Google have introduced a new tag management service that allows website owners to streamline the process of managing analytics, advertising, and conversion tags on their site.
Anyone working in online marketing knows the challenges of managing code snippets needed for site performance tracking. These tags often require frequent tweaks or changes, and coordination between marketers and webmasters is not always smooth. (more…)
There’s been a fair bit of chatter in recent months about the value of nofollow links for SEO. Google considers nofollow links a naturalness signal when evaluating backlink profiles. Truth aside, every SEO should understand nofollow links. The key question: Are nofollow backlinks actually worth pursuing? (more…)
Google didn’t release their usual algorithm update news last month, so this week we have a plethora of juicy updates to look at.
Recently, Google has focused on three key SERP improvements:
Cleaning up search result pages
Enhancing Panda’s high-quality content detection
Displaying more answers directly on results (reducing clicks to websites)
A couple of weeks ago we looked at negative SEO and what you can do to protect your site. One of the techniques we mentioned was hacking. Competitors, upon gaining access to a site, may alter the content or add malware to pages in the hope that Google will delist or penalize a site. Hackers may also simply attempt to use a site to spread their malware without any particular intentions regarding SEO.
We gave a number of suggestions for dealing such an intrusion, but often, after having received a warning from Google, it can be difficult to determine exactly what the Googlebot crawler is seeing.
Hackers are adept at making a site appear perfectly normal to those who go directly to a page, while serving malware or undesirable keywords and hidden links to search engine crawlers and those who arrive at a site from a search engine. What you see when you visit a site is not necessarily what Googlebot is seeing.
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As we all know, back-links are a critical factor of search engine ranking algorithms. Getting more incoming links from better sources is a sure-fire method for improving a site’s position in SERPs. Google’s Penguin algorithm update now penalizes unnatural link-building techniques.
Google prioritizes rankings that serve users’ needs—and since shady link-building tactics undermine this goal, the algorithm actively demotes such sites. To help you stay compliant, here are three safe backlink strategies that won’t trigger Google’s spam filters.
recently confirmed Google doesn’t use bounce rate as a signal for search engine ranking; this offers little comfort to website owners whose visitors won’t stick around.
A site’s bounce rate is, specifically, the percentage of visitors that leave the site from the page on which they arrived without interacting or following navigation. Sites with a high bounce rate are falling at the first hurdle, and it can often be difficult to determine exactly which factors are repelling users. Today we’re going to have a look at the five most likely reasons that your site is failing to engage people.
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Embeds like analytics scripts, tracking scripts, and social media widgets are not always designed and written as well as one might hope; consequently, including too many of them in a web page can incur large slowdowns in loading time. Indeed, this Ghostery study shows such slowdowns.
As we saw in Part One of our series on website optimization, a slow site can seriously impact user experience. Anything over 3 seconds is going to be an irritation to users, and irritated users lead to lost sales, reduced conversions, and higher bounce rates. For instance, figures released by Walmart show that increased load times are significantly correlated with lowered conversion rates. Specifically, a precipitous drop occurs as load times increase between one and three seconds. (more…)
We’ve all experienced that frustration—when a page takes forever to load, burdened by unoptimized images, widgets, and analytics scripts. To make matters worse, these elements often pull from scattered servers, creating unnecessary lag with each round-trip request. Today, we’re going to have a look a 6 of the best infographics on the subject, and next week we’ll show you the top 10 causes of slow web pages and what you can do to fix them.
Unsurprisingly, Americans demand speed—whether from waiters, sales staff, or websites. In fact, slow-loading sites frustrate us most, as Mashable’s infographic clearly shows.
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