Weekly SEO news: 23 April 2019
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Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

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Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. How to improve your Google rankings by improving your internal links

The links on your own website can influence the position of your web pages in Google's search results. Good internal links make it easier for your pages to be indexed and ranked by Google.

Better rankings with internal links

Why are internal links important?

Links are one of the most important signals in Google's ranking algorithm. Most people know that links from external pages are important. However, the internal links on your website also contribute to your rankings:

Google gives more value to pages with many links. Links from external websites help Google to see the overall value of a web page in comparison to other pages on the web. Internal links help Google to see the importance of a web page in comparison to the other pages of your website.

Pages with many links are crawled more often by Google. If you want to show Google that a particular page is important, make sure that you link to that page from many other pages of your website.

Click-depth is important

Google's John Mueller said in a webmaster hangout on YouTube that click-depth matters in search engine optimization.

"If your homepage is generally the strongest page on your website and from the home page it takes multiple clicks to actually get to one of these stores and that makes it a lot harder for us to understand that these stores are actually pretty important.

On the other hand, if it's one click from the home page to one of these stores then that tells us that these stores are probably pretty relevant and that probably we should be giving them a little bit of weight in the search results as well.

So it's more a matter of how many links you have to click through to actually get to that content rather than what the URL structure itself looks like. A flat architecture may be more beneficial than like a long pyramidal. [...]

I think the flat architecture definitely tells us a little bit more but it's still something where you have to be careful not to overdo it. So if you link to all of your pages from the home page then [...] it's not something where you'd have much much value from that.

You still need some structure or some context around those pages. If you have a handful of pages that are really important for you then that will be perfect to link from the home page or any of the important pages that you might have on your site."

Tip: Among many other things the website audit tool in SEOprofiler measures the click-depth of your pages:

Check the click depth on your web pages.

Click depth statistics

Reduce the number of clicks that are needed to get to important pages on your website. For example, you can do to reduce the click-depth:

  • Increase the number of high-level categories on your website. The more high-level categories your website has, the quicker people will find particular pages.
  • Increase the number of related links on your pages. For example, you could increase the number of linked similar products on a product page.

How to improve your rankings for particular topics

Improved internal links can also help you to improve the authority of pages that deal with a particular topic. Create hub pages on your website that link to all pages that are related to a particular topic.

The page that covers the main topic should be linked from the home page of your website. That page should be an authoritative page that covers the main topic from an expert view. Then link to the related pages from the main page.

The related pages should also link to each other to reinforce the relationship between these pages. Use anchor texts that are related to the topic in your links. By creating these content hubs, you increase the ranking chances of the individual pages.

Tools can help you to optimize your links

With the right internal links, you can increase the authority of your website for your subject. You can also improve your Google rankings through rankings factors like click-depth and page importance. The tools in SEOprofiler will help you with that:

Optimize your links

2. Internet marketing news of the week

Google Google confirms that there are still problems with the ranking algorithm

"In a webmaster hangout on YouTube, Google’s John Mueller confirmed that there are still problems with Google’s ranking algorithm. Google is working on it but they don’t know when the problems will be fixed:"


Google: our search results are completely independent of our ads

"On Twitter, Google's Danny Sullivan said that Google's search results are completely independent of Google Ads. [...] Google Analytics is also separate from Google Search. We don't make use of that. It wouldn't make any sense, since not all sites use it. It's not representative."

John MuellerGoogle: you can use umlauts in your URLs

"On Twitter, Google’s John Mueller confirmed that you can use umlauts such as ä, ö or p in internal links. You do not have to use punycode. So it’s okay to link to http://römtömtömtöm.com instead of http://xn--rmtmtmtm-n4accc.com/ (which is basically the same URL)"


Google My Business rolling out short names

"Google has started the rollout of 'Short Names'; the ability of a business to create a custom, short URL that then can be used for easy access to their business profile on Google.

Customers can enter the short name URL in the browser’s address bar, like 'g.page/[yourcustomname]', to go directly to your Business Profile."


+++ SEARCH +++ ENGINE +++ NEWS +++ TICKER +++

  • Another Google indexing bug. This time, it affects Google News.
  • Apply or dismiss automatic Google Ad recommendations.
  • Instant-loading AMP pages from your own domain
  • Google Maps is asking commuters how crowded their trains are.

3. Previous articles

Do you need better rankings for your website?

SEOprofiler is a web-based search marketing tool that helps you to get better Google rankings. You can create a free SEOprofiler account here. The step-by-step manual will help you to get started as quickly as possible.