintain the website of the company you work for? Of course, to do this right, you need to keep a keen eye on the performance of your website. Google offers several tools to collect and analyze data from your website. You probably have heard of Google Analytics and Google Search Console before. These tools are free for everyone maintaining a website and can give you valuable insights about your website. Here, we’ll explain how to use Google Search Console for SEO!

Table of contents

Why use Google Search Console?

Google Search Console helps you track the performance of your website easily. You can get valuable insights from your Google Search Console account, which means you can see what part of your website needs work. This can be a technical part of your website, such as an increasing number of crawl errors that need to be fixed. This can also give a specific keyword more attention because the rankings or impressions are decreasing. Or find the reasons why some pages aren’t indexed.

Besides seeing this kind of data, you’ll get email notifications when Google Search Console notices new errors. Because of these notifications, you’re quickly aware of issues you must fix. That’s why everyone with a website should learn how to use it!

the google search console overview page with menu items to the left and graphs on the right
The Google Search Console Overview page

Search Console is structured around various sections

Search Console has several sections, which keep expanding as Google adds more:

  • URL Inspection
    • The URL Inspection tool lets you get insights on specific URLs and how Google sees and indexes these. You’ll also see if the page is eligible for rich results.
  • Performance
    • In the Performance section, you’ll discover how your site is doing in the regular search results, on Discover, and Google News, if it is eligible for those.
  • Indexing
    • In the Indexing section, you’ll find all the insights you need to see how Google discovers and indexes your pages. You can also learn if and how Google is indexing the video content on your site. There’s also a section to check your XML sitemaps and any page removals you may have requested.
  • Experience
    • The Experience section gives you an idea of how Google values your page’s performance on mobile and desktop, with a little help from Core Web Vitals, and whether your pages are served via HTTPS connections.
  • Shopping
    • In the Shopping tab, you’ll find more information about how Google sees your products — if you own an ecommerce site or sell something else online. You can see which products have rich results, plus insights into your merchant listings and how you appear in Google Shopping.
  • Enhancements
    • The Enhancements section lists all the structured data that Google found on your site and whether or not it is eligible for rich results. This includes events, reviews, job postings, and more.
  • Security & Manual Actions
    • The Security & Manual Actions destination shouldn’t be visited often, as it lists security issues found by Google or when it issues a manual action against your site.
  • Links
    • The Links section overviews your site’s internal and external links.

Setting up an account

You’ll need to create an account to start using Google Search Console. Within Google Search Console, you can click on ‘add a new property’ in the top bar:

adding a new site property in the top left-hand side of the search console screen
Add a new property to get started

You can insert the website you want to add by clicking the ‘Add property’ button. If you choose the new Domain option, you only need to add the domain name without www or subdomains. This option tracks everything connected to that domain. With the ‘old’ URL prefix option, you must add the correct URL, so with ‘HTTPS’ if you have an HTTPS website and with or without ‘www’. To collect the correct data, it’s essential to add the correct version:

selecting the property type gives two options, for domain or url prefix
Choose domain if you want to track all your URLs or URL prefix if you want to track specific URLs

You must verify that you’re the owner when you’ve added a website. There are several options to verify your ownership. The Domain option only works with DNS verification, while the URL prefix supports different methods. You can learn more about the differences in Google’s documentation: adding a new property and verifying your site ownership. You can also use Google’s Site Kit WordPress plugin to connect Analytics and Search Console while giving you statistics in your site dashboard.

Add to Yoast SEO

For WordPress users who use Yoast SEO, get the verification code via the ‘HTML tag’ method from the Ownership settings in Search Console. Copy the long, random string of characters.

download html file to get the verification code
See your verification methods in the Google Search Console ownership settings

You can easily copy the code and paste it into the Google field in the ‘Site connections’ section in the settings of your Yoast SEO plugin:

in yoast seo general settings you'll find the site connections option to add the google search console verification code
Paste your code into the Google field to finish the process

After saving this, you can return to Google Search Console and click the ‘Verify’ button to confirm. If everything is ok, you’ll get a success message, and GSC will start collecting data for your website.

Features in Google Search Console

Now that you’ve set up your account, what’s the next step? Well, it’s time to look at some of your data! In the rest of this article, we’ll explore some of the reports and information available.

Performance tab

In the Performance tab, you can see the pages and keywords your website ranks for in Google. If you’re eligible for that, you’ll also find reports on your content’s performance in Google Discover and on Google News. You’ll get 16 months of performance data for your reports.

If you check the performance tab regularly, you can quickly see what keywords or pages need more attention and optimization. So, where to begin? Within the performance tab, you see a list of ‘queries’, ‘pages’, ‘countries’, or ‘devices’. With ‘search appearance,’ you can check how your rich results are doing in search. You can sort each section by the number of ‘clicks’, ‘impressions’, ‘average CTR’, or ‘average position’. We’ll explain each of them below:

performance section in google search console
The Performance overview harbors a ton of information

1. Clicks

The number of clicks tells you how often people clicked on your website in Google’s search results. This number can say something about the performance of your page titles and meta descriptions: if just a few people click on your result, your result might not stand out in the search results. It can be helpful to check what other results are displayed around you to see how you can optimize your snippet.

The position of the search result also impacts the number of clicks. If your page is in the top three of Google’s first result page, it will automatically get more clicks than a page that ranks on the second page of the search results.

2. Impressions

The impressions tell you how often your website or a specific page is shown in the search results. The number of impressions after this keyword shows how often our website is shown for that keyword in Google’s search results. You don’t know yet what page ranks for that keyword.

To see what pages might rank for the specific keyword, you can click on the line of the keyword. Doing this for a keyword, the keyword is added as a filter:

search performance data for a specific post on a site
You can query the data in many ways

Afterward, you can navigate to the ‘Pages’ tab to see what pages rank for this keyword. Are those pages the ones you’d want to rank for that keyword? If not, you might need to optimize the page you’d like to rank. Think of writing better content containing the keyword on that page, adding internal links from relevant pages or posts to the page, making the page load faster, etc.

3. Average CTR

The CTR – Click-through rate – tells you what percentage of the people who have seen your website in the search results also clicked through to your website. You probably understand that higher rankings mostly also lead to higher click-through rates.

However, you can also do things yourself to increase the CTR. For example, you could rewrite your meta description and page title to make it more appealing — Yoast SEO has AI features to help you do that. When the title and description of your site stand out from the other results, more people will probably click on your result, and your CTR will increase. Remember that this will not significantly impact you if you’re not ranking on the first page yet. You might need to try other things first to improve your ranking.

4. Average position

The last one on this list is the ‘Average position’. This tells you the average ranking of a specific keyword or page in your selected period. Of course, this position isn’t always reliable since more and more people seem to get different search results. Google seems to understand better and better which results fit which visitor best. However, this indicator still shows whether the clicks, impressions and average CTR are explainable.

Indexing

The’ Indexing’ section is a more technical but treasured addition to Google Search Console. This section shows how many pages have been in Google’s index since the last update, how many pages haven’t, and what errors and warnings caused Google to index your pages incorrectly. Google split this section into parts, collecting your regular pages and video pages while giving a home for your XML sitemap and the removals sections.

the indexing report in search console shows how google indexes your pages
You can see how Google indexes your content over time

We recommend you check this tab regularly to see what errors and warnings appear on your website. However, you also get notifications when Google has found new errors. Please check the error in more detail when you get such a notification.

You may find that errors are caused when, e.g., a redirect doesn’t seem to work correctly, or Google finds broken code or error pages in your theme. You also find error messages like “Crawled – currently not indexed“. Google has a long list of possible reasons why pages aren’t indexed and what you can do to fix that.

Clicking on one of the issues, you can analyze the error more in-depth to see what specific URLs are affected. When you’ve fixed the error, you can mark it as fixed to make sure Google will test the URL again:

example of an indexing errors, this is excluded by nonindex tag in search console
Fixed the specific error? Validate it so Google can check if it’s gone for real

Things to look out for

There are a few things you should always look for when checking out your indexing coverage reports:

  • If you’re writing new content, your indexed pages should steadily increase. This tells you two things: Google can index your site, and you keep your site ‘alive’ by adding content.
  • Watch out for sudden drops! This might mean that Google is having trouble accessing (all of) your website. Something may be blocking Google; whether it’s robots.txt changes or server downtime, you need to look into it!
  • Sudden (and unexpected) spikes in the graph might mean an issue with duplicate content (such as both www and non-www, wrong canonicals, etc.), automatically generated pages, or even hacks.

We recommend you monitor these situations closely and resolve errors quickly, as too many errors could signal low quality (poor maintenance) to Google.

URL Inspection

The URL Inspection tool helps you analyze specific URLs. You retrieve the page from Google’s index and compare it with the page as it lives now on your site to see if there are differences. You can also find more technical info on this page, such as when and how Google crawled it and how it looked at that moment. Sometimes, you’ll also notice several errors. This might be regarding Google’s inability to crawl your page correctly. It also gives information about the structured data found on this URL.

url inspection in search console showing if a page is indexed and if it has enhancements
The URL Inspection tool gives insights into every URL on your site

Experience

The experience report is an invaluable addition. It gives a good idea of how fast your site loads on mobile and desktop and how Google uses core web vitals to grade page experience. It shows which pages have issues that keep them from performing well. The data is based on the Chrome UX report, so it’s accurate data from real users.

Site speed, page experience, and user experience are complex topics with many moving parts, so learning how to think about page speed is good. The answer is here: how to check site speed.

page experience and core web vitals reports show urls that aren't good
Find out which pages offer a bad experience and how you can fix that

Enhancements: rich results

If you have structured data on your site — provided by Yoast SEO, for instance — it’s a good idea to check out the Enhancements reports in Search Console. The Enhancements tab collects all the insights and improvements that could lead to rich results. It lists all the structured data that Google found on your site. There’s an ever-expanding list of rich results, and you can find the following, among other things:

  • Breadcrumbs
  • Events
  • FAQs
  • Job postings
  • Profile pages
  • Review snippets
  • Sitelinks searchboxes
  • Videos

All these tabs show how many valid enhancements you have or how many have errors or warnings. You get details about the kind of errors and warnings and on which URLs these are found. There’s also a trend line that shows if the number of issues is increasing or decreasing. And that’s just the start of it.

an example of the enhancement reports in this case for job postings
Here’s an example of a job posting enhancement. You can overlay Impressions to get more context for the stats

The Enhancements reports help you find and fix issues that hinder the performance of your rich results in search. By checking the issues, reading the support documentation, and validating fixes, you can increase your chance of getting rich results in search. We have a more expansive guide on the structured data Enhancement reports in Google Search Console.

Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is a roadmap to all important pages and posts on your website. Every website would benefit from having one. Do you run the Yoast SEO plugin on your website? Then, you automatically have an XML sitemap. If not, we recommend creating one to ensure Google can easily find your most important pages and posts.

You can find an option for XML sitemaps within the Indexing tab of Google Search Console. Here, you can tell Google where your XML sitemap is located on your site:

google search console showing the status of your xml sitemaps
Don’t forget to check your XML sitemap

We recommend that everyone enter the URL of their XML sitemap into GSC to make it easy for Google to find. In addition, you can quickly see if your sitemap gives errors or if some pages aren’t indexed. Regularly checking this ensures that Google can find and read your XML sitemap.

We recommend regularly checking the XML sitemap section in our plugin to manage which post types or taxonomies you include in your sitemaps!

Shopping

Google Search Console also has a Shopping section. Here, you can check how Google sees your products and if they get proper rich results. You’ll see if they are valid or if they are missing fields that make the product snippets more prominent. Click on a product to see which fields are missing for particular products and if these are essential parts or nice-to-haves. If you’ve added these to the structured data of your products, you validate the fix in Search Console.

In the Shopping section, you’ll also find your Google Merchant listings and an option to enable shopping tab listings to show your products on the Shopping tab in Google Search. With these options, Google gives ecommerce site owners — and people selling stuff — more ways of checking how their listings are doing.

google search console shopping section showing the product snippets of a site
Optimize your product listings in Google search

Links

Within the links to your site section, you can see how many links from other sites are pointing to your website. Besides, you can see what websites link, how many links those websites contain, and what anchor texts are used most when linking to your website. This can be valuable information because links are still vital for SEO.

the links section in search console showing the top internal and external linked pages
Find out which pages receive lots of links

Within the internal links section, you can check what pages of your website are most linked from other spots on your site. This list can be valuable to analyze regularly because you want your most important pages and posts to get the most internal links. By doing this, you make sure Google understands your cornerstones as well.

per page information on external links in google search console
You can even see how many links individual pages get

Manual Actions

You don’t want to see anything in the manual actions tab. If Google penalizes your site, you’ll get more information. If your site is affected by a manual action, you’ll also get an email message.

Several scenarios can lead to these kinds of penalties, including:

  • You have unnatural/bought links
    Ensure links from and to your site are valuable, not just for SEO. Preferably, your links come from related content that is valuable for your readers.
  • Your site has been hacked
    A message stating your site’s probably hacked by a third party. Google might label your site as compromised or lower your rankings.
  • You’re hiding something from Google
    If you’re ‘cloaking’ (that is, intentionally showing different content to users to deceive them), or using ‘sneaky’ redirects (e.g., hiding affiliate URLs), then you’re violating Google’s guidelines (now known as Google Search Essentials).
  • Plain Spam
    Automatically generated content, scraped content, and aggressive cloaking could cause Google to blocklist your site.
  • Spammy structured markup
    If you use rich snippets for too many irrelevant elements on a page or mark up content hidden from the visitor, that might be considered spammy. Mark up what’s necessary and only necessary things.

Security issues

Within the security issues tab, you’ll get a notification when your website seems to have a security issue.

Google Search Console is essential

Reading this post should give you a good idea of what Search Console is capable of and how to use it, so we’d like to ask you this: Do you already use Google Search Console for your website? If not, create an account to collect data about your website. Do you think something is missing? Feel free to leave a comment!

Read on: How to make your site stand out in the search results »

The post How to use Google Search Console: a beginner’s guide appeared first on Yoast.

Read more at Read More

How to Use Semrush for Keyword Research (Including Template and Examples)

/0 Comments/in , /by

If you want to learn how to use Semrush for keyword research, you’re in the right place.

In this tutorial, we’ll cover everything from topical and competitor keyword research, to gap analysis and topic clustering.

Semrush has a number of powerful keyword research tools – Keyword Manager, Keyword Magic Tool and Keyword Gap – that will enable you to do it all.

We’ll also cover working examples for each of the main keyword research use cases so you can immediately start implementing the training in your business.

If you don’t yet have a Semrush account, you can use this 14-day free trial link to get access to all the features covered in this guide so you can follow along step-by-step.

If you prefer video, I’ve put together a comprehensive over-the-shoulder tutorial below that walks through seven ways to do keyword research with Semrush:

Disclaimer: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate links are one of the ways I fund the blog. Thanks for the support!

Find Existing Keyword Opportunities With Semrush (Template Included)

The first way you can use Semrush for keyword research is to identify existing keyword opportunities.

Specifically, find all the keywords with search demand that your website is already ranking for in positions 4-15.

Here’s how to do it:

Open the Semrush SEO Toolkit and go to the Organic Research >> Positions report:

Finding existing keyword opportunities in Semrush

This will generate a report showing all the keywords your website is ranking for in the top 100 positions.

Next, you’ll need to apply some advanced filters. These will vary from business to business, but I’ll typically use Position, Volume and Keyword Difficulty (KD).

To illustrate, here are the filters I’d use for my website:

  • Position: 4-15
  • Volume: 100+
  • KD: 0-49
Adding keyword filters in Semrush

These filters will extract keywords that my website is already ranking for on page one or two, that have search demand, and aren’t ultra competitive.

Review the remaining keywords and add any that you’d like to target to a new list.

Building a new keyword list inside Semrush

This is usually the best place to start when you’re working with a website that has an existing content footprint as you’ll be able to capture some quick organic traffic gains.

Note: I’ll typically segment keyword opportunities into two lists – Existing and New.

Existing keyword list in Semrush

This will make it easy to see which keywords have already been added to a list inside Semrush.

Existing keyword research template

If you’d prefer to analyze keyword data outside of Semrush, I’ve created a template that you can use to automate a lot of the filtering and formatting.

Existing keyword research template

Simply export all the keywords your site is ranking for in positions 4-15 and paste them into the template. The template will organize all the opportunities in descending search volume and add color coding so you can quickly spot the keywords that are already ranking the highest with the lowest SERP competition.

I put together a full video walk-through of the template below:

Semrush existing keyword research template.

Competitor Keyword Research With Semrush

One of the fastest ways to find new high-intent keywords is to analyze your competitors.

Semrush provides several different ways to perform competitor keyword research. We’ll walk through each one and look at some working examples.

Semrush Top Pages report:

For this example, let’s pretend we have a beard products ecommerce business and are looking for some new target keywords.

One of the competitors might be Beardbrand.

I’d enter that domain into the SEO Toolkit and go to the Organic Research >> Pages report:

Top Pages report in Semrush

The report shows which pages are driving the most organic traffic to their website. You can see what percentage of total organic traffic each page is generating, along with the total number of keywords the page is ranking for in the top 100 positions. You can also click through to view all of those keywords.

Top Pages metrics in Semrush

This is great insight, but let’s take it a step further.

Since this is an ecommerce website, we’d want to prioritize product-related keywords as these will present the best direct monetization opportunity.

One way to do this is apply a URL filter to only return product pages.

For example, we can see that Beardbrand houses all of its product pages under a /products subfolder:

Filtering only the product pages in Semrush

As a result, I’d add a URL contains /products filter to the report.

Now I can see 22 product pages that are driving the most organic traffic to the website. This would be the best place to start the keyword analysis.

You can use competitor subfolder analysis for any type of business.

Let’s pretend that you’re a personal injury lawyer in Florida. One of the competitors might be Dolman Law Group. After reviewing their main navigation, I can see that all the services pages are nested under the /legal-services subfolder:

Finding service subfolders to analyze in Semrush

As a result, I’d apply a URL contains /legal-services filter in the Pages report, or just enter the subfolder into the main search bar, to see which services pages are driving the most organic traffic to their website and check to make sure our firm was also targeting those keywords.

Analyzing competitor subfolders in Semrush

But, what if your competitors don’t organize content into subfolders?

You can use keyword modifiers instead to uncover the highest intent opportunities.

For example:

If I was analyzing a competitor for my website I would apply the following filters:

  • Position: 0-20
  • Volume: 100+
  • KD: 0-49
  • Keyword Contains: best, review, software, alternatives, vs, tools
Using keyword modifiers to filter keyword targets

These filters will return the best keyword opportunities for affiliate monetization.

Repeat this process for your top organic search competitors. You can find these by search for your main product or services keywords in Google, or look at the Competitors report in Semrush which shows the websites with the most keyword overlap:

Semrush Organic Competitors Map

If you want to learn more about performing competitor subfolder analysis with Semrush, check out the video tutorial below:

Find low competition long tail keywords with Semrush

You can use Semrush to extract low competition long tail keywords from your competitors.

Here’s how to do it:

Enter your competitor into the Semrush SEO Toolkit and navigate to the Organic Research >> Organic Positions report.

Apply the following filters:

  • Position: top 20
  • Volume: 100+
  • KD: 0-49
  • Word count: 4+
Finding long tail keyword opportunities in Semrush

You’ll get a set of potential long tail keyword targets that have search demand and a low level of competition.

If you still have a large list of keywords to review, increase the minimum volume filters or add an additional URL filter to focus on a specific section of your competitor’s website.

For example, you could only analyze the /legal-services folder:

Using URL filters to find high intent long tail keyword ideas

Keyword Gap analysis with Semrush

Semrush’ Keyword Gap tool makes it easy to find all the valuable keywords (both organic and paid) that one, or multiple competitors rank for, but you do not.

In Semrush:

  • Enter your root domain – e.g. robbierichards.com
  • Enter up to 5 competitor domains – e.g. http://marketingarsenal.io/
  • Click the green “Compare” button
Semrush keyword gap tool

First, you can view missing keywords to check all the keywords your competitor ranks for, but you don’t:

Missing keywords report in Semrush

Next, you can check weak keywords to see all the keywords where you rank lower than your competitor(s):

Weak keywords report in Semrush

These could be keywords that require content optimization or even a new dedicated piece of content to rank higher.

When performing keyword gap analysis inside Semrush, I’ll usually add some advanced filters to streamline the keyword set down to the most relevant opportunities that have search demand and aren’t ultra competitive. This makes the analysis faster, and helps narrow in on the most immediate opportunities.

For example, I’ll add the following filters:

  • Competitors in Top 10:
    • If I see a competitor with a comparable domain authority ranking in the top 10 positions it tells me that I also have a chance of ranking in the top 10 as long as I create quality content and any necessary backlinks.
  • Volume: 100+
    • I want to make sure there is enough search demand to warrant targeting a keyword.
  • KD: 0-29
    • I want to start with low competition keywords.
Semrush keyword gap tool filters

Similar to the previous section, you can also add keyword modifiers to trim the keyword set down further.

For example, I might also add a keyword containing “software” or “best” filter to surface the best affiliate monetization opportunities:

Advanced filters in the Keyword Gap tool

Scan down the list and add any new targets to your master keyword list.

Subfolder gap analysis with Semrush

Subfolder gap analysis is another way you can use Semrush to quickly identify high-value keyword opportunities for your business.

Let’s return to a couple of the previous working examples to illustrate.

Local business

Fellerman Law is a competitor of Dolman Law. If they wanted to quickly see all the service-related keywords that Dolman Law was ranking for, but they are not, they could analyze their /legal-services/ subfolder.

In the Semrush Keyword Gap tool:

  • Enter your root domain – e.g. https://www.fellermanlaw.com/
  • Enter your competitor’s subfolder – e.g. https://www.dolmanlaw.com/legal-services/
  • Click the green “Compare” button

Add the Position, Volume and KD filters again to first focus on the quick-win opportunities.

Scroll down and we can see 163 Missing Keywords that Dolman is ranking for in the top 10, but Fellerman is not targeting.

Semrush keyword gap analysis

Fellerman could now scan down the list and select relevant keywords to create new service pages for and start driving more qualified organic to their website.

This subfolder analysis process can be applied to any type of business.

For example:

  • Ecommerce businesses: analyze competitor /product or /category subfolders.
  • Affiliate businesses: analyze competitor /review subfolders.
  • AdSense business: analyze competitor /blog or /category subfolders to find high volume, low competition keywords that you can rank for quickly and drive loads of eyeballs to ads.

The key to this strategy is to look for the subfolders that contain keywords that align directly with your website’s monetization model.

I have created a dedicated video tutorial for this strategy here.

PPC-organic gap analysis

Semrush’ keyword gap analysis tool is unique in that it enables you to analyze paid vs organic keyword gaps.

A couple use cases include:

  • Find all the keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you are not.
  • Find all the keywords you rank for outside the top 3 positions, but are not bidding on. These are areas where you may need to provide some paid aircover.
  • Find all the keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you are not targeting as part of your organic strategy. This will highlight higher-intent keyword gaps.

Provide paid aircover

Let’s pretend Semrush wanted to provide air cover for all the keywords that they were not yet ranking inside the top 3 positions.

In the Semrush Keyword Gap tool:

  • Enter your paid root domain – e.g. https://www.semrush.com/
  • Enter your organic product subfolder – e.g. https://www.semrush.com/features/
  • Click the green “Compare” button

Next, they could add a Position and Intent filter:

Now, we can see a list of keywords that Semrush is ranking for outside the top 3 positions, and is not currently bidding on in paid search.

Semrush could scan down the list and select any high-priority keywords that they want to bid on until they rank in the top organic position.

Identify high-value keyword gaps

You can use Semrush to identify all the keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you don’t currently rank for in the organic search results. The idea here is that if a competitor is bidding on a keyword, chances are it’s going to have high-intent and the potential to drive conversions.

In the Semrush Keyword Gap tool:

  • Enter your root domain – e.g. https://www.copper.com/ – and select Organic keywords
  • Enter your competitor’s root domain – e.g. https://www.pipedrive.com/ – and select Paid keywords
  • Click the green “Compare” button

Scroll down to the Missing Keywords report and select any high-intent keywords that you are not already targeting.

Note: because paid keywords will typically have higher intent, they will usually have a higher level of competition. As a result, you might also start with a maximum KD filter to trim the opportunities down to the most realistic targets.

Generate topical keyword Ideas with the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool

Semrush’ Keyword Magic tool enables you to enter a seed term and generate thousands of new keyword ideas. Semrush claims to have the largest keyword database (24B+).

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool

However, the real power of this tool lies in the advanced filtering options.

For instance:

My blog monetizes primarily through affiliate marketing. As a result, I want to rank for keywords that people are searching for during the consideration stage of the buyer journey where they are actively evaluating different types of solutions and/or deciding between specific products.

Since I write about SEO-related topics, I would enter relevant category keywords – keyword research, link building, rank tracking, etc. – with those consideration stage modifiers.

In the Keyword Magic Tool:

  • Enter an investigational intent modifier – e.g. “best”
  • Add an Any keywords filter containing core category keywords – e.g. “keyword research, link building, ranking tracking, technical SEO, on-page seo, content optimization, seo reporting, local seo, competitor analysis, seo audit” etc.
Using modifiers in the Semrush Keyword Magic tool

This will return a list of solid consideration stage keyword opportunities. But, I wouldn’t stop there.

Next, I would look for keywords that show a user is actively comparing the products that I promote against competitors.

For example, in the Keyword Magic Tool:

  • Enter a seed term – e.g. “Semrush”
  • Add 3 comparative keyword modifiers – e.g. “alternative, competitor, vs” – and select “Any keywords” in the Include Keywords filter:
Keyword Magic Tool example

From the results, we have 584 potential keyword targets. These mid-funnel terms include “Ahrefs vs Semrush, Moz vs Semrush, Serpstat vs Semrush, SpyFu vs Semrush etc”.

I can try to rank for these keywords and showcase why Semrush might be a better solution, and subsequently drive referral traffic that converts into commissions.

Note: The Keyword Magic tool also groups keywords by Popularity and search demand:

Grouping in the Semrush Keyword Magic tool

This is an extremely handy feature if you have a large keyword set to review and aren’t sure how to streamline it with the advanced keyword filters at the top of the table. Simply review the groupings and click into the one that appears most relevant to your business.

Find question-based keyword opportunities with Semrush

You can also use the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool to generate loads of question-based keyword ideas.

In Semrush:

  • Enter a seed term – e.g. “CRM” – into the Keyword Magic Tool.
  • Then click on the Questions tab:

Scroll down the list and look for relevant product or service-related questions your ideal customer might be searching for at the top, middle and bottom of the funnel.

For example:

As I scroll down the list I can see people asking questions around like:

  • How to select a CRM system?
  • How to maintain a CRM database?

Most of these question keywords are relatively low-competition opportunities:

Tip: you can use Semrush’ Intent and Grouping filters to quickly surface the highest intent opportunities:

If you want to learn more about using Semrush to generate question-based keyword ideas, check out the video below:

Create Topical Keyword Clusters with Semrush

Note: I’ve included a video overview of the Semrush keyword cluster tool at the end of this section.

Semrush enables you to create keyword clusters from scratch, as well as cluster existing keyword lists.

Semrush Keyword Manager

To illustrate, let’s return to our personal injury lawyer example.

If I wanted to generate keyword clusters from scratch, I’d click Create List and then enter up to 5 seed keywords, along with a domain for added context:

Creating keyword clusters in Semrush

The tool returns 50 clusters containing 900 keywords.

In the table you can see:

  • Intent
  • # of keywords in each cluster
  • KD %
  • Aggregate search volume across the keyword cluster

Semrush will flag “high ranking potential” keywords. These are terms with high volume and relatively low KD percentages.

Scrolling down the list we can see some interesting results that fall outside typical top-level service pages:

Semrush keyword cluster results

Click to open a cluster and you’ll see all the keywords along with their respective search intent, KD% and search volume metrics.

Keyword cluster metrics in Semrush

Tip: It’s important to review the Content references section because you want to understand if you need to optimize an existing page for this cluster, or create a new dedicated URL.

For example:

After hovering over the URLs in the reference section I can see that the competitors are ranking with dedicated pages for the “hit and run attorney” keywords.

As a result, I’d create new sub-service landing pages to target those high-intent clusters.

You can also use Semrush to cluster an existing keyword list.

From the Keyword Manager, select the second option to create a list:

Clustering existing keyword sets in Semrush

Paste in your existing keyword set:

Entering keywords into the Semrush Cluster tool

Semrush will automatically cluster all the keywords.

Here’s what it looks like after I uploaded 214 keywords that I’m interested in targeting:

I Like How Semrush Tools Are Integrated

One of the things I really like about Semrush is that its keyword research tools are all integrated.

Once you have finished building your target keyword list in Semrush, you can select keywords and send them to the Position Tracking tool to monitor rankings or transfer them to the SEO Writing Assistant for content production and on-page analysis.

Semrush keyword research tools are integrated

These integrations make it easy to scale your content workflow and monitor performance over time, all without having to leave the platform or rely on other standalone SEO tools.

Level-Up Your Keyword Research With Semrush

You now know how to use Semrush to extract high-value keyword opportunities for any type of business.

If you haven’t done so already, remember to grab a full-access 14-day free trial of Semrush and start implementing these tactics in your business.

The post How to Use Semrush for Keyword Research (Including Template and Examples) appeared first on Robbie Richards.

Read more at Read More

10 Best Daily Rank Tracking Software for SEO [2023 Edition]

/0 Comments/in , /by

Looking for the best daily rank tracker? Read on.

Pretty much all rank checkers let you track multiple keywords across multiple locations, devices, and search engines. But only the top-performing tools allow you to track hundreds of keywords daily, or even better, refresh them on-demand.

Let’s face it: ranking positions change quickly.

And the only way to keep pace is by using the fastest daily rank tracker.

So, how do you choose the best daily rank tracking software?

In this post, we’ll examine the key features to consider and then examine the top 10 daily rank tracking tools. Take a minute to see which solution is right for your business. Each tool is

AccuRanker – best standalone daily rank tracker.
Semrush – best daily rank tracker that is part of an all-in-one SEO platform.
Nightwatch – accurate and affordable standalone daily rank tracker.
Pro Rank Tracker – affordable solution with strong reporting capabilities.
SERPWatcher – accurate and extremely intuitive daily rank tracking solution.
Advanced Web Ranking – standalone tool with great white label reports.
Wincher – simple and affordable solution for Google only.
SE Ranking – affordable all-in-one platform with daily rank monitoring.
Authority Labs – effective for automating daily updates and reporting.
Ranktracker – all-in-one platform with a solid rank tracking feature.
Search Console – free option.

Disclaimer: This article does contain some affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate links are followed by (aff) in this article. Thanks for the support!

Key considerations when choosing a daily rank tracking software

Let’s start by exploring the 7 key features you need to consider when choosing a daily rank tracker.

Accurate (on-demand) ranking data:

Accuracy plus frequency is critical to daily keyword rank tracking.

Ranking positions change rapidly, so you’ll need to choose rank tracking software that has accurate daily updates, plus the option to run an on-demand refresh as required.

For example, AccuRanker (aff) updates your ranking data daily, plus you can run an instant on-demand refresh when required:

(Image: Refreshing rank data on-demand inside AccuRanker.)

Scalability across keywords and users:

Next, you want to ensure the daily rank tracking software can accommodate the number of keywords and users your company needs. Also, consider how pricing changes as you increase the number of keywords and users. For instance, does each price plan scale in line with your requirements?

Location, device, and competitor tracking:

Keywords perform differently across locations and devices, so you’ll need a daily rank tracking tool that measures those variations. You’ll also want your daily rank tracker to run competitor comparisons so that you can benchmark your performance.

For example, Semrush (aff) lets you:

  • Track location-specific keyword rankings at a national, region, or city level.
  • Compare keyword positions across tablet, desktop and mobile devices.
  • Run side-by-side competitor comparisons.
Tracking rankings across different devices and locations in Semrush
(Image: Filtering rankings by device and location in Semrush.)

Support for multiple search engines:

Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu (Chinese), Yandex (Russian), YouTube, Amazon – which search engine is most relevant for your business? When selecting your daily rank tracker, make sure it supports the right search engines for your business.

For example, AccuRanker (aff) lets you choose from multiple search engines:

(Image: Tracking keyword rankings across multiple search engines in AccuRanker.)

SERP feature monitoring:

SERP features such as snippets, images, videos, and local maps dominate search results.

If traffic suddenly increases or decreases, it could be due to gaining or losing a SERP feature on your keywords, so tracking them daily is crucial.

For example, AccuRanker’s Aggregated SERP Analysis tool (aff) lets you track the movement of 50+ different SERP features across all of your keywords, while the SERP Feature Ownership graph shows which keywords you rank for but don’t yet own the SERP feature:

(Image: Monitoring keyword SERP features in AccuRanker.)

Historical rank performance:

As keyword rankings fluctuate daily, you’ll want your software to show you the historical trending performance over different periods across different locations, devices, and search engines.

For example, Semrush’ Position Tracker (aff) provides the historical daily ranking performance for the last 60 days. After the 60 days, you can view weekly snapshots of historical rankings:

Tracking historical ranking performance in Semrush
(Image: Historial ranking performance in Semrush.)

White label reporting:

Besides monitoring the latest on-demand ranking data, you’ll also want the option of generating progress reports for your colleagues or white label reports for your clients.

For example, ProRankTracker (aff) includes current rankings, progress, comparison, and benchmark reports:

(Image: Creating and scheduling custom reports in Pro Rank Tracker.)

AccuRanker (aff) includes built-in white-label reports, plus it integrates with third-party tools like Google Data Studio for enhanced visual reports:

(Image: Third-party reporting via AccuRanker and Google Data Studio.)

10 Best Daily Rank Trackers for 2023

Now it’s time to check the top daily rank tracking software.

Some of these tools are dedicated standalone rank trackers, while others are part of all-in-one SEO platforms.

But all of these daily rank trackers have most, if not all, of the features covered above.

Let’s dive in…

AccuRanker

AccuRanker daily rank tracker

AccuRanker (aff) is the world’s fastest and most accurate standalone daily rank tracker that lets you refresh keyword rankings whenever you need them. It’s trusted by more than 32,000 companies, including IKEA and Kinsta.

Key features:

  • Run instant on-demand updates of ranking data.
  • Select pricing plans based on keywords and unlimited users.
  • Track daily keyword rankings across multiple search engines, including Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, and YouTube.
  • Compare side-by-side keyword ranking with your competitors.
  • Monitor 50+ SERP features, including snippets, images, videos, and local map packs, for all of your keywords.
  • Add tags, notes and dates to easily filter and segment ranking data.
  • View the historical daily ranking performance of individual keywords.
  • Generate and schedule white-label rank tracking reports.
  • Create visual reports with Google Looker Studio integration.
  • Integrates with Google Search Console and Adobe Analytics.
  • Landing Pages report maps ranking data to Google Analytics data to show the correlation between rankings, traffic and revenue.

Pricing: AccuRanker starts at $116/month for 1,000 daily tracked keywords.

Start a 14-Day Free Trial

Semrush

Semrush (aff) is an all-in-one SEO platform trusted by over 10 million marketing professionals and used by leading brands, including Tesla, Samsung, and IBM. Its Position Tracking Tool (aff) lets you track daily rankings at different locations on mobile and desktop, and compare them to your competitors. It also ranked highly in our expert poll of the best rank trackers.

Key features:

  • Collect accurate daily keyword ranking data.
  • Select pricing plans based on the number of keywords and users.
  • Track keyword rankings nationally, regionally, and locally on desktop or mobile.
  • Tag your keywords to allocate them into relevant segments.
  • Get notified of the crucial position changes.
  • Analyze daily SERP feature movements, such as snippets, images, videos, and carousels.
  • View historical daily ranking performance.
  • Run side-by-side competitor comparisons.
  • Generate white-label rank tracking reports.
  • Produce detailed and engaging reports with the Google Looker Studio connector.

Pricing: Semrush starts at $119.95/month for 500 daily tracked keywords.

Start a 14-Day Free Trial

Nightwatch

Nightwatch is one of the most accurate standalone daily rank trackers that lets you track your rankings on all leading search engines down to the ZIP code level. It’s trusted by companies of all sizes, including Shopify, Scotiabank, and Booking.com.

Pricing: Nightwatch starts at $32/month for 250 daily tracked keywords.

Try Nightwatch

Pro Rank Tracker

Pro Rank Tracker (aff) is a standalone daily rank tracker trusted by over 60,000 SEO agencies and brands worldwide, including Fuel Online, Just Internet Solutions, and GoGoPrint. Its state-of-the-art algorithm gives you fast, accurate, on-demand keyword ranking results.

Key features:

  • Get automatic daily ranking updates, plus on-demand refreshes.
  • Select pricing plans based on keywords and additional users.
  • Follow international and local rankings on desktop and mobile.
  • Track keyword rankings on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, and YouTube.
  • Monitor SERP feature movements, including local listings and map packs.
  • View historical ranking performance and competitor comparisons.
  • Generate multi-lingual, white-label “live link” reports with daily or on-demand updates.

Pricing: ProRankTracker starts at $13.50/month for 100 daily tracked keywords.

Try Pro Rank Tracker

SERPWatcher by Mangools

SERPWatcher (aff) is an easy-to-use daily keyword rank tracking tool. It’s part of the Mangools all-in-one SEO platform used by more than 25,000 customers and trusted by big brands, including Airbnb, Alexa, and Adidas.

Key features:

  • Get daily ranking updates.
  • Receive significant rank changes via email alerts.
  • Select pricing plans based on keywords and additional users.
  • Track keyword rankings at country, state, and local levels on desktop or mobile.
  • Share interactive reports using a link.

Pricing: SERPWatcher starts at $29.90/month for 200 daily tracked keywords.

Start a Free Trial

Advanced Web Ranking

Advanced Web Ranking provides fresh daily, weekly, or on-demand keyword rankings. Over 24,000 leading brands and agencies trust the standalone rank tracker, including Microsoft, Amazon, and MoneySupermarket.

Key features:

  • Get accurate keyword rankings daily or on-demand.
  • Track location-specific keyword rankings at a city, state, or country level on desktop or mobile.
  • Get granular local rank tracking down to the GPS coordinates.
  • Track daily rankings on multiple search engines, including Yandex, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, Amazon, and YouTube.
  • Monitor all types of Google SERP features and compare ranking with your competitors.
  • Build in-depth, white-label reports and share them via a URL link.
  • Integrate ranking data with third-party tools, such as Google Data Studio.

Pricing: Advanced Web Ranking starts at $99/month for tracking up to 7,000 keywords.

Start a Free Trial

Wincher

Wincher is a simple, flexible, and powerful standalone daily rank tracker. It’s used by thousands of people in almost 150 countries, including companies like Philips, SVT, and Bonnier.

Key features:

  • Get daily keyword rank tracking updates and refresh data on-demand.
  • Scale with pricing plans based on keywords and unlimited users.
  • Track your keyword rankings in a specific country, region, or city location.
  • View competitor rankings and get notified if they overtake you or vice versa.
  • Select from 130+ Google search engines and track which keywords have SERP features.
  • Evaluate up to 6 months of ranking history for any added keywords.
  • Generate on-demand white-label reports.
  • Create great-looking reports with the Google Date Studio integration.

Pricing: Wincher starts at $39/month for 500 daily tracked keywords.

Start a Free Trial

SE Ranking

SE Ranking (aff) is an all-in-one SEO platform with a 100% accurate keyword tracking tool. Leading brands like Zapier, Trustpilot, and Hunter Engineering Company use its daily rank tracker.

Key features:

  • Check your keyword rankings daily, every 3 days, or every week.
  • Scale your pricing plan based on the number and frequency of keywords to track and the subscription period.
  • Track your rankings by country, region, city, or zip code level.
  • Check Google, Yahoo, Bing, and YouTube rankings for all locations and devices.
  • Monitor keyword SERP features, including snippets, videos, maps, and Google Ads.
  • Compare up to 20 competitors’ keyword rankings.
  • Share white-label reports via a custom domain.

Pricing: SE Ranking has a scalable pricing structure starting at $39.20/month for 250 daily tracked keywords.

Start a Free Trial

Authority Labs

Authority Labs is a reliable and accurate standalone daily rank tracker that even lets you recover those “not provided” keywords. It’s trusted by marketers and industry leaders worldwide, including Mint, Jobing, and Symantec.

Key features:

  • React to changes with daily keyword rank tracking.
  • Scale with pricing plans based on keywords and unlimited users.
  • Automate local rank tracking and mobile rank tracking with daily reporting.
  • Track location-specific keywords by state, city, or zip code on mobile and desktop.
  • Monitor keywords on Google, Bing, and Yahoo!
  • Track and compare competitors’ keyword ranking side-by-side.
  • Share custom white-label reports via URL link.
  • Integrate rank tracking data in Google Data Studio reports

Pricing: Authority Labs starts at $49/month for 250 daily tracked keywords.

Start a Free Trial

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker is an all-in-one SEO platform that includes a daily rank tracker to keep track of your site’s rankings in real time. It’s used by marketers from leading companies, including Apple, Red Bull, and Adidas.

Key features:

  • Get daily email notifications for any significant ranking changes.
  • Track keyword ranking globally, nationally, and locally on desktop or mobile.
  • Compare ranking movements side-by-side with your competitors.
  • Track any language on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex search engines, plus GMB and local rankings.
  • Monitor your keyword SERP features like shopping previews, maps, or reviews.
  • Get an instant visual overview of your historical rank tracking progress.
  • Send daily, weekly, or monthly white-label reports.

Pricing: Ranktracker has subscription plans starting at $24/month for 100 daily tracked keywords.

Start a Free Trial

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free all-in-one platform with tools and reports to help you measure your overall search traffic and performance. While you can’t add specific keywords to track (like the premium daily rank tracking software above), you can monitor your daily rankings.

Key features:

  • Analyze daily keyword rank tracking updates.
  • Sort ranking data by keywords, pages, countries, devices, search appearance, and dates.
  • Export data to Google Sheets, Excel, or a CSV file.

Pricing: Google Search Console is free to use.

Which Daily Rank Tracker Are You Going to Try?

There are several things to consider when searching for a daily rank tracker. You want software that provides:

  • Accurate (on-demand) ranking data.
  • Scalability across keywords and users.
  • Location, device, and competitor tracking.
  • Support for multiple search engines.
  • SERP feature monitoring.
  • Historical rank performance.
  • White label reporting.

We looked at the best daily rank tracking software – 5 standalone rank trackers and 5 rank tracking tools from all-in-one SEO platforms.

That’s a lot of tools! But here are my recommendations:

If you’re looking for a robust standalone daily rank tracker, then AccuRanker (aff) is my top choice.

On the other hand, if you want a daily rank tracker that’s part of an all-in SEO platform, then the Semrush Position Tracker (aff) Position Tracking Tool is excellent.

Let us know in the comments which daily rank tracking software you’re using.

The post 10 Best Daily Rank Tracking Software for SEO [2023 Edition] appeared first on Robbie Richards.

Read more at Read More

Semrush Free Trial: Test Drive Semrush Pro or Guru [Links Inside]

/0 Comments/in , /by

Semrush Free Trials: 
Test Drive Semrush PRO or GURU for 14 Days


Get Free 14-Day Trial of Semrush PRO

Get Free 14-Day Trial of Semrush GURU

Are you looking to get your hands on a free trial of Semrush? 

You’re in the right place.

I’m guessing you already have an idea just how powerful the Semrush toolset can be for analyzing competitors and building profitable online marketing campaigns.

It’s the toolset I’ve been using for years at my SEO agency to produce consistent results for our clients.

But, until you actually take Semrush for a test drive, you really can’t appreciate how powerful it is.

In fact, Semrush (aff) is continually adding new Toolkits that provides its 6M+ users insane value.

It’s no longer just a leading competitive analysis tool. It truly is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that provides SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing capabilities.

And it’s the reason why it’s been voted the “Top Tool” by hundreds of SEOs and digital marketing professionals across numerous categories:

#1 Keyword Research Tool

139 experts polled


View Final Leaderboard

#1 Rank Tracking Tool

70 experts polled


View Final Leaderboard

#1 All-in-One SEO Tool

400+ experts polled


View Final Leaderboard

#1 Competitor Analysis Tool

67 experts polled


View Final Leaderboard

Not sure which free trial – Semrush Pro, Guru or Business – is right for you? Don’t sweat!

I’ll walk you through the different Semrush plans, introduce all the Toolkits, and show you how to get the most out of your free trial so you can determine if it’s the right tool for your business and/or clients.

I’ve partnered with the team at Semrush to give you exclusive access to extended free trials, so you can take your time exploring and testing all the functionality the platform provides.

Disclaimer: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This is how I fund the blog and its promotion. Thanks for the support.

Which Plan is Right for You? Semrush Pro vs. GURU Comparison:

Both of these plans come packed with tools and features to boost your online marketing. But which one is right for you?

If you’re a freelancer, blogger, or in-house marketer with a limited budget, then the Semrush Pro (aff) plan will likely be the best option.

You’ll have access to 28 advanced tools to manage your SEO, PPC and Social Media projects.

If you’re a professional SEO consultant or an agency that services numerous clients, then you’ll be best-suited to the Semrush Guru (aff) plan.

It has all the same tools and features as the Pro plan, plus you get access to Historical Data, Branded Reports, extended data limits, and the new Content Marketing toolkit. 

For instance, you can track more projects, crawl more pages, track more keywords, and access more results per report – perfect when you’re working with clients that have larger data sets.

The table below highlights some of the key differences:

PRO

GURU

BUSINESS

Projects

5

15

40

Results per report

10,000

30,000

50,000

Page crawls per month

100,000

300,000

1,000,000

Keywords to track (daily position updates)

500

1,500

5,000

Scheduled PDF reports

5

20

50

Branded PDF

 reports

Historical data

Looker Studio Integration

API Access

How to Activate Your Semrush Free Trial:

#1: Select your Semrush plan and click one of the buttons below to sign up for a free trial:

PRO  |  GURU

#2: Register with your email address and chosen password, and then click on the orange ‘Create your account’ button:

Semrush free trial form

#3: You’ll see the Semrush billing page pre-populated with your Pro or Guru subscription details and zero charges showing in the “Today’s charges” field.

Go ahead and enter your billing information:

Sign up form showing SEMrush trial is free for 30 days

Note: Semrush will charge a nominal amount to your credit card to check its validity. Don’t worry – once confirmed, it will be refunded. Rest assured, you won’t be charged a penny until your Semrush trial period ends and you decide to continue as a customer.

#4: Now scroll down the page to make the most of your Semrush free trial.

Robbie headshot

Editor’s note:
Already have a free account to upgrade? No problem.
Just log into your account through this link (Pro) or this link (GURU) and activate the free trial of either plan.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Free Trial of Semrush (Toolkits and Use Cases)

Got your free trial activated? Excellent! 

Now, you have 14 days to determine if it’s the right tool for you, so let’s get started.

Below we’ll walk through a few immediate action items to help you get the most value from the Semrush tool set from day one.

Remember, you’ve got full access to the entire Semrush tool set with your free trial. So we’re going to check some of the practical applications you can use in each major toolkit.

Note: I have also included some actionable video tutorials below.

Semrush SEO Toolkit

Semrush Organic Research report
  • Analyze how your competitors are driving organic traffic at the subfolder, page, and individual keyword levels with the Organic Research reports, so you can quickly scale your organic traffic across each stage of the funnel.
  • Find stacks of long-tail keywords (with specific search intent) and expand the organic footprint on your pages with secondary keywords using the Keyword Magic Tool.

    Semrush has the largest, and most accurate database, containing over 20B keywords.

  • Uncover featured snippet opportunities for existing content and new keywords.
     
  • Analyze competitor backlink profiles so you can find, check, and manage thousands of link building prospects in seconds with the Link Building Tool. In addition, the Backlink Audit Tool allows you to quickly find and analyze potentially toxic links.
  • Track keyword rankings at national, regional, and local search level across any device – mobile, tablet, and desktop – with the Position Tracking Tool. All users on all Semrush plans get access to daily ranking updates on all devices, which is one of the many features that sets it apart from competitors.
     
  • Run technical Site Audits and optimize your content with the On-page SEO Checker, so your pages soar in the SERPs.
  • Generate a list of URLs and their primary keyword targets, automatically or manually, with the On-Page SEO Checker. And then analyze the content quality, semantic and secondary keyword gaps, backlink opportunities/gaps, and on-page elements such as titles, heading tags, etc.
  • Manage local listings and track GMB rankings.
  • Use the SERP Analysis tool to evaluate the content types, page authority scores, and backlink counts for competing URLs in the SERPs and qualify keyword opportunities.
  • Perform Gap Analysis for both keywords (at the URL, subdomain and domain levels) and backlinks.

Bonus resource: How to Find High-Value Competitor Keywords (5-Step Guide)

Semrush Advertising Toolkit

Semrush Advertising Toolkit
  • Get a top-level view of how much paid traffic your competitors get each month, the number or keywords they bid on, the estimated budget, and the historical trends with the Advertising Research reports.
  • Scrutinize the ad copy your competitors are using to win the click, so you can create winning ads with the Ad Builder.
  • Use the Ad History reports to find out which ads have been in rotation the longest and uncover which ad copy has a proven track record of success.
  • Analyze all the landing pages competitors are using to convert paid traffic and discover where they are targeting ads on the Display Advertising network.
  • Identify which display ad creatives – image, text and HTML – the competition is using, and which properties – websites, YouTube channels and videos – they are displaying ads on.
  • Use the PLA Research reports to unearth the pricing strategies of your competitors, so you can optimize your PLAs with better titles, descriptions, and pricing.
  • Use the PPC Keyword Tool to build and organize keyword lists into groups, and set negative keywords, etc. Then download everything to a CSV file and import into the Google Ads Editor.
  • Perform a Paid Keyword or PLA Gap Analysis to see which keywords or shopping ads your competitors are running, but you are missing. You can then add them to your PPC keyword list in Semrush, and even export them to the Google Ads editor.

Bonus resources:

12 Best SEM Tools (Free and Paid) for 2020

5 Best SpyFu Alternatives

Semrush vs SpyFu: The Definitive Guide (2023)

Semrush Management Toolkit

All projects in SEMrush
  • Analyze and measure all aspects of your digital marketing with 12 reports – including site health, position changes, visibility trends and more – in one Projects dashboard, so you can spot at a high-level where the immediate weaknesses and opportunities exist in your digital marketing campaigns.
Projects dashboard inside the SEMrush Management Toolkit
  • You can filter the ‘My Projects’ dashboard to show only projects you own or those that have been shared with you from different Semrush accounts.
  • Build professional branded campaign reports with pre-built reporting templates and the simple drag-and-drop Report Builder (aff) before sharing with colleagues or clients:
Building reports in SEMrush
  • You can pull data from all the Toolkits – e.g. SEO, PPC, etc. – plus external data – e.g. Google Analytics, Search Console, and Google My Business – and then drop your logo on the report.

Editor’s note: With a Business subscription, you can also use the Semrush connector to add your data directly into custom Google Data Studio reports:

SEMrush data in Google Data Studio report

Image: Semrush data populating in a custom Google Data Studio SEO report. 

Semrush Content Marketing Toolkit

SEMrush Content Marketing Toolkit
  • Use the Content Audit tool to conduct a thorough audit of your website’s content so you can understand what content should be optimized, and what can be removed.
  • Implement actionable tips to create optimized content that’s loved by people and search engines, and based on the analysis of your Top 10 rivals in the SERPs with the SEO Content Template.
     
  • Analyze and measure your content performance – including guest posts and external articles – by tracking backlinks, rankings, and social shares in one place with the Post Tracking report.

Note: The Content Marketing Toolkit is only available with the GURU plan (aff). 

Semrush Social Media Toolkit

Semrush Social Media Toolkit
  • Use the Social Media Poster to draft, schedule, and post content to different social platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest – without leaving Semrush.
  • Monitor the social media accounts of your competitors so you can compare their growth and engagement levels with your accounts using the Social Media Tracker.
  • Get social media audience insights such as demographics, location, when your audience is online, and on which days.
  • Check which competitor content is getting the most engagement, and on which channels.
  • Boost social media ads and create new ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, directly within Semrush.

Semrush Traffic Analytics

Combine the power of SimilarWeb and Google Analytics in one tool.

Semrush Traffic Analytics dashboard

Semrush Traffic Analytics is my #1 SimilarWeb alternative. 

Analyze ALL the traffic sources – direct, referral, search, social, and paid – across all devices and geographies, and compare engagement levels – visit duration, bounce rate etc. – between you and the competition.

Bonus resource: Find Out How Much Traffic ANY Website Gets: 3-Step Analysis. You’ll also get access to a free website traffic analysis template (shown below):

Website traffic analysis template for SEMrush users

Analyze every aspect of your competitors’ online traffic strategy:

  • Discover which channels (direct, referral, search, social, and paid traffic) drive the most traffic.
  • Examine which external URLs drive the most referral traffic.
  • Track which subdomains or subfolders get the most visits.
  • Check which pages/posts pull in the most organic traffic.
  • Determine which individual keywords generate the most traffic.

Analyze your competitors’ on-site engagement:

  • Track the performance of your competitors’ articles across social networks.
  • Monitor session duration and bounce rates across devices and channels.

Analyze your main paid search competitors:

  • See how much they’re spending on paid traffic.
  • Check which keywords they’re bidding on.
  • Study the composition of their ad copy.
  • See which URLs they are using to convert paid traffic.
  • Identify where competitors publish YouTube and display ad creatives. 

And, that’s just scratching the surface.

Grab a free Semrush trial today (PRO or GURU) and see first-hand why millions use Semrush to perform deep competitor analysis, and build successful SEO and digital marketing campaigns.

FAQs

Can I create both a Semrush Pro and Guru account?

Semrush only offers one free trial per user, so make sure you pick the right plan:

  • If you’re a freelancer or blogger, then Semrush Pro (aff) will be perfect. 
  • If you’re an SEO specialist or agency, then go for Semrush Guru (aff). This is the plan I use at my agency. 

Is there a coupon or discount code?

No, there’s no coupon or discount code. This is a Free Trial that you access via the links on this page for either the Pro or Guru plan.

Can I start a trial without a credit card?

No, you’ll need to enter your credit card details when registering for the free trial. Your card will be verified and used for future billing after the trial period ends.

Can I cancel my Semrush subscription before the trial period ends without incurring charges?

Yes, if you want to cancel your Semrush subscription, you’ll need to send a cancellation request email to mail@semrush.com.

If possible, try to send the cancellation email from the email address associated with your account. Semrush will cancel your account within one business day.

Can I continue using a free account after trial cancellation?

Yes, after canceling your trial subscription, you will still be able to access Semrush on a free account. But please note that with a free account, your limits and access to some tools and reports will be severely reduced.

Semrush also provides a 30-day grace period after your cancellation. During this period, your Projects data is saved, so it’s available should you change your mind and decide to renew your account. 

How long is the Semrush free trial?

It depends on which plan you choose.

Semrush doesn’t promote free trials on their website, but I have some exclusive trial links for the different plans:

  • Pro: 14 days 
  • Guru: 14 days 

How does Semrush compare to Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is a fantastic SEO platform with a great UI/UX, and one that I use often. But it doesn’t have the breadth of insights that Semrush provides, especially around Traffic Analysis and Paid Ad insights. I wrote a dedicated post looking at Ahrefs vs Semrush here. 

Can I continue using a free account after trial cancellation?

Absolutely! You can upgrade or downgrade to any plan that fits your requirements at any time.

Grab Your Semrush Free Trial Today

I’ve been using Semrush for years, and I can’t imagine trying to provide SEO services to my clients without it.

With so many toolkits, Semrush really is the all-in-one digital marketing platform that will give you a competitive advantage.

So what are you waiting for? Use one of the trial links below to get your free no-risk access to the entire toolset:

Semrush Free Trials: 
Test Drive Semrush PRO or GURU free for 14 Days 


Get Free 14-Day Trial of Semrush PRO

Get Free 14-Day Trial of Semrush GURU

The post Semrush Free Trial: Test Drive Semrush Pro or Guru [Links Inside] appeared first on Robbie Richards.

Read more at Read More

10 Best Moz Alternatives (Free & Paid) for 2023

/0 Comments/in , /by

Looking for the best Moz alternative? Read on.

Moz is a quality all-in-one SEO toolset.

It allows you to perform keyword research, run site crawls and audits, analyze backlinks, track rankings, manage local listings, clean up citations, and bring data directly into the SERP via its SEO Toolbar.

But it’s not the perfect tool for everyone.

Some may think Moz is too pricey and want a more affordable or free alternative.

Others might feel the data limits for things like audit, keyword and backlink reports are too low on certain plans.

Others might prefer the UI and functionality of other standalone tools or all-in-one platforms.

In this guide, we’re going to look at the top 10 free and paid Moz alternatives, highlight their key use cases, and discuss how they compare to Moz.

For easy navigation, we’ve broken out the alternatives in the table of contents below:

Disclaimer: This article does contain affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks in advance for the support!

Best All-in-One Moz Alternative: Semrush

Semrush is a leading all-in-one SEO platform that has over 55 tools for Competitor analysis, Keyword research, Rank tracking, Content and Technical audits, On-page and Backlink analysis, white-label reporting, and in-depth PPC analysis.

Semrush SEO platform

Semrush is used by over 10 million users, including top brands such as Amazon, Tesla and Walmart.

Semrush provides an immense amount of data (aff) comprising 24B+ billion keywords, 142 geo-locations, 808 million domain profiles, and the fastest backlink crawler and largest database (43 trillion backlinks) on the market. That’s more than enough firepower to blow most other standalone SEO tools out of the water.

Editor’s Note:

Semrush is an essential part of my SEO and PPC toolset for personal and client projects that I’ve been using for over 8+ years.

In addition to SEO and PPC, Semrush also provides a range of other Toolkits – Advertising, Content Marketing, Competitive Research, Campaign Management, and Social Media – to support other areas of your digital marketing campaigns.

And, most of the Toolkits integrate with each other.

Traffic Analytics

Website Traffic Analytics report in Semrush

The Traffic Analytics (aff) tool lets you discover which marketing channels – organic, paid, referral, or social – drive traffic to any site. Plus, you can check estimated bounce rates, average visit duration, and other engagement metrics.

Enter any website, and you’ll discover:

  • Which channels drive the most traffic.
  • The categories of interest and brand preference of visitors.
  • Which websites drive the most referral traffic.
  • Which subdomains or subfolders get the most visits.
  • Which pages/posts pull in the most organic traffic.
  • Which keywords generate the most organic traffic.
  • Which regions and countries drive the most traffic.
  • The desktop vs. mobile traffic ratio and user engagement.
  • The other websites that your visitors are also visiting.

The Semrush Traffic Analytics report also allows users to check the traffic stats for up to 200 different websites in a single report. This bulk analysis is a huge time-saver for agencies and businesses trying to quickly identify key traffic channels, and referral partner sources in new or existing markets.

Editor’s Note:

The Traffic Analytics tool provides an all-access backstage pass to your competitor’s entire traffic strategy, which is something that Moz doesn’t provide.

If you’re interested in trying the Traffic Analytics tool, use this free 14-day trial (aff).

Keyword Research

Semrush keyword overview report

The Semrush SEO Toolkit (aff) provides access to a massive database of 24B+ different keywords with accurate search volume data that you can use to find new keyword opportunities or analyze those of your competitors.

You can use the Semrush SEO Toolkit to:

  • Find your high-value existing keyword opportunities.
  • Unearth competitor keywords and top traffic pages with advanced filters.
  • Perform URL, subfolder, and subdomain-level keyword gap analysis.
  • Uncover question-based topics.
  • Compare up to five competitors and uncover keywords they rank for, but you don’t.
  • Use SERP metrics – search volume, search intent, estimated traffic, referring domains etc – to more accurately qualify keyword opportunities.
  • Find untapped featured snippet opportunities.

Editor’s Note:

There’s a reason that Semrush was voted the best keyword research tool by over 130 SEO experts; it provides the largest, and arguably, the most accurate keyword database of any tool on the market.

That said, while the Moz keyword database (500M) is much smaller than Semrush’ (23B+), it does still provide one of the better keyword research tools on the market.

One of the top features is the SERP analysis breakdown. Similar to Semrush, users can view link data next to each ranking URL to better gauge competition, and more accurately qualify keyword opportunities.

Rank Tracking

Position Tracking

The Semrush Position Tracking (aff) tool lets you accurately track mobile and desktop keyword rankings from country level, all the way down to the zip code.

This level of granularity has made Semrush a top-rated rank tracker, and a popular choice for agencies who need to monitor rankings for a range of clients targeting international markets all the way down to local businesses.

You can use the Position Tracking tool to:

  • Get daily keyword ranking updates (including your competitors) across tags, devices, and locations.
  • View historical ranking performance from the last 7, 30, 60, or 90 days. You can also set custom date ranges.
  • Monitor SERP feature movements, such as snippets, images, videos, carousels, and ads, to quickly spot new opportunities.
  • Track ranking movements against competitors over time.
  • View ranking data in white-label SEMrush reports, or integrate with third-party reporting tools like Google Data Studio.
  • Import ranking data from other tools.

Editor’s Note:

The accuracy of Semrush’ desktop and mobile ranking data is the #1 reason I’ve been using the platform to track all the rankings for my personal projects, and agency clients over the past 8+ years.

I also really like having the ability to track SERP feature movements, and easily integrate ranking distribution data into third-party SEO dashboards.

You can track a larger number of keywords with Semrush (500) compared to Moz (300) on the respective starter plans.

That said, Moz does provide mobile and desktop ranking data across multiple search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and Google. Right now, Semrush provides accurate ranking data that is updated daily for Google and Baidu (China).

Backlink Analysis

Backlink Analytics report

The Semrush backlink database contains over 1.6 billion referring domains to help you find all the domains linking to your website, and your competitors.

You can use the Backlink Analytics tool to:

  • Check your backlink profile to identify and reclaim any lost backlinks.
  • Analyze your competitors’ backlinks at scale and unearth their most powerful links.
  • Uncover which content types and topics attract the most links for your competitors.
  • Find your competitor’s recurring backlink sources.
  • Discover unlinked brand mentions.
  • Prospect for links and run outreach campaigns from directly inside the SEMrush application.

You can use the Backlink Gap tool to:

  • Compare the backlink profiles of up to five of competitors and quickly find backlink opportunities that you’re missing.

You can use the Backlink Audit tool to:

  • Examine your domain’s backlink profile for any suspicious or toxic links, and automatically create a disavow file to send to Google.

Editor’s Note: 

The Semrush link building tool set has come a long way in recent years. The Backlink Analytics and Backlink Gap tools provide quality competitor link insights if you don’t want to pay for a dedicated link building tool.

In fact, the Semrush link database (1.6B domains) is now larger than Moz’ database (718M domains), and many other dedicated link building platforms.

The Backlink Audit tool is also a handy feature that makes it easy to quickly spot potentially harmful links across sites of any size.

Finally, Semrush’ Link Building Tool enables users to not only prospect, but also run outreach and track new links all within the Semrush platform. This feature means that you don’t have to pay for separate tools for prospecting and sending outreach emails.

Technical SEO Audits

The Site Audit (aff) tool is a powerful website crawler that allows you to quickly analyze any website’s health. The audit produces a prioritized list of issues, including duplicate content, thin content, orphaned pages, crawlability, and broken links, so you can see precisely where a website is struggling.

You can use the Site Audit tool to:

  • Inspect the desktop or mobile version of a site, plus include or exclude specific pages.
  • Compare crawls side-by-side to see how errors, warnings, and notices have changed over time.
  • Run on-demand audits and schedule auto re-crawls on a daily or weekly basis.

Editor’s Note: 

I prefer to use the Semrush Site Audit tool, and currently use it to run monthly site crawls and technical audits for personal and client projects.  

You can run technical site audits from one central SEO project dashboard, which is especially useful when managing multiple clients.

Semrush will give you an updated “health” score after each re-crawl.

One of the best features of the Semrush Site Audit tool is the ability to compare audits side-by-side to show progress over time, and send action items to external tools like Trello.

Moz also provides a site crawl and audit tool that identifies a range of technical site issues, and similar to Semrush, breaks them down into categories.

Local Listings Management

The Local Listing Management (aff) tool is an integration between Semrush and Yext that helps local businesses upload and maintain NAP listings.

Simply enter your NAP details once, and the Listing Management tool maintains the correct information on your website, Google Business profile, social networks, and important industry/niche directories.

  • Manage and publish local business information (NAP) to the major data aggregators, and dozens of authoritative directories, including Google, Yelp, Facebook, and Alexa.
  • Correct or adjust your NAP any time to make it more consistent across the web.
  • Monitor and reply to all your customers’ reviews in one place and manage your ratings.

Editor’s Note:

Moz provides an industry-leading local SEO solution, especially when it comes to citation building, audits, cleanup, and review management.

Semrush integrates with Yext, which is handy if you want to get NAP data pushed out to the leading aggregators and directories.

That said, Moz is a top-rated local search tool, and would be the preferred option if you’re looking for a dedicated solution for managing local listings.

White Label Reporting

Building reports in SEMrush

Semrush’s white-label Reporting tools (aff) enable brands and agencies to present a competitive analysis, and clearly show the performance of SEO and PPC campaigns.

You can also use the drag-and-drop widgets to build branded SEO performance reports that combine Semrush analytics with other third-party data, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google My Business.

  • Generate reports from pre-existing templates or create your own custom template.
  • Build, save, and manage all your reports in the tool with a user-friendly interface.
  • Send regular reports automatically on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Editor’s Note:

Similar to Semrush, Moz provides a quality drag-and-drop report builder that enables users to create custom-branded and/or white label reports from scratch, or using pre-built templates.

One feature that helps Semrush stand out is the ability to not only pull data from each of its toolkits, but also third-party sources such as Google Analytics, Search Console and Google My Business.

For many businesses and agencies, this functionality removes the need to invest in a dedicated SEO reporting tool.

Semrush also provides an integration with Google Data Studio on its higher paid plans.

Semrush free trial banner

Best Moz Alternative for Beginners: Mangools

Mangools (aff) is a user-friendly and affordable SEO toolset that makes it easy for any SEO (beginner to advanced) to extract valuable insights.

The easy-to-navigate 5-in-one toolset is used by big brands such as Airbnb and Adidas to perform keyword research, analyze SERP data, track rankings, analyze backlinks, and run top-level site analysis.

It has one of the nicest user interfaces of any tool on the market.

Here’s how you can use the Mangools SEO toolset:

  • KWFinder (aff) helps you identify long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty, either using seed keywords or your competitor’s domain. You get a list of keywords with search volume and a Keyword Difficulty (KD) “traffic-light” rating so that you can target the quick-win keywords.
  • SERPChecker (aff) lets you run localized SERP simulations for any country or city on desktop or mobile. You can see all your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, use 45+ different data points to evaluate SERP competition, identify the impact of rich snippets on SERP CTRs, and compare your website metrics against the competition.
  • SERPWatcher (aff) provides accurate daily ranking updates across more than 50,000 locations, including counties, cities, and DMA regions, across both mobile and desktop devices.

    The Dominance Index (DI) shows if you’re dominating the search results for your tracked keywords.

  • LinkMiner (aff) allows you to analyze the power of your competitors’ backlinks with its Link Strength (LS) metric, which is powered by Majestic’s Citation and Trust Flow metrics, among others.

    You can also preview link placements without opening a separate browser window. Save the best link opportunities to lists inside the application.

  • SiteProfiler (aff) lets you check the SEO metrics and authority of any website. You can check the health of a backlink profile, spot the most popular content, benchmark your website against other sites, and discover similar websites based on audience demographics.

Editor’s Note:

Mangools is an affordable, user-friendly Moz alternative that provides a ton of data in an easy-to-digest format.

LinkMiner contains 9.5 trillion backlinks and pulls in Majestic’s trust and citation flow metrics. And SERPWatcher provides daily rank updates across 52,000+ locations on any device.

The tool makes it incredibly easy to find high-value keyword ideas, and use several SERP data points to accurately qualify each opportunity.

Best Free Moz Alternative: Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is a free, easy-to-use SEO toolset with access to over 6 billion keywords and 1 billion pieces of content. Users can perform keyword research, topic research, backlink analysis, rank tracking, and run SEO audit reports.

The free version provides limited data, but is still very handy if you’re looking for a free alternative to Moz. For example: you are limited to 100 keyword results per search.

You can use Ubersuggest to:

  • Discover which content is getting the most engagement – social shares and backlinks – in your niche.
  • Generate keyword suggestions, questions, comparisons, and prepositions based on what’s working for your competitors, plus what people are typing into Google.
  • View link and traffic estimates for each keyword inside the SERP report.
  • Monitor your backlinks and find opportunities for getting new high-quality links for your website.
  • Check your site for SEO issues, and get detailed instructions on how to fix them.

Editor’s Note:

While Ubersuggest won’t do everything or give you access to nearly as much data compared to Moz or Semrush, it’s still a fantastic free alternative.

Ubersuggest also has some paid plans ranging from $29 – $99/month, plus some special lifetime deals that offer more features and reports/queries per day.

Best Single Purpose Moz Alternatives

So far, we’ve looked at the best all-in-one, beginner, and free alternatives to Moz.

But, you might not be looking for a comprehensive, all-in-one SEO toolset like Semrush, and only want to invest in a tool for a specific use case, like local SEO, backlink analysis, SERP tracking, or site audits.

So, here are the best single-use case alternatives to Moz.

Best Moz Alternative for Backlink Analysis: Ahrefs Site Explorer

Ahrefs is a top Moz alternative for backlink analysis

Ahrefs has the largest index of live backlinks and is the second most active web crawler after Google. Ahrefs is a clear leader when it comes to backlink analysis and link prospecting. That said, Ahrefs is also one of the top Moz alternatives for keyword research, technical site audits and competitor content analysis.

You can use Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to:

  • Analyze competitor link profiles to see which pages, content types, and topics get linked to the most.
  • Use advanced filtering to find the best competitor link prospects.
  • Find backlink gaps and also identify your competitors’ recurring link sources.
  • Analyze anchor text distribution, spot PBN activity, and potential malicious SEO attacks.
  • View traffic estimates for backlink sources.
  • Monitor the growth in backlinks, plus page and domain ratings.
  • Spot the source of broken, new and lost backlinks.
  • Use the Batch Analysis tool to pull link metrics for up to 200 URLs at a time.
  • View link metrics inside SERP reports and more accurately qualify keywords.
  • Identify which websites link to your competitors the most.

Bonus resources:
Ahrefs Review
21 Actionable Link Building Strategies
10-Step SERP Analysis Guide

Best Moz Alternative for Keyword Research: Semrush

Semrush gives you access to an enormous database of 23B+ billion keywords through several integrated keyword research tools. One unique feature is that you can add keyword ideas to your master list (inside SEMrush) from various places, including the Keyword Magic Tool, SEO and PPC toolkits.

You can use the Keyword Magic (aff) tool to:

  • Get loads of related long-tail keywords divided into subgroups and question-based topics from your seed keyword.
  • Use keyword filters such as best, top, software, versus, and competitor to find higher intent opportunities.
  • Find keywords that trigger SERP features.
  • View SERP overview reports with integrated backlink, intent and trend data to more accurately qualify and prioritize keyword opportunities.

Bonus resources:
19 Practical DIY SEO Tactics
Targeted Keyword Research Guide
Keyword Gap Analysis: 5 Advanced Tactics in Under 10 Minutes
Semrush vs. Ahrefs: Which is the Better Toolset?
5-Step Competitor Keyword Research Guide

Best Moz Alternative for Rank Tracking: AccuRanker

AccuRanker SERP tracker

AccuRanker (aff) is the world’s fastest (on-demand) and most accurate standalone rank tracker used by over 25,000 agencies, SEO professionals, and brands.

Not only does this platform allow you to gain granular real-time ranking data across all the major search engines, but it also enables users to tie ranking movements back to traffic and conversions.

You can use AccuRanker to:

  • Evaluate market penetration with its unique Share of Voice (SoV) metric.
  • Run accurate on-demand updates of ranking data.
  • Track keyword rankings across all major search engines, including Google, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, and YouTube.
  • Map ranking data to Google Analytics traffic, goal, and revenue data in the Landing Pages report.
  • Monitor 50+ SERP features, such as featured snippets, knowledge panels, images, videos, carousels, ads, and local packs, for all of your keywords.

Bonus resource: AccuRanker Review

Best Moz Alternatives for Technical Audits

Screaming Frog

The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a versatile tool for performing in-depth technical and on-page SEO audits.

The powerful site crawler quickly gathers data on almost every on-page and technical SEO element, including indexation, titles, headings, meta descriptions, site speed, UX, content length, duplicate content, broken links, file sizes, and more.

Screaming Frog can crawl any type of website. Users can configure the spider to crawl specific sections of a website, and only pull in certain metrics.

You can use Screaming Frog to:

  • Find indexation issues.
  • Evaluate page titles and meta descriptions that are too long, too short, missing, or duplicated across your site.
  • Find internal and external broken links (4xx), redirect errors (3xx), server errors (5xx), and issues with blocked resources.
  • Discover duplicate and thin (low) content pages.
  • Pinpoint large image files that cause slow site loading times.
  • Analyze internal link structure and uncover orphan pages.
  • Crawl and analyze JavaScript websites and frameworks, such as Angular, React, and Vue.js.
  • Use API connections to pull performance data – engagement, traffic, links and conversions – from third-party sources, such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Ahrefs, Moz and Pagespeed Insights, and map them to all the URLs in a crawl.

Sitebulb

Sitebulb is a user-friendly website auditing tool. It’s ideal for those who are less technical, as you can use the color-coded visual graphs and easy-to-navigate UI to quickly spot issues. Plus, you can follow the helpful hints to understand why it’s an issue and how to potentially go about solving it.

You can use Sitebulb to:

  • Find and fix duplicate content, titles, meta descriptions, and URLs.
  • Spot on-page issues, such as thin content and missing elements.
  • Discover problems with broken links or internal links to redirects.
  • Unearth crawling and indexing issues.
  • Use maps to visualize the internal link structure of a website.
  • Compare audits over time to see which metrics have improved.
  • Crawl and render Javascript websites just like the major search engines.
  • Build custom PDF reports that can be used to showcase results to a client, support sales prospecting, or highlight opportunities for the C-suite.

Editor’s Note:

Sitebulb has quickly become one of the leading website auditing tools on the market. It provides extremely actionable insights inside an easy-to-digest user interface.

If you find that Screaming Frog is a little hard to navigate, but Moz doesn’t provide enough data, then Sitebulb is a great alternative to consider.

Best Moz Alternatives for Content Analysis

Surfer SEO

Surfer SEO Chrome extension for Google Docs

Surfer SEO (aff) is a data-driven on-page SEO analysis tool. It’s the latest addition to my SEO arsencal, and a tool I now rely on daily across personal and client projects.

The Content Editor is ideal for optimizing existing assets, and the SERP Analyzer makes it easy to create detailed content briefs for writers.

Surfer SEO integrates with Google docs, and has a free chrome extension (aff) that pulls estimated search volume data directly into the SERP.

You can use Surfer SEO to:

  • Build data-driven content briefs based on 500+ ranking factors.
  • Pinpoint the perfect keyword density, common words, precise copy length, page structure, headers, and more for your content.
  • Discover topical questions that potential visitors have and answer them within your content.
  • Find quick wins for your content and boost rankings immediately.

Editor’s Note:

I use Surfer SEO almost daily to optimize existing assets and build detailed content briefs for clients and personal projects. I cover it all in this review.

Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs’ Content Explorer is a great tool for discovering which content types for a competitor or an industry get the most traffic, social engagement, and/or backlinks.

It’s also integrated with other SEO tools in the Ahrefs platform, making it possible to view traffic, backlink, and engagement data for different content.

You can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to:

  • Find the most popular content on any topic, sorted by traffic, social shares, referring domains, and more.
  • Delve deeper into any content to see whether a page is gaining or losing backlinks and organic traffic over time with the in-line charts.
  • Reverse-engineer your competitor’s content marketing strategy.
  • Find broken link building opportunities with the live/broken filter and referring domains filter on a given topic.
  • Find unlinked brand mentions.
  • Identify high-traffic keywords that don’t require many backlinks to rank.

Best Moz Alternative for Local SEO: BrightLocal

BrightLocal

BrightLocal (aff) is a leading all-in-one local marketing platform that can build, clean up and remove citations, generate and manage online reviews and reputation, audit Google My Business (GMB) information, and track local search rankings.

It’s trusted by thousands of marketers from agencies, small businesses, and multi-location businesses, including IKEA and Valvoline.

You can use BrightLocal to:

  • Grow, monitor, and respond to customer reviews on the sites that matter most to your business.
  • Track local search rankings in organic, local packs, maps, and mobile.
  • Audit and expand your citation profile.
  • Run SEO and GMB audits to improve local search performance.
  • Integrate with Google Analytics to track changes to traffic and conversions.
  • Generate white-label reports for clients.

Bonus resource: Best Local SEO Tools

Which Moz Alternative Are You Going to Try?

Moz is a top-quality all-in-one SEO toolset that allows you to:

  • Research keywords
  • Run technical SEO audits
  • Analyze backlinks
  • Track rankings
  • Manage local listings
  • Clean-up citations

Depending on your business requirements, you may want to buy a specialized standalone tool, like AccuRanker (aff) or Screaming Frog.

But if you want to invest in an all-in-one SEO toolset that has a similar price point to Moz, then Semrush (aff) is the best alternative.

Semrush free trial banner

The post 10 Best Moz Alternatives (Free & Paid) for 2023 appeared first on Robbie Richards.

Read more at Read More

13 Ways to Get Your Website on the First Page of Google (With Examples and Templates)

/0 Comments/in , /by

Most people rely on Google.

How many times have you heard someone say: “Just Google it.”

People make more than 3.5 billion searches every day on Google!

But even more interesting is that 75% of them don’t scroll past the first page of search results:

Graph showing number of people who don't scroll past the first page of Google

In short: people want answers fast!

You may have heard the classic quote from Brian Clark at Copyblogger when he said:

“The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of the Google search results.”

It’s funny, but true. You need to rank on the first page of Google to stand a chance of reaching most readers.

But, the challenges don’t stop once you hit the first page. Google’s front page is becoming much more complex (and competitive) with the evolution of new SERP features such as featured snippets, knowledge panels, local map packs and carousels. 

Once your website gets on the front page you then have to contend with:

1. PPC (Adwords at the top and bottom of the page)

AdWords examples at the top of the SERP

2. Local Maps

Example of local map results


3. Featured Snippets

Featured snippet example

4. Related Questions

Related questions example


5. Shopping (Paid Promotions)

Google Shopping ads example

You can see the proportion of each major SERP feature in the MozCast Feature Graph:

Moz SERP feature graph

Even though it’s getting harder to rank on the first page of Google, it doesn’t mean you should give up. It’s just a case of analyzing the SERPs and selecting the strategy that gives you the best shot at success.

(Spoiler: your website is not always the best option)

Truth is: you can’t always rank on page one with your own web properties. But this shouldn’t stop your business from getting front page visibility for your most important keywords. 

And that’s exactly what you’ll learn in this post – how to tailor your SEO strategy to rank on page one, with or without using your own website.

But before we jump into the tactics for getting your site on the first page of Google, it’s important to understand what signals have the biggest impact on rankings …

13 Ways to Get Your Website on the First Page of Google:

You can use the links below to jump to a specific section or strategy in the post. There are also links at the end of each section to jump back to the top of the post. 

#1: Start with Your Existing Keyword Opportunities
#2: Find (and Eliminate) Keyword Cannibalization
#3: Steal Position Zero with Featured Snippets

#4: Rank in the Google Map Pack
#5: Target Low Competition/ High Volume Long Tail Keywords
#6: Use Barnacle SEO to “Attach” to Pages Already Ranking High in the SERPs
#7: Use Parasite SEO to Rank for Ultra Competitive Keywords
#8: Match Your Content Type to SERP Intent
#9: (Accurately) Qualify Keywords with Page-Level Link Signals

#10: Build Page-Level Authority to Outrank Big Brands
#11: Expand Your Organic Footprint and Land Hundreds of First Page Rankings (with a Single Asset)
#12: Embrace a Mobile-First Mindset
#13: Pay to Play

Disclaimer: This article does contain some affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. This is how I fund the blog and its promotion. Thanks for the support.

13 Ways to Get Your Website on the First Page of Google (in Any Industry)

Now you understand what signals drive rankings, it’s time to dive into the tactics.

Some tactics require a little more time and patience to execute. 

Let’s start with a strategy you can use to get your website on the front page of Google in 24 hours.

#1: Start with Your Existing Keyword Opportunities 

Video: I walk you through the free Google Sheets template that will automate most of the existing keyword research process. A huge time saver!

If you only do keyword research to create new content, this tactic may be a bit of an eye-opener. 

I’ve used this tactic for my own blog on countless occasions:

Traffic increase after getting a post on the first page of Google

Increasing traffic by as much as 402% month over month:

Graph showing organic traffic increase

The blog post above went from position #8 to #2 overnight, which is why the traffic shot up like a rocket!

This tactic allows you to take existing content that may not be living up to its full potential and optimizing it in such a way that it generates near-immediate traffic gains.

Here’s what you need to do: 

  1. Use Semrush to identify content that is ranking on page 2 of the SERPS – the “low-hanging fruit”.
  2. Optimize your content to ramp up traffic.

Here’s the process:

Step 1 – Identify low-hanging fruit

In Semrush: 

  1. Enter your domain URL – e.g. “beardbrand.com”. 
  2. Select “Organic Research” from the sidebar menu.
  3. Click on the “Positions” tab:
Organic research report in Semrush

The results show all your top-ranking keywords:

Organic Positions report in Semrush

But you’re only interested in the “low-hanging fruit”, so you need to set a “Custom range”
(6 – 20) in the “Positions” filter:

Applying a position filter to the Organic Positions report

Now your results look this – e.g. 8.5K keywords instead of 39K:

Keyword rankings on the first page of Google

You can also layer on minimum volume, word count, and other advanced filters to find the best existing keyword opportunities.

For example, you could apply a filter for a minimum 100 search volume, max KD% of 49%, and at least 3 words in the query. 

Now your results look this – e.g. 1.1K keywords instead of 8.5K – as you’ve streamlined the number of queries further:

Keyword filters applied in Semrush

See what this looks like for your website:

But you can take this one step further and find specific types of keywords.

For instance, you can use URL subfolders like “/collections” or “/product” to return all the commercial intent product-related terms for an ecommerce site. On the other hand, using a URL subfolder like “/blog” would return all the informational or investigational (affiliate) keyword ideas.

Here’s how it works.

Beardbrand houses all of its products under the “/products” subfolder. For example, you’ll find their Beard Wash Softeners here:

Products subfolder

In Semrush, add an advanced filter: 

Either search by the subfolder:

Searching by subfolder in Semrush

Or search by the root domain and add an advanced filter: 

  • Include > URL > Containing > “/products”:
Using advanced URL filters in Semrush

Now the results show only the commercial intent product-related keywords in positions #6-20: 

Commercial intent keywords ranking in positions 6-20

Likewise, you could change the filter to show only informational keywords found in the Beardbrand blog.

In Semrush, change the advanced filter:

  • Include > URL > Containing > “/blogs”:
Informational intent URL filter

Now the results show only the informational intent keywords in positions #6-20:

Information intent keywords in Semrush

By entering these parameters, you’re investing time on those keywords that are most valuable to your business. 

Robbie headshot

Editor’s Note: You can also set the search volume threshold to something that makes sense for your industry; e.g. you may need to set it lower to find opportunities in a really niche industry.

So far, you’ve found keywords with relevant search volume, strong existing rankings, and manageable competition.

Next, you need to prioritize which pages to optimize first.

I prefer to start with the “money” keywords at the bottom of the funnel, and work my way back up to the informational keywords:

Search Intent funnel

Export the results as a “.CSV” file, then copy/paste the data into the sheet labeled “1. Semrush Export” in the Google Sheet below.

In the DONE tab, you should now see something like this:

Quick Wins keyword template

The rows with the most GREEN in them signify the MOST ATTRACTIVE opportunities.

For example, the queries “free link building tools” and “best keyword tracker” shows an attractive search volume, manageable competition and mid-funnel intent, plus it’s already ranking on the first page of Google. 

On the other hand, the query “link building tips” has strong competition, top-funnel intent and is languishing at the bottom of page two. 

As a result, I’d prioritize the first couple queries for relaunch because they appear to be quick-wins from both a traffic and monetization (affiliate) standpoint. 

Step 2 – Optimize your content:

Here is a quick overview of how I would optimize these posts to move up the rankings:

  • Update existing expert contributions 
  • Add 10-15 new contributors
  • Update the scoreboards and republish 
  • Re-promote on social media and mention all contributors 
  • Run outreach to contributors and secure 5-10 backlinks
  • Add internal links from 3-5 topically relevant posts with high URL ratings

For a more in-depth overview of the relaunch process, check out this guide. 

Robbie headshot

Editor’s Note: If you want to learn the exact keyword research and relaunch processes I use to consistently scale organic traffic for personal and client websites, check out my premium training, The SEO Playbook.

Keyword Research Playbook gif

Screenshots of the Aggregate and Keyword Mapping tabs in The SEO Playbook. 

Top

#2: Find (and Eliminate) Keyword Cannibalization

Video: I’ll walk you through the free Google Sheets template that will automatically find potential keyword cannibalization issues on your website. 

Keyword Cannibalization occurs when two or more pages on your website are competing for the same keyword.

Keyword cannibalization

(Source)

At first, you might think it makes sense to have more than one page ranking for the same keyword.

But it’s not.

For starters, Google doesn’t know which of the pages to rank highest. And in some cases, it decides to ignore both pages.

And second, backlinks and shares get split between the pages, which leads to less authority for each page. (And that’s bad, because we’ve seen, pages with higher authority tend to rank better.)

In short: when your website is competing with itself, you’re significantly diluting your chances of ranking at all!

So how do you find and eliminate keyword cannibalization?

  1. Use Semrush (aff) to see which keywords your website is ranking for.
  2. Check for keyword duplication (i.e. multiple pages ranking for the same keyword).
  3. Resolve the issue by either merging the two (or more) resources or deleting one of them. (Note: only do this if there are ZERO links/traffic/conversions or the page serves a different purpose such as a support resource)

Here’s how to do it:

In Semrush:

  1. Enter your domain URL – e.g. “www.robbierichards.com”. 
  2. Select “Organic Research” from the sidebar menu.
  3. Click on the “Positions” tab:

The results show every keyword and their ranking position: 

Organic Positions report for the blog

Export this entire report to a “.CSV” file:

Exporting keywords from SEMrush

Next, copy/paste all the exported data into the sheet named “1. Semrush Export” in the Google Sheet below.

It should look something like this:

Then navigate to the “DONE” tab, and it will show you all the keyword cannibalization issues on your website:

Keyword cannibalization results

Now, based on the results, you have a couple of options:

(a) If the two pages competing for the same keyword are very similar, and both offer unique value, consider merging them into one canonical resource.

Note: Ensure you add a 301 redirect from the unused page to the new canonical resource, especially if it has backlinks.

(b) Otherwise, if the competing page offers nothing of unique value, then you can delete it.

Top

Semrush free trial banner

#3: Steal Position Zero with Featured Snippets

Ranking on the first page of Google is a great achievement!

But it’s only the start… 

What you really want is the top spot. Or to be more precise, you want to claim #Position 0 with a Featured Snippet.

Ahrefs found that the URL in Position #0 steals 8.6% of clicks from Position #1 when the SERPs have a Featured Snippet:

Ahrefs study showing average CTR for featured snippets

Here are three ways to steal position zero with featured snippets.

Tactic #1 – Existing featured snippet opportunities

In Semrush (aff):

  1. Select Organic Research from the sidebar
  2. Enter your domain – e.g. “healthline.com”
  3. Select the “Positions” tab
  4. Open the “SERP features” filter and select “Featured snippet”:
Finding featured snippet opportunities

Now you have a list of all the keywords the domain ranks for on the first page with a featured snippet. These are your “quick-win” opportunities.

For example, the keyword “collapsed pancreas” is in position #4, but Medical News Today has the featured snippet:

Featured snippet example

Tactic #2 – New featured snippet opportunities

In Semrush:

  1. Select Keyword Magic Tool from the sidebar
  2. Enter a seed keyword – e.g. “beard oil”
  3. Click on “Phrase match”
  4. Open the SERP Features filter and select “Featured snippet”:
Finding new featured snippet opportunities in Semrush

From the results, you can click the SERP list icon to open the SERP and reveal the URL currently occupying the featured snippet. For example, Healthline has the featured snippet for the keyword “what does beard oil do”:

Featured snippet example

Tactic 3 – Find your competitors’ featured snippets

In Semrush (aff):

  1. Select Organic Research from the sidebar
  2. Enter your competitor’s domain – e.g. “healthline.com”
  3. Select the “Positions” tab
  4. Use the “Advanced filters” to find “Featured snippet” opportunities:
Identifying competitor feature snippets

Now you have a list of all your competitor’s featured snippet content, plus the keywords to target.

Editor’s note:

Semrush also lets you track the positions of your featured snippets – including those already featured, won snippets, lost snippets, and new opportunities on the SERPs.

In Semrush (aff):

  1. Select Position Tracking from the sidebar
  2. Select your project – e.g. “www.robbierichards.com”
  3. Select the “Featured Snippets” tab:
Tracking featured snippets in Semrush

Note: For more information on the different types of featured snippets, plus how to optimize your content to land more of them and increase your organic traffic, check out this in-depth guide.

Top

#4: Get Ranked in the Google Map Pack

Ranking in the top ten organic results isn’t the only way to get on the first page of Google.

Nowadays, you’ll find the Google Map Pack at or near the top of the SERPs for any query with local intent.

In fact, you don’t even need to add a qualifier like “near me” in your search because Google filters the SERPs by the searcher’s location.

For example, if you search for “Italian restaurants”, Google shows Italian restaurants near you:

Google Maps example

Map results are triggered for more searches than ever – which means, getting ranked in the Google Map Pack is crucial for any local business.

  • 97% of search engine users search online to find local businesses. (Ardent)
  • 92% of searchers will pick brands on the first page of local search results. (Nectafy)

According to Google’s official guidance, three factors determine how high your business ranks in the local results:

  1. Relevance: The more relevant your business profile is to a query, the higher it ranks.
  2. Distance: The nearer your location is to the searcher’s location, the higher it ranks.
  3. Prominence: The more established your business is, both offline and online, with positive reviews and ratings, the higher it ranks.

Editor’s note:

Ranking highly in Google Maps is a big topic, so I’ve put together a couple step-by-step guides that will show you how to rank your local business in the Google Map Pack, and in the process, reach the top of the first page of Google. 

127-Point Local SEO Checklist for 2020 (with Working Examples)
17-Step Google Maps Marketing Guide (With Examples & Case Studies)

Top

#5: Target Low Competition/ High Volume Long Tail Keywords

If you want to get on the first page of Google, then you need to start targeting long tail keywords.

Why?

Because long tail keywords typically have a lower monthly search volume, but a higher probability of conversion.

They get their name from the “long tail” of the search demand graph:

Search demand graph from SEMrush

For example, a user wants to buy a specific TV make and model, so they search “Sony 50 inch 4K TV under $1000″ vs “Sony TV”. The intent is typically higher with long tail keywords. 

Here’s a couple of ways to find long tail keywords.

Tactic 1

In Semrush:

  1. Select the “Keyword Magic Tool” (aff) from the sidebar menu
  2. Enter a seed term – e.g. “tomato plant”
  3. Use the advanced filter “Word count” to include keywords with 3 or more words:
Finding long tail keyword opportunities

Now you have a list of additional long-tail keyword opportunities related to “tomato plant” like “yellow leaves on tomato plants” and “tomato companion plants”:

Long tail keywords

You can also toggle a switch to get a list of long-tail question keywords like “when to plant tomatoes”, “how to plant tomatoes”, and “how to prune tomatoes”: 

Question keywords

Question-based keywords are popular because people want answers to specific questions.

Here’s another example of long-tail question keywords for the seed term “divorce attorney”:

Tactic 2

There’s another tactic you can use in Semrush to find the long-tail keywords your competitors use and rank for.

Here’s what to do:

In Semrush:

  1. Select “Organic Research” from the sidebar menu
  2. Enter a competitor’s domain – e.g. “healthline.com”
  3. Click the “Positions tab”
  4. Filter by Top 20 positions for the high-ranking terms
  5. Filter for 2+ keywords to show long-tail terms with 3 or more words:
Mining long tail keyword opportunities from competitors

Now from your list of results, you can see the top-ranking long-tail keywords of your competition: 

Long tail keyword examples

There’s another tactic you can use in Semrush to find the long tail keywords your competitors use and rank for.

Here’s what to do:

In Semrush (aff):

  1. Navigate to the SEO Toolkit and enter a competitor’s domain – e.g. “healthline.com”
  2. Select “Organic Research”.
  3. Click the “Positions tab”.
  4. Filter by Top 20 positions for the high-ranking terms.
  5. Filter for 2+ keywords to show long tail terms with 3 or more words:
Extracting long tail keyword ideas from competitors inside SEMrush

Now from your list of results, you can see the top-ranking long tail keywords of your competition: 

Top ranking long tail keywords in SEMrush
Robbie headshot

Editor’s Note: If you want to learn the exact keyword research processes I use to scale organic traffic for my clients, check out my premium training course, The SEO Playbook.

Top

Semrush free trial banner

#6: Use Barnacle SEO to “Attach” Your Website to Pages Already Ranking High in the SERPs

Some big brands dominate the SERPs, even for long tail keywords, which makes it hard for small businesses to rank on the first page of Google.

For instance, big brands such as TripAdvisor, Avvo, and Trulia dominate the holiday, law, and real estate niches.

Here are some examples.

Hotels: TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, Timeout.com, etc:

Barnacle SEO example in the Hotels niche

Real Estate: Zillow, Rent.com, Trulia, Zoopla (UK), Rightmove (UK), etc:

Barnacle SEO example in the real estate niche

Legal: Avvo.com, Superlawyers.com, Justia.com, etc:

Barnacle SEO example in the legal niche

There’s no way you’re going to outrank them – at least not to start!

So rather than competing with the BIG sites that dominate your niche, you can attach your own brand to them.

That way, you can effectively piggyback on their success!

It’s a tactic called “Barnacle SEO” – a term coined by Will Scott of Search Influence.

In short: It means you attach your site to the BIG websites to get traction.

For example:

  • If you run a hotel in London, then encourage your guests to leave reviews on TripAdvisor, so you get featured on that site for a specific city/town.
  • If you run a law firm, optimize your profiles to rank highly in relevant categories on sites like Avvo. Or, pay for a featured listing (more on that later).
  • If you run any type of local business, optimize your profile and generate loads of quality reviews to rank highly in relevant Yelp categories.
  • If you provide holiday accommodation, you can list it on Airbnb.

You can also look for keywords in your niche where forums like Quora dominate the SERPs.

For example, if you were a lawyer, you could search for forum threads about attorneys.

In Semrush (aff):

  1. Enter “quora.com” in Organic Research. 
  2. Select the “Positions” tab.
  3. Filter by the Top 5 positions for the high-ranking terms.
  4. Use the “Advanced filters” to find threads containing the word “attorney”:

This will result in a TON of threads that rank well for attorney-related terms:

Top ranking attorney keywords in Quora

Select the ones most related to your business from the list, sign into Quora, answer the questions and link back to a “value-add” resource.

It doesn’t always make sense to wait to rank your own website on the first page of Google. Sometimes the best strategy is to attach your site to those already ranking. 

Note: For more information on how to use Barnacle SEO to get your website onto the first page of Google, check out this in-depth guide. 

Top

#7: Use Parasite SEO to Rank for Ultra Competitive Keywords

As we saw with Barnacle SEO, it’s tough to rank for some keywords.

That’s because the BIG “money” keywords are often super-competitive and ONLY high authority sites stand a chance at ranking for them.

For instance, the search term “SEO tips” has a keyword difficulty rating of 62 and is dominated in the SERPs by big brands with high domain authority:

Example of a competitive SERP

So, what’s the solution?

Parasite (or Tenant) SEO.

In short, Parasite SEO is where you piggyback on the authority of other websites to rank for super-competitive, “money” terms.

You do this by publishing new content on high ranking sites and publications. (Unlike Barnacle SEO where you get listed in relevant directories and forums).

Here’s how it works:

  1. Identify high authority websites in your niche that accept guest posts.
  2. Pitch them topics with the competitive keywords you want to rank for.

Editor’s Note:

Obviously, you’ll need a list of competitive keywords you want to rank for to do this. If you don’t have those already, check out my post listing a TON of ways to find keywords with Semrush, and grab a free trial here. 

Here’s a couple of examples of Parasite SEO in action:

Example 1:

Matt Barby used Parasite SEO to rank his client for the keyphrase “app makers” (22,000 monthly searches).

The Business News Daily article generated 74,783 referral visits and almost 4,300 user registrations:

Parasite SEO results

Example 2:

Another way to leverage other sites is to piggyback on existing list posts. 

I wanted to get some quick exposure for my SEO training course. So instead of publishing a new list post on my site where I’d have to link to competitors, I contacted another site that was already ranking for loads of terms such as “SEO certifications”:

Ranking with parasite SEO

The article also ranked for hundreds of other targeted keywords such as “SEO classes”, “SEO training”, and “best SEO classes”:

Parasite SEO keyword rankings

I gave the author a free license to review my course, and now I’m listed number 5 in their SEO training courses post and get hundreds of targeted referral visits each month:

Organic traffic from parasite SEO

Top

#8: Match Your Content Type to the SERPs

A common mistake I see many clients make is to target keywords with the wrong content type.

For instance, should you publish:

  • Blog posts? 
  • Videos?
  • Category pages?
  • Product pages?
  • Government resource pages? 

If you choose the wrong content type, you’re rank potential is dead in the water before you even start. 

Case Study:

I had one client who tried to rank for the keyword “interactive infographic” using an in-depth product page.

It was a great page with a high URL rating (authority) and a good number of quality backlinks. 

But it didn’t rank.

When we checked the SERPs, we found out why:

Targeting keywords with the right content types

The top ranking content was all long-form list-type blog posts.

So, we published a massive list post of our own and it now ranks #1 for the target search term, and drives a lot of organic traffic to the site each month:

Google Analytics screenshot after targeting keyword with correct content type

Over 12-months, the original product page brought in 366 organic visits compared to the list post with 9,565 organic visits.

You can check which is the right type of content for your keywords by simply reviewing the SERPs.

For example: 

The top results for the search term “quadcopter controls” are all “How to” style blog posts:

But the top results for the search term “thrive leads add fields” are videos:

Example of video content types ranking in the SERPs

And for a broad query such as “beard oil”, product category pages tend to rank on page one:

Assessing content types in the SERPs

Always check the preferred types of content for your keywords before investing resources into content creation. 

Top

#9: (Accurately) Qualify with Page-Level Link Signals 

The Barnacle SEO and Parasite SEO tactics showed that it’s not always possible to rank on the first page of Google for your target keywords.

The terms you can target will depend mainly on your domain rating, plus the competing DR and UR of sites that are already ranking.

A study by Ahrefs shows page-level backlink metrics have the strongest correlation with page one rankings:

Ahrefs study showing relationship between page-level authority and rankings

Note: In general, it’s better to get one link from 10 different websites than 10 links from a single website.

For example, look at the Semrush SERP Analysis report for the search term “SEO tips”:

In Semrush (aff):

  • Select Keyword Overview from the sidebar menu
  • Enter your keyword – e.g. “seo tips” 
  • Scroll down to the SERP Analysis report at the bottom of the page 
  • Click Get Metrics to see the URL referring domain counts for the top 10 posts:
Semrush SERP analysis report

Notice how the Page AS (Authority Score) and Ref. Domains (number of unique Referring Domains to the page) figures are all high.

Unless your site has similar figures, it would be unrealistic to consider ranking for that keyword.

However, sometimes it’s possible to identify gaps in the top 10 positions that you could target, especially if your content is of higher quality and better satisfies the search intent.

For example, Wikipedia – with its high number of referring domains – usually gets the top spot for informational search queries.

But take a look at the SERP Analysis report for the search term “chocolate labrador”:

Example SERP report

Notice a few URLs with considerably fewer referring domains rank higher than Wikipedia.

Why? Because their content is specific to chocolate labradors, whereas the Wikipedia content covers all breeds of a labrador.

Here’s another example for the search term “sales techniques” that shows you can beat URLs with a high number of referring domains (like SuperOffice and Inc):

Always check the Authority Score and number of Referring Domains for the pages currently populating the SERPs for your target keywords.

If they’re significantly higher, don’t waste a ton of time going after them, unless you spot a big gap in topical relevance and/or content quality.

Top

Semrush free trial banner

#10: Build Page-Level Authority to Outrank Big Brands

Once you understand the link profiles of the competing assets, you can start to build enough page-level authority to compete aggressively. 

Remember: Page authority is driven mostly by the number of links from referring domains.

Here are 3 quick ways to land quality links to valuable content and help get it onto the first page.

(1) Replicate your competitors best backlinks

Most sites have hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. Unfortunately, some can be low-quality and spammy!

So here’s a way to find your competitor’s best backlinks.

In Semrush:

  1. Select the Backlink Analytics (aff) tool
  2. Enter your competitor’s domain – e.g. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/08/19/get-on-first-page-google
  3. Select the “Backlinks” report:
Checkling competitor backlinks in Semrush

Now from the complete list of backlinks, you can filter out the low-quality and spammy links. For example, you can select only “text-based follow links” using the advanced filter:

Filtering by link type

Now you’re left with high-quality text-based links that you can prospect and replicate for your content.

Check out the Quick Wins Playbook in my SEO training course for more information on this strategy, or check out this in-depth competitor backlink analysis guide.

(2) Find recurring backlink sources to your competitors

If you discover that a competitor is getting links from the same source over and over again, then take note, because:

  • They’re likely to be interested in the content on your website (as they’re linking out to similar content already).
  • They’re likely to be receptive to your link requests (as they have a track record).

Which means you have a great link prospect.

Here’s how to find these recurring backlink sources.

In Semrush:

  1. Select the Backlink Gap (aff) tool
  2. Enter your domain and up to five competitors – e.g. https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/first-page-of-google/ + https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/08/19/get-on-first-page-google
    (Note: You can do this at the domain, subdomain, or URL levels.)
  3. Click “Find prospects”
  4. Select your domain in the drop-down above the table
  5. Sort the “Matches” column in descending order to show how many of your competitors have a backlink from the listed referring domain:
Performing backlink gap analysis in Semrush

Now you’ll see a list of domains that link to your chosen competitor’s website at least once, ordered by the number of matches.

Go through the results and make a note of the best sites to contact.

Then repeat the process for your other competitors.

(3) Perform a backlink gap analysis

You can use the Backlink Gap tool to find out where your competitors are getting backlinks from, but you aren’t.

In Semrush:

  1. Select the Backlink Gap tool
  2. Enter your domain and up to five competitors – e.g. https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/first-page-of-google/ + https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/08/19/get-on-first-page-google (Note: You can do this at the domain, subdomain, or URL levels.)
  3. Click “Find Prospects”
  4. Select your domain in the drop-down above the table:

In the list, you can see the backlink opportunities that you’re missing – i.e. the domains that your competitors have links from, but your domain does not.

You can also take a look at how your competitors are getting the backlinks. Are they guest posts, site submissions, earned editorial links, or featured in tool lists?

For example, if you check the first item above, you can see that Wordstream earned an editorial link on Medium:

Backlink example

Remember: only add links from sources that are relevant to your new content.

4) Boost new pages by linking to them from existing high-authority pages

When you publish new content on your site, one of the best ways to give it a quick boost is to add internal links from existing high-authority pages.

But don’t link for the sake of it. Make sure the content is related.

Here’s how to find high-authority pages.

In Semrush:

  • Select the Backlink Analytics tool
  • Enter your domain – e.g. “beardbrand.com” 
  • Select the “Indexed Pages” report
  • Sort the “Domains” column in descending order:
Pages sorted by backlink count

The results show the best pages on your website ordered by the number of referring domains.

Scan down the list to find a relevant post from which to add your link.

For example, if Beardbrand published a new post called “How to apply beard oil”, they might want to link internally to it from this related post on “How to Grow a Beard: The Essential Guide”:

Bonus resource:
3 Ways to Find Keywords for Link Building

Top

#11: Expand Your Organic Footprint and Land Hundreds of First Page Rankings (with a Single Asset)

It’s possible to get a single article ranking for dozens, hundreds or even thousands of different keywords relative to the niche and type of content.

For example:

Healthline’s top-ranking informational page on how to lose weight includes 11.7K keywords:

Post ranking for 11,700 keywords in SEMrush

But in contrast, in the traffic safety niche, the traffic cones product page on the Traffic Safety Store has 766 keywords:

What’s interesting to note is that the primary keyword – traffic cone – brings in 5,687 visitors – that’s 14.32% of the page’s overall monthly organic traffic. The remaining 85.68% comes from the other 765 semantic and long tail secondary keywords:

SEMrush data showing primary keyword driving a small percentage of traffic

Here’s how to expand the organic keyword footprint on your pages by finding and adding related keywords to the primary topic.

In Semrush:

Enter your primary keyword – e.g. traffic cone – into the Keyword Magic Tool (aff):

SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool

From the results list, you can find thousands of related long tail keywords:

On the left-hand side are groups of keywords. For example, you could click on “orange” to show all the keywords related to orange traffic cones:

Keyword groups in SEMrush

Check the results to see what new keywords you want to add to your content. 

Note: these secondary keyword ideas can also be used to build new posts or pages.

For example: Traffic Safety Store would likely not target “organic traffic cones” with the same top-level traffic cones category page. It would instead create a sub-category page for each different traffic cone color.  

When you’re looking specifically for secondary keywords to boost topical relevance, look at semantics.

For example: “best wifi router” is semantically related to “best wireless router” and could definitely be targeted with the same review post:  

Secondary keyword ideas in SEMrush

You can also use the Keyword Gap tool to identify secondary keyword gaps at the URL level compared to the competition.

In Semrush:

  1. Select the Keyword Gap (aff) tool
  2. Enter your domain and up to five competitors – e.g. https://www.robbierichards.com/seo/first-page-of-google/ + https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/08/19/get-on-first-page-google

    (Note: You can do this at the domain, subdomain, or URL levels.) 

  3. Select “Competitors in Top 10” positions:
Performing keyword gap analysis

Now filter the results to show the keywords you are missing:

You now have a list of secondary keywords from your competitors that you can target.

Top

#12: Embrace a Mobile-First Mindset

If you want to rank on the first page of Google then you have to embrace a mobile-first mindset.

At the end of 2018, 57% of organic searches in the US came from mobile devices:

Graph showing growth in mobile traffic

Based on the increasing trend, it’s no surprise that Google switched to a mobile-first index. 

You may have seen this notification in Search Console informing users of the changes:

Mobile-first indexing announcement

Previously Google indexed the desktop version, but now index and rank the mobile version of a website first..

(Source)

A “mobile-unfriendly” website can now negatively impact your rankings on both mobile and desktop devices.

You can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check if individual pages are optimized:

Google's mobile-friendly testing tool

And then check the results:

You can also check your site-wide mobile usability report in Google Search Console:

Mobile usability report in Search Console

Google has been using site speed as a ranking factor since 2010. So it’s also important you have a responsive, fast-loading site.

Enter your page URL into either of these free tools to measure the loading time of individual pages: 

Google Pagespeed Insights:

Google Pagespeed Insights

GTMetrix Performance Report

GTMetrix report

Ouch!

Editor’s Note:

Using a combination of WP Rocket, WP Smush and my WPX Cloud hosting CDN, I’ve been to cut my site load speed in half:

Load speed in GTMetrix

Check out the best WordPress SEO plugins for reducing load speed. 

Top

#13: Pay to Play

If you have the budget, paid ads are a great way to get immediate SERP visibility for your most important search terms while waiting for your organic SEO efforts to kick in.

Here are a few options.

Google Ads

Text Ads
You can pay to display brief text adverts to promote your service or product. Ads appear at the top or bottom of the SERPs:

Example of a Google text ad

Local Map Pack Ads
For local businesses, you might want to pay to advertise your service in Google Maps (app and desktop). An ad label gets the top spot above the organic results:

Local Maps ad example

With Google Local Ads, you pay for results when people click your ad to visit your website, call your business or get directions.

Review sites 

Depending on your niche, there might be established review sites and directories to target.

For example:

G2 Crowd – for software apps and services:

G2 Crowd

This gets millions of visits every month from people looking for independent reviews of SaaS products across hundreds of different categories. Business can pay to get featured listings in their specific category:

G2 crowd category

Avvo – for legal services. 

Again – this is another example of a directory site that ranks for millions of local service-based keywords:

Phoenix car accident lawyer rankings

Rather than waiting months or even years (depending on the market) to get on the first page, an attorney could buy a featured listing and get their practice viewed by hundreds of new visitors every month:

Remember: These sites are already ranking, but you can ensure top placements for your services by paying for listings.

This way, anyone who clicks on the number #1 directory result for your local service keyword will land on the location page in the directory and see your practice first. 

Deciding on your target keywords

There are a couple of ways to choose what keywords to use in your paid ads. You can check:

A. What your competitors are using and what’s been successful for them.
B. What the estimated Volume and CPC would be in Google for your product or service.

Here’s how to find what keywords are successful for your competitors in the Semrush Advertising Toolkit (aff):

  1. Enter the competitor domain – e.g. “gruber-law.com”.
  2. Select Advertising Research from the side menu.
  3. Click the Positions tab:
SEMrush Advertising Toolkit

From the results, you can see the keywords they are bidding on – e.g. “car accident lawyer milwaukee”, “personal injury lawyer milwaukee” – and what positions they’ve ranked for:

In this example, you can see Gruber Law has been successful with their paid ad rankings.

Editor’s Note:

Use the Semrush Ads History report to find all the keywords that are converting well for competitors. This will save you a ton of time (and budget) testing different keywords and match types.

Here’s how to do it in Semrush:

Go to the Advertising Toolkit >> Advertising Research >> Ad History report:

SEMrush Ad History report

You’ll see a list of all the keywords that have been targeted with ads in the last 12 months. If you see keywords that were being targeted and then all of a sudden stopped without being restarted, this could be due to poor quality lead generation.

Conversely, if you see a competitor bidding on the same keyword for 12 straight months, you could infer that the keyword is converting well, or at least generates quality leads. 

Not using Semrush?

Here’s how to check the estimated volume and CPC from Google Ads for your target product or service directly in the SERPs:

  1. Install and enable the Keywords Everywhere chrome extension.
  2. Enter your target term in Google – e.g. “arizona injury lawyer”.
  3. Check the results – e.g. Volume=210/mo, CPC=$53.78
Using Keywords Everywhere

And also check the “Related Keywords” for alternative terms to bid on:

You won’t have the ad intelligence that Semrush provides, but you’ll at least have an idea of the cost and level or competition for the keywords you are interested in targeting. 

Index Your Content Immediately

Whenever you publish a new page, you want to get it indexed by Google ASAP.

If it ain’t indexed, it won’t rank, and nobody will find it!

Google will eventually trawl your site and detect the new page and index it. But you can request the URL to be indexed immediately via Search Console.

Head to the URL Inspection Tool and enter the new page URL. Google checks whether it’s been indexed:

URL Inspection Tool

If it hasn’t (or you want to force Google to crawl it again after some changes) click on “Request Indexing”:

Google adds the page to a priority crawl queue so it gets indexed quicker. Assuming there are no issues, the new page gets indexed within a few hours.

Top

Ready. Set. Rank.

OK, now you have 13 tactics to help you get on the first page of Google.

Take one tactic at a time, implement it, and monitor the results. Then let me know which one works best for you.

Robbie headshot

Editor’s Note: If you want to learn to learn advanced SEO processes that consistently generate results, check out my premium training course, The SEO Playbook.

The post 13 Ways to Get Your Website on the First Page of Google (With Examples and Templates) appeared first on Robbie Richards.

Read more at Read More