When it comes to ranking on Google, there are a multitude of factors that impact ranking. Some more important than others. One of those core factors that is weighed by search engines are backlinks.

Backlinks are the votes of the internet, showing that other properties are vouching for the information on your site.

But how do you build links properly? Especially when Google has said to not build links.

Something important to keep in mind when link building as a part of your SEO strategy is link velocity.

What is Link Velocity?

Link velocity is the rate of links acquired to your website.

What is an Optimal Link Velocity?

There is no specific answer for an optimal link velocity. This will depend on various factors such as your content profile, PR mentions, and more.

The main idea to stick by for an optimal link velocity is to keep it somewhat gradual.

For example, month one build 10 links, month two build 14 links, month three build 11 links, month four build 19 links, and so on.

In the example above, there is a steady rate of links built, but isn’t following a formula or pattern.

Think of it as a natural occurence. Some months you’ll get more links, some you’ll get less. But if the pages and content on your website are quality and publishing is consistent, chances are both will gradually rise together.

Remember that link velocity won’t matter without a solid content marketing strategy with consistent quality content.

What About Viral Content?

When content goes viral or a PR gets picked up by many sites, your links for a small period may look out of this world.

These instances would be okay, since the content would likely have large amounts of engagement and links from stronger domains if the virality is authentic. Search engines would be able to recognize that the topic/content being shared is occurring through high profile domains, news, and other outlets.

The same goes the other way around. If you were to acquire a large sum of bad backlinks in a small time frame from spam sites, Google may be able to determine it’s a negative SEO attack and disregard the spam backlinks.

Google is a little smarter than we think at times.

But don’t let that keep your guard down. Continually monitor your incoming backlinks and SEO health in case issues need to be remedied.

Google on Link Velocity

John Mueller from Google has said:

“From my point of view if you’re jumping in with a question like this and you’re saying I’m going to get 200 backlinks in two days… then that sounds a lot like you’re not getting natural backlinks.

That sounds a lot like you’re going off and just buying them or having someone buy them for you. And that itself would be kind of the thing that we would not be happy with.”

This falls back onto the idea mentioned above on keeping things natural. Look at your content, competitors, and backlinks to consider a link building strategy that works for your business.

Key Takeaways

Link building is a necessary SEO strategy at times to stay competitive on the SERPs. And with that, link velocity is an important concept to understand.

• Link velocity is the rate of links built to your website.
• Viral content will derail your link velocity, but is okay.
• Keep link building natural.

The post Link Velocity appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Maybe you’ve heard of a URL slug when discussing optimizing URLs. But what exactly is a URL slug? What part of the URL is that referring to? Today, we’ll be covering what a URL slug is, how to edit it, and how to optimize them for SEO.

What is a URL Slug?

A URL slug is the portion of a URL that comes after the domain extension or subfolder. This would be the last part of the URL, that explains (if optimized), which page a user is on.

How to Edit URL Slugs

Editing URL slugs will depend on the CMS (content management system) you are using. If you are on WordPress, to do that in the new Gutenberg editor, do the following:

1. Click on the title of the post.
2. Afterwards, the field containing the URL of the post will appear above the title.
3. Select the “Edit” button to the right and change the slug of your post.
4. Select the “Save” button after you’re done editing.

Another popular CMS is Wix. To change your URL slug:

1. Choose the relevant page you’d like to edit under “Pages”.
2. Select the “Show More” icon.
3. Select “SEO (Google)”.
4. Edit your URL slug then press “Enter” on your keyboard.

If you are on a different CMS, a quick Google search will point you in the right direction.

Optimizing URL Slugs for SEO

Now that you know how to edit your URL slug, what should you edit them to be?

Optimized URLs are all about providing a positive user experience.

Are you more likely to click on or remember a URL that looks like this: www.website.com/blog/post-129-hjhofgwh/

Or this: www.website.com/blog/chocolate-cake-recipe

The answer is probably the latter version since it’s more descriptive. The main things to keep in mind for optimizing URL slugs are to consider your users and to include your primary keyword.

Create URL Slugs for Users

It’s important to always be thinking about your users. Why else are you creating content? For people to read, of course!

Use the URL slug to explain what page a user is on and to help describe the content. Don’t go overboard with too many characters here though. A URL that is too long can be just as ineffective as a non-descriptive URL.

Include the Primary Keyword

Additionally, you should include your primary keyword in the URL slug. Google and other search engines look at the URL of a page to help understand what a page is about.

If it isn’t possible to include the primary keyword, which may be the case, a partial match of that in the URL may suffice.

Key Takeaways

URL slugs are commonplace in SEO. Never forget to set an optimized URL slug when creating content, as it can have an impact on your SEO efforts.

• A URL slug is the final section of a URL.
• Editing a URL slug is pretty straightforward. If you don’t know how to do that, a quick Google search will point you in the right direction.
• Create URL slugs with users in mind.
• Don’t forget to include your primary keyword in the URL.

The post Optimizing URL Slugs appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Redirect maps are a must when tackling a site migration. If you don’t migrate your site properly by forgetting to implement redirects, there are potentially huge traffic implications. Learn why redirect maps are important and how you can put one together.

Website migrations can sometimes be a smart business decision or at times, unavoidable. But when you decide that this is a move that is going to be made, there are tasks that are a must. One of those items is creating a redirect map.

Redirect mapping is important when the migration involves URL changes.

Find out what exactly a redirect map is, how to prepare for one, and how to put one together with this guide.

What is a Redirect Map?

A redirect map is a spreadsheet that lays out the page URLs on the old site that will point to the URLs on the new site.

The redirects mapped out for the most part should be 1:1 redirects. 1:1 redirects are going to be the exact same page from the old site, that shows up in the new site.

If you redirect URLs to irrelevant pages (not a 1:1 redirect), you risk having these treated as soft 404s by search engines.

Instances that redirects won’t be the 1:1 are if pages are scrapped or consolidated. If you come across this when creating your redirect map, choose a relevant category page or any page that is somewhat related.

The benefit of setting redirects correctly is for the benefit of both users and search engines.

For users that navigate to your old URLs through memory, bookmark, or from a backlink, they’ll want to see the updated page.

For search engines, those backlinks could be holding value that would be beneficial to have transferred to the new site. If you neglect to do this, rankings won’t reflect previous positioning due to the missed connection.

Preparing for a Redirect Map

The steps before you set up a redirect map could make the process a headache vs something manageable. Here are a few things to keep in mind before moving onto the redirect mapping phase of your migration project.

Finalize URLs

Before creating a redirect map, you should finalize your URLs. The last thing you want to be doing is creating another redirect map because the URL structure of the new site changed last minute.

Get everyone who has a hand in on the project on the same page to establish the URLs of the new site.

Determine Your Mapping Criteria

Decide what parts of the page you will be paying attention to when putting together the redirect map.

If the site is super small, manually mapping the URLs is feasible. But for most sites, automating the process will be a massive time saver.

The criteria you’ll choose will depend on how the previous site was handled.

Popular items to drive the automated process of redirect mapping are headings, page content, or other unique on-page content like SKUs (for eCommerce sites).

How to Set Up a Redirect Map

Afterwards, you’ll want to hand this off to the person who will implementing the redirects and save it for validation after the project is marked as complete.We’ll walk through two options for setting up a redirect map.

Setting Up a Redirect Map – Headings

This is a simpler process that you could use multiple tools for. You could use a crawling tool like Screaming Frog or install a plugin that will export your URLs and titles (WordPress).

For this walkthrough we’ll be showing you how to do that in Screaming Frog.

First, crawl your old website and export the h1s for the URLs crawled.

Next, do the same thing with your new site. If it’s password protected, you’ll need authentication to crawl behind the login.

Once you have both sheets, use a VLOOKUP to match the URLs and their h1s together. That list will be your redirect map!

But what if you don’t have h1s set up properly? Well, the next method will be your best friend.

Setting Up a Redirect Map – On-Page Content

This method of setting up a redirect map will be worthwhile if you don’t have an indicator like an h1 or SKU to uniquely identify pages. Thanks to Screaming Frog for putting together this rundown!

That’s it! As mentioned above, use the map to hand off to the person implementing redirect. Once the site is live, validate the changes with your redirect map.

Fun way to set up redirect mapping for a site migration – Switch to list mode. ‘Enable Near Duplicates’ & disable ‘Only Check Indexable Pages For Duplicates’ under ‘Config > Content > Duplicates’. pic.twitter.com/catKLvXJpM

— Screaming Frog (@screamingfrog) September 8, 2020

Next up, refine the content area used for similarity analysis for old and new URLs (‘Config > Content > Area’). You can ‘include’ say category/product descriptions classes for example, like so – pic.twitter.com/D44XK5Jcqd

— Screaming Frog (@screamingfrog) September 8, 2020

Upload both new and old URLs in list mode and crawl them. Then hit ‘Crawl Analysis > Start’, and look under the ‘Content’ tab. In theory each URL will have 1 near dup with close to 100% similarity. pic.twitter.com/4IHcd23Mtr

— Screaming Frog (@screamingfrog) September 8, 2020

You can see the ‘Address’ and ‘Near Duplicate Address’ in the lower window ‘Duplicate Details’ tab (& export via ‘Bulk Export > Content > Near Duplicates’). This can give you a nice easy 1:1 URL redirect mapping. pic.twitter.com/p0DJBd64z4

— Screaming Frog (@screamingfrog) September 8, 2020

Key Takeaway

Creating a redirect map isn’t difficult these days with the types of tools we have access to. As an unskippable task of any site migration, you can rest easy that your site will transfer page value if your redirect map is on point and executed correctly.

• Redirect maps are important for site migrations.
• A redirect map is a list of URLs from your old site, lined up with URLs on the new site.
• Choose a criteria from the content for each page to set up the list of URLs.
• Use the redirect map to implement and validate the redirects set.

The post Redirect Maps for Site Migrations appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Succeeding in the real estate industry can be challenging without a proper online presence. Learn about the benefits of real estate SEO and what you can do to better pull in leads.

Finding clients in the real estate industry is tough these days. With market share split between companies of all sizes, how can you compete?

The answer is with a clear cut digital marketing strategy, because of the majority of consumers that are online.

SEO compared to PPC is a long game. But the residual and relatively evergreen traffic makes it worthwhile.

Find out what Real Estate SEO is and how you can integrate it into your marketing strategy to earn more clients.

What is Real Estate SEO?

Real Estate SEO (or real estate search engine optimization) is a digital marketing strategy focused on improving on search presence to generate traffic, specifically for real estate specialists.

The primary reason for generating traffic from search engines for real estate agents would be to acquire qualified leads that are interested in buying or selling property.

Because real estate is a mostly localized business, real estate SEO aligns heavily into local SEO initiatives.

The Benefits of SEO for Real Estate Agents

There are many benefits of leveraging SEO for real estate agents, but the most important is generating qualified local leads. More and more people are turning to the internet to find their next agent to help them sell or buy their dream home.

In this day and age, it’s imperative that you have a solid online presence to stay competitive.

With  44% of all buyers looking online for properties for sale, having an online presence is a must.

You may be thinking: But how can I compete with companies like Trulia and Zillow?

The answer is, you can’t when it comes to users searching for properties on their own.

But you can plug into that process by being there for them when they want to buy and sell as their agent.

Local SEO is a huge part of having a great online search presence because of users looking for real estate agents in their area.

Don’t overlook the staying power and longevity of a well thought out SEO strategy among your overall marketing efforts.

Real Estate SEO Strategy Tips

To help you improve your real estate SEO strategy, we’ve put together the best tips to help homebuyers and homesellers find you on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines.

Content Strategy

Content strategy is one of the most important parts of SEO. Search engines surface content to fulfill searcher intent. Answering the questions of someone who “Googles” something is the primary goal, and that is done through content.

Not only written content, but through video, audio, and images.

Think through questions that your prospective leads are asking and answer them through comprehensive and concise content.

Maybe it’s things to know when buying a home. Or things to know when selling a home.

Create content that focuses on local real estate trends that will resonate with your readers.

Local SEO

Local SEO is a process that requires proper upkeep month to month since it’s the identity of your business for local searches.

Google My Business

Setting up Google My Business is an important signal for Local SEO, specific to Google. Here are the core items to focus on in Google My Business

• Set up your Google My Business accurately with a well thought out description, address, operating hours, and categories.
• Create a backlog of local posts to stir up engagement and let users know of events, new posts, and business updates.
• Set up a review collection system for your GMB account to improve your chances of ranking in the local 3 pack.

Local Citations

Local citations are online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (N.A.P.)

Be sure to keep this consistent across all mentions, down to the way the address is represented.

Having discrepancies between different directories can give off negative signals and hinder local SEO success.

Technical SEO

If your site can’t be crawled properly or used by visitors leaving them with a positive user experience, your rankings will be held back. Technical SEO focuses on the technical requirements of search engines (which oftentimes aligns with a positive user experience).

The best way to spot technical SEO errors is to run an audit. Looking through your website visually, with a spider SEO tool, or general use SEO tool.

Here are some of the top technical SEO changes you should look out for within your Real Estate website.

Mobile Optimization

With 81% of Americans with a smartphone, the status quo of using a desktop computer for the internet has transitioned to the powerful computers in our pockets.

Optimizing for a positive mobile experience is desired by not just consumers, but search engines.

Utilize a website template with a responsive design so there is parity between the mobile and desktop view.

Pay attention to device demographics in your analytics as well to determine how to tailor the smarphone view of your site to drive more leads.

Secure Website

When important information is shared, a secure website can help provide protection against attacks.

Make sure your website is secured with an SSL Certificate.

Look for the checkmark in your browser or HTTPS in the URL.

Pagespeed

If it takes forever for someone to load pages on your site, they will most likely leave. Because this is an important metric valued by users, search engines take this into account.

The biggest culprit of pagespeed issues relates to images. Optimize images by compressing them and resizing them to the absolute largest size you’ll show them.

Another thing that impacts pagespeed heavily is third party assets. If you have a bunch of third party tools running on your site (analytics, live chat, etc.) or a bunch of plugins/apps, your site may take a hit. Users have to load those up with your site.

Remove any third party scripts you aren’t using and anything you don’t really need.

Top Real Estate Keywords

Keyword research is an important process for any business looking to expand their online search presence. We’ve put together a list of the top real estate keywords to help get you started and guide you towards becoming a real estate SEO expert.

Here are 25 of the top real estate keywords with a relatively low difficulty for you to work off of. The information was pulled from Ahrefs.

Real Estate SEO Services

Executing a successful SEO strategy for your business takes time and effort. When you’re focused on selling homes, time is limited. Lean on a professional SEO agency that specializes in local SEO to handle your SEO strategy.

The post Real Estate SEO – The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

When people use search engines, they have needs and wants that drive that behavior. Find out what search intent is and why it should always be thought of.

Understanding search intent is a skill that all SEO practitioners should master. In this day and age, Google and other search engines have grown from something that was easily manipulated, to a complex system that now tries to understand and provide valuable search results.

Succeeding in SEO these days takes more than keywords and bloated content.

Being able to pick apart the different queries that people will search to find your business and being able to execute it flawlessly drives results.

So what exactly is search intent and how can you work it into your strategy to improve your overall search presence? In this guide, we’ll touch on the core concepts of search intent and how to use it in your SEO strategy.

What is Search Intent?

Search intent is the concept of discovering what exactly a user is looking for when they use a search engine to answer their queries. It encompasses the needs and wants of people who use search engines.

Types of Search Intent

There are four categories of search intent that bucket a large amount of the different reasons that users search the web. These are a great start towards understanding search behavior.

Informational Intent

Informational intent is when a searcher is looking for information.

This could be a search about a historic figure, place, or concept.

This type of search intent focuses on answering questions and providing additional knowledge about specific topics.

More specific informational results may come up depending on the type of informational search. Like searching for recipes, how to guides, videos, etc. will pull up certain results.

Informational Search Examples:

• LeBron James
• Oregon
• What is a comet

Navigational Intent

Navigational intent is when a searcher is looking for a specific website or webpage.

This is where brand identity and recognition come into play. If you have a brand that is recognizable, people can just type your business name into Google and navigate there.

Navigational Search Examples:

• Facebook
• YouTube
• Myspace

Transactional Intent

Transactional intent is when a searcher is looking to make a purchase.

Buying driven words like coupon, shop, buy, are keywords that indicate that the user knows what they want and are ready to purchase.

Transactional Search Examples:

• Laptops
• Shop Google Pixel 5
• Buy Instant Pot

Commercial Investigation

Commercial investigation is when a searcher is trying to make a purchase decision and turn to the web to research their options.

This search intent will pull up review and comparison content types.

Maybe someone is having trouble choosing the right coffee maker for their kitchen. Or they have two specific products in mind to purchase, but aren’t sure which one to choose.

Commercial Investigation Search Examples:

• Best coffee maker
• Samsung Galaxy vs iPhone
• Alarm clock reviews

Six Need States by Google

Another way to look at search intent is through Google’s six need states that they published in 2019. These six behaviors drive search intent, and just like the core four categories above, will give you insight into how to target potential customers effectively.

Educate Me

“Search is about competence and control. It is thorough: reviews, ratings, comparisons, etc.”

Educate me is when users go to search engines to get information. Popular searches that fulfill this need are thorough, and include things like reviews, ratings, comparisons, etc. The need state being that a user is looking to be educated on a product, so they can make an educated purchase decision.

Help Me

“Search is about connecting and practicality. It is to-the-point, and more likely to mention family or location.”

Help me is when users go to search engines to be helped. An example for this need state is “family friendly vacations”. The searcher for that query wants to be helped to provide a relaxing time for their family and to connect.

Impress Me

“Search is about influencing and winning. It is laser focused, using specific phrases.”

The impress me need state is tied into status, luxury, and a sense of importance. These things are driven by the need to be impressed and are normally specific search phrases. An example would be, “What kind of watches do celebrities wear?”

Reassure Me

“Search is about simplicity, comfort, and trust. It is uncomplicated and more likely to include questions.”

Reassure me is an uncomplicated need state that fulfills a searchers need to make the right decision. This could be something like a review video that confirms that the action camera you’ve had your eyes on is the right choice.

Surprise Me

“Search is fun and entertaining. It is extensive with many unique iterations.”

Surprise me is the need to have fun and be entertained. A search like “diy home crafts” may fall into this need state. The inclusion of “diy” can be used in different iterations and is driven by a persons need to be surprised by the things they can create, like coming across a macrame design.

Thrill Me

“Search is a quick adventure to find new things. It is brief, with just a few words and minimal back-button use.”

Thrill me is when searchers are looking for something new. An example of a thrill me fueled search could be “activities near me”. Searchers would be looking for activities in their area to satisfy their need to be thrilled.

There is definitely overlap between need states. Deducing them down to their core based on your offered services/products will lead to concise marketing.

Why is Search Intent Important?

You have a general background of the four search intent categories and Google’s six need states.

But why is this important?

Remember this: A search engine’s main objective is (or should be) to provide the best search results possible to the user asking a specific query.

If you understand what searchers are looking for and why, you can improve rankings and better market your product/service on the SERPs.

Leveraging Search Intent for SEO Strategy

Knowing about search intent is great, but putting it into action is what generates results.

Optimize Existing Pages

Look at the core pages of your website and the different keywords that you are ranking for (and want to rank for).

From there, generate a brief of what exactly the search intent is for that specific query.

Ask questions like:

• What category does the search fall into?
• What kind of content type or format is successful for that search?
• What are searchers looking for?
• What is fueling their search?
• How can we fulfill intent as best as possible?

Asking questions like these will give you insight into what kind of changes to make to your existing content. Maybe it’s adding new sections of content, adjusting the headings and title tag, or even removing content.

By putting yourself into the shoes of the searcher, you can provide content that is direct and serves searchers well.

Use Search Intent to Influence New Content

If your existing content is performing well, the analysis of search intent doesn’t stop there. Continue to consider intent through the creation of new content.

Never forget that search engines want to provide the best results possible, and you probably do as well.

Break down targeted keywords to recognize the search intent to fulfill. Then from there, go even further to understand the searcher or your prospective customer and the content that will influence them.

If you want to really understand search intent to its roots, interview/question people that fit your target market and pick their brains on what their search journey looks like.

Key Takeaways

A successful SEO campaign isn’t easy without a deep understanding of search intent. Never forget to consider search intent when writing or optimizing content.

• Search intent is the “why” behind people searching the web.
• There are four buckets for search intent: informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial investigation.
• Google has six need states that help visualize search intent: educate me, help me, impress me, reassure me, surprise me, and thrill me.
• Search engines aim to fulfill a searchers query as best as possible and so should you.
• Optimizing existing pages and creating new content are benefited with the understanding of search intent.

The post Understanding Search Intent appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

The mobile-first index is coming. Are you ready? Find out how to conduct a mobile parity audit so your rankings and user experience stay intact.

The shift in user behavior from desktop web browsing to mobile web browsing is largely attributed to the rapid growth in technology and the fact that we have powerful computers in our pockets. Because of this rise in mobile internet usage compared to desktop internet usage, Google announced that they would start mobile-first indexing on July 1, 2019 for all new websites. What this means is Google is now going to be crawling/indexing your website from a mobile smartphone agent, compared to a desktop user-agent.

Initially set to go into full effect in September 2020, mobile-first indexing will be fully rolled out by March 2021, based on a recent announcement.

With this change being rolled out to every website, it’s important to prepare for it. As digital marketers and business professionals, we tend to work on our web properties from a desktop view, but making sure the mobile view is just as good is something to consider.

That’s where a mobile parity audit comes in. Being sure that your mobile experience matches that of your desktop experience will yield positive results from search engines and your users.

In this comprehensive guide, we will cover what a mobile parity audit is and how to conduct one. Let’s get started!

What is a Mobile Parity Audit?

A mobile parity audit is an audit that is focused on comparing the differences between a mobile and desktop experience and noting errors.

The term “parity” is defined as “the state or condition of being equal”, which is what we are trying to achieve in light of the mobile-first index.

In most cases a mobile parity audit will be quick due to responsive websites, but it’s always best to check.

And for sites that have built separate mobile website experiences, this is an audit that shouldn’t be looked over.

How to Conduct a Mobile Parity Audit

Tools You Will Need

To conduct a mobile parity audit, you’ll need to use a crawling tool and a spreadsheet software.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog will be used to crawl your website with different user-agents.

Spreadsheet Software (Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets)

Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel will be used to sort and filter through data to fuel the analysis.

Collect the Data

Crawl the Website with the Googlebot (Desktop) User-Agent

Open up Screaming Frog and navigate to “Configuration” > “User-Agent”.

From there choose “Googlebot (Desktop)” under “Preset User-Agents”.

Start the crawl by entering your URL.

Once finished crawling, save the Internal HTML pages.

Crawl the Website with the Googlebot (Smartphone) User-Agent

Open up Screaming Frog and navigate to “Configuration” > “User-Agent”.

From there choose “Googlebot (Smartphone)” under “Preset User-Agents”.

Start the crawl by entering your URL.

Once finished crawling, save the Internal HTML pages.

Compile the Data into Spreadsheets

Once you have both of your sheets of data exported from Screaming Frog, you are going to line up your URLs. Metrics you want to pay attention to are:

• Inlinks
• Crawl Depth
• Word Count
• Title Tags
• Meta Descriptions

Analyze the Data

This is the most important step, since it is where you will be drawing actionable insights from. These are things you will want to pay attention to:

Do the amount of pages crawled match?

When looking at your combined spreadsheet, take a look to see if the number of pages crawled match. If there is a set of pages that aren’t showing up on mobile, that may be a sign that you are missing internal links somewhere.

Are there any pages or sets of pages different in crawl depth?

Inspect the crawl depth of both sets and take note of any pages that have a difference. Maybe pagination changes from desktop to mobile or there is a sidebar with internal links that disappears.

Are there any noticeable differences in word count?

The number of words is okay to be different, but if there is a large difference, it should be investigated. Being sure that the mobile version has the same core content as the desktop page will ensure rankings don’t take a dip when the crawler changes for your site.

Are there any pages missing a large number of inlinks?

Check to see if there are pages missing internal links. If there are inconsistent inlinks, that could impact your rankings if not already on the mobile first index.

Is the metadata consistent?

If you rely on desktop to ensure your metadata is what you want it to be, like meta descriptions and title tags, comparing those to mobile is imperative. In some cases the metadata may be different and porting over the version you’ve been optimizing is the next step.

Conduct a Visual Audit

After you’ve run through the various questions outlined above, you want to conduct a visual audit to confirm that those things are occurring. Do this by having two windows open, one in mobile device view and the other in normal desktop view.

Alternatively, you can look at it on a laptop or computer and on your smartphone.

If you suspect there is a noticeable difference in word count, you may notice that the text missing on mobile is a sidebar “about” description.

In instances like that you’ll be fine.

Place your focus on areas that will have a higher impact.

For example, if your key landing pages are now 5 clicks away from the homepage on mobile instead of 3, that should be resolved.

Key Takeaways

Maintaining a positive user experience between devices is imperative for success. You don’t know if a visitor will come in on their iPhone or on their laptop. The mobile parity audit will ensure you hit those points and are prepared for the complete shift to the mobile-first index.

• Mobile parity audits are for achieving parity between desktop and mobile website experiences.
• If you have a responsive site, the mobile parity audit will be relatively quick.
• Pay attention to the highest impact discrepancies.

The post How to Conduct a Comprehensive Mobile Parity Audit appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Regular expressions from the jump appear to be difficult and complex. Although, learning the basics is a lot simpler than you may think. Knowing the basics will enhance your audits, analyses, and tasks so you can provide better data-driven recommendations.

Learning the ins and outs of being a web developer are valuable for any digital marketer due to the overlap of concepts and environment. But expanding on those skills aren’t the easiest and quickest thing to do. A skill that digital marketers and SEOs in particular can benefit from that web developers and programmers use are regular expressions.

Regular expressions will take your analysis to the next level because they are usable in tools like Google Analytics and Screaming Frog. They will also be usable in Google Search Console once they roll out the regular expression filter for their performance reports.

Today we’ll cover the basics of regex to get you up to speed and even walk through a few use case examples that will take your analyses to the next level.

What Is Regex (Regular Expressions)?

A regular expression is a string of characters that are used for matching or managing text.

Regex Basics

Characters

Escaping Special Characters

\

The backslash in regex escapes special characters. Escaping characters is important because the metacharacters used denote character classes, so if you are searching for one of them, you’ll need to escape it. Metacharacters that need to be escaped include:

.[{()\^$*+

Matching Any Character

.

The period is a wildcard character for matching any character except for the newline character.

Matching Digits (0-9)

\d

Matches one digit from 0 to 9.

Matching Non-Digits

\D

Matches one character that is NOT a digit.

Matching Word Characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _)

\w

Matches one word character or underscore.

Matching Non-Word Characters

\W

Matches one character that is NOT a word character or underscore.

Matching Whitespace (newline, space, tab)

\s

Matches a whitespace character: space, tab, newline, carriage return, and vertical tab.

Matching Non-Whitespace

\S

Matches one character that is NOT a whitespace character.

Anchors

Word Boundary

\b

A word boundary is a position that has a word character on one side and no character on the other.

Non-Word Boundary

\B

Matches all positions where a word boundary does NOT match.

Start of a String

^

Specifies that the following pattern must begin at the first positioned character of the string.

End of a String

$

Specifies that the preceding pattern must match the end character of the string.

Character Sets and Logic

Matching Characters within Brackets

[]

The straight brackets match one of the characters within.

Matching Characters NOT within Brackets

[^ ]

The carat in the brackets match one of the characters NOT within.

Either Or

|

The vertical bar or pipe symbol is a logical character for “OR”.

Group

()

The parenthesis create a group.

Quantifiers

Zero or More (0+)

*

The asterisk looks for the specified character/group zero or more times.

One or More (1+)

+

The plus symbol looks for the specified character/group one or more times.

Zero or One (0 | 1)

?

The plus symbol looks for the specified character/group zero or one time.

Exact Number

{}

The curly brackets look for the specified character/group in the number of times specified.

Range of Numbers (Min, Max)

{,}

The comma within the curly brackets look for the specified character/group in a range of numbers specified.

Printable Regex Cheat Sheet

To help you quickly remember each of the basic regular expressions above, we’ve created a free printable regex cheat sheet:

Download Regex Cheat Sheet

SEO Use Cases for Regular Expressions

Using regex can be daunting and knowing where to start can seem muddled when you’re starting off. To help you find ways to use regex in your day to day, we’ve lined out some of the most popular and practical uses cases.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a powerful SEO tool that allows you to crawl websites. Data like URLs, site structure, file types, scripts, and everything that compiles a site can be collected then analyzed. Sometimes there is specific data you want extracted or certain pages you want to pay attention to during your crawl. This is where custom extraction and the include/exclude features come in.

Custom Extraction

The custom extraction function in Screaming Frog is primarily used for data extraction. You have the option to select regex as a method for scraping data.

An example of using this feature with regex is to extract the dates of your articles. Sometimes your date isn’t shown on the page and can’t be extracted using a CSS class. In a CMS like WordPress, the date of publishing is usually set with the DateTime object, so we can reference that when extracting dates.

In Screaming Frog, navigate to “Configuration” > “Custom” > “Extraction”, then add a new extractor method and set it to “Regex”. From there, you would enter the following regular expression:

datetime="(\d{4}\-\d{2}\-\d{2})

What this regular expression is looking for is the DateTime object, and the date in iso format within it. Notice how the group (wrapped in parenthesis), starts by looking for four digits followed by a hyphen, then another two digits, another hyphen, and the last two digits. Screaming Frog pulls the group as the custom extraction, leaving you with a clean URL that you can reformat when you export and open in a spreadsheet software.

Include/Exclude

Depending on the site you are crawling, using Screaming Frog can take a long time or may need more computer processing resources than you currently have. Fortunately, they have the include/exclude feature to limit and specify your crawl. You can choose which subdomains or subdirectories to include or exclude from your crawl.

An example for using regular expressions in this feature would be to selectively crawl the blog and category pages of a site. You have the ability to set different URL matching regular expressions in different lines, but we’ll utilize logic in place of that today.

For this site, let’s say we are looking to pay attention to just the /category/ pages and /learn/ pages so we can audit our knowledge center. The regular expression would look like:

If you were to set it up on different lines (without the logic) it would look like this:

The period following the URL is trying to match any character, and the asterisk quantifies the matching of any character zero or more times. The pipe or vertical line in between “learn” and “category” looks for any subfolder that matches one OR the other.

Google Analytics

As a powerful tool to show you various metrics and valuable information, using regular expressions with Google Analytics is a must.

Table Filters

You can use regular expressions to set table filters to view the data you want to focus on.

An example for using table filters is when looking at the source of traffic. Maybe you want to include or exclude certain sources when looking at how your traffic was acquired.

google|bing

The regex above looks for any sources in Google Analytics that are from Google OR Bing.

Custom Segments

Custom segments are a great way to look at different sets of your data. Regular expressions are usable within the conditions that you can set and are a quicker way to do so. A common regular expression, similar to the table filters above will be using the pipe or vertical line.

An example of using regex for a custom segment would be to match specific countries to see how many users, sessions, or any other GA metric came from those specified countries.

Australia|Canada|United States

The regular expression above is matching any sessions that came from Australia, Canada, or the United States.

Goals

We have the ability to leverage regular expressions when setting up goals in Google Analytics. You would specify this under the “Goal Details” and select “Regular expression”.

For this example, we’ll setup a goal to track the total amount of website actions. Let’s say we have a site that has options for users to download, donate, and purchase items. The URLs for this would be as follows:

• example.com/thank-you-download.html
• example.com/thank-you-purchase.html
• example.com/thank-you-donate.html

To set the goal to track each of these, we would enter the following regular expression under “Goal details”:

/thank-you-(download|purchase|donate)\.html

The regex above is looking to match any visit to the URL with “thank-you-“. Then followed by matching “download” OR “purchase” OR “donate”, with “.html” at the end.

Google Search Console

It would be great if we could use regular expressions in Google Search Console since we could better strip branded queries from our analysis. Luckily, regular expressions in Google Search Console is coming soon! We’ll update this with examples when it rolls out.

Technical SEO Tasks

Regular expressions are also a great way to accomplish a number of technical SEO tasks. Some tasks that you can accomplish with regex are:

• Optimize Long URLs
• Correct Redirects
• Resolve Canonical URL Issues

You would need to have existing knowledge of the Apache mod_rewrite module and .htaccess files. For the sake of this guide, we’ll skip over those details as they are rather complex. Stay tuned for another post on this!

Regex Resources

To help you further your knowledge on regular expressions, we’ve put together the following regex resources.

Regular-Expressions.info

Learn more about regular expressions with this online resource focused on regex.

Regular Expressions 101

Test and debug your regular expressions with this tool.

Key Takeaways

Regular expressions are a surefire way to take your SEO skills to the next level. Even the basics are worthwhile to remember as they’ll be useful in your day to day.

• Regex is used for matching and managing text.
• There are characters, anchors, character sets, logic, and quantifiers in regex.
• Tools like Screaming Frog, Google Analytics, and one day Google Search console can be used with regular expressions.

The post Regular Expressions (Regex) for SEO appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Mechanical Keyboards Inc. is a leader in the mechanical keyboards market, but is it because they have a solid SEO foundation?

Keyboards are important for the day-to-day of many people. With both computers and the internet ingrained into society, physical keyboards are a must have peripheral. Right now, you most likely navigated to this post using a physical keyboard.

You would think that the physical keyboard market is shrinking with the majority of internet users going mobile first. But this doesn’t seem to be the case, especially for a niche of keyboards, mechanical keyboards.

What is a Mechanical Keyboard?

A mechanical keyboard is a keyboard made up of individual key switches. Compared to a membrane keyboard which uses a membrane or layer to press on a circuit layer. The appeal of mechanical keyboards over membrane keyboards are their durability, tactility, and customizability.

Mechanical keyboards are an up and coming market with a predicted growth to 1.36 billion by 2023. If you are familiar with Reddit, the /MechanicalKeyboards subreddit even has 576,000 members, which has been growing by 50% on average year to year.

Today we will be breaking down one of the top mechanical keyboard merchants on the market, Mechanical Keyboards Inc. In this breakdown, we discuss the areas that Mechanical Keyboard Inc. has going right, which are a key contributing factor to their organic search presence. More importantly, we will peek into areas of opportunity that can propel them past their competitors through SEO. As an online retailer, having a well thought out SEO strategy is a must have for prolonged success.

What They Have Going Right

Mechanical Keyboards Inc. has areas of their site that are positive and help drive their organic traffic. They are a leading retailer for a reason and these are the things they have going their way.

Product Selection

Mechanical Keyboards Inc. has a large variety of pre-built keyboards and accessories for visitors to sort through. Not only that, they stock some of the biggest brands like Ducky, Varmilo, Leopold, Vortex, and much more. Having more products in stock means more people can land on those product pages since they have the product and brand names in their headings.

Alongside their wide product selection, they are among a select few vendors that are official, helping users stray away from counterfeited goods.

Credibility

They are touted as THE mechanical keyboard vendors by members of the mechanical keyboard community. Because they have a high product selection and provide several mechanical keyboard resources, they are seen as the must visit site for pre-built keyboards.

The subreddit /MechanicalKeyboards, shouts out Mechanical Keyboards Inc. as a reputable seller, which drives users to their site as well.

Because they are an official seller for brands like Ducky, they often will drop exclusive editions of certain keyboard models. This exclusivity with brands is another unique selling proposition that Mechanical Keyboards Inc. brings to the table.

Learning Center

Another area of their business that they have going right is their learning center. They answer questions that newer mechanical keyboard enthusiasts are asking. Things like which switches to pick, what to look for when purchasing, and more.

One of the best performing knowledge pages that answers the question, “What is a mechanical keyboard”, pulls in roughly 1,800 visits a month.

These knowledge pages aren’t entirely optimized, but a chunk of them perform well due to the niche. Additionally, these pages provide a deeper topical confidence for search engines of what the site is about.

Exact Match Domain

I know what you’re thinking… “Exact match domains don’t influence search rankings, do they?

Well… yes and no. From a ranking factor standpoint, they do not. But if you have all your ducks in a row, have relatively low competition, and fulfill intent wholly, then yes they do.

Mechanical Keyboards Inc. has the upper hand against competitors because the product name is in their domain name and business name. And because they have little competition, users are likely to visit their site when learning about and purchasing mechanical keyboards. Alongside the credibility point mentioned above, they are becoming a go-to resource for search engines.

If they had a low selection of mechanical keyboards compared to others, didn’t try to answer user questions through their learn center, and more competition existed, who knows where they would be ranking today.

Areas of Improvement

You now have a good idea of what Mechanical Keyboards Inc. has going right which we discussed above. That isn’t by all means an exhaustive list, but are some of the core areas observed of their online business.

The market is always changing from both an SEO standpoint and also looking at the growth of the mechanical keyboards niche, which means there is always opportunity to improve. Because of the projected market growth, new competitors may rise and if they provide a better overall service, they have the ability to compete head to head with Mechanical Keyboards Inc.

URLs

An important part of on-page SEO is URL structure. Mechanical Keyboards Inc. appears to have their site custom built with PHP and their eCommerce templates riddle their pages with URL parameters. Here are a few examples of pages they have, with some suggested URLs to optimize them.

Ducky Keyboards Page (Brand Focus)

Main Keyword: Ducky Keyboard (74,000 Search Volume)

Current Position: 3

URL: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_list&c=111

Suggested SEO URL: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/ducky

Ducky One 2 Mini Page (Product Focus)

Main Keyword: Ducky One 2 Mini (110,000 Search Volume)

Current Position: 2

URL: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/index.php?l=product_detail&p=4322

Suggested SEO URL: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/shop/ducky/one-2-mini

This isn’t only the case for shopping pages, but is visible site wide, like their “what is a mechanical keyboard” page: https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/define_mechanical_keyboard.php

Messy URLs are easy to fall into, especially when a CMS sets these up incorrectly by default, or if you have a tech stack that has been custom from the start. But working on these to be SEO and user friendly is a must to refine overall usability and accessibility.

Pagespeed

Taking a look at the main shopping page of mechanicalkeyboards.com, we are seeing a page load time of 2.5 seconds on a 4G network, which is categorized as slow. When it comes to ecommerce, it is common knowledge that milliseconds can have an impact on your bottom line.

Using the estimated organic search traffic number from SEMRush of 280,000, a low conversion rate of 1%, and assuming that the average order value is $100 (average mechanical keyboard pricing on their site), we can evaluate the impact that pagespeed has on their business. With these values, and an improvement of pagespeed by 40% (2.5 second load time to 1.5 seconds), Mechanical Keyboards Inc. could realize a potential increase in annual revenue of about $161,000. And that is with relatively low estimations!

But how can they increase the speed of their site? The simple things like optimizing images, lazy loading images, and reducing the page weight.

Structured Data

Structured data helps two-fold, by providing search engines with an easy to understand view of the page, and enhances the listing on the search engine results page (SERPs). Currently, mechanicalkeyboards.com doesn’t use any sort of structured data or schema. One of their competitors, we all know as one of the giants of retail, Amazon, does.

When looking for a specific keyboard on Google, which one are you likely to click on?

Amazon has the advantage on the SERPs with the reviews shown directly on their listing, encouraging users to click. These are clicks that Mechanical Keyboards Inc. could be losing out on.

Not only that, but the stock available (which is often out of stock for most popular mechanical keyboards), and the price could be shown with the implementation of structured data. Structured data has a high impact on the click through rate of sites, especially eCommerce ones and is something that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Sitemap

Sitemaps are important towards helping search engines find your new pages. They aren’t required for sites that have a clean hierarchy and structure, but are almost always recommended. Mechanical Keyboards Incs hierarchy and structure are far from clean. They also have an influx of new products that they release from time to time, which would be easily discovered through a properly designed sitemap. As of now, mechanicalkeyboards.com is lacking a sitemap, but should consider implementing one to enhance the discoverability of their top pages.

Canonicals

Canonicals are a must when considering SEO for a website. Especially when they are stated as a best practice by Google. The benefit of specifying a canonical URL for each page is to make sure there aren’t any duplicate content issues and that Google (and other search engines) choose the right page when indexing/ranking.

Mechanical Keyboards Inc. has zero canonical tags setup. From a broad perspective this may seem okay, but digging in there are bigger troubles afoot. For example, what is the difference between these homepage URLs:

• https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/
• https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/index.php
• https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/index.php?poll_id=8&option_id=3

The answer is nothing. The solution to these pages is to set a redirect, or to specify parameters in Google Search Console. But seeing these makes us wonder how many duplicate URLs there are. Especially when there were about 30,000 internal URLs we crawled through (99% of those marked as indexable!). Also, there are plenty of instances that may require a canonical due to the different variations of products that result in duplicate content.

User Experience

Overall, the user experience of shopping on mechanicalkeyboards.com is fairly straightforward and intuitive. There are some areas of the site though that are difficult to navigate. One instance is filtering through products. You can refine your search by brand, switch, keycaps, backlight, or size. But you can’t toggle multiple filters at once.

This can be achieved through faceted navigation. Allowing users to choose multiple filters like the brand they want, if they want a certain size, and by certain switch types has the ability to heavily boost the shopping experience.

Another area of improvement is the changing of menu designs as you travel from one section of the site to another. As you can see below there are three different menus, capitalization, and colors. The lack of cohesiveness gives the feel that you may be on a different site, or even worse… lack of trustworthiness in some users.

These are items that stuck out to us in our dive of Mechanical Keyboards Inc., but there are a handful of other areas that can use improvement.

User experience and SEO share common goals, and search engines are getting better at recognizing this as they continually progress their algorithms. To succeed in the organic search playing field, it is necessary to provide the best user experience to users possible.

Wrapping Things Up

When conducting this breakdown of mechanicalkeyboards.com, we focused on the key areas for their SEO. These aren’t all of the issues they have going wrong, but you have to start somewhere!

As mentioned, they do have a following and a solid business grounded. But to maintain their top rankings and remain proactive, pursuing their SEO holes is paramount to their long term success.

If you have an eCommerce site and are leading your market, don’t get too comfortable. It is always best to be proactive and continually improve to avoid competition sliding by.

The post SEO Site Breakdown: Mechanical Keyboards Inc. appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Internal linking is a powerful strategy for improving your SEO. The best part about internal links, is that you are in control. Learn about internal linking best practices so you can distribute your link equity properly and help users navigate your website with ease.

When you land on a website, one of the first things you navigate to is most likely the top level navigation, or the “main menu”. With these navigation items, are the pages on your site that you wish users to visit the most, whether that be your shopping page, services page, or about page. These navigation items are considered internal links, and have their many benefits when it comes to SEO. Additional places internal links can be found is in the body of content, also referred to as hyperlinks.

In this guide, we will cover all the ins and outs of internal links and how you can use them to your advantage.

What is an Internal Link?

Internal links are hyperlinks that connect one page on the same domain to another. The opposite of an internal link is an external link, which is a hyperlink that points to a page on a different domain.

Code example for an internal link:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/” title=”Title of the link goes here and shows up as a tooltip”>Keyword Anchor Text</a>

Internal links are one of the most important things (and one of the easiest) ways to improve your website’s SEO. They help establish a hierarchy for your site, with the most linked to pages being deemed the most important. Not only that, but they help users navigate your site and help crawlers navigate the site, which helps distribute link equity throughout.

SEO Best Practices

Internal Link to Important Pages

Since internal links help establish a hierarchy, you can choose which pages get more link value and help search engines understand which pages to pay attention to. One of the best ways to do this is to add your most important pages to your top level navigation. Additionally, you can add internal links from pages that have the largest amount of backlinks to harness that link value.

Internal Anchor Text Optimization

Anchor text is the clickable text you see on a website that link internally or externally. The anchor text is a way to help explain what the link is, which helps Google determine the page’s relevance. Because we are talking about internal links, you are okay to be somewhat aggressive with the anchor text.

By aggressive, we mean using exact match or partial match anchor text. From our observations, we’ve noticed that the following internal linking anchor text distribution is somewhat balanced:

Too aggressive anchor text usage can come off as spammy to search engines and can cause rankings to plummet, which is why we recommend a balanced anchor text distribution.

For an overview of the different anchor types, see below:

Exact Match

An exact match anchor text is when the main keyword of a page is used. For example, a page about content marketing is linked to with the anchor text, “content marketing”.

Partial Match

A partial match anchor text is when a variation of the main keyword of a page is used. For example, a page about content marketing is linked to with the anchor text, “content marketing strategies”.

Branded

Branded anchor text is when a brand name is used. For example, our homepage is linked to with the anchor text, “Generic Marketing”.

Naked Link

A naked link doesn’t use words, but instead uses a URL. For example, “genericmarketing.org/learn/”.

Generic

Generic anchor text uses words or phrases that are common, such as “Click here” or “this website”.

Image

An image anchor is when an image is used to link to a page instead of text.

It is also important to note that you should diversify your anchors. Don’t use the same for two different pages.

Place Internal Links Higher Up and Closer to Homepage

A few years ago, Google was granted a patent, that constructed the way that links were weighed on webpages. This was called the Reasonable Surfer Patent or the Reasonable Surfer Model.

The reasonable surfer model essentially states that the amount of link value passed, is based on the probability of a user clicking on that link. With this in mind, structuring the way your navigation and links throughout your site are placed, is important.

When creating internal links, place them higher up on the page, and less clicks from the homepage (lower crawl depth). By following the concepts of the reasonable surfer model and how search engines perceive your pages, you can improve the SEO of your most important pages.

For a full understanding of Google’s patent on the reasonable surfer model, check out Bill Slawski’s breakdown.

Keep Internal Links Relevant

While you are internal linking, make sure to keep them relevant. By relevant, we mean linking to a post about chef knives from a post about the best kitchen utensils. A non-relevant internal link would be linking to a post about chef knives from a post about the different types of birds in the Amazon. With relevancy, there will be some sort of overlap of information.

By keeping the internal links relevant, a strong connection will be created allowing users and search engines to jump from page to page while staying on topic.

Follow Internal Links

Nowadays, people are always trying to game search engines like setting a nofollow tag on links to “preserve link juice”. While this is worth doing for some links (paid links, affiliate links, etc.), you should make sure that your internal links are followed.

If you nofollow internal links, you are telling Google to not count your page, or pass page value to it.

Best practice is to follow all the links on your site, internal and external, because you wouldn’t be linking to anything sketchy… right?

Implement Related Articles

Related articles are a great way to introduce internal linking to your blog. They are relevant to the topic being discussed if done correctly, and enhance the question/answer process of users by providing additional content to consume.

You can easily implement related articles with a plugin on WordPress, but be sure to configure the settings right to keep the related articles relevant.

Think related Youtube videos and how those seem to take users down rabbit holes.

Create an HTML Sitemap

An HTML sitemap, not to be confused with an XML sitemap, is a great way to add internal linking opportunities. Websites usually add this to the footer.

The page consists of a sitemap that covers the most important pages, which is helpful for users when they are navigating through. Also, these links can be set with whatever anchor text you desire and any pages you think are worth including.

How to Conduct an Internal Link Audit

An internal link audit can give you insights on which pages are being linked to the most, your anchor text distribution, what pages can use more internal links, and much more. The two best tools for an internal link audit are Screaming Frog (Free crawling up to 500 URLs, or about $187 a year) and Ahrefs (Starting plan is $99 a month).

Screaming Frog

To run an internal link audit with Screaming Frog, simply enter your URL into the ‘Enter URL to spider’ box at the top and click ‘Start’.

Note: If you have Google Search Console and/or Google Analytics setup, we suggest connecting those APIs.

After the crawl is complete, you can export the internal links by going to ‘Bulk Export’ then ‘All Inlinks’, which should download a CSV file which you can open in Excel or Google Sheets.

Once downloaded you should have a sheet of all the internal links on your site. Take this data and match it up against your Google Search Console or Google Analytics metrics to give you a good idea of what your important pages are, and if there are enough internal links pointing to them.

Also, you can check what the crawl depth of your site’s pages are by looking at the internal link data on the Screaming Frog interface, or by exporting that data and looking under the column ‘Crawl Depth’.

Other things you should look at are 3xx and 4xx errors, which you can export through:

‘Bulk Export’ → ‘Response Codes’ → ‘Redirection (3xx) Inlinks’ or ‘Client Error (4xx) Inlinks’.

And finally, the redirect chains report under:

‘Reports’ → ‘Redirect and Canonical Chains’

This will provide more data on your 3xx links. You will have to filter these spreadsheets to show internal data only.

By fixing 3xx and 4xx pages, you can rest assured that your site can be crawled by search engines with ease.

Ahrefs

To audit your internal links with Ahrefs, you would just click on ‘Internal Backlinks’ in the left side panel. You can export this data to take a more granular look, or through the Ahrefs interface, which will show you the internal anchors and backlinks for the pages on your site.

You can also setup a project in Ahrefs under their Site Audit tool to audit your internal links. The Site Audit tool will give you additional insights into 3xx pages and 4xx pages that you should fix.

How to Find Internal Linking Opportunities

There are many methods of finding internal linking opportunities. The first is having knowledge of the content of your site, remembering which pages are about what, and placing those internal links.

Another way to find internal links is through the help of plugins, if your site is on WordPress. Keep in mind that these plugins create repetitive anchor text and aren’t personalized. Also, additional plugins can decrease the performance of your site!

Without using a plugin, one of the simplest ways to find internal linking opportunities is to do a “Site:” search. For example you would do:

The “Site:” search operator searches Google for any indexed pages for a specified site. The double quotes around the query force an exact-match search. By using the two together, you can search your site for certain anchor texts to internally link to.

Key Takeaways

Internal linking is one of the key SEO initiatives that you have control of. Take your site’s internal linking to the next level with the steps we have outlined above.

• Internal links establish a hierarchy for your site and give search engines as well as users, a good idea of what pages are important.
• Link to your most important pages often.
• Optimize the anchor text that is used, but also keep in mind to diversify them.
• Links that are higher up on the page and less clicks to the homepage will be given more weight.
• Keep your internal links relevant.
• Following all internal links will ensure page equity is distributed properly.
• Related articles on blog posts are your friend.
• An HTML sitemap is a great way to implement additional internal links.

The post Internal Linking for SEO – The Ultimate Guide appeared first on Jon Eric Dela Cruz.

Understanding the different parts of the anatomy of a URL is an important part of digital marketing and technical SEO. Learn about the basics of HTTP, HTTPS, and HTTP/2 and how they can help to enhance your online search presence below.

The World Wide Web and most of its resources are accessed via HTTP or HTTPS, something you are aware of that shows up in the beginning of any URL. Just as our world is advancing in technology, so is the internet and the protocols that come with it. HTTP was a standard across the web, now transitioning into HTTPS for its security. The revisions of the protocols from HTTP 0.9 up into HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 upcoming are an important part of the ongoing improvements as well. In this guide we will cover the basics of HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP/2, and their relation to SEO.

What is HTTP?

HTTP is an acronym for HyperText Transfer Protocol. It is a protocol or system of rules for transferring files across the World Wide Web (www) between web clients and web servers. Web clients, the most common being a web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc), send HTTP requests for files (webpages like www.example.com/blog-post/) from a web server. A web server (or internet server) is a computer where web content is stored, that responds to requests from web clients then sends web content and services.

What is HTTPS?

HTTPS is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. This is the secure version of HTTP, encrypting communications between web clients and web servers through either Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS). Both of these encryption protocols utilize public keys and private keys. Private keys are stored on the web server and public keys, as the name suggests, are available to everyone publicly. Web clients and web servers perform an SSL handshake when HTTPS sessions are initiated, to exchange information and establish a secure connection.

HTTPS was commonly used for websites that transmit sensitive data like ecommerce websites, banking websites, etc; but is now becoming the norm for any website.

Benefits of HTTPS in Regards to SEO

Security is an important aspect of digital marketing and plays a key role in SEO. Google has even stated that HTTPS is a ranking signal, to help keep everyone surfing the web, safe. Outside of the official announcement on their webmaster blog, Google Chrome makes it apparent when a site being visited is not secured with HTTPS. For users that don’t see the secure padlock icon, they may be wary of entering their personal information, and rightfully so.

With the ranking benefit that comes alongside HTTPS sites, it is apparent that changing from HTTP to HTTPS is the right choice. Keep in mind that the ranking benefit is low impact, compared to quality content and backlinks.

How to Setup HTTPS for Your Website

Setting up HTTPS is simple nowadays, and won’t even cost you a dime if you opt in for a service like Let’s Encrypt. To install Let’s Encrypt with cPanel, follow these steps:

1. Access your cPanel dashboard.
2. Under “Security”, locate the “Let’s Encrypt SSL” icon.
3. Select your domain you would like to install HTTPS on and press “Issue”.
4. The SSL certificate should install and if there is an error, it will inform you.

If you run into any issues on the above, or don’t see the option to install an SSL via Let’s Encrypt, speak with your hosting provider.

Please note that upgrading to HTTPS should be planned based on the amount of content your website has. If you are ranking well in a few areas, mapping out your content and making sure you have the right redirects in place will ensure a smooth migration. Additionally, you should run a find/replace sitewide afterwards to remove any internal link instances of HTTP to HTTPS and cut down on the total amount of redirects.

What is HTTP/2?

HTTP/2 is the second major version of the application protocol. It was made to speed up the transferring of files between web servers and web clients. Prior to HTTP/2, HTTP 1.1 had to send files down a single line, one at a time, closing and opening. HTTP/2 drastically sped this up by keeping the line open and allowing the transfer of multiple files at one time.

Benefits of HTTP/2 in Regards to SEO

Another important ranking factor announced by Google in respect to the mobile-first world we live in is page speed. Page speed as a ranking factor is a priority because of the slower connections associated with mobile devices. Also, websites are growing in size because of the addition of multiple assets like images, JavaScript, CSS, and more.

How to Implement HTTP/2 for Your Website

Luckily, most big name hosting providers will have HTTP/2 enabled on their servers. To test if your server is using it, check out this HTTP/2 testing tool. If you don’t have it enabled, ask your hosting provider of your options. Also, it is required you have an HTTPS connection.

Key Takeaways

HyperText Transfer Protocol and its many variations or revisions are an important part of the modern web. Implement the most stable and latest version of any technology and you are sure to be closer to the top, especially with SEO.

• HTTP is the protocol used for transferring files across the web.
• HTTPS is the secure protocol, encrypting information that is transferred.
• HTTPS is recommended by Google for positive SEO and is a minor ranking factor.
• HTTP/2 is the latest major revision of HTTP and allows for multiple files sent down a single line.
• HTTP/2 improves page speed, and in return, helps SEO.

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