SEO

Core Principles of SEO

doug@websitemagazine.com (Doug Hughes) — Thu, 18 May 2023 19:35:48 GMT

Attracting the right site visitors is still an extremely important barometer for business success. With 54 percent of consumers citing organic search as the way they have typically found the sites they visit, your efforts in search engine optimization (SEO) are extremely important.

SEO vs. SEM: Understanding the Differences

doug@websitemagazine.com (Doug Hughes) — Thu, 18 May 2023 18:45:00 GMT

While most new business owners will try to weigh up the benefits of SEO vs SEM, not everyone fully understands the differences between these two critical online marketing techniques.

Guide to Local SEO in 2023

peter.devereaux@websitemagazine.com (Peter Devereaux) — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 20:47:00 GMT

Local SEO has been around for quite some time, but it’s now more important than ever, and rightly so. As much as ‘general’ SEO is great for your business, if you’re a small or medium business without a local SEO strategy, you’re losing out big time.

How Long Does it Take to Rank in Google?

Marina Turea — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 06:00:00 GMT

In today's ever-competitive digital world, a top ranking on page #1 of Google search results has become the holy-grail. That's why each SEO agency has had to answer this question every so often:

Move Up the SERPs with Schema Markup

doug@websitemagazine.com (Doug Hughes) — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Schema markup is a powerful tool that businesses can use to enhance their online presence and attract more potential customers. It's a type of structured data that can be added to a website's code to provide search engines with more information about the content on the site.

Is Microsoft's New Chat GPT Enabled Bing the Google Killer?

doug@websitemagazine.com (Doug Hughes) — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 06:00:00 GMT

A recent article entitled "Google Versus ChatGPT: Which AI is Smarter?" compares the intelligence of Google and ChatGPT by analyzing their performance in 40 intelligence challenges. Preply, a global language learning platform, conducted the study and had a panel of communication experts assesses the performance of both AI tools.

SEO for Dummies 2023 Checklist: Simple, Actionable, Scalable Tips for Better Rankings

peter.devereaux@websitemagazine.com (Peter Devereaux) — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Many entrepreneurs and marketers cringe at the mere thought of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It's the proverbial big elephant in the room and a huge nightmare for many.

Baidu vs. Google: A Comparison

peter.devereaux@websitemagazine.com (Peter Devereaux) — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Everyone knows about Google, the ballooning tech giant that may one day own our very souls. They already own YouTube. Then there's the ubiquitous webmail platform and forays into mobile phone service, smart homes, and other ventures.

But most of us met Google as a search engine. It wasn't the first search engine, but its plain white, no-frills interface took over the concept of search so that "Google" became synonymous with search- "I'll Google it." You know your brand is successful when it becomes the go-to verb for its service.

Other search engines exist, but Google dominates 91% of the market share in the US, with over 7 billion searches a year, leaving its nearest competitors Bing and Yahoo in the dust.

Of passing interest to consumers - and of serious interest to internet marketers - is the fact that the second largest search engine in the world, with over 1.5 billion searches per day, is one that most Americans have never even heard of. You may know how to Google something, but do you know how to Baidu something?

No Such Thing as Overnight SEO?

peter.devereaux@websitemagazine.com (Peter Devereaux) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

As an SEO, how long does it take to see results? And as a business, how long should you wait to experience the benefits of that SEOs effort?

Google's recent " How to Hire an SEO" video discussed these issues (and others) and specifically how long it takes for SEO changes made to result in actual improvements.

In the early days of SEO, it was quite common to hear (and receive guarantees) that "optimization" could take just days or weeks to result search ranking improvements.
While it was true in some instances, the reality was (and is to this day) much harsher - it can take months to experience the impact (good and bad).

What has your experience been with SEO? Can you get a website ranking for competitive terms in months or in a shorter time frame? Share your experience with a comment below now.

Why Google's Meta Description Expansion Matters

peter@websitemagazine.com (Pete Prestipino) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Search engine optimization professionals watch any and every new development at Google that may positively or negatively influence the placement of their listings. An announcement from the company this week, however, shows why fundamental SEO practices remain important.

Google has expanded the length allowed in the meta description tag from 160 allowable characters to 320, providing SEOs an opportunity to use additional text to promote their websites on the search results page. Google is also reportedly increasing the size of the search snippet as well.

The meta description tag, for the unfamiliar, is an HTML tag that appears in the section of an HTML Web page; it usually looks like this:

< meta name="description" content="This is a description of my web page."/ >

In the past, the meta description tag gave search engines and visitors more information about the contents of a page, but Google has repeatedly stated they don't use the description for ranking purposes. Instead, they opt to use a snippet from the page that is most relevant to the user's query.

That raises an important question: If Google just uses a snippet from the page anyway why would they care about expanding the description?

Perhaps Google is simply using the expanded meta data as a form of confirmation that their algorithms for detecting and selecting the most important snippet of the page for the user query are correct by checking what has been defined in the HTML by its producer (i.e., the website's manager/owner).

That would certainly be a logical course of action for Google, but what happens when there is no "fallback" description for their system to use as confirmation, validation or verification? If Google can't find a meta description on a page and can't determine on its own the most appropriate and relevant snippet it may not show a description or a snippet at all. And that's a problem.

If there is a meta description available, however, Google could potentially use that data to analyze for use within a snippet.

So, maybe Google is just using this expansion of the meta description as a way to signal to webmasters and SEOs that they remain an integral part in the search engine's ability to index, analyze, rank and turn pages for users.

The takeaway in either case should be that meta descriptions still matter. Moving forward, consider taking advantage of the expanded meta descriptions while keeping an eye on its relevance and suitability to the user's query. You never know, it could end up as a featured snippet or as part of your page's description.