# Red Search — Full Documentation > Complete reference for Red Search, a Sydney SEO and AI search optimisation agency (founded 2018). Concatenated Markdown of company details, services, case studies and the full resource library for deep context ingestion. ## Company - Name: Red Search - Positioning: Sydney's best SEO specialists. Dedicated to growing your business with proven SEO strategies. - Founded: 2018 - Founder: Daniel Law (SEO Specialist & Director) - Location: Level 1, 5 George Street, North Strathfield 2137 — serving clients Australia-wide - Phone: 1300 101 712 - Email: info@redsearch.com.au - Google rating: 5.0 (33 reviews) · 150+ clients ## Services ### National SEO National SEO is built for brands that sell beyond a single suburb, operating across multiple cities or right across Australia. We engineer the authority, content depth and technical foundation needed to compete for high-volume, nationwide keywords. What's included: - Nationwide keyword & competitor mapping - Scalable site architecture & internal linking - Authority link building at national scale - Topic clusters that build topical authority - Monthly reporting against revenue goals URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/national-seo/ ### Local SEO Local SEO puts your business in front of ready-to-buy customers in your area: in the Map Pack, in "near me" searches and across Google Business Profile. Perfect for service businesses and single-location stores. What's included: - Google Business Profile optimisation - Local citation building & cleanup - Suburb & "near me" keyword targeting - Review generation strategy - Local landing pages that convert URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/local-seo/ ### Link Building Backlinks remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals. We earn high-quality, completely natural links from relevant, authoritative Australian and international websites, publications and directories, all strictly white-hat and never spam. What's included: - Digital PR & editorial outreach - Relevant, authoritative placements only - Anchor-text & link-velocity strategy - Toxic backlink audit & disavow - Transparent monthly link reporting URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/link-building/ ### WordPress SEO WordPress powers over 40% of the web. We know it inside out, from technical configuration and Core Web Vitals to plugin hygiene and content structure, so your site ranks faster and runs cleaner. What's included: - Technical WordPress configuration - Core Web Vitals & speed optimisation - Schema & on-page SEO - Plugin & security hygiene - Content structure & internal linking URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/wordpress-seo/ ### eCommerce SEO eCommerce SEO turns your category and product pages into a compounding source of revenue. We fix the technical issues that hold stores back and build the content and authority that wins commercial search. What's included: - Category & product page optimisation - Faceted navigation & crawl control - Product schema & rich results - Content that captures buying intent - Shopify, WooCommerce & Magento expertise URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/ecommerce-seo/ ### SEO Auditing A technical SEO audit uncovers the hidden issues quietly capping your rankings: crawl errors, slow pages, indexation problems and broken architecture. We find them, prioritise them, and give you a clear roadmap to fix them. What's included: - Full crawl & indexation analysis - Core Web Vitals & speed review - Site architecture & internal links - Prioritised, actionable fix roadmap - Optional implementation support URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/technical-seo-auditing/ ### Google Penalty Recovery A sudden drop in traffic can be devastating. Whether it’s a manual action or an algorithmic hit, we diagnose the cause, clean up the damage, and rebuild the trust Google needs to restore your rankings. What's included: - Penalty diagnosis (manual & algorithmic) - Toxic backlink audit & disavow - Content & on-page remediation - Reconsideration request management - Recovery monitoring & reporting URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/google-penalty-recovery/ ### WordPress Hosting Hosting is the foundation everything else sits on. Our managed WordPress hosting is tuned for Core Web Vitals, hardened for security, and backed by people who actually understand SEO. What's included: - Performance-tuned managed hosting - Daily backups & security hardening - Free SSL & CDN - Staging environments - SEO-aware support team URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/wordpress-hosting/ ### AI Optimisation AI Optimisation (Generative Engine Optimisation) positions your brand inside the AI answers your customers increasingly rely on. We structure your content, sharpen your entities and build the authority engines trust, so you get cited and recommended, not skipped. What's included: - AI visibility & citation audit - Entity & schema structuring - Citable, answer-ready content - Authority signals AI engines trust - Cross-engine monitoring & reporting URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/ai-optimisation/ ### Content Development Content Development creates the depth and quality Google and AI engines reward. We research intent, plan topic clusters and produce expert, E-E-A-T-aligned content that ranks, converts and keeps working long after it’s published. What's included: - Search intent & content-gap research - Topic clusters & content roadmap - Expert, E-E-A-T-aligned content - On-page optimisation - Content refresh & decay management URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/seo-services/content-development/ ## Case Studies ### All Gone Rubbish Removals — Rubbish Removal · East Coast A national rubbish removal company with ambitious growth goals. All Gone Rubbish Removals Sydney specialises in fast, same-day junk collection for residential and commercial clients. Committed to ethical, environmentally friendly disposal, the company set out to transform its business, scale operations and capture new markets across Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle, the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Results: 677% increase in SEO traffic; 367% increase in online enquiries; 218% improvement in keyword rankings URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/all-gone-rubbish-removals/ ### Mortgage Pros — Mortgage Brokerage · Sydney A multi-award-winning mortgage brokerage with ambitious organic growth goals. Mortgage Pros is a leading Sydney mortgage brokerage and a recognised top-100 performer in its industry. Despite remarkable success offline, the firm struggled to gain meaningful organic visibility on Google, leaving revenue opportunities on the table. Results: 589% increase in SEO traffic; 510% increase in online enquiries; 2,450% improvement in keyword rankings URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/mortgage-pros/ ### Trees Down Under — Arborist · Hills District & Sydney A tree removal company looking to dominate the Hills District and Sydney. Trees Down Under approached Red Search with ambitious goals: to dominate their local region and, ultimately, Sydney. The website had no prior SEO and was handed over in a completely blank state. Results: 579% increase in SEO traffic; 278% increase in online enquiries; 100% increase in all major keyword rankings URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/trees-down-under/ ### Barnardos Australia — Not-for-profit · National Protecting a leading children’s charity through a full site migration. Barnardos Australia is a leading non-government, non-denominational child-safety and family-care organisation, run by an independent Board of Directors. Incorporated in Australia, Barnardos is a registered charity and a public company limited by guarantee. Results: Zero rankings lost; Seamless site migration; MoM organic growth URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/barnardos-australia/ ### Eyecare Plus — Optometry · 150+ Practices Australia’s largest member-owned optometry group asserting search dominance. Eyecare Plus is Australia’s largest member-owned business support group for clinically focused independent optometry. With over 150 optical practices across Australia, it combines the advantages of a large optometric group with the highest standard of personalised patient service. Results: 79% increase in clicks from Google; 41% increase in Google impressions; 24% increase in SEO new users URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/eyecare-plus/ ### Grinders Coffee — Coffee Roaster · Since 1962 One of Australia’s most trusted coffee roasters, migrated without missing a beat. Founded in 1962, Grinders Coffee started from humble beginnings and a single storefront, and has since grown into one of Australia’s most trusted coffee roasters. Results: 42.2% increase in Google impressions; 35.1% increase in SEO sessions; 17.6% increase in SEO new users URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/grinders-coffee/ ### Cerrone Jewellers — Luxury Jewellery · eCommerce Scaling Australia’s most-awarded diamond jeweller through eCommerce SEO. Cerrone is Australia’s most-awarded bespoke, luxury diamond jeweller. Over the past 45 years, the business has cemented itself as an industry leader, highly regarded for its craftsmanship and reputation for design excellence. Results: 39% increase in SEO users; 82% increase in all tracked keywords; 50% increase in impressions on Google URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/cerrone/ ### Paul's Rubbish Removal — Rubbish Removal · Sydney A Sydney rubbish removal business with a big appetite for growth. Paul's Rubbish Removal approached our team with a vision to expand online. The company provides commercial and residential rubbish removal across every region of Sydney. Paul and his team had advertised across offline channels with generally good results and a healthy flow of leads, but wanted to take their marketing a step further. Results: 624% increase in SEO traffic; 1,248% increase in Google impressions; 375% increase in online enquiries URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/pauls-rubbish-removal/ ### Simply Maid — House Cleaning · National An emerging, ambitious house-cleaning brand scaled Australia-wide. Simply Maid is one of Australia's largest residential house-cleaning brands, servicing every major Australian city. Since 2015 they've provided premium cleaning to well over 5,000 Aussie homes, and set even greater growth goals for 2025 and beyond. Results: 1,100% increase in SEO new users; 364% increase in online bookings; 90% keywords ranking in top 3 on Google URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/our-work/simply-maid/ ## Resources ### Content Marketing: Everything You Need To Know URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/content-marketing/ Category: Content & Keywords Content marketing is an online marketing strategy that many businesses are heavily investing in... The term "Content Marketing" has slowly and undoubtedly gained momentum over the past years. Today, it's an online marketing strategy many businesses heavily invest in. For many new entrepreneurs entering the online space, this marketing concept may be, at times, confusing and hard to understand. Given the immense popularity and effectiveness, this post will explain what content marketing is, how it will impact your business and the most popular [types of content](/resources/types-of-content/) marketing channels. ### What is content marketing? Content marketing is about utilising and distributing valuable content for scalable business growth. Different companies practice content marketing in various ways. The reason for this is, is because every business is marketing to a different target market. Each market will react and engage with each marketing more or less effectively. For example, there is no point in tweeting up a storm on Twitter if your consumers are primarily conversing and interacting on Facebook. Your content marketing campaign will fail, and your budget will be wasted. ![The Content Marketing Process](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Content-Marketing-Process-1024x360.png) Instead, what is important, is to research and understand as much about your target market as possible before starting a campaign. This ensures you are appealing to the right people through the right platforms. ### Content marketing purpose and objectives Providing your audience with content of value is at the heart of what content marketing is about. Your content will likely be created to either educate, inform or entertain. All three approaches will work to serve and [achieve the same end result](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/content-marketing-value/): to provide your customer with *actual value* in the information you are supplying. For every piece of content you have distributed across the web; you are essentially providing prospects with another great reason why they should choose you over your competitor. This ultimately allows your business to stand out from the endless crowd in the online marketplace. In other words, you're setting yourself apart and distinguishing your business as one that believes in engaging with customers. Your content marketing strategy should provide genuine worth that triggers a sense of pleasure and enjoyment. Content marketing strategies aren't aimed at selling something to customers - however, what they are designed to do is inform audiences about the specifics of your business to make sure that they're able to make more informed choices (i.e. by picking you), or to entertain and engage them. A [well developed content marketing strategy](https://www.agencyjet.com/blog/steps-to-developing-a-content-marketing-strategy) is supposed to do both, and the result is always the same: customers start trusting you as a business and you as a brand because you've given them all the information they wanted. They like you because you've given them actual worth. They'll happily complete a transaction once they're all set to buy something. ![The Content Marketing Model](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Content-Marketing-Model.png) ### How content marketing is different from traditional marketing Content marketing is different from regular marketing in two fundamental ways. First, information resides on owned or [earned media](https://learn.g2.com/earned-media). If there's any media buyout involved, it's traditional marketing, not content marketing. Secondly, content marketing is a pull, not a push. Content doesn't interrupt; it* blends and attracts.* ### How content marketing aligns with SEO Without good content, you will struggle to make your SEO strategy useful. All successful businesses create quality content for their clients. They do so by either publishing content on their website or distributing it via various popular online sources. To name a few, we have Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Slideshare and Instagram. In addition to that, the quality of your website's content highly determines your search engine positions, especially with Google. After the Hummingbird update, Google started giving [high importance to the content](http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-hummingbird-friendly-content-marketing-tips/79111/). This fact alone stresses that SEO success highly depends on the quality of content you have on your website. Although content marketing and SEO are two entirely different marketing phenomena, this does not mean that they work alone. Combining the two techniques helps you rank higher in search engines and gain better traffic. Your business can improve its marketability by writing content for search engines and humans. Whenever creating a content marketing strategy, you [must keep SEO firmly in mind](/resources/can-i-stop-seo/). For expert guidance on how to best get the best from both channels, we recommend speaking to an experienced [SEO agency](/). ![SEO Content Marketing](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/SEO-Content-Marketing.jpg) ### How content marketing can benefit your business Content marketing can prove to be a serious game-changer for your business. Although this kind of marketing offers several advantages (most of which are tough to monitor), there are three key benefits you should know about: - Generating natural link popularity - Building brand awareness through engagement - Generating quality organic traffic to your website Here are some other ways content marketing helps your business: - Content marketing allows you to make a personal connection with your audience - Unless a company knows how to promote itself using mind-to-mind conversations, having great content that offers excellent value to its target audience will make a huge difference. - Content marketing makes it easy for your prospects to find your business Usually, every time a savvy buyer is confronted with a problem, he tries to find a solution on the internet, right? Therefore, for a business willing to make itself more visible on search engines, well-optimised and quality content is essential in reaching your audience. ### The importance of content within customer buying cycles As buyers go through several stages of the buying cycle, they need content at each stage to strengthen their willingness to buy your product or service. For example, how would a prospect know whether your product is within his budget or what other customers are saying about your product? Content plays a significant role at this stage in convincing prospects in favour of buying your product or service. Without relevant web content, prospects might choose your competitor over yours. ### Key forms of content that may work well for your business So, now you know what content marketing is and how it might benefit your business, here are some of the best actionable ways to start your content marketing strategy without any professional aid: ![The Content Marketing Pyramid](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Content-Marketing-Pyramid.png) - **Create evergreen content that isn't time-sensitive (seasonal)** For almost all businesses, your website is your clients' first impression. It's your storehouse of information, so it must grab your customers' attention. A good way to keep customers hanging around - as well as building trust and demonstrating your brand - is by having free content present on the website that customers could read. Creating evergreen content is a great strategy to accomplish this. - **Engage with customers through mobile apps** An app is an excellent way to advertise your product, provided you know how to make it fit your customers' needs. Not all businesses can do this, but if you can, branding and marketing your business through mobile apps is the way to go. - **Blogs and resource pages** Blogs, if done well, are an exceptionally successful content advertising tool. Why? Firstly, they offer an easy way to interact with customers and advertise your product online. They provide a two-way conversation: customers can interact, seek advice, and even post content or leave comments. Secondly, if you publish well-written and up-to-date information online, you might become an authority in your niche. If you're guest posting everywhere and posting high-quality content on your blog, people start [seeing you as an authority on your subject](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/business-benefits-of-blogging/377747/). That is certainly good for any business. - **Imagery: think infographics and before and after photos** Content curation works quite well with images because individuals frequently search online for visual inspiration. If you have a vast collection of images related to your subject, they consider your website a valuable resource and stick around. - **Video and Multimedia** Videos are one of the most powerful content marketing tools. Simply having a video on your homepage dramatically increases customers' time on your site. The more they hang around, the more likely they will contact you or buy directly. Any good video might go viral in no time. People love sharing videos with their friends on social websites and sending them to people they know. ### Conclusion Keep finding out how you can best fulfill the content marketing needs of your business and keep perfecting what you do. Every business is different, and each industry is unique. Refine what you do according to your customer's needs so that you can maximise all of your online marketing efforts. ### 20 Reasons Why Your Website is Losing its SEO Rankings URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/20-reasons-losing-ranks-search-engines/ Category: Google & Algorithms Find out 20 of the common reasons why your website is experiencing a drop in SEO rankings. According to recent findings by Chitika, an online ad network, the top is very lonely, at least in terms of Google’s rankings. The study shows that the top-ranked website in [Google’s organic search results receives 33% of the traffic](https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2276184/no-1-position-in-google-gets-33-of-search-traffic-study), with the second position getting 18%, and the list degrades from there. If this study is anything to go by, then it’s obvious that we would want our respective websites ranked at the very top or at least on the first page. This would mean the business or website [garnering a lot of traffic](https://startupresources.io/drive-site-traffic-startup-business/). This, in turn, generates emails, phone calls, leads and sales. A sudden drop in search engine traffic and Google rankings is a terrifying prospect that would spell doom for your business in terms of losing revenue. Recent changes to your website, poor optimisation, technical issues and [Google algorithm updates](/resources/google-algorithm-updates/) are some of the factors that contribute to your Google rankings. A drop in your hard-earned rankings would mean you must address these issues including several others. As an award-winning [Sydney SEO agency](/), we actively work with new clients who have suffered SEO ranking drops. Whilst some penalty issues are simple to reverse, other cases may require a deep dive, followed by months of re-optimisation. This article lists the 20 most common issues why your SEO rankings may have dropped in Google. ### 1. Outdated keyword and tracking strategies Google often change tracking codes and come up with new ideas for website optimisation. For instance, searches have moved from using a few generic keywords towards the use of ‘natural language’. With that in mind, your keyword strategy might be outdated. **Diagnosis:** To rectify this, you should double-check and update your tracking and keyword strategies to allow searchers to get the desired results. Instead of using outdated generic keywords, structure your keywords to be more natural and to appear like complete sentences. ### 2. Manual Google penalties When pages on your site are not compliant with [Google’s webmaster quality guidelines](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769#quality_guidelines), it’s highly likely that you’ll incur manual search engine penalties. These manual penalties are imposed by Google’s human reviewers who will determine whether or not your site is non-compliant. Some of the common reasons for manual penalties include; user-generated spam, hacked site, cloaking, thin content and unnatural backlinks. **Diagnosis:** You should check for manual penalties if you notice a sudden huge drop in your search engine rankings. You can learn about each type of [manual action here](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en&visit_id=637640723863589997-1359138221&rd=1) and log in to your [Google Search Console](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en) and visit the Search Traffic Manual Actions section where Google will tell you the reason for the manual action and how to rectify it. ### 3. Low-quality links Buying low-quality links because they’re cheap is not a wise move. It’s a move that’ll affect your website’s ranking or even make it disappear entirely. Google, as well as other search engines, have come up with various updates to stop ‘search engine spamming’. *Diagnosis: Avoid unnatural or low-quality backlinks like a plague.* ### 4. Losing high-quality links Losing high-quality links will definitely affect your website. You should, therefore, check whether there’s a problem with these high-quality links and that they are directed correctly. **Diagnosis:** You should continually [build high-quality links](/seo-services/link-building/) naturally. For instance, create amazing content that is helpful to people who will share and link to your page. ### 5. Google updates & algorithm changes In its quest to always improve and provide better services to its customers, Google will always roll out with algorithmic updates (the most being the Broad Algorithmic update, and Link Spam Update), not once, but hundreds of times each year. Some of these updates and changes can be disruptive and hurt your site’s rankings. **Diagnosis:** To avoid being sent packing as a result of these updates and changes, you should constantly use effective cross-channel traffic and marketing strategies such as the inclusion of social media and other marketing channels on your website. ### 6. Competitors outranking you It’s a known fact that Google rankings are a zero-sum game. In other words, if a given website improves its rankings, another website will be affected and drop in ranking. After all, there can only be one. This is basically why websites must always seek effective [SEO services](/seo-services/) and look to constantly improve to stay in the game. **Diagnosis:** Search engine ranking is an eternal game. Competitors are constantly looking for ways to improve their websites and rankings and so should you. ### 7. Poor web hosting Using or switching to low-quality hosting company or platform will not only affect your site’s visitors but will also attract user behaviours that will then send signals to search engines to lower the rank of your site. **Diagnosis:** You should use a [high-quality web hosting](/seo-services/wordpress-hosting/) platform that improves user experience by making sure that your website is fast, mobile-friendly and user-friendly. ### 8. Broken 301 redirects Whether you are creating a new website, shifting to a new server or carrying out structural changes to your website, using a broken 301 redirect plan will negatively affect your rankings. A 301 redirect is basically a notice to Google that you’re planning some changes on the website. This is essential as it notifies Google to redirect or send your website visitors to your new site and not the old one. **Diagnosis:** You should do a 301 redirect plan correctly and make sure to include things such as canonical tags, [XML sitemaps](/resources/xml-sitemap-seo/) and updated backlinks. ### 9. Normal fluctuations It’s always a normal thing for Google rankings to fluctuate. This might happen from one day to the next, from one location to another and even from one computer to another. In essence, rankings may fluctuate based on a host of variables. **Diagnosis:** There’s no specific way to rectify this other than ensuring that your website is constantly improved and updated with great content. ### 10. Geographical discrepancies Your ranking may be affected depending on the location of the search. This is because Google often looks and takes into account the sites that a searcher previously visited before bringing up search results. **Diagnosis:** Check your site’s geographic traffic distribution and ensure that you’re not blocked or spammed in areas where you do not operate. You should also make sure that your site is specific, precise and accurate as to which geographical areas you cover. ### 11. Page speed [Page speed](/resources/page-speed-seo/) will not only affect user experience but will also affect SEO rankings. Your page will be impacted if it’s slow, heavy and takes a long time to load. **Diagnosis:** Make sure that your website is loading as per Google's recommended 2-second page loading speed. You can check your page speed [here](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/improve-page-speed-traffic-conversions/219581/). ### 12. Changes in click-through rate Google is paying more and more attention to user experience and will rank sites based on how user-friendly they are. With that said, your ranks are likely to drop if your Click-Through Rate (CTR) drops. **Diagnosis:** Users will click through your site and stay there if they’re satisfied with your site’s content. Great content and fast loading pages will drastically lower page abandonment rate and improve engagement. ### 13. Server issues Your site may have various server issues such as an empty markup served or a broken cache. **Diagnosis:** It’s important to solve server issues quickly and avoid errors that might arise in server logs and URLs. Use [Google’s Fetch and Render tool](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?hl=en) to test whether or not your URL is working optimally. ### 14. Technical SEO issues Search engines are becoming more refined and a simple technical issue that doesn’t conform to the engine’s guideline may lower your rankings. **Diagnosis:** You should always be aware of search engine changes and updates, as well as [technical SEO](/seo-services/technical-seo-auditing/) issues. This will help you take better care of your site and keep your hard-earned ranking up. Fix things such as 404 errors and long page load times. ### 15. Server overload A web server can easily overload if it’s structured in such a way where it cannot keep up with the demand of too many users visiting the site at a single instance. **Diagnosis:** It’s crucial to optimise your site and be ready to deal with high volumes of traffic. ### 16. Poor quality content As obvious as it may sound, having poor quality content that is full of mistakes in grammar & spelling will have your site degraded. **Diagnosis:** Always make sure that you offer great content that is relevant and reliable for the user. ### 17. Lack of fresh content Fresh content is a must if you want to keep your rankings high. If your last blog was over a year ago, Google will be whipping out its wrath on your site very soon. **Diagnosis:** Make sure that you constantly update your site with fresh, original and great content. ### 18. Excessive use of keyword-rich anchor text If you’ve been using lots of the same rich anchor text, Google will see it as spam and may lower your rankings. **Diagnosis:** Avoid using excessive “click here” leads because Google doesn’t like the excessive use of keyword-rich anchor text. ### 19. Plagiarised content Plagiarism is strictly restricted on Google and may adversely affect your rankings. In fact, your site may be entirely removed from Google’s index if you duplicate content that’s not original to your site. **Diagnosis:** Keep your site’s content original and do not plagiarise content. ### 20. Incorrect robots.txt file Using an incorrect robots.txt file will flag down your site as robotic and Google may end up removing your site from its index completely. **Diagnosis:** Always employ [robots.txt best practices](https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt) to optimise your site’s ranking. ### Google Panda: The Complete Guide to Panda URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-panda/ Category: Google & Algorithms To assist you in your local SEO conquest, We've compiled a list of the best Australian local citations... First officially released in 2011, Google Panda has continued to change the SEO landscape time and time again. Google's Panda algorithm is aimed at promoting high quality, content-focused pages while devaluing low quality pages. We like to think of Panda as the older brother to [Google's Penguin algorithm](/resources/google-penguin/), which focuses on linkspam. Many websites, both past and present have been significantly affected by the content quality algorithm. If the last Panda update is anything to go by, many websites may in fact never reach the previous traffic and ranking levels they sustained before the release of Panda. Moving forward, it's important that your business understands Google Panda and how it ultimately impacts your bottom line - your online sales. **So what can you do to avoid falling on the wrong side of Google Panda?** In this guide, we offer a complete guideline for Google Panda. We explain what it does, its history, common myths and how you can protect your business from its potential impacts. ### What is Google's Panda algorithm and what does it do? Initially released on February 3, 2011, the main purpose of the Google Panda algorithm is simple. Panda works to [reward high-quality more relevant websites](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html) and demote low-quality websites in Google’s organic search engine results. With more than [28 updates since its launch](https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change), Google Panda has addressed and targeted a number of issues in Google search results including: - **Thin content** – These are weak pages with no content or with very little relevant content served to the user. Google recognises that there is very limited significant content or resources that can be beneficial to the user. A perfect example would be a healthcare website that describes very serious health conditions in one sentence. As we can understand, a user looking for information about a health condition would naturally expect to find an in-depth web page - not a page with virtually no text content. - **Low-quality content** – Websites that are populated with content, however, lack in-depth information and offer little or no value to readers. - **Duplicate content** – Plagiarism or duplication of content is a serious offence that Google does not take lightly. Whether on-site or off-site, duplication of content will get you into a big problem with Google Panda. For example, having the same content duplicated on multiple pages on your website might place you under Panda’s radar and negatively affect your search ranking. - **Content farming** – Having a big number of low-quality pages that provide low or very little value to readers. In most cases, content farming involves hiring a huge number of low-quality writers to create short content that covers a wide range of search engine queries with the sole aim of ranking for keywords. - **Lack of authority** – Google is very serious about the trustworthiness of the information provided to readers on websites. With that in mind, providing misleading information to readers might place you on the wrong end of Panda penalties. An easy way to start building up your authority is to have an author box under all your writings. This adds legitimacy to your content as it's backed by a real, verifiable person within the industry. - **Excessive ad-to-content ratio** – Websites that have excessively paid adverts than meaningful content. If you're populating your website with too many ads this ultimately results in poor user experience. Websites that do not endorse a balance or provide any meaningful information may be devalued by Panda. - **Low-quality user-generated content (UGC)** – These may include guest blog posts that are full of grammatical errors, cannot be trusted and are not authoritative. Many forms of poor UGC are created for spammy SEO purposes and are highly sceptical of having their URLs devalued. - **Misleading and deceiving content** – Your website pledges to deliver content that matches a given search query but then fails to deliver on the promise (you haven't addressed the [searcher's search intent](/resources/search-intent-seo/)). This is highly deceptive and may result in high user bounce rates. - **A website that’s blocked by users** – A website that visitors are blocking either through a Google Chrome browser extension or directly in the search engine is a clear indication that Panda might penalise it. - **Low-quality and broken affiliate links** – Having numerous paid affiliate links that have poor and low-quality content might bring you lots of problems. Again, having affiliate links that don’t take visitors to the promised website or location might bring you even further problems. Other issues may include non-optimised pages, content with lots of grammatical errors, sites without a specific topical focus and keyword stuffing (refer to [keyword density](/resources/keyword-density-seo/)). ### Google Panda’s history of updates As noted earlier, the Google Panda algorithm was rolled out to target low-quality content sites while rewarding high-quality content sites with higher SEO rankings. The update can also be an opportunity to provide sites that were previously penalised with the chance to recover, should they have resolved previous issues. While most of these updates are minor, Google has occasionally rolled out major updates. It’s important for you to keep up with Panda’s new updates so that you can understand issues and traffic patterns in your website and the SERPs in general, as well as the best practices. ### Is Google’s Panda algorithm still relevant? This is a question that many website owners are asking a lot. When the update was initially rolled out in 2011, the Panda algorithm update rocked the online world. Many website owners and business owners alike were hit with ranking and indexation penalties for breaking Google’s guidelines. Google Panda was Google's first warning shot that they were indeed serious about their war to combat web spam. Fast forward to 2020, Google has been winning this war and many website owners will continue to suffer if they do not toe the line and follow the guidelines set in place by Google. This comes despite the fact that the last Panda update was witnessed in 2016. At the time, Google announced that ***Panda had become a core part of the search engine algorithm*** and that the internet giant would no longer publish the Panda algorithm updates since it had become an important part of the Google search engine. Some may say that Google Panda doesn’t have the same influence that it had on the search engine when it first came out. However, it's important to understand that Google Panda has now completely integrated with Google's core algorithm. That said, Panda is still very relevant in 2020 and will continue to be implemented and is here to stay. ### So how can you make Panda your friend? Although Panda has affected many website owners over the years, there are a lot of things that you can do to make Panda your friend in 2020 and well into the future. In fact, the most comforting takeaway from Google’s decision to make Panda a core part of the search engine algorithm is that there are no major changes to expect in the near future. So if you’re aware of the Panda guidelines and what is expected of you, it’s very unlikely that you’ll run into new problems or issues in the future. Obviously, this is not to say that you have to relax on your laurels and forget about these guidelines and how they can adversely affect your ranking and indexing. You should keep in mind that the Panda algorithm updates are very active and you can’t be very sure about what it will bring in the future. Nonetheless, you can stay on the right side of Panda by doing the following: - **Enforce quality content -** Do not create content that may violate [Panda’s content guidelines](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality). You should avoid duplication, low-quality content, irrelevant content, thin content, auto-generated content, redundant content and content with grammatical errors and poor spelling. You should therefore focus on creating unique and high-quality content. - **Promote positive user experience** - Avoid poor user experience like plague because they can give Google cues that something is wrong with your site. You should avoid things such as poor navigation, slow site speed, excessive ads, 404 errors, excessive links, hidden text and cloaking, keyword stuffing and such things. - **Promote page engagement** - Even though Panda might not be vigorous enough to examine every part of your content for quality, Google can use what they refer to as “user signals” to take issues with what visitors to your website say. For instance, you may be in trouble if visitors do not spend time on your website or if your website's pages have excessively high bounce rates. - **Build trust and confidence** - Trustworthiness, integrity and authority are important factors that Google look at. Therefore, your information should be genuine and trustworthy. You should ensure that your website is secure by incorporating HTTPS encryption, an appropriate privacy policy, genuine contact information, terms and conditions and ensuring that your site has no excessive ads. ### Common Google Panda myths There’s no doubt that Panda blew a lot of websites out of the water. From spammed articles, and keyword-stuffed content to affiliate links buyers, many website owners found themselves on the wrong side of Panda's algorithm updates. As a result, many myths started swirling around and some of them are still in existence. Some of the myths about Panda that you shouldn’t waste your time on include: - **There will be another Panda update soon** –While there were various Panda updates in the past, the last one was rolled out in 2016. Google chose to integrate Panda as a core part of its search engine and has never published another update. In essence, there is most likely no Panda update that will come about anytime soon. You should therefore focus your energy on making your website Panda-friendly by following the already existing guidelines. - **Duplicate content filter is part of Panda** – Even though your website can face a Panda penalty for duplicate content. Panda isn’t solely aimed at duplicate content. In fact, a duplicate content filter and Panda are two separate and independent tools. - **Too much UGC will be penalised** – User-generated content such as guest blog posts used to be and continues to be an important part of the web. So, do not be misled that publishing guest blog posts might attract Panda. All you have to do is to ensure that they’re of high-quality and actually possess information users would want to read. ### How to find out if your website has been affected by Google Panda The two ways that your site can be affected by Google penalties may either be Manual Action or Algorithm Penalty. In most cases, detecting Manual Action penalties is much easier. This is because Google is nice and polite enough to send you a message to notify you about the penalty. Manual penalty notices are issued through Google Search Console. On the other hand, algorithmic penalties are quite hard to detect because Google will not notify you about such penalties. You will have to find them by yourself, or better yet find a reliable [SEO agency](/) or consultant to do it for you. These are 2 ways to determine whether your website may have suffered from a penalty: - **Traffic & ranking drops -** Head into your Google Analytics and take a look at your Google traffic and rankings. If you notice a massive sudden drop in traffic upwards of 75%, this might be an indication that your site has been subjected to a Panda penalty. You should, however, keep in mind that other things such as the rise of competitors, manual penalties and normal seasonal drop in consumer interest might also cause such drops. - **A drop in phone calls & leads** - If you've noticed a severe drop in email leads or phone calls in a short time frame then that may also be a result of a penalty. Most websites generate a large portion of their total traffic through search engines such as Google. If you've noticed a significant decrease in leads and calls, then you may have been impacted. If either of the top two points applies to your situation, then apply the following steps to confirm whether it was Panda: - **Identify** - Check your website stats and jot down all major dates where you've noticed a significant decline in calls, leads or organic traffic. - **Cross-reference** - Google algorithm forecasting tools such as [MozCast](https://moz.com/mozcast/) and Dejan SEO's [Algoroo](https://algoroo.com/) may show big spikes in major SERP changes. Cross-reference this data with your own traffic stats to see whether they align. Additionally, [Moz's Algorithm Change History](https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change) and Search Engine Land's [algorithm update page](https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-algorithm-updates) are also great resources to check whether a new update has rolled out. ### How to recover from a Google Panda penalty We understand, that there is nothing more demoralising than being penalised or losing valuable organic traffic. We have worked with many clients to recover from the Panda penalty and have formed time-test strategies on how to do it effectively. The fact is that recovering from a Panda penalty is difficult. If you haven't properly done your due diligence then you may be wasting time trying to resolve issues that your website hasn't even been affected by. It takes careful planning and expertise to recover from a penalty. Here are just some of the avenues we recommend you look at to successfully recover if your website has been affected by Google Panda: - **Revamp low-quality content pages - **I know this has been said and repeated a thousand times. However, the reality is that Google's ability to detect poor content is getting better and better. Conduct a full audit and update all [content that is considered to be 'decaying'](/resources/content-refresh-decay-seo/). - **Remove any duplicate content - **Just like cutting through the bush with a machete, start slashing away and completely removing any content pages that are duplicated. If the existing URLs have backlinks pointing to them, make sure to implement 301 redirects accordingly. - **Rethink ads and affiliated content** - If you have affiliate links on your website, it's time to reduce them and only promote content that will genuinely provide value to your users. - **Ensure accuracy with page topics **- Scan through your pages and make sure each page's content closely addresses the main topic title. Keep information as targeted as possible. Use subheadings to break similar content into sub-topics. If you find that some subheadings don't warrant their own section, consider sorting them into accordions. Clean up all pages that you think don't meet strict content quality criteria. - **Avoid auto-generated content - **If your website previously accepted guest posts or sponsored posts, it's time to enforce quality control. Remove any content pieces that don't provide any sort of genuine to your users. Moving forward, ensure you have strict publication guidelines in place. By personally reviewing each copy or having an experienced editor in charge of your website, this should generally stomp out low quality. - **Avoid over-optimisation - **Keyword stuffing is a big no-no. Use natural language in your headings and content that capture the idea of your page topic well. Don't stuff keywords, think about what your users are looking to find and craft your content around key terms that will directly address what they're hoping to find. - **Enhance user experience -** The goal here is to improve your website's existing bounce rate. Using best on-page and UX practices, comb through your web pages and ensure things are structured in a way that is both easy to skim and absorb for your users. Without a doubt, the above-the-fold section should be a core focus as this is the section users see first before all else. ### Google Panda: focus on the content experience To this end, it is important for website owners to realise that the Panda algorithm has more to do with enhancing the [user experience through content](/resources/types-of-content/) than the technicalities that are involved in optimising a website for search engines. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that the best way to make your website Panda-friendly and avoid any penalties is by using appropriate means to enhance user experience. In other words, everything that you put on your website should add value to the users in a genuine and honest manner. Remember, doing anything that goes against user experience may jeopardise your website’s indexing and organic ranking, and may leave you vulnerable to very risky Panda penalties. If you've been penalised by Google Panda or think you may have been affected, contact us today and speak to us about our [SEO services](/seo-services/). Our SEO specialists will be able to help you accurately identify what went wrong and formulate an actionable recovery strategy. ### How Artificial Intelligence (AI) is Changing Content Writing URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/artificial-intelligence-content/ Category: Content & Keywords We explore how Artificial Intelligence is going to change Content Writing moving forward. Find out what it will mean for you and your brand. ![AI & Content](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/AI-Content-1-1024x341.png) Since the dawn of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI), we’ve been experiencing groundbreaking leaps and innovations over the past years. AI is changing the digital industry, from video games to the Internet of Things, and most especially, content writing. It won’t come as a surprise since aside from image processing, natural language processing has been the core of several contemporary AI and machine learning research. In this post, we discuss artificial intelligence's current and upcoming applications in content and commercial writing. We will also attempt to answer whether we should consider AI the end of human content writers. ### Will artificial intelligence end content writing careers? Before we dig further into how [AI changes the content writing industry](/resources/ai-content-seo/), let’s get one thing off the table. Is AI going to replace human content writers? The simple answer is no. Of course, not unless we develop an entirely paradigm-shifting machine learning technology. On the other hand, people worry about AI replacing jobs because not everyone understands the current level of machine learning and AI. Besides, almost every AI application today focuses on backpropagation, a concept of supervised learning. That means the program’s output strictly depends on your input. That said, we must reimagine AI before it comes close to human content writing capacities. Currently, industries and consumers prefer backpropagation when developing AI systems. With that, content writers can sleep soundly. By far, AI has specific applications that are changing the shape of content writing, particularly in [content marketing](/resources/content-marketing/). ### Receive fast, streamlined, automated reporting from AI While this section contradicts what we previously said, you must understand that data-serving content differs from informative and insightful content. For instance, businesses and institutions can implement AI to generate financial reports that fill the gaps between figures. Sports events can also use AI to report tallies and score sheets that don’t require a human touch. ### AI will greatly assist with SEO keyword research & topic ideation Preparation takes half of the entire content writing process. That means researching for excellent topics, targeting the right keywords, and everything else that contributes to building great content (an experienced [SEO Sydney agency](/) can help). Besides, research matters more than ever in today’s digital landscape, where everyone is involved with SEO. An excellent example of topic research is [Originality's Free Content Optimizer](https://originality.ai/content-optimizer), an AI-based content platform that elevates topic research to a new level. You specify a topic, and the machine learning algorithm develops content optimization. More than that, artificial intelligence and machine learning are also helpful in simulating search engine behaviours. By doing so, marketers and content writers can see how SEO content changes your decisions and affects the performance of your written content. In a nutshell, you don’t have to wait longer to notice the impact of your SEO strategy, thanks to AI simulations and machine learning. ### AI, leveraging consumer pain points to sharpen up content copies The [AI has gone beyond surface-level spell-checkers](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/everyday-ai-beyond-spell-check-how-google-docs-is-smart-enough-to-correct-grammar) and grammar suggestions. Continuous developments enabled machine-learning writing aids with nearly human-level grammar and comprehensive readability, style, and overall structure. Some AI-based software even offers a customisable approach to every output, pointing out underperforming written content and suggesting how to improve those pain points. ### AI, in all facets of digital marketing, not just content Artificial intelligence stands out when it comes to content segmentation and targeting users with personalised content. One advantage of AI is its capability to crunch big data into insightful results, something that most writers cannot perform efficiently. A perfect example of AI-powered content-targeting applications is [email marketing](https://www.notifyvisitors.com/blog/email-marketing/). Every email marketing resource contributes to better visit rates, click rates, and, most importantly, sales. Besides, it lifts much weight from content writers without completely taking over their jobs. Furthermore, you can train machine learning algorithms for digital marketing, such as automated product recommendations and cart abandonment emails. With that, content writers have these daunting tasks off their hands. Writers have another chance to flex their abilities and essentially attract new customers. ### Stay on top of AI & maximise its benefits when the opportunity arises To summarise, artificial intelligence is still light years away from developing content beyond data reports and backpropagation inputs. Therefore, we are doubtful that machine learning algorithms will replace content writers at any time. Despite that, AI platforms have made groundbreaking frontiers in content writing that have contributed to streamlining digital marketing strategies and personalised user experience. In other words, artificial intelligence is changing content writing for the better. ### Does Google Reviews Benefit SEO URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-reviews-seo/ Category: Local SEO Does more Google Reviews impact SEO? Find out how they relate and whether you should be investing more resources into building up more Google Reviews. ![Google Reviews & SEO](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Google-Reviews-SEO-1024x341.png) It's no surprise that there are a vast amount of different ranking factors that Google looks at when determining a website's SEO rankings. One question that we get asked frequently is, does more Google Reviews help boost SEO rankings? In this article, we'll explore this question and aim to cover all facets that tie Google Reviews and SEO together. ### Do Google Reviews really matter? ![Google Reviews For Businesses](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Google-Reviews-For-Businesses.jpg) When it comes to SEO, most digital marketers would think of major areas such as [link building](/seo-services/link-building/) and content development. Customer reviews get less attention in comparison, but for leading brands and large-scale enterprises, whether local or global, Google reviews can make or break your visitors’ buying decisions. **#2 most important factor when trying to appear in Local Map Pack** Google reviews that include target keywords in Google Business Profile appeared to be the [second-most driving factor](https://www.localseoguide.com/guides/local-seo-ranking-factors/) when determining a local brand’s ranking in *Local Packs*. That said, the only factor that is more significant than Google reviews is your website’s organic ranking. Hence, if your brand has been implementing the best [local SEO](/seo-services/local-seo/) practices and has sustainably achieved high organic rankings among several competitive keywords, then your page will most likely rank on top of Local Packs. But what about businesses that strictly operate in the digital realm? The figures don't stop there, as online surveys imply that highlighting and responding to customer reviews significantly impacts your website’s performance. [Throughout the study](https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/how-do-online-reviews-affect-local-seo/), it was found that organic page views on Google skyrocketed from 5,500 to 8,000 visits a month. ### Google Reviews & SEO: Understanding their relationship Watching your statistics rise is cool, but most brands still have no idea how these numbers and rankings work the way they do. Here are a few straightforward reasons why Google reviews positively impact your rankings: - **Search Engines Trust Consumers More than Websites** More often than not, Google relies on organic signals to determine whether a website deserves compelling rankings. SEO agencies that have been in the industry since day one know how [Google values high authority backlinks](/resources/types-of-backlinks/). For instance, when your eCommerce page gets a link from an authority site (a website with high [domain authority](/resources/domain-authority/)), Google interprets it as a trustworthy endorsement. Hence, they will reward you with an improved online presence. Similarly, when a consumer reviews your services and products, they signal to Google that your business is providing value to its marketplace. Additionally, it also helps future users reinforce their buying decisions. - **Google Loves Reading Websites** Google has an army of crawlers that *reads* your website and understands what your content is all about. And the more information it has to read, the more it will know about your brand. As a result, you want also to ensure that customers are leaving Google Reviews that mention your product or services. Doing so provides Google with fresh information to crawl through, building a wealth of topic relevance. - **Excellent Reviews = More Clicks** People trust reviews as much as word-of-mouth and peer suggestions. So if someone sees plenty of one or two-star reviews on your business, they’d most likely skip to your closest competitor with better reviews. Furthermore, we have been associating SEO rankings with click-through rates since day one, and that’s mostly correct. When many users pick your website from SERPs, Google will know that your site performs excellently, thus rewarding you with better rankings. When you’re gaining better reviews from customers regularly, you’ll most likely experience a boost in Google rankings as a result. ### Leveraging all benefits of Google Reviews to Boost SEO ![Google Maps 5 Star Reviews](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Google-Maps-5-Star-Reviews.webp) Now that you understand how Google reviews impact your ranking, let's discuss why local reviews influence your overall position and why Google cares about it. - **Local Reviews Establish Brand Trust** As discussed, Google trusts what online users say about your brand more than your statements about yourself. You can promote how great your products are as much as you like, but when customers speak about the same opinion, Google trusts it much more than you. Hence, search algorithms reward your online brand with an improved organic presence. - **Excellent Consumer Ratings Bring in More Traffic** From the end-user perspective, online users find Google reviews as turning points for their purchasing decisions. BrightLocal states that [57% of online consumers](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/) will only engage with a business if it has 4-star reviews or more. Hence, putting an effort into earning a solid star rating with compelling reviews will reward you with unparalleled trust and improved traffic to your website. Combining great reviews and a robust organic traffic stream, Google has the signals it needs to identify your brand as authoritative, putting you in a better spot in SERPs. - **Local Reviews Tell Google About Your Content** For Australian brands dominating their niche, having a detailed and in-depth page description is vital for the best SEO practices. Not only do these descriptions help Google crawl and index your site, but they also increase the chances for Google to include your site on SERPs. On the other hand, online consumer reviews do the exact same thing. Local reviews are responsible for letting crawlers determine your site’s content and fill in gaps that your web content might have left. - **Review Content Matters** We already established that reviews with target keywords are among the core SEO factors to index and rank leading brands in Local Packs. That said, securing your name on featured boxes on top of SERPs with mapped locations is possible if you mention: - Target keywords you want to rank Local keywords of the city or neighbourhood your offices are in Moreover, reviews help rank your page across specific keywords, but leveraging Google Q&A at Google Business Profile will let you answer crowdsourced questions from consumers. That way, your answers will show up in SERPs along with product reviews as long as they feature the target keywords. - **Engagement is a Two-Way Street** Engagement matters a lot in search engines and Google Business Profile as much as it does on social platforms. So instead of using social channels to focus on Facebook posts and comments, you can take a step further and encourage users to leave reviews on Google Business Profile. Likewise, you can establish a two-way engagement by responding to customer reviews and inquiries on Google Q&A. Additionally, Google published a [support page](https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en) focused on giving tips to improve your overall Google rankings. Using the guide, large-scale enterprises can learn that interacting with consumers is more effective through review responses within the business website or GMB. Looking at the support page itself, you can imply that responding to your consumers certainly impacts SEO rankings. Besides, the way you respond to negative reviews can turn tides in your favour and have them improve their reviews positively. Research also finds out that [89% of consumers](http://www.meetsoci.com/resource-the-great-conversational-divide/) will change from a negative review to a positive one depending on how the brand responds to their comment. - **Product Reviews Earn Clicks, Clicks Earn Visibility** At this point, you should have an idea that Google Reviews go beyond SEO and towards user experience. Research shows that reviews and product ratings are primary factors that influence people when choosing local brands to convince consumers. In other words, compelling product reviews will earn you more clicks. Consequently, earning more clicks rewards your site with better visibility on Google SERPs. That’s because [Google rewards leading brands with an excellent organic CTR](https://moz.com/blog/does-organic-ctr-impact-seo-rankings-new-data), creating a positive loop. - **Leverage Online Reviews for Better Rankings** As long as you’re implementing the best SEO practices and our business performs well, responding and managing your product reviews shouldn’t consume much of your resources. You can leverage online reviews using many proven and time-tested ways. But one thing that stands out is by incorporating product reviews across your website pages. Depending on your niche, product line, and brand message, there are countless methods to implement this strategy, and it varies among brands. What counts is that you can tie your site to relevant product reviews, acquire new ones, and propel trust among your target and potential consumers. ### Using Google Reviews together with SEO, it's a no-brainer! Google Reviews provides huge amounts of benefits to your SEO strategy – in many ways than one. Maintaining a solid star review rating will fortify your footing above your competition and put your brand into the spotlight to naturally attract more organic traffic. Ultimately, how effectively you're able to leverage Google Reviews, all boils down to how you incorporate it into your existing SEO strategy. That said, adopting the best practices for SEO is more attainable with a time-tested [Sydney SEO agency](/) to back you up. Long-term design objectives can be achieved through relevant data and a best-in-class SEO Strategy. At Red Search, our SEO specialists provide results-focused and data-driven [SEO services](/seo-services/) to secure and sustain your rank on the first page of SERPs. For your questions and enquiries, call our SEO experts at 1300 101 712 or drop a message in our [contact form](/contact/).˙ ### Internal Links & SEO: Why They’re Important URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/internal-links/ Category: Link Building Internal links are any links you put on your content that connects to a different page inside your website or domain name. Links are vital to improving SEO. Google uses links to determine which pages are the most valuable in its bid to rank them appropriately. Internal links are crucial for every website as they help connect your content and are beneficial in establishing your website structure for indexing. So when it comes to SEO, internal links establish your site hierarchy, giving crawlers an idea about which pages are more valuable than other content. Hence, streamlining your site's internal linking strategy should improve your SEO and prepare you to dominate your digital niche. But before delving deeper into the importance of internal links, let’s first define them and how to create them. ### What Are Internal Links? Internal links are links within your content that connect to different pages within the same domain. Users navigate to find relevant pages through internal links. In other words, without internal links, your users are pretty much stuck on one page, unable to engage with the rest of your content. Besides, search crawlers navigate through sites using internal links. If you’re not using links to stitch your content together strategically, you’re losing your crawl budget, as crawlers wouldn’t find other pages to index and rank. Internal links also come in different types, depending on their placement and purpose. These include your homepage, blog feed, navigation menu, and links within your content that point to your other blog posts. We call internal links found within blog posts *contextual links*. Contextual links tell search crawlers what your content is about and point users to related content to drive traffic to other areas of your site. Thus, the more links you put on significant pages, the more valuable they become for search engines. Hence, internal links are vital for SEO. ![Link to important pages](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/link-to-important-pages.png) *Source: [Backlinko](https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/internal-links)* ### How to Create an Internal Link At this point, you should understand how auditing and improving internal links impact your overall SEO efforts. Also, streamlining useful internal links throughout your sites should help Google understand: - Page relevance - Structure and connection between pages - Content value and authority In setting up your internal link building, you must first outline your brand goals and consider other factors that can affect how you establish your links. - **Outline Your Brand Structure and Goals** You must organise your internal links and website structure correctly. Put your landing page links at the top, followed by subsections and categories, which will break further into different blog posts and web pages. - **Highlight Your Most Significant Content** After organising your link hierarchy, it’s time to highlight your cornerstone content. Your most important content should include the core information about your brand and products. You’ll want these pages to rank high on SERPs, so we recommend pointing many internal links to it. - **Include Contextual Links** We already discussed contextual links, so you should already know how vital they are in curbing your limited crawl budget to your favour. Contextual links help Google and your visitors understand your content and check out relevant articles. To do so, you’ll need to link your cornerstone content to individual pages. - **Build Links to Hierarchical or Categorical Pages** If your website follows a hierarchical structure, don’t forget to link parent pages to their corresponding child pages and vice versa. Linking pages to their proper hierarchies should allow for a well-structured site where every page makes sense with one another, and no content will seem misplaced or unnecessary. ![Add Internal Links to Categories and Pages](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/add-internal-links-to-pages-or-categories-to-improve-indexing.webp) - **Link Related Posts to One Another** Depending on your CMS or site builder platform, you can integrate a related post section among different sections in your posts. Besides, you can opt for an automated linking plugin or manually curate relevant content yourself. - **Utilise Navigational Links** While linking contextualised links benefits your [link building](/seo-services/link-building/), you can also improve your primary content’s authority by adding homepage links to your navigation bar. Utilising navigational links is crucial for businesses with multiple product categories or subpages. That’s because users wouldn’t lose their path and can easily circumvent back to the homepage. Besides, it also helps search crawlers understand your site hierarchy. - **Add Taxonomic Links** In addition to utilising a navigation bar, you can also organise your website content using taxonomies. Taxonomic links can be category or tag links that tell search crawlers about your content. For instance, if you manage a successful blog site, you can benefit from adding internal links to a particular post’s corresponding taxonomy. This will improve users' navigation and contribute to a better UX. - **Add Popular and Recent Post Links** You’ll want to drive more traffic and crawl the budget to your site’s most popular and latest posts. That’s why we recommend adding popular and recent post internal links on your site’s footers or sidebars. Adding a popular and recent post section for every page should distribute link value throughout your site. Plus, driving traffic across your site than focusing on a single page is a positive indicator for Google. ### Why Internal Links are Important? Unlike external links, internal links are under your absolute control as the webmaster or site owner. Thus, you can streamline exceptional internal linking strategies to drive users and search crawlers to your cornerstone pages. **Site Structure and Relationships Between Content** Google bots also scour through your site by following its internal links, rendering your homepage before proceeding to the first link it finds. In doing so, crawlers can understand your general hierarchy and figure out relationships among different content pieces so they can index your site on relevant keywords that most of your content covers. **Link Value** Besides helping crawlers understand your site structure, you can also use internal linking to distribute link value evenly on your site. More often than not, your landing page receives the most link value as it has most of the backlinks. But with internal link building, you will share that link value across all links you’ve put on your homepage. In other words, featuring your latest posts and popular content on your homepage lets Google find them quicker than digging them deep into your category pages. ### How Do Internal Links Work with SEO? As discussed, Google crawlers determine your site content through various elements, including internal linking. Hence, if a post doesn’t have links anywhere on your site, then search crawlers won’t know it exists in the first place – assuming the content isn’t [in your sitemap](/resources/xml-sitemap-seo/). Moreover, search engines continuously scour your site for new pages to index. Crawlers would identify other pages as they would have crawled those pages before, but they would only discover new content when you link them to a previously known page. Establishing robust internal linking also benefits your inner pages' authority, which is critical for large-scale businesses. You should also take internal linking seriously, especially if you want to optimise for search. ![Internal linking from high quality pages](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/links-from-high-quality-pages.webp) ### Best Practices in Internal Link Building for SEO in 2020 - **Create Lots of Quality Content** You’ll first need many internal pages to create sustainable and useful internal links. But to develop a practical internal link building strategy, you’ll first need quality linkable content. And we mean lots of them because the more links your site has, the more robust your link building becomes. - **Link Sites Using Anchor Text** Nobody wants to read cluttered pieces of content online, especially long URL strings. To keep your content intact while implementing internal links, consider using anchor texts rather than image links or typing in the URLs. - **Avoid Linking to Category Pages** When linking your content together, make sure to avoid general pages such as category pages on your site. That’s because these pages already have links in your navigation bar, which you can find on every page. In other words, you should establish internal links deep within your website’s structure, usually the content pages and blog posts. - **Use Natural Anchor Text Links** When linking your pages internally, you need to consider a consumer-centric approach. That means the link value you are spreading throughout your site comes second to providing quality content to your visitors. - **Use Relevant Links** Internal linking isn’t all anchor texts and navigation links, but it’s still less meticulous than most webmasters think. Despite that, you still need to consider your users when linking. Make sure that you’re linking to relevant content and isn’t linking for its own sake. - **Keep Your Internal Links at a Reasonable Number** While we mentioned that more quality links are beneficial for your SEO, you should avoid spamming your pages with internal content. Besides, [Google made it clear](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en) that you only have to keep your links as many as they would be helpful for your online users. ### Conclusion Internal linking has a lot more to do with SEO and user experience than meets the eye. Implementing it also takes less effort and can be less complicated than other backend SEO strategies. What counts is keeping your users and crawlers in mind when developing an internal link building strategy. Consistency is still key, and that also means developing compelling content and [SEO strategy](/seo-services/) every time. Designing and streamlining an actionable SEO strategy is possible with an award-winning SEO agency in Sydney. With up-to-date information and a best-in-class SEO Strategy, you can achieve your long-term objectives with Red Search. At Red Search, our [Sydney SEO agency](/) houses business- and results-focused experts. We're proactive in ensuring our goals align with yours to create a mutually beneficial long-term partnership. We're the experts to call if you need help with your SEO. For your questions and enquiries, feel free to call our SEO experts at 1300 101 712 and drop a message in our [contact form](/contact/). ### Plural & Singular Keywords in SEO URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/plural-singular-keywords/ Category: Content & Keywords We dissect Google’s interpretation of plural and singular keywords as well as their impact on search engine optimisation. If you have been targeting plural and singular keywords for a while, you would have noticed that Google indexes them differently, implying that their differences could impact your SEO. In a Google Webmaster Office-hours Hangout session on June 26th, [John Mueller pointed out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zASRtpEkQio&feature=youtu.be&t=500) why Google crawlers and its search engine index and rank closely-related words uniquely. For instance, let’s say you run an electrical business that provides 24-hour electrician services in Sydney. You’ll want to rank on Google for *24 hour electrician* and *24-hour electricians*. But for whatever reason, you’ll notice a drastic difference in your rankings between the two keywords, where your site performs entirely differently for each term. To fully understand their difference, we need to discuss the root of the situation. First, it all boils down to simulating and satisfying a [user’s search intent](/resources/search-intent-seo/). With that, we dissect Google’s interpretation of plural and singular keywords as well as their impact on search engine optimisation. ### Google’s Definition of Plural and Singular Keywords During the Google Webmaster Hangouts session, John Mueller answered an interview question surrounding the difference in ranking singular and plural keywords. Mueller highlighted that Google might interpret singular and plural keywords as different search intents, explaining why you would get a unique SERP for each term. Hence, just because a keyword is singular or plural doesn’t mean they fall under the same query. It’s also possible that SEO specialists and webmasters see both keywords as different elements, depending on their frames of reference. Besides, Google simulates user intent on its SERPs, so the keywords likely have other search intent from the user-end. That said, you should not essentially assume that search crawlers and Google will always consider plural and singular keywords as close synonyms and display similar search results for both versions. Check out the full video below - we have started the video at the timestamp where Mueller addresses the guest's question around plural and singular keywords. ### Keywords & SEO As stated, search intent can differ between synonyms, including the plural and singular keywords, regardless of your target topic and brand niche. Hence, you cannot assume that singular and plural keywords point to the same search results nor generalise that both keywords mean the same. Instead, we can say that singular and plural keywords have differences in their variations. However, these intents will vary depending on use, topic, and niche. Repeating what Mueller stated on their Webmaster Hangout, Google sees singular and plural keywords as different elements and unique search intent from the users’ side. For instance, if you’re an optical brand, user intent regarding eyeglass-related keywords might differ between singular and plural terms. Google might show definitions for the term "eyeglass" and product sites for "eyeglasses". Motorcycle gear also follows the same pattern. If you're a gear retailer, someone typing motorcycle helmet is often still deciding, weighing full-face against open-face, working out how sizing and fitment actually work, or checking what the Australian standard requires before they commit to anything. Someone typing "motorcycle helmets" has generally moved past that and wants a range in front of them to compare and buy from. That's why the plural tends to return retailer category pages, while the singular mixes those results with definitions and buying guides. The lesson carries directly into your site architecture: a retailer like Bikebiz should be targeting the plural on its [motorcycle helmets category page](https://www.bikebiz.com.au/road-gear/road-helmets), where visitors can filter by brand, type and size, and reserve the singular for supporting articles on helmet types, fitment and safety ratings that link back into it. ### Plural Or Singular Keywords: Which Should You Use? Since you already know that Google interprets singular and plural keywords to be relevant to various search queries, you might stumble upon the question of whether to use plural or singular keywords for your content. Here are some differences between singular and plural keyword intent: - People often use singular keywords for informative search queries, recommendations, or broad topics about a particular subject. - People would use plural keywords when searching for product, website, or service comparisons, including intents, to buy a product. As a result, you need to focus on your users’ intent when conducting keyword research. Going back to the eyeglass example, you can target the *eyeglasses* keyword more frequently for your product pages and category pages. Then you could focus on the keyword *eyeglass* for your blog post and informative articles about the product and its features. ### Why Singular and Plural Keywords Rank Differently Google’s algorithm updates made it more refined and advanced to [satisfy user search intent better](https://www.brightedge.com/blog/why-user-intent-is-the-cornerstone-of-modern-seo). By learning to deliver the best user experience possible, Google remembers and anticipates user behaviour when typing in every search query. Therefore, if you’re looking to rank better on your target keywords, you must consider how users will use Google and other search engines to look for and engage with your content. As stated, singular keywords are mostly for informative search intent, while plural keywords point to product search intent. That’s why you would get different search results when typing in both terms, as Google sees them differently. ### How to Optimise Your Page with Plural and Singular Keywords Keep in mind that search engines use [latent semantic indexing keywords](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-latent-semantic-indexing-why-does-it-matter-for-your-seo-strategy) and synonyms to provide relevant and accurate search results. However, the case for singular and plural keyword variants is different, as user intent is crucial when choosing to target one word or the other. If you want search engines to rank you on the right keywords accurately, make sure that you understand the user intent and create compelling content that’s relevant to that search behaviour. ### Keyword Mistakes You Should Avoid - **Executing keyword research poorly** Implementing thorough keyword research for large-scale websites can be daunting, and many people tend to skip this time-consuming process. More often than not, this would lead to poor-quality content stuffed with keywords that won’t drive sales and doesn’t satisfy user intent. Regardless of your niche and website scale, you need to take the time to dive into your audience’s language. Don’t assume that you already know which words are the most useful, as your audience and trends may change on a whim, including your brand focus and priorities. - **Focusing on irrelevant keywords** Leading brands that target several keywords often have competitive niches, making it challenging to rank better. With that, you should only focus on keywords that matter and are impactful for your content. Avoid aiming for unrealistic keywords and gear up your keyword research for long-tail keywords. Instead of [creating content](/resources/types-of-content/) for general keywords, look for unique or specific terms in your brand and work on ranking them as part of your long-term keyword research strategy. - **Neglecting user search intent** We’ve discussed the impact of search intent when ranking singular and plural keywords. With that, you should ensure that you know the search intent behind every search keyword you target. People might look for information about your site or its products, or shop online and purchase something from your website. And because search engines are attempting to simulate these intents to come up with accurate results, content that doesn’t correspond to user intent won’t rank on SERPs, no matter how compelling it is. - **Focusing on fewer keywords in your content** If you’re writing content that’s [long enough to rank better](/resources/best-word-count-seo/) (roughly 1500 words), it might share ranking opportunities to multiple keyphrases and semantic terms as well. Therefore, if your content can rank for long-tail key phrases, then you should avoid focusing on one or two keywords for every post. - **Ignoring singular and plural keyword differences** More often than not, people who write long-tail keywords tend to target singular and plural terms altogether. Since Google recognises that singular and plural search queries have unique search intents, you wouldn’t want to appear on a search results page that you’re not focusing on rank. To avoid losing organic traffic and site reputation on specific keywords, always put user intent above your keyword research and target tense-specific keywords. Regardless of whether you should focus on singular or plural terms, make sure that you’re using them according to their intent. - **Failing to audit and evaluate** Your strategy doesn’t end the moment you published your content live. If you want to make sure you’re on the right track, you have to audit and evaluate your metrics and performance regularly. One way of doing that is by monitoring organic traffic on your page through Google Analytics. Another is by conducting a Google search in a private browser with no personalised search. Failing to do so is like turning a blind eye to your efforts, leaving you and your team clueless about whether you should focus on less competitive search terms or long-tail keyword variants. ### Conclusion While it takes a single letter to draw the line between plural and singular keywords, their impacts on SEO can be drastic and unique. That said, knowing when to use each term can unlock several opportunities for you to boost your SEO strategy and potentially rank your site on top of Google SERPs. The impact of singular and plural keywords in SEO all boils down to user search intent. Hence, learning your audience’s language and knowing what keywords they use should help you drive traffic and sales on your site. Designing and streamlining a scalable SEO campaign is also possible with a reliable [SEO agency in Sydney](/). With the latest information and a best-in-class [SEO services](/seo-services/), you can achieve your long-term objectives with Red Search. At Red Search, our experienced and passionate team of search experts uses results-focused and data-driven SEO strategy to secure and maintain your rank on the first page of SERPs. For your questions and enquiries, feel free to call our SEO experts at 1300 101 712 and drop a message in our [contact form](/contact/). ### NoFollow Links: Everything You Need To Know URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/nofollow-links/ Category: Link Building In this guide, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about nofollow links and how to best use them. Nofollow links have been part of HTML programming and link building for more than a decade. Tags like rel=”nofollow” are also among the most basic yet critical HTML tags that shape your overall SEO strategy. Furthermore, using nofollow links in the right places and lines in your code should level up your site’s capacity for search engine ranking and optimisation. In this guide, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about nofollow links and how to best use them. First off, let’s talk about the basics of nofollow links. ### Nofollow Links, What Are They? In HTML, nofollows are relationship attributes denoted by . As such, rel attributes define the relationship between the current page and a linked content or webpage. For instance, you can use a basic nofollow link as such: *thisproduct type*. Marking a link with the above rel attribute will [instruct crawlers](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en) not to pass through PageRank, as stated in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. But keep in mind that the nofollow function will only work with the link you’ve inserted it on. Former Google software engineer Matt Cutts also stated that [sculpting your PageRank](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/) using nofollow does not have any major impacts. ### How to Check for NoFollow Links You can check a link for a nofollow attribute by following the steps below. - Right-click on your browser window with your website opened, then click *View page source*. - Next, find the link you want to check in the page’s HTML code. - If you found the link with a *rel=”nofollow”* attribute in its string, then that particular link is nofollow’ed. Otherwise, the link has a *dofollow* attribute by default. - Alternatively, you can install nofollow browser extensions and plugins that outline nofollow links. ### Different Types of NoFollow Links It’s a no-brainer that all links with nofollow attributes are nofollow links. However, there's a rule of thumb for inbound links that tend to be nofollow: - Social media links - Forum post and comment links - Links from user-generated content (UGC) - Blog posts and news sites - Widget links - Links in press releases - Paid links Furthermore, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines highlight that any paid links you link to your content should [have a nofollow attribute](https://youtu.be/1SmlsfSqmOw). Otherwise, it could end up [hurting your PageRank](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en) and overall search ranking. ### Do NoFollow Links Help with SEO? At this point, you should know about nofollow links and their impact on SEO. To reinforce our point, let’s recap Google’s actions on nofollow links: - PageRank won’t flow on nofollow links. - Google ignores all associations between your site and your linked site In short, Google doesn’t follow links attributed to nofollow. However, nobody knows whether or not Google transfers a little amount of PageRank to some nofollow links. Regardless, a [study on the correlation between Google ranking](https://ahrefs.com/blog/links-with-traffic-study/) and several backlink attributes found that the relationship between SERP ranking and dofollow links is lower than that of the total backlinks and SERP ranking. Take it with a pinch of salt, as the study hasn’t focused on the direct impact of nofollow or dofollow links on SEO. But from what we know, nofollow links indirectly affect your SEO strategy because: - **Nofollow Links diversify your link profile** An effective site has a diverse set of natural backlink profiles. That means different links should have attributes like dofollow and nofollow. Whether you like it or not, other sites will link to your content via nofollow links. Also, a website with a noticeably higher percentage of dofollow links than nofollow tells search crawlers that something fishy is going on. - **Nofollow Links drive traffic, and traffic drives followed links** While SEO isn’t the primary goal of leveraging nofollow links, you can use them to drive referral traffic to your site. Besides, nofollow links from other sites expand your brand influence. When another site links to yours, people will more likely: - Find your content - Engage with your content - Recommend your product/page to others via links or word of mouth In short, nofollow links don’t help with ranking higher, but they have the sheer potential to drive more audience to your site and increase your followed links. - **Nofollow Links provide peace of mind against link penalties** Paying for sponsored posts on an authoritative website makes sense. Also, investing in a feature article might tempt you to insert a backlink for readers to visit your website. But as stated, Google flags this practice against their Webmaster Guidelines. And if paying for links results in a manual penalty from Google’s webspam team, then all your efforts won’t be worth it. Plus, that’s one less competitor for leading brands to rank on SERPs. Additionally, [Authority Hacker ran a study](https://www.authorityhacker.com/link-building-survey/) where they asked 750+ link builders whether nofollow links had an impact on search rankings. Their research found that **89.1% of link builders** think that nofollow links still have a positive search impact. ![Nofollow links](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Nofollow-links.png) ### Audit Your Site for Nofollow-related Issues Keeping a couple of dofollow backlinks and outbound links that raise a flag against the Webmaster Guidelines can pose a threat to your site. Additionally, Google can also flag internal nofollow links as spammy or detrimental to your SEO. That’s why you might need to run a quick on-site audit to determine and fix any nofollow-related issues you find. #### 1. Remove follow links With exact-match anchors More often than not, websites minimise using keyword-rich anchor texts when building links to your site. Identify and eliminate any exact-match anchors that can be signs of backlink manipulation. Here are a few examples and guidelines to consider when dealing with various outbound and exact-match links: #### 2. Paid links on low-quality sites Ask the webmaster to remove or nofollow the link. Disclaim or retract the page or domain if you receive no response from them. #### 3. Bio links on guest posts If you used keyword-rich anchor texts on a guest post bio link, you could ask the editor in charge to change the keyword link into a branded link. Otherwise, you can ask them to nofollow the link if they want to keep it. #### 4. Widget links If you find dofollow links on your site widget, change its HTML rel attribute to nofollow. Consequently, ask those who have embedded your widget on their sites to nofollow the widget link. #### 5. Sitewide links For internal or sitewide links, you can change it to nofollow or swap with a branded anchor link. But keep in mind that exact-match followed links can also occur naturally and in compliance with Google’s guidelines. In short, auditing your links means investigating them in-depth before making any decisions, as it could be more detrimental than beneficial to your website if you fail to do so. #### 6. Look for followed sponsored links To reiterate once again, you should nofollow any backlinks from sponsored posts and paid links. That’s because paid links shouldn’t earn PageRank points. So if you find one on your site, you can reach out to the editor and ask them to nofollow any followed sponsored links. #### 7. Identify keyword-rich followed outgoing links on your site If you’ve previously accepted guest posts or user-generated content, then you might have encountered followed outgoing links. High [domain authority (DA)](/resources/domain-authority/) sites also found out that many guest contributors sell followed links in their articles. And with the massive scale of all links across all posts, brands decided to flip the switch and completely nofollow all outbound links. #### 8. Determine followed sponsored links on your website If you accept sponsored posts on your site, you need to ensure that you set the link’s rel attribute to nofollow. But if you’re not sure, here’s how you can check it: - Run a Google search with the query *site:websitename.com “sponsored post”*. From the search results, click each link and determine the sponsored link. - After finding the link you need, install the nofollow Chrome extension to find all nofollowed links on the page easily. - If the link you want has no highlights or outlines, then it’s probably followed. You can confirm this by right-clicking, selecting *Inspect Element*, then finding the *rel=”nofollow”* tag. #### 9. Identify nofollow internal links on your site As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t nofollow a link unless they redirect to pages that you don’t want to index. Hence, if you spot any nofollow'd link internally, try to find where these links come from and see if there’s an apparent reason to nofollow the link. Otherwise, you can remove the nofollow tag to turn the link into followed. By following the above steps, you should be able to conduct an entry-level yet efficient on-site audit for nofollow links. ### Summary Despite the long age and history of nofollow links, there isn’t much about their direct impact on SEO. Even so, its purpose and contribution as an essential HTML tag make it a vital component of a competitive and effective SEO strategy. There is much to learn about nofollow links and how to use them properly. What’s more intimidating is developing an effective [link building](/seo-services/link-building/) strategy that drives sustainable traffic to your site. Designing and streamlining an actionable and bespoke SEO strategy can be possible with a reliable [Sydney SEO agency](/). With the latest information and a best-in-class SEO Strategy, you can realise your long-term brand objectives with Red Search. At Red Search, our passionate and determined team of search experts uses a results-focused and data-driven SEO strategy to secure and maintain your spot on the first page of SERPs. For your questions and enquiries, feel free to call our SEO experts at 1300 101 712 and drop a message in our [contact form](/contact/). ### What Is Google Business Profile & How It Affects SEO URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-my-business-seo/ Category: Local SEO Find out why Google My Business is crucial to your business' success and how it impacts SEO. Active consumer interaction is among the critical factors in successful marketing for business enterprises and leading brands. That’s why Australia’s industry giants are closely competing for the first page in Google SERPs, as most of the internet's traffic only flows within the first ten results. Besides, brands with minimal customer exposure won’t have an opportunity to drive more sales and traffic. Along those lines, statistics show that roughly [44% of businesses](/resources/local-seo-statistics-australia/) signed up for their Google Business Profile listing, giving them an advantage over competitors. It’s almost a no-brainer for all businesses to sign up for local and international business directories. But if you’re among those who left this option out of the question, this good read is for you. ### What is Google Business Profile? ![Google Business Profile](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Google-Business-Profile-1.png) [Google Business Profile](https://www.google.com/business/) is more than a business listing platform. The platform also qualifies as an SEO management system to benefit Google’s many different services and its core offering, Google Search. Additionally, leveraging Google Business Profile can be a turning point in driving your products' marketability and reinforcing your brand impression on Google. To get started with Google Business Profile, one first has to sign up to obtain a My Business account. After doing so, you’ll gain new opportunities to expand your business, like displaying opening hours on Google Maps and including photos for local packs and search results. Also, you can display consumer ratings, interact with them, and answer frequently asked questions within the Google Business Profile platform. That way, you have another channel to engage with consumers and anticipate market trends through reviews and consumer feedback. In other words, a Google Business Profile not only connects sellers to their customers but also enhances business visibility on Google. ### Importance of Google Business Profile ![Google Business Profile Posts](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Google-Business-Profile-Posts.png) SMBs and large-scale businesses must sign up for a Google Business Profile account to gear up and reinforce their website’s SEO (combining [Google Maps exposure with SEO](/resources/google-maps-local-seo/)) in varying ways. It greatly benefits customer interaction, business marketing, and SEO improvement. Sites that do not sign up for Google Business Profile are at a disadvantage compared to those that do. Building a better and smoother interaction flow with the viewers makes your business’ reputation sturdier. Google Business Profile is an essential website for businesses and websites to use to improve their services, audience interaction, and organic exposure. ### How Google Business Profile Affects SEO As a business directory, Google Business Profile lets your website appear whenever users search specific keywords online. The level of visibility of sites is crucial in business to overtake other competitors and attract much-needed customers. Understanding this relationship, the following will discuss how Google Business Profile significantly contributes to and impacts a website's SEO. #### 1. Prominence Boosts Competence As the world progresses to modernisation, eCommerce is becoming a prevalent and dominant channel for leading brands. Besides, 62% of people around the globe now have access to the internet. Moreover, marketing evolved with the upward trend and conquered the internet for a seamless and convenient user shopping experience. To optimise and take advantage of upcoming trends, businesses must adapt by leveraging Google Business Profile to access its potential to gain more revenue. That way, you can improve your online activity and [customer engagement](https://blog.xoxoday.com/customer-engagement-strategy/) to compete closely with tough competitors in the top ranks of search engines. By including Google Business Profile as part of your overall SEO strategy, or [local SEO strategy](/seo-services/local-seo/), you can supercharge your website’s prominence to garner more customers and surpass other competitors. #### 2. Business Verification Equates to Customer Assurance It is undeniable that online marketing can be tricky in earning your consumer’s trust in your products and services. Your audience's confusion and doubt could be most likely about the prevalence of scams and fake news articles, impacting your niche's legitimacy and reliability. To overcome this dilemma, Google Business Profile can improve your trust image and security verification. That’s because the platform requires accurate and factual information from your brand to guarantee your credibility and authenticity. After that, you can display your Google Business Profile Guarantee Badge, so your audience immediately knows you’re serious about your business. Online customers or searchers trust and open sites registered and backed by Google Business Profile, establishing a site’s verification and reliability. #### 3. Allows Viewers’ Trend Analysation For digital marketing, in-depth analysis and understanding of your customers’ behaviour help you reinforce the best marketing strategies and conceptualise better content. With that, Google Business Profile gives you relevant insights from your audiences, such as their locality, common interest, questions, and opportunities for keyword research. Google Business Profile also lets large-scale enterprises reassess existing marketing plans and techniques so you can improve your SEO to match your customers’ interest, attract more visitors, and increase online prominence. #### 4. Positive Reviews, Positive Revenue ![Google Business Profile Features](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Google-Business-Profile-Features.png) Excellent [reviews and positive consumer feedback](/resources/how-to-get-more-google-reviews/) on your Google Business Profile page increase your site’s relevance and credibility. As a result, it creates a ripple effect that, in turn, drives more visitors to your site. Google makes use of reviews and feedback in generating search outcomes as the basis of the site’s reliability to [satisfy a user’s queries](/resources/search-intent-seo/). Using these insights, you can improve your SEO and effectively secure a higher spot in the rankings. That is why potential customers interested in products and services in your niche will have better chances of finding your site first than other competitors. In other words, you can build trust from positive reviews, leaving a positive impression on potential clients, which ensures them a safe and successful transaction. If you have invested time into earning Google reviews only to have them disappear, find out more through this article we published - [why my Google reviews are disappearing?](/resources/google-reviews-missing-disappear/) #### 5. Enhanced Organic Exposure In constructing your Google Business Profile page, don’t forget to attach your website link and other channels for users to engage in your site. When users visit and read your Google Business Profile page, you have to ensure that they will be interested enough in the description of your site and your Google Business Profile posts. This piqued the interest of the viewers and will then lead them to your website using the link included in your Google Business Profile page. More customers exploring your site will help improve our website's SEO and subsequently enhance your website's organic exposure in search engines. ### Harmonising Your Market Strategy with the Internet Demand Optimises SEO Google Business Profile helps enhance your website's SEO by listing it to reputable Australian business directories, improving site reliability, and increasing the site's organic exposure. You must always maintain a high ranking of your site’s online visibility on search engines because online users tend to visit only the top ten results for most search queries. Marketing your site digitally and competing with hundreds of thousands of well-known brands can be challenging, even for expansive and large-scale enterprises. However, by using the right channels and investing in the best SEO practices to attract customers, it will become easier for you to surpass other businesses and establish your reputation. ### Conclusion Rest assured that your website will be the next talk of the town if you incorporate all of these useful marketing strategies online. Additionally, ensure you implement and focus on the best SEO practices to harness all your resources and mobilise them to secure the top spot in Google SERPs. Furthermore, do not forget to constantly update and include all useful information about your website for a higher possibility of matching keyword searches. Continue to thrive in harvesting and nurturing more positive remarks and feedback about your site’s service and other important factors to persuade potential customers. Always remember that Google Business Profile can support you in enhancing your site’s SEO for a better, if not the best, marketing strategy for your websites and businesses. For your questions and enquiries, call our [SEO Sydney experts](/) at 1300 101 712 or drop a message in our contact for Written by ### 12 Killer Ways to Speed Up Your Website & Improve SEO URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/page-speed-seo/ Category: SEO Guides Learn about 12 killer ways to speed up your website to improve your SEO in 2021. Large-scale brands and enterprises must leverage every second of their ongoing marketing strategy in today's competitive digital landscapes. Consumers also want to access relevant information and answers to their queries instantaneously. That said, Google points out that even a second delay negatively impacts your overall mobile conversions by as [much as 20%](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-site-speed-tools/). Since Google began considering mobile page speed as a [ranking factor](https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html), digital brands continuously leverage mobile traffic to rank in SERPs and user conversion. Along those lines, here are 12 ways to speed up your website to improve your SEO in 2021. ### Page Speed and Insights Before you tweak anything on your website, it’s crucial to determine and isolate any weak spots. With that, testing your site through [Google’s PageSpeed Insights](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/) tool should be ideal as a first step. In the tool's Speed tab, you can also get real-time and relevant insights from PageSpeed Insights and the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX). From the CrUX report, you can get actionable insights that you can use further to optimise your website for fast and seamless UX. While PageSpeed insights now incorporate [Lighthouse](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2018/11/pagespeed-insights-now-powered-by) as a parameter other than CrUX, it still holds similar optimisation score rules that Google uses as ranking factors. It’s safe to say that page speed doesn’t closely correlate with page ranking in SERPs. However, Google’s quest to provide accurate information on the fly prioritises page speed on top of technical optimisation. ### Basic Speed Statistics You Should Know Here are some relevant facts and figures to supercharge your page speed in 2021: - A mobile site loads 87.8% longer than its desktop version - Roughly 50% of mobile users expect a page to load faster than 2 seconds - About 40% of users won’t engage with a site that loads images too long - Users with a negative mobile experience are [62% less likely](https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-site-speed-tools/) to return and buy on your site - 70% of websites that rank in Google SERPs already shifted to mobile devices Read on here for more [SEO statistics and facts](/resources/local-seo-statistics-australia/). ### What is PageSpeed Optimisation Score? When running your site in PageSpeed, getting a score over 80 points implies a fast and well-optimised website. But if you’re getting a much lower result, it’s wise to take a few steps and improve your overall PageSpeed optimisation score. Besides, optimising your site for speed improves its chances of ranking as this technical factor indirectly influences rankings. PageSpeed Insights is a reliable tool for speed because it analyses your site’s health and gives you a few key areas to improve. ### Optimisation for PageSpeed Insights Since page speed is among Google’s crucial ranking factors, its core ranking algorithm counts site speed as one of the signals to rank websites in search results. That said, you need to consider the time it takes to load the first byte, including other factors, to maximise Google’s crawl budget and positively impact your SEO strategy. In other words, a slow page will: - Yield fewer crawled pages - Negatively affect UX, thereby increasing bounce rates - Be detrimental to your site indexing Along those lines, here are a few speed optimisation factors to monitor. ### Speed Optimisation Factors You Should Focus On #### Time To First Byte (TTFB) One way for Google to measure site speed is by how long a browser receives your website’s first byte of data or information straight from your dedicated server. The search community refers to this metric as the time to the first byte. In Google PageSpeed, the tool measures data from CrUX relevant to TTFB, such as DOM Content Loaded (DCL) and First Content Paint (FCP). #### Web Hosting More often than not, most webmasters would kick off into optimising on-page elements such as java scripts and web design elements. But only a few brands look outside the box and find out the real issue, their web hosting service provider. Your web host provider is crucial in determining how fast your website loads. That said, relying on a poor hosting service will be detrimental for your brand and may cost you significant amounts of loss in revenue, aside from negative search rankings. #### Unnecessary Plugins When using WordPress as your CMS, you might notice that you can toggle plugins on or off to activate and deactivate them respectively. This feature is useful for users who want to keep their plugins dormant before deciding to use them. Keeping unwanted plugins dormant and unused will add to your website’s dead weight. Removing unnecessary plugins from slowing your website down is the best way to prevent them. To start, here are a few pointers to remember when it comes to site plugins: - Make sure to install essential plugins only. - Delete leftover files and minified CSS/JS after deleting a website plugin - If you have an inactive plugin for over a few months, consider deleting it from your site. - Only keep updated and compatible plugins in your site. #### Keep Your Website Code Clean When optimising page speed, your website’s technical backend is as vital as its frontend, writing clean code and optimising existing HTML code is a job for web design and SEO experts. Organising your website code ensures that all processes and navigation are smooth and seamless. Some aspects to consider when developing your website code are: - Dynamic caching - Keeping a child theme file than tampering the parent theme files - Minifying CSS and JS files #### Utilising Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) Large-scale brands and enterprises should understand the influence of geographic proximity in site loading speed. With that, content distribution or delivery networks shorten the time to completely load your page content, regardless of a user’s distance from a web server. When you want to rank on a broader scale, your users’ distance from your web server has an opposite correlation to how fast they’ll access your content. CDNs host your site through the cloud to combat that limitation while letting local servers accommodate your nearest clients. That way, you can ensure that users worldwide can access and navigate your site as quickly as possible. Besides that, content distribution networks use caching to trim out some hosting bandwidth and deliver seamless content. ### Killer Strategies to Increase Page Speed At this point, you should have a good idea about the impacts of page speed for user experience and search ranking. But sometimes, you could use a few insights from industry experts to ensure effective and efficient delivery. To crank up your site speed, here are some tips you can follow: #### Minify HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Similar Resources If you skipped the section discussing maintaining a clean code, we’d reiterate that keeping unwanted data in your technical backend increases a site’s dead weight. These include code comments, redundant metadata, or repetitive CSS styles and designs. Eliminating this information and cleaning out your code can decrease your site’s loading time while improving its performance. #### Content Compression By compressing images and videos, you can shorten your page load time and significantly speed up page rendering time. #### Optimise Cascading Style Sheets Delivery If you have minuscule CSS resources, consider plugging them into the HTML rather than having several CSS files in one page. That’s because a browser will only render a page once it finishes processing all CSS resources. Hence, using HTML for some visual elements can be useful if you want to save a few milliseconds from the load time. #### Monitor Server Response Time You can use pinging tools, such as [Pingdom](https://www.pingdom.com/) and [WebPageTest](https://www.webpagetest.org/), to monitor your server response in real-time. Both tools can help you identify underlying site performance issues as soon as they happen. #### Utilise Browser Caching You may want your users to return to your site to maximise user conversion. If so, you don’t want them to load the same information whenever they visit your site. That’s where browser caching comes into play. Mobile and desktop browsers usually keep cache files such as JavaScript files, CSS, and stylesheets that store web design elements. That way, clients don’t have to load an entire page whenever they return. Google has a [comprehensive post](https://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/caching.html) for webmasters that gives insight into leveraging browser caching that our SEO specialists highly recommend. ### Final Thoughts With Google's mobile-first and mobile page speed update, the search landscape will become much more volatile and competitive in 2021. Keeping up with the latest trends and pro tips should help you kickstart your brand’s SEO and content marketing strategy. Besides, our comprehensive guide should benefit large-scale brands and digital enterprises in keeping up with Sydney’s unpredictable search landscape. ### Press Releases & SEO: All You Need To Know URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/press-release-seo/ Category: Content & Keywords Thinking of incorporating PR to boost SEO? Find out everything you need to know about PR and SEO in our comprehensive guide. One way of streamlining your business’s news and events to the press is through *press releases* (PR). The Oxford English Dictionary defines press releases as official statements that brands or entities issue to the media that provide information on an event or a specific matter. Press releases usually come in written format (print and digital), but you can also publish them in audio (podcast) or video format. For leading brands who will conduct an event or are nominees of an awarding body, the best way to tell the people is to grab the media’s attention quickly. In other words, press releases are pieces of content that you distribute and publish to news platforms to inform people about your events or updates. Aside from that, press releases also play a vital role in [search engine optimisation (SEO)](/) that many brands do not know. Along those lines, here’s all you need to know about press releases and their SEO relevance. ### The relevance of PR for SEO Press releases usually follow a specific process: - An event or update happens - You write a press release for your brand - You distribute the PR to news publishers - News publishers acknowledge and pick up the PR - They will then publish your press release The moment your PR is out in the open, it will start contributing to your SEO. A press release has massive indirect value for a brand’s SEO. And in today’s search landscape, PRs are as valuable for SEO as those with a direct cost. On the other hand, you can also enjoy direct SEO value from PR only when its URL ranks high on Google SERPs. For instance, if you post a press release on your brand site, and it shows up on Google News, you can drive organic traffic to your site and improve brand awareness. The real value of a successful PR is its indirect value to your brand awareness and SEO. Suppose you’ve managed to create an eloquent, relevant, interesting, and engaging PR. In that case, a news authority, media outlet, or blog site will likely publish and champion it. As a result, your brand will gain more product mentions, referral and organic traffic, [high value backlinks](/seo-services/link-building/), and citations from various sources within and out of the news site. Besides, you can also enjoy other SEO benefits by submitting a cunning press release, including: - Natural inbound links from authoritative sites - Brand recognition and social media mentions - Brand awareness and visibility - Referral traffic ultimately leads to sales ### Why PR should be part of your SEO strategy Press releases, as discussed, have indirect value for SEO. But it’s not an out-of-the-box element that you can act as a plug-and-play to your site. A lot comes into crafting amazing PR content that benefits your SEO rankings. That said, here’s why you should include press releases as part of your SEO strategy: #### Press release distribution is free You can publish a press release on many new websites for free, or at very low costs. Before, businesses needed to print their releases physically and mail them to news authorities and blog companies ━ not anymore. First, you can streamline press releases as part of an email subscription and marketing campaign. The only resource you’ll spend is time and workforce to write the content and [build an email list](https://hunter.io/blog/email-finder-tools/) to send it. Furthermore, you can also use your automated email platform to streamline your PR distribution and follow-ups. Sending out a machine-generated email, that is also protected by [DMARC](https://powerdmarc.com/what-is-dmarc/), saves you more time and writing juice than writing out follow-ups from scratch for every email address. You can use automated email platforms for your press releases as they let you: - Organise mailing lists into unique categories (i.e., location, reach, etc.) - Schedule when you’ll send out your press release emails - Monitor who received your email messages and keep track of results #### Control over your content The most significant advantage of publishing a press release is that you have absolute control over your messaging. That’s because you can decide on elements and things such as: - Who provides relevant quotes and slogans? - Which product information is the most crucial? - And how many words will the press release have? For starters, you need to use quotes that explain your brand or product’s impact on your consumers. Otherwise, you can use them as your call-to-action or, but make sure you’re posting up-to-date and valuable information. And since you’re the one controlling your message, you need to ensure that all information you provide will achieve your desired goal. #### PRs can reach a targeted audience Since publishing press releases let you spread the word on a broad range or a targeted audience, including it in your email marketing plan only makes sense. Depending on your goals, you can stir up hype for new business expansion, product launch, or media coverage for an event. Regardless of your intention, journalists will refer to press releases for vital information such as your brand name, staff and personalities, and other relevant facts. Plus, with the advent of virtual meetings and online conferences, newsrooms decrease in size, and many journalists expect to cover more news with less effort. Hence, publishing press releases will save significant time for both your brand and understaffed press organisations. So whether you’re posting for a reporter or another company, you can customise and tailor-fit your press release to reach your target audience. Also, crafting the winning formula for effective PR includes key components such as: - Understanding your target readers - The catchphrase and hook - An exciting and powerful story - Attention to detail ### Crucial ways PR can be used for SEO ranking purposes Even if you did everything right up to this point, capturing the media’s attention can still be challenging ━ especially for a tightly competitive niche. News editors receive numerous PR topics from different sites daily, including your competitors. Editors and journalists also need to curate every article before posting to ensure that they only publish the best and most exciting topics and news for their readers. Hence, if you’re still in the process of writing your press release topic, here are three crucial pointers to keep in mind when leveraging PR for SEO and backlinks: #### Write newsworthy topics Newsworthy doesn’t necessarily mean *massive* and *phenomenal*. You can start writing about an event hosting or market research your readers need. How about product launches? If you’re brewing something big for the next season, you can give out easter eggs or early announcements to your customers through press releases. Regardless of your purpose, make sure it’s newsworthy, and always give your all to writing it. #### Write a compelling PR Keeping your audiences’ attention on your article is crucial to converting them in the long run. Therefore, you need to kick off your PR with a catchy title to hook them into reading the entire post. Consider your readers' attention span and make sure your article is short and engaging. If you wrote it as if from a magazine feature page, editors would then copy and paste it directly to their site when publishing it. Here are also some essential tips you can use when writing a press release: - Always write in a third-person perspective. - Keep your article short and concise (around 400-500 words) - Feel free to add images and videos - Kill the fluff and cut the jargon #### Attract journalists who care about your industry Whatever your PR topic, you must avoid sending it to hundreds of local and national journalists in hopes that many of them will approve and publish your content. Like SEO, you must research relevant news sites and journalists for your brand before anything else. Say you're a leading tech retail company in Sydney that wants to spread the word about your newest smartphone release or a software update. Instead of distributing your PR to every email address in your list, finding journalists who write tech blogs can save you more time and resources. ### Press Releases and NoFollow Links For brands and businesses involved in SEO longer than press releases, you might wonder whether backlinks in PRs will be useless. If you’ve already read our post [about nofollow links](/resources/nofollow-links/), you should know that nofollow links won’t be useless for link building. Moreover, you will only use nofollow links within the news or blog sites that published your press release. Other links you acquire due to an effective press release will be dofollow and nofollow links. But all of that still depends on the news site’s policies and rules about whether or not they’ll link to you. Nofollow links are also safer for PRs as they further reduce your risk of getting penalised. Reiterating Google’s policies on backlinks, the search engine [prohibits sculpting or buying your backlinks from other sites](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/report-spam). As a result, Google Webmaster Guidelines require [inbound links from news sites and PRs to be nofollowed](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/link-schemes). For leading brands to successfully streamline press releases for their SEO, nofollow is the right way to go. ### Press Releases and Google Trends Aside from nofollow links and other elements in writing an effective PR, Google Algorithm updates and search trends will also impact your overall press release strategy. Speaking of trends, as long as people search for information and updates online, publishers will always need interesting news topics to post. So if your brand isn’t writing press releases for the public, you won’t have any chances to improve your brand awareness. Furthermore, your press release can drive more traffic to your site, not just with backlinks, but also with brand mentions and engagements on social media platforms. But if you’ve been publishing PRs for a decade, you might wonder why it’s not as popular as from 2008 to 2010. #### Webspam A lot of the changes have to do with webspam. As the internet grew more popular, more and more brands competing for search rankings have resorted to black hat practices, spamming news editors and journalists with articles and press releases. To protect news sites from getting penalised, editors started curating and filtering news stories more thoroughly. That makes it a daunting channel for many businesses to leverage regarding accessibility. #### Google Penalties The second reason why press releases are deemed inferior for SEO could be Google’s penalties. In the past, press releases were widespread because you could easily add a backlink from news outlets, bringing clicks from those links to your site. But with Google cracking down against these link building tactics, press releases became less popular. However, if you look at the benefits of PR for brand awareness and distributing accurate information, you can still find it worthy even in 2020 and beyond. Those benefits are: - Improving your brand awareness - Building hype on a future product launch - Branch opening announcements, job vacancies, etc. You also don’t need to spam hundreds of journalists for one of them to notice you. You only need to focus on a relevant news outlet and grab their attention. Other channels will eventually follow suit by publishing your content on a renowned site. By researching and remembering Google’s guidelines, you can increase your chances of getting a target news site to publish your PR. But even if you fail, you can always message them on their social media profiles or post on your site using [exciting and engaging content](/resources/types-of-content/). ### Conclusion Unleashing your press releases’ full potential means leveraging them for information dissemination and SEO. By far, press releases are still worth looking into, but they’re not as authoritative and dominant as they used to be. As part of a comprehensive SEO strategy, press releases are essential to feed your audience accurate and up-to-date information. However, please don’t make them your core aspects of SEO and think that a single PR publication can turn the tides in your favour. In other words, use press releases moderately and reasonably. With a reliable SEO agency in Sydney, you will have no problems adding PRs to your robust content arsenal. With relevant data and a best-in-class SEO Strategy, Red Search will help you realise your long-term brand objectives and dominate your digital niche. At Red Search, our search specialists use results-focused and data-driven SEO strategy to secure and maintain your spot on the first page of SERPs and [local SEO](/seo-services/local-seo/) rankings. For your questions and enquiries, please call our SEO experts at 1300 101 712 and drop a message in our contact form. ### Does Paying on Google Ads Help SEO? URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-ads-help-seo-rankings/ Category: Google & Algorithms Running Google Ads and wondering if it provides any SEO value? We explain the relationship between Google Ads & SEO here! As more and more businesses venture into the digital space, one question keeps popping up when speaking with our SEO specialists. *“Does paying on Google Ads help boost our SEO rankings?”* As native [Sydney SEOs](/), we understand the basis of this popular SEO myth and how it came to be. After all, it only makes sense that Google would prioritise paying customers over non-paying customers, right? The straightforward answer is no. Paying to run a Google Ads campaign does not help boost your organic SEO rankings. ### Why Google Ads Don’t Help Boost SEO Rankings To keep it short, [Google Ads cover](https://www.newsxtend.com.au/2023/04/11/a-definitive-guide-to-google-ads/) a different space altogether in Google’s search results. Google highlighted the stark contrast [between pay-per-click (PPC) ads and search engine optimisation (SEO)](https://ads.google.com/home/resources/seo-vs-ppc/). The search engine states that websites could pay for Google Ads to display their site in *ad-specific areas* or search results labelled as an ad. Remember that PPC ads don’t affect organic SERPs since paid links don’t mix with organic search rankings. Besides, doing so creates ethical and competition concerns, which we’ll cover below. ### Antitrust Laws & Competition Issues If paid links from Google Ads influenced a website’s ability to rank highly, it would contradict Google’s purpose of delivering accurate and high quality information. Hypothetically, brands could pay for their SEO rankings and expect poor-quality content to produce great results. It just doesn’t make any sense. Google may also face legal issues and lawsuits if paid links would affect organic rankings. That’s because it violates international antitrust and competition laws, given that large-scale businesses with massive resources could easily dominate the search results pages. Remember that one page of quality content with keyword optimisation can rank for several search keywords at once when properly optimised. More people also trust [organic results over paid search results](/resources/local-seo-statistics-australia/), and to compromise the legitimacy of organic results would ultimately defeat the search engine’s purpose. ### Can I Use Google Ads & SEO Together? Yes, you can. Depending on your goals, Google Ads and SEO can be used together to feed each channel valuable data. In other words, you can collect relevant data by using both Google Ads and SEO and, in turn, combine those insights into a single data-driven strategy to get optimum results. While they’re essentially different from one another, each campaign has its strengths that can be leveraged to drive faster results, while maximising your ROI. ### Experience SEO that Delivers Results [Relying on Google Ads](https://businessandpower.com/what-are-ad-google-settings/) alone can only go so far at the expense of limited resources. It may act as a great short-term marketing strategy to drive leads, however, in the long term, we believe that is rarely the case unless combined with SEO. If you’re currently running Google Ads and would like to chat about leveraging SEO, call us today. You will be scheduled with a senior SEO consultant who will be able to discuss your unique needs. ### Content Refresh: Addressing Content Decay to Boost SEO URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/content-refresh-decay-seo/ Category: Content & Keywords We explore what Content Decay is and how it impacts SEO. Find out how you can boost your SEO by addressing Content Decay. Developing excellent content with in-depth topic research and market relevance can drive tremendous organic traffic to your site. But that doesn’t mean you have to pour your resources into producing new content all the time. It’s true that old content may eventually lose traffic and value. However, updating old pages will restore their value and even deliver positive SEO results with less effort. Besides, content fresh is among Google’s many ranking factors that directly influence a website’s quality. Read on to find out more about how restoring old content can help boost SEO rankings and improve website quality. ### What is Content Decay? Regardless of your industry or the size of your website, your content’s value will most likely follow 5 phases. [Jimmy Daly and Ryan Law from Animalz.co](https://www.animalz.co/blog/content-refresh/) elaborated on these five stages and stated how your traffic behaves in every phase. - **Spike Phase:** High value right after publishing the post - **Trough Phase:** Period of low and stagnant traffic after the spike phase - **Growth Phase:** Gradual increase in traffic over a considerable period - **Plateau Phase:** A noticeable peak of growth that lasts a few months - **Decay Phase:** Period of gradual decrease of traffic and page value All content and pages reach a stagnant plateau phase before gradually decaying. Hitting the plateau phase can mean a lot of things. You either maxed out your keywords’ search volume or search rankings due to content relevance, [domain authority](/resources/domain-authority/), or [backlinks](/seo-services/link-building/). That said, refreshing your content is one way of keeping it in the plateau phase for as long as possible. If every single one of your pages drives consistent organic traffic on your site, you won’t need to research and develop new content every time. ### How does Content Decay Happen? More often than not, your content decays due to several factors. Factors may include market trends, [Google’s core algorithm updates](/resources/google-algorithm-updates/) or the timeliness of the content topic. #### Freshness Factor Google includes content freshness in ranking pages, giving more weight and value to new content over years-old pages. It’s also worth noting that Google indexes sites and evaluates content freshness through on-page and off-page engagements. That’s why pages that are years old will still belong to Google’s good books if they still attract backlinks or social engagements. #### Direct Competition With more and more brands jumping into [content marketing](/resources/content-marketing/) and SEO, competition over organic traffic and keyword ranking has become tighter than ever. Your direct competitors may use better tools and invest more into developing relevant content that may result in you losing some traffic and keyword rankings along the way. #### Loss of Topic Interest If you’ve written a few pieces of content about obsolete topics, your traffic on those pages will inevitably fall as people lose interest in them. The same is true for short-lived social media trends or hot topics with little-to-no relevance or insights in the long run. ### How to Identify Content Decay? Spotting content decay over a few months can be impossible since arriving at the decay phase takes several months up to years in the making. But with Google Analytics and various other tools, you can monitor organic traffic for particular pages over long timespans. You can track your online engagement and traffic for three months and longer so you can adequately benchmark which phase your pages are currently in and spot decaying content. But it should not end with tracking down content decay. After that, you need to determine the reason to minimise decay on future pages. #### Identify Causes for Content Decay Finding out why your posts are decaying will help you learn how to fix them and improve your content quality in the future. Looking at how well your content is doing before and comparing it now should give you insights into its most probable cause. Maybe it’s due to the rising competition or a market trend/update that pulled your content behind. You can also try aiming your focus on the following questions to narrow down the causes of the decay: - What does your content lack from the top-rated content? - How comprehensive and in-depth does the content cover? - Do you use up-to-date statistics and research? - Do you have more backlinks than the top competitor? - Which channel is your content topic more popular? If your content page still ranks in the same spot but exhibits a traffic decay, your keywords and topic may just be outdated. #### Determine what content refresh to maximise SEO You can boost your SEO without producing new content by refreshing old or decaying pages. By tracking down content decay, you might even find plateau pages that can use an SEO boost. Having an [Sydney SEO agency](/) on your back can speed up things, as they can determine which pages need a refresh and perform keyword optimisation in the process. That’s like hitting two birds with one stone. ### How Addressing Content Decay Helps SEO #### Build Links to Newer Posts Looking through old content allows you to link them to updated pages and resources. Those include the latest whitepaper, infographics, market trends, and events relevant to your brand. That way, you can increase the content’s value since newer resources were most likely unavailable when you first published the content. Doing so also improves your page rank in Google’s eyes since you’re developing a more valuable resource on your site. #### Maximise Your CTR Most of the time, the top-ranking sites in Google SERPs have been published around a year ago. That’s because new and refreshed content will look more appealing for Google’s core algorithm. With up-to-date resources and a remarkable headline and meta description, you can attract your target audience to your site and secure a strong position in Google SERPs. #### Fixing Broken Links to Improve Value One significant benefit of refreshing old content is that you’ll find unchecked issues such as broken links from deleted resources. If you have external links on a three-year-old article, there’s a good chance that the page you linked to was deleted, redirected, or archived. Regardless of what caused the broken link, leaving it unattended can hurt your page rank and pull you down Google’s SERPs. #### Streamline Keyword Optimisation You can find old content that can use a keyword boost and raise them from the dead. Maybe you have a couple of pages published with flawed keyword research or expand the topic itself to cover more keywords. However you want to do it, don’t miss the chance of improving your old pages to rank better in competitive keywords and increase your overall brand value by taking proactive steps. ### Other Benefits of Refreshing Old Content #### Repair Spelling and Grammatical Errors Grammar and spelling mistakes can be outright harmful to the user experience and SEO, not to mention cringe-worthy for the site owner. So instead of ignoring minor grammar errors, consider taking your time to repair the mistakes and improve their overall readability. #### Ramp-up Your Content Quality Search engines aim to deliver the most accurate and best answers to search queries. In other words, it focuses on the user experience above all else, that’s why you should too. You can continuously develop new and better content for UX, but you can also refresh the old ones to cope with Google’s user-centred algorithm updates to climb the ranks. Moreover, ramping up your content quality for old pages makes them more useful for users looking for updated information or better content. #### Incorporate Fresh Value into Old Content You can also improve your content’s overall quality by plugging in the latest information and up-to-date resources to preserve its relevance. If you’ve published a top ten list for 2019, you should consider refreshing it and inserting updated resources to stay relevant in 2023. If it’s a [blog post](/resources/blog-seo/) discussing statistics, now’s your chance to step up and include new numbers from your research. Besides, if you’ve managed to publish an authoritative article that gained several backlinks, you don’t want to waste it the next few years, do you? Here are examples of stastistics pages we regularly keep up to date: - [Australian internet statistics](/resources/australian-internet-statistics/) - [Australian SEO statistics](/resources/local-seo-statistics-australia/) - [Australian mobile phone stastistics](/resources/australian-mobile-statistics/) - [Australian voice search statistics](/resources/voice-search-statistics-australia/) - [Australian ecommerce statistics](/resources/australian-ecommerce-statistics/) - [Australian Christmas shopping statistics](/resources/christmas-online-shopping-statistics-australia/) - [Australian Google trends statistics](/resources/google-trends-search-statistics-australia/) ### Final Thoughts Every piece of content you publish on your site stays there for a long time. Producing [evergreen content](/resources/evergreen-content-seo/) is one way to stay on top. But refreshing old ones is also an efficient and proven way to extend your traffic’s plateau phase and improve your keyword ranking. If you only have so much time on your hands to refresh old content, we have you covered. Our SEO Sydney specialists are able to appropriately determine where content decay is occurring and put in place a bespoke strategy to address the issue. Speak to us today to find out more about what we can do for your business. ### Google Algorithm Updates: What They Mean To Your Business URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-algorithm-updates/ Category: Google & Algorithms We have put together a rundown of each Google algorithm update and highlighted their impact. Find out more about how these crucial updates affect your website. Competing in a digital niche and search engines means adapting to countless Google algorithm updates to stay on par with your competitors. With more and more brands harnessing the power of search, understanding how every Google algorithm functions can help you stay on top of your website's SEO marketing. We have put together a rundown of each Google algorithm update and highlighted their impact. ### Google Panda [Google Panda](/resources/google-panda/) is one of the earliest major algorithm updates released by Google way back in 2011. Panda’s objective is to flag and detect duplicate content and keyword stuffing, which was a prevalent [black hat SEO](/resources/black-hat-seo/) practice at the time of release. Furthermore, the algorithm launched a *quality score* that helped Google evaluate and rank pages according to how well they answer search queries instead of counting the keywords. To make sure your page falls into Panda’s good books, we recommend publishing high-quality and informative content. If you have old pages with poor grammar, we recommend rewriting them and adding keywords more strategically that don’t ruin readability. ### Google Penguin Google introduced the Penguin update last 2012, a year after launching Panda. While Panda only focused on keyword stuffing and content quality, Penguin targeted other black hat techniques such as link spam and link directories, along with keyword stuffing. The update shifted away from link volume as a ranking factor to producing high-quality and valuable content with user-friendly and organically placed links. ### Google Hummingbird A year after Penguin’s release, Google launched Hummingbird, favouring relevant content that satisfies search intent. The algorithm essentially connected the dots between particular keywords and their corresponding search intent. With that, brands and SEO specialists should put more effort into content readability, strategic keyword use, and overall user experience that meets the search intent. ### Google RankBrain Google launched RankBrain as an addition to Hummingbird in 2015 to rank sites according to how well their pages satisfy search intent. Like Hummingbird, RankBrain weighs pages depending on their relevance to search phrases and keywords. With this algorithm, brands should first implement market research to determine the search intents they want to target. Otherwise, they’re only pouring resources into aimless content that won’t rank on highly competitive search terms. In other words, content quality is the key to pass Hummingbird and RankBrain. ### Google Core Updates If you’ve been competing in search engine results pages for over a few years, you should have heard of Google’s core updates. For years, Google has been releasing minor to broad core algorithm updates to improve search results and deliver up-to-date and relevant answers to search queries. Since Google updates its core algorithm several times a year, there’s little transparency about minor updates and how they affect the search results. But for significant updates such as Broad Core Algorithm Updates, Google releases a statement and guideline before the release so websites can prepare for it. #### Google Link Spam Algorithm Update (July 2021) Google recently rolled out the Link Spam Update with the primary goal to nullify and ignore link spam. With this update, the search engine announced that websites practising link spam should notice drastic changes in ranking, especially those with paid and affiliate content. #### July Core Updates (July 1 & 12, 2021) Danny Sullivan, Google’s search liaison, announced two core updates in July 2021. These core updates, just like the ones following this list, improve Google’s algorithm in being able to better evaluate the quality of web pages and content. As a result, websites that perform better than the others may maintain the top spot, while those under-rewarded may notice an increase in their search rankings. #### Broad Core Algorithm Update (June 2, 2021) Another broad core algorithm update took off last June 2021. Since this update has some improvements that are yet to roll out, Google released the core update incrementally. #### December 2020 Core Update Google typically releases core updates frequently, yet the December 2020 core update took roughly seven months since their last release. Still, websites affected by the core update should produce better and updated content to rank better. #### May 2020 Broad Core Update (May 4, 2020) About halfway through 2020, Google released a broad core update that took roughly two weeks to take off completely. It’s worth noting that Google released many broad core updates in 2020, following the January 2020 Broad Core Update. #### January 2020 Broad Core Update (January 13, 2020) Google started the year 2020 with its broad core update. They insisted on the same set of guidelines discussed above to stay afloat amidst the core updates. Those include focusing on quality and UX-friendly content and satisfying search intent as for all other core updates. #### September Broad Core Algorithm Update (September 24, 2019) Another broad core algorithm update took off in September 2019. The update took a few days before it was fully operational. Google released an announcement a few hours before launching the broad core update. #### June 2019 Core Update (June 2, 2019) Halfway in 2019, Google announced another broad core update that would roll out on several data centres. The search engine also stated that dropping a few ranks doesn’t mean your site has problems to fix. Instead, several ranking factors come into play that causes other sites to outrank yours. #### Florida 2: March 2019 Core Update Many SEO specialists consider Google’s March 2019 core update as the most significant algorithm update since 2011. Despite that, the same guidance still applies to this update as it does to the rest of Google’s core updates. #### August Broad Core Update (August 1, 2018) The August Broad Core Update is another core update that earned a nickname in the industry due to its impact on search results. Most SEO specialists noticed that this update affected medical pages more than other industries, leading them to call it the *Medic Update*. #### April 2018 Broad Core Update (April 16, 2018) Google launched the April 2018 broad core algorithm update to target content relevance, among many things. They also stated that sites that have dropped from the rankings don’t necessarily need to fix anything on their site since it’s more of a content-related effect. #### March Broad Core Update (March 9, 2018) The search engine’s March broad core update focused on updating Google SERPs and rewarding pages that deserve better rankings than others. Google also reminded everyone to publish high-quality content and step away from link spam and blackhat SEO tactics. #### June 2017 Unconfirmed Update (June 25, 2017) Several SEO specialists and tools noticed an unconfirmed yet significant core update in June 2017. Metrics revealed that this core update resulted in drastic fluctuations in ranks 6 to 10 in Google. The unconfirmed update affected almost every digital niche, but it caused the most changes to pages competing under the food and beverage industry. ### Google BERT Google released a revolutionary update called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) in October 2019. The algorithm utilised machine learning and open-source natural language processing (NLP) to understand [natural language in search intent](/resources/search-intent-seo/). With that, Google BERT enabled better context interpretation and delivered results that match search intent. ### Mobile-First Update Google’s Mobile-first Update took off incrementally from 2018 to 2020, slowly shifting the search engine’s focus towards mobile-friendly websites. By the time you’re reading this, you should already have a responsive site designed to optimise the mobile experience. Additionally, the mobile-first algorithm update will greatly impact Google SERPs between desktop and mobile users. Since traffic on mobile is slowly exceeding that of desktop, pages with mobile-optimised UX should rank better than those that don’t. ### Final Thoughts Google works round-the-clock to deliver high-quality content for an intuitive search experience. That’s why digital brands should play their part and provide data-driven and up-to-date information for their target audience. But it doesn’t end there, since staying on top of Google SERPs requires a comprehensive knowledge of every Google Algorithm and how each one works together to improve search. Contact our [Sydney SEO agency](/) if you think you have been impacted by a Google update. We will help you develop a recovery plan and have your website back on its feet in no time. ### Why Are My Google Reviews Missing or Disappearing? URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-reviews-missing-disappear/ Category: Local SEO Have you noticed that your Google Reviews are missing? Find out common reasons why this is happening & what you can do about it. Small and medium businesses rely on Google Business Profile reviews to promote their brand and attract new customers. Your customers want to express how excellent your products and services are for them. But if you received a five-star review, only to find it missing a few weeks later, don’t fret. Disappearing reviews may be a drag for your business, after all, no one likes to see hard-earned reviews disappear. To help you better understand why your Google Reviews disappear, we have outlined some of the most common reasons why this happens. ### Google Spam Algorithm Removes Violating Business Reviews The most common cause why many business owners find their Google Business Profile reviews missing is because of [Google’s spam detection algorithm](https://support.google.com/business/answer/10313341?hl). It scours Google listings and detects spammy content, including reviews. If you’re not sure if a review for your business violated [Google’s Review Content Guidelines](https://support.google.com/local-guides/answer/7400114?hl=en), consider these questions below so you can narrow down the problem. Additionally, you can also ask your [SEO agency](/) what happened. Most SEO agencies actively monitor your Google reviews and will know whether Google has released any spam detection updates. #### 1. Did the review include a phone number? Including a business number in a customer review doesn't make sense unless it’s for self-promotion, a spam practice. That’s why Google considers contact details a major trigger for spam detection and removes the reviews in question almost immediately. #### 2. Did the customer attach your URL? Just like your contact number, a page URL is another big trigger for Google's Spam Algorithm. Some users want to promote sites that deliver excellent products and services. But we highly suggest reminding your clients not to attach your URL and instead write a special review that you can include on your site. #### 3. Does the review have duplicates in other channels? If Google finds the exact client review on other online channels like Yelp or Facebook, Google may remove the duplicate content or both altogether. We understand your customers want to let as many people know about your brand as possible. But other brands may weaponise this method for their benefit. To ensure each review stays and contributes to your branding, encourage your clients to write a unique review for every website. #### 4. Did the customer write your review from your local store? Some physical stores have a dedicated review station where customers can write their opinions on your products/services. But if you’re managing your Google Business Profile profile from the same device or network, the review may be uploaded using the same IP address. Google’s spam filter may alarm if it detects a review uploaded with the same IP address that manages the Google Business Profile Account. #### 5. Did your staff or manager write the missing review? You typically need to indicate your Google Business Profile account owners and managers. So if the review came from an account included in that list, Google would see it as a conflict of interest. We highly recommend leaving your business reviews to your consumers. #### 6. Did you get a massive influx of reviews overnight? It’s pretty normal for large-scale brands to have some new reviews every week. But if you’re a small to medium-scale business that gets hundreds or thousands of reviews in a significantly short period, that may trigger Google’s spam alarms. You can also ask a small portion of your clients to submit a review and maintain a pretty realistic number. Say you want to reach out to 100 clients for a review, and half of them write one overnight. That could alert Google’s spam algorithm and crawl your reviews for possible spam content like those discussed above. #### 7. Do your reviews share a similar pattern or tone? Sometimes, Google’s spam algorithm detects different reviews *too good to be true *and sound the same. If your reviews have perfect capitalisation, grammar, and mention your brand in the same way or tone, Google may remove some of it for possible spam. Keeping your reviews honest and natural means not over-coaching your clients on what to write in the review. You should also avoid sending them review templates and let them submit a review in their own words. #### 8. Check if the reviewer deleted their reviews Your customers can delete their Google Business Profile reviews at their disposal. As a brand, you need to work harder to make sure your clients will stand by their words and keep their reviews about your page. That way, you can leverage their reviews to attract more clients in the long run and encourage new customers to leave a review to keep expanding your reach. ### Missing vs Delayed Google Reviews Say you’re reading your business reviews one day, and you found a new 5-star review about your excellent customer service! Nothing beats the feeling of getting your efforts acknowledged by your customers! But what if it goes missing the next time you check your page? There are tons of reasons why Google reviews go missing from the page. These reviews are often hidden and removed for violating [Google’s User Contributed Content Policy](https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114?sjid=780015051259414648-AP#zippy=). But we’ll discuss that in a later part. Nevertheless, Google stated that it doesn’t reinstate reviews that were [removed due to policy violations](https://support.google.com/business/answer/10313341?hl=en) as a means to ensure all Google reviews are trustworthy, helpful, and relevant. You may also lose Google reviews after recovering your Google Business Profile from a suspension. You can [reach out to Google](https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/12648169?hl=en&ref_topic=7422769&sjid=13018160642380893228-AP) for assistance with lost reviews after a reinstatement. ### Why can’t I find my Google Review after writing it? If you’re an avid customer or brand advocate to your peers, your local business may appreciate you leaving a review. But after writing a long-form review, it may take longer than expected to appear on live on Google Maps. Google claims this issue is common with newly merged business profiles and should be resolved within a few days, considering your review meets the guidelines and quality checks. You may have also submitted the review under an outdated app or an older mobile operating system. Consider updating your app to the latest version or switching to a different device when writing your next review, as this may fix the problem. ### Did a Google Business Profile Update Bug Cause the Deletion? It’s a rare case, but Google once [confirmed an algorithm bug deleted legitimate reviews](https://support.google.com/business/thread/8930171/my-business-got-reviews-around-57-but-the-review-number-is-decreasing-everyday?hl=en) after an algorithm update dedicated to Google Maps reviews. While this rarely happens in a year, Google cannot help you recover deleted reviews. In those cases, all brands, regardless of scale, can be affected by the glitch. But due to its rarity, the other causes discussed above are probable culprits of the missing reviews. ### Check for prohibited content It’s easy to dismiss this factor as it’s usually easy to spot harmful content in Google Reviews. Still, Google included a comprehensive list of prohibited and restricted content you may want to see to confirm if your missing reviews actually fit into Google’s indicators. #### Deceptive Content Google wants business reviews and user contributions to reflect genuine experiences in local businesses. That said, Google frowns upon the following content and behaviours: - Fake engagement - Impersonation - Misinformation - Misrepresentation #### Inappropriate Content This portion is self-explanatory and is the major cause of most Google review deletions. You want your customer reviews to reflect your business, and a few too many unethical reviews and hate speech can drag your brand (and Google) down. Here are inappropriate content that Google watches out for reviews: - Hate speech and harassment - Offensive content (profanity, obscenity, etc.) - Personal information - Adult-themed content/review - Gore & violence - Restricted & dangerous content - Illegal content (terrorism, child safety violation, etc.) - Advertising, solicitation, and repetitive content - Off-topic, gibberish, and mischief While it’s easy for readers and users to scroll away from these reviews, businesses should proactively clear their pages and Maps profiles from this content. Take these indicators seriously, as Google will take manual action such as suspension and account termination if a Maps user and business holder is caught harming the community and the users. ### Do Google Reviews expire? To keep it short, no, Google reviews do not expire and will stay online (until Google or the business owner gets them removed). In your Google Business Profile, under the *Google Reviews* section, you can scroll through all Google reviews of your business. We mean *every single one of them*. While Google has no statements about how a review’s age determines its relevancy, other it’s safe to say that its date, length, and keywords all play a role in whether a business responds or if a review is positive or negative. In short, you can sort the reviews by *Most relevant*, but the feedback nature and age don’t exclusively impact relevance. ### Can I Hide Negative Google Reviews? Yes! and no. You can have Google remove unwanted reviews, but only if they violate Google’s review policies. Genuine negative reviews cannot be hidden by Google or by business owners. Requesting your users to delete their bad reviews may even hurt your brand further, especially if your customer sees it as bribery and wants to take the incident out to the public. We recommend requesting your customers to delete or edit their reviews only if you have successfully addressed their issues and positively changed their thoughts about your business. The best (and most practical) way to hide and/or bury your negative reviews is by investing in improving your products or services and customer experience and collecting more positive reviews. Besides, negative reviews will eventually lose their relevance, especially if there’s only 1 bad review in 100 positive ones. ### Can I Recover Deleted Google Business Profile Reviews? Once Google’s spam algorithm took action and deleted the GMB review, there’s no way to get it back. The only way out of the stump is to focus more on earning honest five-star reviews in the future. One way to do so is to ask yourself the questions we pointed out above. ### Consider Backing Up Your Google Reviews While you cannot recover deleted reviews, having an updated backup can help you skim through the before and after to find out which ones are deleted and think of possible causes. We recommend making a weekly or monthly routine of copying new business reviews to a separate document file. As soon as you notice drops in your business reviews, you can now compare the actual review page to your backup to determine which ones went missing. ### Final Thoughts A few missing Google Business Profile reviews may not hurt your brand significantly. But it’s best to determine the root of the problem and make sure it doesn’t repeat as much in the long run. That’s because your reviews help bring in new clients and encourage repeat buyers to try your other products/services. Besides, performing a review audit can go a long way in making data-driven decisions for your website. ### URL Structure: Understanding URLs & How They Impact SEO URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/url-structure-seo/ Category: SEO Guides Understand how URL structures work and how SEO-friendly URLs can be leveraged to improve rankings. Creating and developing a powerful [SEO strategy](/seo-services/) for your website should always be one of your highest priorities. With that in mind, you have to consider all aspects and stay open to every possibility that will come in handy to make sure your site will rank positively. However, little do we know, and we are less likely to notice the importance of URLs in driving traffic to our website. A URL is equal to a home address that allows people to find you easily. Most importantly, it defines your business, which helps visitors and even Google understand what your page is all about. Can a well-structured URL grow your online presence? Does it help you rank and establish your roots on the first page of Google’s SERP? Let’s find out how URLs can make or break your SEO strategy. ### What is a URL? Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs for short, are commonly known as web addresses. When you type the web address on the search query, the browser will locate or access the web page you entered or resources online. As we know, computers have language that comes in numbers and letters. But, as can be seen, a URL or web address is composed of human-readable text. The URL is particularly designed in text to replace the numbers known as IP addresses, which are used by computers to communicate with servers. ### The Two URL Types URLs are classified into two types: - **Static URL:** A Static URL has no variable strings, which means it remains the same as it is not dynamically generated. Unless changes are made in the HTML coding, the content will remain the same. - **Dynamic URL:** Have variable text strings that change depending on variable parameters that are provided by the server that delivers them. Regarding ranking, the key is consistency, which a Static URL offers. Also, URLs with shorter than 2,083 characters are ideal in all browsers. We recommend keeping your URL short, consistent and keyword-rich (without stuffing). This will allow you to have the best chances for your chosen keywords. ### How to Structure URLs With modern technology and platforms, such as [WordPress' SEO](/seo-services/wordpress-seo/), creating an SEO-friendly URL is simple. You need to understand what keywords you can target and then populate those keywords into the URL. This is the simplest explanation. However, there are many methods to do so more effectively. It's crucially important that URLs are named correctly straight off the bat. This will prevent having to implement any redirects later. We have taken the below example from [Google to best explain how simple URLs](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=637446789270753635-2386785163&rd=1#understand-how-search-engines-use-urls) convey content-relevant information. This would classify as an SEO-friendly URL, contrary to the unfriendly alternative. URLs like the following can be confusing and unfriendly: > *"https://www.redsearch.com.au/post/**14032015.html**"* If your URL is meaningful, it can be more useful and easily understandable in different contexts: > *"https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/**australian-internet-statistics**/"* We can easily deduce that the above URL is a resource page about Australian internet statistics. ### Tiers of URLs: Breaking It Down **PROTOCOL** HTTP or HTTPs (“s” stands for secure) is the standard language of web browsers and servers. This web protocol is responsible for enabling communication online and data transfer from one machine to another. Moreover, it may also include the following protocols: “*mail to://” *which opens your default mail client or *“ftp://” *which handles file transfers. HTTPS is more ideal for online security than the standard HTTP. Today, people are increasingly aware of identity theft and other cybercrime on the internet. Implementing this security protocol will protect your visitors, assure them your website is secured, and help your site rank better on Google. **SUB-DOMAIN** The sub-domain in a URL which is the WWW exists for one purpose – it is to identify the address as a website. For the most part, WWW serves no technical purpose, it’s an unintentional and widespread standard practice. Although creating a domain without including WWW is possible, there are necessary steps to consider. **DOMAIN** The domain name or hostname is a human-readable text identifying the specific location of the resource, which in most cases is a website's web address. **TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN** A top-level domain, or TLD for short, refers to the website’s category. We’re all familiar with *.com*. Moreover, there are a range of categories available today, such as *.edu* for educational sites, *.gov* for government sites, and many more. **PATH & QUERY STRING** A URL also contains a subdirectory or extensions that help define specific content. It helps people understand which section of the webpage they’re on. ### Why URL Matters in SEO Google’s search engines factor several variables, such as title tag, content, and link anchor text, into their decision-making process, including a URL that is at the top of their list. URLs help Google and other major search engines understand what a webpage is all about. That’s why it’s important to format the URL appropriately to support [search engine bots'](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide?hl=en&visit_id=637446789270753635-2386785163&rd=1#manage-your-appearance-in-google-search-results) preference in indexing and ranking your web page. Therefore, this is where your short, consistent, and keyword-rich URL comes into the picture. An SEO-friendly URL meets the needs of both searchers and users because they, too, have to understand what your page is all about. ### Incorporating Keywords in a URL As search engines are less likely to value words towards the end of a URL, remember to place your keywords at the beginning of the URL. Take a closer look at the following examples of optimised and non-optimised URLs and learn how to incorporate keywords properly when creating an SEO-friendly URL. - **Optimised: **https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/australian-mobile-statistics/ - **Not optimised:** https://www.redsearch.com.au/category-24/post-32425 A URL should be made for the search engine bots and users for easier access to the desired content or page. So, you have to bear in mind the key aspects of an optimised URL, including: - A URL should indicate an accurate term or phrase that pertains to your content - Practise optimising every web page with one keyword - Separate the words using hyphens - Avoid using capital letters, as it can lead to duplicate URLs and loss of page rank ### Best SEO-Friendly URL Practices All digital marketers share the goal of ranking at the top of Google's search results. To achieve this goal successfully, start by optimising your URL. Although there are several methods that you can use to create and implement an SEO-friendly URL, here are the best SEO-friendly URL strategies. **1. Limit folders in the URL structure** URLs should contain only the necessary amount of characters for URL structure and folders. **2. Use hyphens in between words** According to Google, it’s best to [avoid using spaces or underscores in the URLs.](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/url-structure?hl=en&visit_id=637446900980953162-1122748446&rd=1) Therefore, hyphens are the standard way of separating words in a URL. Here’s an example of utilising a hyphen as a word separator in the URL structure: https://www.redsearch.com.au/blog/url-optimisation-tips **3. Short and Keyword-rich** Simply put, keep it short and sweet, but avoid using irrelevant words. As mentioned earlier, the URL should be created both for Google’s search engines and users. This will help the search engines and users figure out the topic of your content easily. **4. Make it inviting to Click and Share** The URL plays a vital role in improving the click-through rate from Google's search results. So, create a unique and enticing URL for the search engine and users. It is given that if it doesn’t look pleasing to the eye, the person will less likely click and share it. **5. Use lowercase** Even though this doesn’t cause a big deal since modern servers don’t mind whether it’s in lowercase or capital letters, it’s the same. However, some servers escalate this issue. To be safe or as a precautionary measure, it’s best to use lowercase in the URLs. ### Bad SEO URL Practices When search engines crawl the web, they search for a coherent URL structure. So, in case the search engine finds it difficult and confusing, without a doubt, it’s not going to pull it out of its hat. An SEO-friendly URL structure allows search engines to understand each page. In addition to learning what makes a great SEO-friendly URL structure, it's important to learn what to avoid. **1. Avoid creating complicated URLs** Needless to say, a URL that doesn’t make sense makes it harder for the search engines to realise what your page is about. **2. Overlooking the use of Canonical Tag** Most eCommerce companies encounter this type of issue by accidentally creating multiple URLs for the same content. **3. Creating multiple Homepage URLs** Some developers don’t realise how it’s best to merge the Homepage and lead users to a single URL. **4. Keyword stuffing** Overdoing keywords to the URL will not do any good for your ranking. It might even hurt your webpage’s ranking as [Google penalises this type of activity](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/irrelevant-keywords). **5. Creating an excessive amount of redirects** Rule of thumb: do not abuse 301 redirects, especially if the homepage no longer exists. Use it only when you change the URL’s name, move contents to a new page and do other similar activities. **6. Take precedence with subdomain** Always consider that search engines will treat the sub-domain as separate from its primary domain. Therefore, it’s best to utilise a subfolder unless you have a valid reason to use a subdomain, as this action can affect multiple SEO functions, such as trust value and [link building](/seo-services/link-building/). ### Final Thoughts Overall, usability is the key component of URL and all SEO aspects. Also, remember the user, including Google’s search engines, when creating your website. Utilising these best practices for SEO-friendly URLs should help your website rank higher in the search results and invite users to visit your pages. Furthermore, bear in mind that Google likes to change the rules. So always keep your eyes peeled for changes in the world of SEO. To discuss the best URL structure alternatives for your business, speak with our [Sydney SEO specialists](/) today. We serve a multitude of industries across Australia and are confident we can help you too! ### How to Optimise for Google's Featured Snippets in 2021 URL: https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/google-featured-snippets/ Category: Google & Algorithms A featured snippet, also known as Position Zero, is a piece of valuable content that you can find on top of Google search results. When Google first rolled out *featured snippets*, it became a trophy for websites competing in the top spot of Google SERPs. However, Google didn’t give webmasters much information on earning featured snippets for your keywords. At Red Search, we have crunched all the facts to give you everything there is to know about featured snippets – providing you with every opportunity to stay on top of your competitors. Besides, with Google reporting more than [3.5 billion searches every day](https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-search-statistics/), optimising your content to leverage featured snippets will undoubtedly generate tons of leads and reward your SEO efforts. ### What is a Featured Snippet If you’ve been using Google for quite some time, you should’ve stumbled upon featured snippets. A featured snippet, also known as *Position Zero*, is a piece of valuable content that you can find on top of Google search results. ![Featured Snippet - Australian Mobile Phone Stats](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Featured-Snippet-Australian-Mobile-Phone-Stats.png) [*https://www.redsearch.com.au/resources/australian-mobile-statistics/*](/resources/australian-mobile-statistics/) Featured snippets are high-quality information from a well-ranking website that answers a search query directly. Nevertheless, earning a featured snippet will drive significant traffic to the featured page. You can have your content featured in Google SERPs as a snippet by keeping the following in mind: - Starting with a “*What is” *subheading - Discussing the topic in-depth - Optimising content structure for a featured snippet format - Avoid brandishing your company name on all corners. - Refrain from writing in the first person - Scale your content for featured snippets - Aim for the top five spots, because Google picks well-ranking pages for snippets Additionally, featured snippets have a relatively more straightforward algorithm than Google’s core algorithms. That said, performing simple but effective on-page adjustments can heavily influence your featured snippet ranking, as long as you clearly outline your topic to your readers. ### How Do Featured Snippets Work Featured snippets mainly serve one key objective (among others), to fuel an intuitive voice search. That’s because when browsing through voice queries or Google Home devices, the search engine reads back featured snippets as a response. Hence, it only makes sense that the featured snippet must answer the query directly and accurately. Aside from that, [Google uses featured snippets](https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?hl=en#:~:text=How%20featured%20snippets%20are%20chosen,quality%20of%20your%20search%20results.) to answer the most competitive and frequent search keywords. As [Google stated](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/appearance/featured-snippets), featured snippets keep readers focused on the results page. Keep in mind that Google rolled out featured snippets as a way to provide a smooth and intuitive UX. One way to leverage this is to provide concise and accurate answers to frequently asked questions. In 2020, Google launched the featured snippet deduplication update that removes featured pages from the rest of the organic search results. That way, results pages with a featured snippet will now have ten organic listings, instead of the usual eleven (11) organic links. ### What are the Types of Featured Snippets Looking closely at featured snippets, you’ll see that they come in distinct types depending on the query. You must know the different types of featured snippets to optimise your content structure for them. The different types of featured snippets are as follows: #### Paragraph The most common featured snippets are paragraph contents. These are excerpts from long-form content that Google pulled out from a

HTML element. ![Featured Snippet - Australian Mobile Phone Stats](https://www.redsearch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Featured-Snippet-Australian-Mobile-Phone-Stats.png) #### List Featured snippets can also come in numbered and bulleted lists from contents with