Weekly SEO news: 20 August 2019
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Here are the latest website promotion and Internet marketing tips for you.

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please forward this newsletter to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO

1. Save time and money: do SEO more efficiently by setting the right goals

You will waste a lot of time and money if you do not optimize your website efficiently. Time is precious and you can achieve much more if you set your goals right.

Time is money: SEO can be done more efficiently

1. You don't need as many visitors as possible

This is a mistake that many beginners make. It's a good idea to to get many website visitors. However, you need the right visitors.

Doubling the number of visitors usually does not double your sales. You need visitors that are interested in your offers. If people come through traffic exchange programs to your website, they won't buy. If you optimize your website for generic keywords that have a very high search volume, people won't buy. Better optimize for targeted keywords with fewer competitors.

How to save time:

Focus on the quality of the visitors. Avoid traffic sources that deliver untargeted traffic. Optimize your web pages for keywords with a high conversion rate. Avoid vanity keywords that just look good. Getting 100 visitors through good keywords is much better than getting 1000 visitors through bad keywords.

2. You don't always need higher rankings than your competitors

For some keywords, it doesn't matter if your website is listed on position 2 or position 7. Searchers will check multiple results on the first results page before they make a decision. If your website is listed in the top 3 results, it is possible that the time and effort that is necessary to move your website to position 1 is better used to get high rankings for new keywords.

The number of targeted visitors that you get through the new keywords might be more than the additional visitors that you get by increasing the position for a single keyword.

How to save time:

It's sometimes better to optimize for new keywords than to optimize for keywords for which you already have good rankings.

3. You don't have to use the keywords with the highest search volume

Keywords with high search numbers aren't necessarily the best keywords for your website. High volume keywords are often generic and they do not convert well.

If a keyword is so competitive that your website won't get on the first result page then this keyword won't work for you. If you cannot make it on page one then it doesn't make sense to use that keyword.

A targeted keyword with a low search volume will deliver more sales to your website. If you want great results, don't waste your time on high volume keywords that will deliver worthless traffic to your site. Focus on long-tail keywords that are much more likely to convert.

How to save time:

Use the keyword tool in SEOprofiler to find targeted keywords. Use the search numbers as a bonus but do not choose your keywords based on the number of searches. If a keyword is related to your business, you should use it on one of your web pages.

A highly relevant keyword with few searches usually has a much higher conversion rate than a general keyword with many searches.

Save time and money

Do the right things in the right order and you will get results much more quickly. The step-by-step SEO guide helps you to work as efficiently as possible.

SEO The tools in SEOprofiler will help you to work even more efficiently. You can create your SEOprofiler account here:

Save time and money

2. Internet marketing news of the week

John Mueller Google: nofollow links do not pass PageRank
 
"Google’s John Mueller said in a short video on YouTube that nofollow links do not pass PageRank. That means that they do not have an impact on the Google rankings of your web pages. [...]

In general, this means we don’t pass any PageRank from the link source to the link target. However, it’s still a link on the web and users may be using those to reach your website."


Google: don’t lease subdomains on other websites for ranking purposes

"Some people lease subdomains or directories on relatively popular domains because they can get better rankings on these subdomains than with their own domains. [...]

It seems that this works quite well for some people so Google decided to publish a statement that indicates that this technique might not work anymore in the near future."

John MuellerGoogle: if you remove a link from a disavow file, it won't be disavowed anymore

"Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that links that have been removed from a disavow file won’t be disavowed anymore. That means that they will contribute to your rankings (if Google’s hasn’t marked these links algorithmically)."


Less than half of Google searches now result in a click

"We can see a consistent pattern: organic shrinks while zero-click searches and paid CTR rise. But the devil’s in the details and, in this case, mostly the mobile details, where Google’s gotten more aggressive with how ads and instant answer-type features appear."


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

  • 25% of all US desktop searches are on Bing.
  • Google considers sending notifications for featured snippet penalties.
  • Google: nofollow a link if money is involved.
  • Google Search tests more pagination options: more results, infinite scroll & more.
  • Google tests bigger font size.
  • It is normal that Google does not always show rich results.

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.