Portent: where all mobiles are welcome

If this still doesn’t convince you, remember that mobile traffic is likely already exceeding desktop traffic and that mobile visitors typically convert at a higher rate than desktop visitors. Mobile isn’t the way of the future or even the “next big thing.” Mobile is here and it’s been here for years.

Because of this, I grabbed a bunch of sites and ran them through Google’s own Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool that lets you know whether or not Google views your site as optimized for smaller screens.

Here are the 5 most common things that cause a seemingly mobile-optimized site to fail Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

1. Blocking CSS or JS Resources

This was one of the most common mistakes, and by far the most heartbreaking. You’ve spent all this time making a beautiful, responsive site. But what you don’t realize is that when Google crawls it, it’s just seeing this:

Noooooooooo

Google has already specifically stated that blocking Image, CSS, and JavaScript resources from their bots is against their webmaster guidelines and can negatively affect your indexation and ranking. But what’s worse, those are the elements that search engines need in order to render your mobile site. That means all of those painstaking hours you’ve spent making break points, image resizing instructions, and minimized design elements go completely unnoticed to the search engines.

The solution here is simple: don’t do it. Get rid of those meta robots instructions. Check your robots.txt files; especially if your resources are delivered via a CDN. Show off all those beautiful images and stylesheets to the search engines!

2. Using Too Small a Font Size

This one may seem obvious but it’s an easy thing to miss. Your text has to be big enough to read on tiny screens or else mobile visitors are going to give themselves headaches trying to read your new Top 5 Beyoncé Themed Holiday Dishes blog post.

Does that say 2 cups of glitter or 3?

This is a super easy one for search engines to check and, because of that, it’s a super easy rule to follow.

Google recommends using a base font size of at least 16 CSS pixels, then resizing based on the font’s properties. For detailed instructions, follow their actual guidelines here.

3. Placing Buttons Too Close Together

Another thing that Google looks at is how close your links are. Fingers are much clumsier than mouse pointers (especially if you’re me) and, because of this, Google uses the size and proximity of links as a mobile-friendliness factor.

To make sure your site passes the tap-test, be sure that important buttons have a height and width of at least 7mm (or 48 CSS pixels). You can make less important links smaller, but you need to be sure that there are no other links within 5mm (32 CSS pixels) of them. Again, Google has more detailed instructions on their own developer’s site.

4. Not Making All Pages Mobile-Friendly

This was the other common mistake I saw. Google’s “mobile-friendly” badge is awarded on a page-by-page basis. That means if your homepage is a shining example of responsive cross-device beauty but your product page still is full of tiny text, tiny images and tiny buttons, it’s all for nothing.

So, when you’re doing your next mobile-makeover, be sure to hit every page on your site. If you don’t, those internal pages are going to start losing out on all that precious, high-converting mobile traffic.

5. Content Is Wider Than the Screen

This last one, admittedly,  happened primarily with sites that didn’t seem to be going for mobile-friendly designs in the first place, but it’s definitely worth mentioning. Making sure you don’t have to scroll sideways to view your page may seem like a no-brainer but it was one of the most common flags that the Mobile Tester threw out.

Typically, your best solution for managing widths is proper use of the viewport meta tag. This allows you to instruct browsers  to display a page’s dimensions based on screen size. Out of everything described in this post, this is the most difficult to fix since this happens when you have an element that is larger the defined veiwport width. Fortunately, there are a few guidelines out there on configuring a viewport, including this one from Google.

Do you have any tips that weren’t mentioned here? Post your questions and advice in the comments below!

The post 5 Ways Your Site Might Fail Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test appeared first on Portent.

I find this to be true online and offline – I read a lot of industry blog posts and attend many workshops and conferences and people are typically quite passionate about what they do; and that passion frequently translates into contributions to the rest of us in the online marketing community.

Nowadays, as an SEO Strategist on Team Portent, the bulk of my day-to-day professional work involves a lot of, well, SEO-related diagnosis and recommendations. And just like you wouldn’t send a carpenter or a plumber out to do a job without a proper set of tools, we online marketers need tools that help us to be more productive than we would be otherwise. During my day-to-day work, I use a combination of Portent’s stellar internal toolset and a host of other tools as well.

Some time ago I started keeping a list of tools on an Excel spreadsheet because it’s just too hard to keep everything in my head (I named the file my “forget-me-not” list of tools). I read a lot of industry blogs every day and if someone mentions some tool and it seems like something I can use now or in the future, I log it on my spreadsheet for future investigation or use.

So now I have this giant list of tools that I want to share with you now.

Cut the Talk – It’s Time to Rock

You probably already know about many or most of these tools, but I’d bet that you’ll find at least one cool tool here you’ve never used before – and that will make it worth your time to scan the list or bookmarking this page for future reference.

I’ve broken this down to logical-to-me categories, but you may prefer a different organizational scheme. Also, it’s true that many of these tools “fit” into more than one category and can be used for multiple tasks, so there is that to keep in mind. I’ll also mention that you may find my extremely short descriptions inadequate (please be kind, I typically would enter the tool to my spreadsheet with some hastily-typed or copy/paste from the site to cue me as to what the tool could be used for). But setting all that aside, what’s important is that someone, hopefully you, will find this list useful.

Last notes: I’ve been keeping this list just for my own personal benefit, and I’m not being compensated in any way by any tool or resource you see on this list. My descriptions are purposely very short making it easy for you to scan this list. So without further ado, here’s my insanely large list of tools. Want to download the spreadsheet? No problem, do that at the bottom of this post.

Categories (click to jump to that specific list of tools)

Competition Research

Content Strategy

Conversion Rate Optimization

Design

International SEO

Keyword Research

Link Building Earning

Local SEO

Online Reputation Management

PPC

Rank Checking

Site Analysis

Social Media

Structured Markup

Miscellaneous Tools & Toolsets

Competition Research

Sure, you don’t want to “take your eye off the ball” with respect to your site and overall digital marketing strategy – but you don’t want to be caught sleeping either while your competitors pass you by (excuse the mixed metaphors). You can learn a lot from what your competitors are doing well or even doing poorly when it comes to online marketing. I recommend you do periodic research on your competition and keep your finger on the pulse of your industry at large.

AdWords Keyword Planner

Use Competitor URLs in Keyword Planner tool, review suggested keyword groups and keywords.

Ahrefs

Batch Analysis: very fast overview of backlinks & social metrics for any list of URLs you enter.

Fresh Web Explorer

Where are your competitors being mentioned? Are there feeds that highlight their content frequently? FWE is a good tool to build up your outreach list.

Market Samurai

Top 10 SERP comparison module outputs a color-coded grid of various key ranking metrics.

Mozbar

Browser toolbar – provides wealth of metrics & data on web pages and SERP listings.

MozCheck

Bulk URL checker to grab Moz stats on multiple URLs via SERPs scrape/download.

Open Link Profiler

“The freshest backlinks, for free”.

Open Site Explorer

Get most linked-to URLs for popular content research – many, many more uses.

Reverse Internet

Serious competitive intelligence including finding all GA accounts!

SEMrush

Use the domain vs. domain tool to see what keywords competitors rank for with associated metrics. View Competitor keywords, ad copy, organic or paid.

SEOmoz

“On-page report card” – grade a page for a Keyword.

SERPIQ

Analyze competition and discover keywords.

Similar Sites

Easily find similar websites.

Similar Web

Via Avinash at Mozcon – use to get a *&%$load of data on your site and other’s sites.

Site Alerts

Instant insights on any website: can also get email subscription to alerts.

Web Me Up

Backlink profile checker, not free.

Woorank

Get a quick overview of site metrics.

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Content Strategy

Content Gems

Quickly find and share the most valuable content in one easy-to-use platform (paid tool).

Content Strategy Generator Tool (updated)

This very cool tool from Richard Baxter and the Builtvisible team helps you plan your content strategy intelligently, using keyword research and estimating your audience size. Their description of the tool is “Easily consolidate trending news from across the web, and find inspiration for your research topics quickly and easily”.

Contently

Content “story” creation service via Mike King.

Copyscape

Copyscape serves both as a plagiarism checker and a duplicate-content checker. Great to use if your content has been distributed across the web.

Enigma

Navigate the world of public data.

FAQ Fox

Find questions your target demographic is talking about online.

Fresh Web Explorer

FWE allows you to check on or keep track of a set of terms over time, and helps you get a sense for what type of content gets a lot of mentions, shares, and links. Many more uses, features keep getting added.

Google Public Data

Drawing on vast public databases, Google public data offers a great starting point for content research, infographics, and more.

Headline Analyzer

Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.

Similar Page Checker

Use this tool to check for duplicate content issues. The Similar Page Checker will give you a score of how closely the HTML of two pages resemble each other.

Speechpad

Transcription service.

Trend Hunter

Paid tool.

Triberr

A community of bloggers and influencers come together to read and share great content.

Wiki Mind Map

Create mind map out of Wikipedia topics & articles.

Content & Headline Idea Generator

Enter a subject (or topic or keywords) and get all kinds of titles and ideas.

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Conversion Rate Optimization

ClickTale

Heatmaps.

Formisimo

Form Analytics.

Inspectlet

Heatmaps, screencapture.

iPerceptions

Get visitor feedback.

Kampyle

Get visitor feedback.

Kiss Metrics

CRO, A/B testing, analytics.

Mouseflow

Live click tracking.

Optimizely

A/B testing.

Survey Monkey

Get visitor feedback.

Visual Website Optimizer

A/B & MV testing.

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Design

Canva

“Amazingly simple graphic design for blogs, presentations, Facebook covers, flyers and so much more”.

HTML Color Picker

Use the online image color picker right to select a color and get the html Color Code of this pixel.

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International SEO

Flang

Hreflang testing tool.

Hfreflang Generator

Hreflang tag generator from Aleyda Solis.

HREFLANG Sitemap Tool

Create HREFLANG Sitemap.

Impersonal Me

Search de-personalized, via Portent SEO Kaitlin McMichael.

International Geo-Surfing

Search international, get SERPs.

Lexipedia

Displays a handy little chart with every definition of a word and synonyms. It’s a lexicon-builder’s dream.

Search From

Simulate using Google Search from different location or device or perform a search with custom search settings – useful for searching Google as if you were somewhere else and for SEO & SEA testing.

Search Latte

Build Google searches in any combination of Google supported top level domain, country and language.

Word Reference

Online translator.

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Keyword Research

AdWords Keyword Tools

Generate keywords from a seed keywords or enter a list to obtain search volume and other data points.

Google Analytics

Look at the keywords that drive traffic – especially historical data before the onset of (not provided). Matched Search Queries – the keywords a searcher typed before clicking on an AdWords ad.

Google Correlate

Find searches that correlate with real-world data.

Google Search

Look at related searches at bottom.

Google Suggest

Don’t hit enter when you start searching. Thanks to Wil Reynolds.

Google Trends

Get idea of up or down trend & also look at hot trends for new ideas.

Google Webmaster Tools queries

Look for striking distance keywords. Export for further analysis in Excel or other tools.

Keyword Eye

Free section requires signup.

Keyword Spy

Organic & paid info. Recently added killer backlink analysis.

Keyword Tool

Like Ubersuggest: get 750 google keyword suggestions for free.

Lexipedia

Create “wonder wheels” of related terms – hover for definitions.

Local Keyword Tool

Local SEO keyword research tool – enter Zip & KEYWORD, get list of KEYWORD plus local cities.

Market Samurai

Research a list of keywords you enter or enter a seed keyword to generate related keywords; huge amount of associated metrics is available.

Merge Words

Concatenation tool.

Meta Glossary

Get definitions and related terms for keyword research.

Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool

Keyword difficulty tool.

Moz On-page Grader

Grade a page for a keyword.

SEMrush

Enter site: get keyword list export, organic or paid

SEO Chat

Keyword suggestion tool.

SEO Chat Keyword Suggest Tool

Like Ubersuggest, you can generate lists of related keywords using a root term. Need to play with this, check it out.

Social mention

Download top keywords; use wordle/compose to create word cloud to visualize. Hat tip to Ben Lloyd.

Sonar Solo

Visualize social trends.

Spyfu

Organic & paid info.

Suggester

Suggester is another free tool like Ubersuggest where you can input a seed term and generate variations – download to CSV is desired.

Tag Crowd

Make your own tag cloud from any text.

Topsy

Enter keyword, look at trends & spikes.

Trend Hunter

Trend Hunter.

Ubersuggest

Generate list of keywords from seed; enter into AdWords tool for volume etc.

Wordle

Create word clouds.

Wordstream

Generate keywords – paid tool.

Wordstream Free Keyword Tools

In addition to its paid offerings, Wordstream offers a suite of free keyword tools offering access to thousands of keyword suggestions.

Wordtracker

Generate keywords – paid tool.

Yahoo Glimmer

“An RDF Search Engine”.

Yelp Trends

Yelp Trends tool.

YouTube AutoSuggest

Just like Google Autocomplete.

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Link Building Earning

Author Crawler

You’ll end up with a report allowing you to sort your backlinks by the social standing of the authors of those links.

Advanced Search Operator Auto Generator

Incredible: enter a keyword, it outputs links to Google SERPS of your keyword plus various advanced search operators.

Banana Tag

Email Tracking service, via Ross Hudgens.

Bookmarklet – Domain Hunter Plus

Checks for broken links on a page. Browser plugin.

Broken Link Check

Checks a site for broken links.

Broken Link Finder

Garrett French’s tool – Citation Labs.

Broken Link Index

Scrapes the web for broken links based on keyword input!

Bulk Doman Authority Checker

Check DA of up to 200 domains at once.

Buzzstream tools

Various tools & uses.

Domain Hunter Plus

This magic extension for Chrome not only helps you find important broken links, but also tells you if the links point to an available domain.

Easel.ly

Free tools for creating and sharing inforgraphics. The templates allow anyone to create a professional-looking graphic.

Email Format

Find email address via domain name entry.

Free Email Verifier

Verify email addresses.

Fresh Web Explorer

Find recent mentions where you aren’t being linked-to.

HARO

Help a reporter out.

Image Raider

Automated reverse image search! Search who’s using your image, request a link from them.

Infogr.am

A great free Infographics resource that allows you to easily create graphics and data visualizations.

Keyword Typo Generator

Create domain misspellings (add TLD) add to bulk backlink checker like Majestic or Ahrefs, find links that point to you then go and ’em.

Link Search Tool

Enter keyword, generates clickable advanced search operators!

LinkRisk

Mine our database and identify opportunity for content placement whether as a link builder, an affiliate or a website owner.

Linkstant

Discover new links immediately, even as they’re being placed (via Mike King).

MailTester.com

Need to send an email to an untested address, but you don’t want to spam them? Check it first with this mail tester to verify.

Majestic SEO

See competitor’s link profile.

MyBlogGuest

Community of guest bloggers.

Open Site Explorer

Look at competitor’s links for good opportunities.

Outdated Content Finder

Find outdated content, build fresh, and ask for links.

PyScape

Grab OSE data via API with this tool.

Scrapebox

Scrape, check, ping, post!

Search From

View all your tweets on one page.

Tagul

Word cloud tool – use to see influencer names.

Twitter Archiver

Via Richard Baxter, Mozcon 2013: twitter archiving Google spreadsheet.

Vsnap

Send email with a 1 min video (via Mike King).

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Local SEO

Best Darn Local SEO Client Questionnaire

It really is.

Census.gov Tools

US Census tools for audience demographics.

Generate local AdWords and Keyword Lists Tool

Your Local SEO not-so-secret weapon.

Moz Local

“In one easy step, Moz Local ensures your business listings are correct, consistent, and visible across the web so search engines and new customers can find you.”

Google Gadgets Driving Directions Widget For Your Webpage

Google Gadgets driving directions widget for your webpage.

Google Map Maker

Among other things, Google Map Maker allows you to contribute to public map information, which may be shared and incorporated into Google Maps.

Google Places for Business Category Tool

Google Places for Business Category Tool.

Google+ My Business Page Finder

Michael Cottam’s Google+ My Business Page Finder.

Whitespark Offline Conversion Tracker

Offline Conversion Tracker

OSHA Standard Industrial Category Tool

OSHA Standard Industrial Category Tool.

Plagiarism Checker

Plagiarism Checker

Schema Creator

Create HTML with schema.org microdata.

USPS ZIP Code Tool

You’ll need a specific address, so be ready for that.

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Online Reputation Management

Complaint Search

Search all complaint websites at once.

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PPC

Note: although I’ve been AdWords certified for years and have run some small campaigns, I don’t necessarily consider myself a “PPC guy” or expert (we have those here, though) – so my list of PPC tools is not particularly extensive, to put it nicely. Feel free to send me your non-commercial suggestions to add here via Twitter (@dportney) – thanks!

Unbounce

Landing Page Creator.

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Rank Checking

The relative importance of checking rankings is debatable. In fact, it was at @SEMpdx SearchFest industry conference where I heard my first full-blown rant from @ConradSaam about the uselessness of checking rank (he recommended focusing on traffic and conversions) – that was 4 years ago and before the Google Hummingbird algorithm update and before Google started rewriting queries based on perceived user intent. I’ve used and still use rank checkers, but the effectiveness of SEO strategies based on keyword ranking really seems to be dying if not already dead. That said, here’s some tools I’ve used:

Rank Checker for Firefox

This light and easy desktop tool checks rankings with the click of a button. Quick, easy and free.

Advanced Web Ranking

Actually, AWR does much, much more than just rank tracking and is definitely worth checking out (this is a paid tool).

Authority Labs

I haven’t used AL in awhile, but have used their service and it’s generally very good – I’m sure they’ve made improvements since (this is a paid tool).

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Site Analysis

I love doing site analysis. Whether it’s a relatively quick SEO Triage, a comprehensive SEO Audit, or even a full-blown SEO Strategy Playbook, conducting a thorough site analysis and providing recommendations is one of my favorite tasks in SEO-land. Here are some tools that I use and that will make your analyses faster, easier, and more comprehensive.

Aardvark bookmarklet

Mouse over page elements to see HTML data like div classes & IDs.

Backlink Over Optimization Analyzer

Anchor Text Over Optimization Tool.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing users will thank you.

Builtwith.com

Get an overview of site metrics.

Check All the Links on a Website

“Find Broken Links, Redirects & Site Crawl Tool.”

Compression / gzip test tool

A simple online web page compression / deflate / gzip test tool.

CSS Sprites

Create CSS Sprites Online.

Developer Toolbar for Firefox

Many use cases – a Swiss Army Knife of tools.

Fiddler2

Website Debugger.

Foxyseo toolbar

Get various site metrics.

Frobee Robots.txt Checker

Many robots.txt files contain hidden errors not easily visible to humans. Run your file through this tool and you never know what you’ll discover.

Google Page Speed Insights

Tools, data, and insights to improve your page speed.

Google Penalty Checker

Google Penalty Checker tool.

Google Plus 1 Checker

Google Plus One Checker in Bulk!

Gtmetrix

Pagespeed & Yslow grade, great report!

Gzip Check

Check if Gzip is enabled.

HTML Markup Validator

W3C HTML markup validator.

HTTP compression and conditional GET test tool

Some web servers enable HTTP compression and conditional GET to reduce bandwidth usage with browsers that support these technologies. Use this tool to test whether a webpage supports HTTP compression and conditional GET.

HTTP Compression Check

Check if compression is on.

IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit

IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit.

Image & Link Analyzer

Check All Links or Images on a Page.

META SEO Inspector

Inspect Meta Data via Chrome Plugin.

Mobile Test Me

Check how a site looks on various mobile devices.

Moonsy

Various tools – check dmoz, backlinks, DA etc.

Neil Patels Website Analyzer

Get various stats on your site and where you might make improvements.

On-Page Optimization Tool

Check the Important SEO Content on Your Webpage.

Page Speed Tool

Check the Speed of your site and your competitors.

Pingdom

Pingdom offers an entire suite of speed tools to help analyze page load, DNS issues, and connectivity.

Qualys SSL Labs

Enter domain to test SSL Certs and get a report.

Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer

See URL HTTP status.

Robots.txt Checke

Use robots best practices and discover hidden errors in your robots.txt files that may cause search engine crawling problems.

Screenshots dot com

Better than way back machine – easy way to quickly see past versions of sites.

SearchMetrics

SEO, Social, Rankings, keyword and backlinks report tool

SEO Crawler

Crawler – cloud based, allows export – max 250 URLs – plus other tools.

SEO Quake

Get key metrics & data quickly – use plugin or toolbar.

Similar Web

Via Avinash at Mozcon – use to get a sh*tload of data on your and other’s sites

SPDYCheck.org

Check if a website properly supports the SPDY protocol, the super-fast HTTP replacement, and troubleshoot any problems with the configuration.

Sprite Me

Create CSS Sprites out of background image using bookmarklet

Sprite Pad

Create CSS Sprites – drag and drop interface

Spy On Web

You Can Disclose Websites With The Same Google AdSense Code, Google Analytics Code, IP Address etc.

SSL Server Test

Analysis of the configuration of any SSL web server on the public Internet

URI Valet

A great tool for digging into server headers, canonical information, analyzing redirect problems and more.

Wayback Machine

Want to see the history of your website or your competitor’s site? The Wayback Machine allows you to step back in time and track important changes.

Web Page Test

Page Speed Tool via Ian

Woorank

Get a quick overview of site metrics

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Social Media

Circle Count

Google Plus Analytics

Facebook Debugger

Debug your OG tags

Facebook Power Editor

Facebook Power Editor Download page

Find People On Plus

The ultimate Google+ directory that’s great for research, outreach, and link building. Sort by keywords, profession, country, and more.

Follwerwonk

Find influencers; competitive research.

Gplus data

Google Plus trends and stats.

Hashtagify

Search and find the best twitter hash tags.

Hootsuite

Create tabs to listen on a particular topic or hashtag

Know Your Meme

Internet Meme Database

Knowem.com

Check for if your brand is available across multiple social sites

Meme Generator

Easy way to generate those images with text at top and bottom like “what if I told you…”

Pinterest Rich Pin Validator

Test structured markup and get approval in same process (per Cyrus’ Moz post)

SharedCount

Want to know how any piece of content was shared socially across the major services? This is the tool to use.

SharedCount API

Harnessing the combined statistics of Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and more, the SharedCount API puts a ton of social data at your fingertips.

Social Authority API

How much reach and social authority do your followers have? How about the people you’re trying to connect with? The free Social Authority API will tell you.

Social Crawlytics

ID competitors most shared content

Social Sites Image Size Template

Complete data on all image sizes for major social media sites

Sonar Solo

Visualize social trends

Twitter Land

Social media analytics

Twitter Validation Tool

First submit domain (per Cyrus’ Moz post) – then check URL

Twitteronomy

Analytics and more for Twitter via Matt McGee glowing recommendation.

Structured Markup

Good Relations

Good relations snippet generator

Google Data Highlighter

Use to grab HTML Markup

Google Plus Schema Creator

Google Plus Schema Creator

Google Structured Data Testing Tool

If you use Schema.org microformats or any other type of structured data, this tool will verify your markup.

Schema Creator

Everyone loves using Schema.org, but the microformats are difficult to write by hand. This generator from the folks at Raven simplifies the task.

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Miscellaneous Tools & Toolsets

Ontolo – Extract Unique Hostnames

Extract unique hostnames

Ontolo – Remove Dupe Hostnames

Remove duplicate hostnames

Scraper Tool (Desktop)

Desktop scraper / data harvester

Seer Toolbox

SEER opened up its internal toolbox for everyone in the world to use. These are the same tools used in-house at SEER, and they rock.

SEO Automatic

Lots of great tools here

Small SEO Tools

All kinds of tools to choose from, pretty cool!

Virante SEO Tools

Virante offers a number of high quality SEO tools to the public. These are often the same tools developed for the Virante team, opened up for public use.

A/B Test Calculator

Creates a bell curve.

Aleyda Solis’ Tools List

Aleyda Solis’ Tools List.

CloudFlare

How do they make CloudFlare free? It works both as a CDN and a security service to provide your website with speed and safety.

Convert Word Documents to Clean HTML

Despite the rise of Google Docs, Word still dominates much of the world. Copying and pasting has always been a hurdle, but this tool makes it easy.

Dingus Markdown to Markup

Convert HTML markup to markdown – via Matthew Henry at Portent.

Evernote

Keep stuff in the cloud, notes, screenshots, etc.

Free download tool

We help to download files from many popular sites.

Google Local Search Weather

Like MozCast – Daily Ranking Changes for Google Places for Business.

Google Page Speed Service

Singed up several times, never heard back.

Google Play URL Builder

Link tagging for Google Play Apps.

Google Scraper Report

Report if a site has scraped you and is outranking you too.

Google URL Removal Tool

Remove outdated content from the search results, public tool.

Internet Marketing Ninjas SEO Tools

The Ninjas are some of the best SEOs and online marketers out there, and they’ve put some of their best tools online for free.

IP Address Range Tool

Creates regex for IP address range.

ITTT (If This Then That)

If this then that – general usage.

List of Tools

List of tools on OnlineSales.co.uk

MozCast

Look at SERPs volatility.

Nerdy Data

Search code online!

Newsle

News story notification service, free.

Page2RSS

Turn any URL into an RSS feed – use with IFTTT.

Pixabay

Free images!

Ranks.nl

Great toolset here.

Remove Duplicate Items

Ontolo offers a suite of link building software and a few helpful productivity tools for link builders. The remove duplicates tool solves a common problem.

Scraper for Chrome

If you’ve never scraped a webpage, you’re missing out. Scraper for Chrome puts the power of simple web scraping in your hands without the need for code.

Secure Referer Quick Check

This web page shows your secure (i.e. HTTPS) referrer.

SEO Automatic

Bulk status code response checker.

SEO automatic toolbar

Browser toolbar – various uses.

SEO Book Toolbar

Browser toolbar for SEO.

SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

Preview SERP snippet live while writing it.

SERPS.com

Look at SERPs volatility.

Sitemap Generators

Google offers a slew of free, top-notch sitemap generators. Most of these live on your server and generate new sitemaps automatically.

Talk Walker Alerts

Like Google Alerts.

Text Expander

Expand text like MS Word autocomplete.

User Agent String dot com

Shows your user agent string.

What’s My Info

Get your complete browser information.

Yahoo Pipes

A great mashup tool that combines different feeds into content and other magical creations. Used for link building and whatever you can dream of.

Caption Tube

Free and easy resource used to create captions for YouTube. Helps with usability and offers viewers a readable transcript.

Screencast-O-Matic

One-click screen capture recording on Windows or Mac computers with no install for FREE!

Video Embed Generator

Create custom embed code for video to include a link: via Phil Nottingham.

Wistia

Video hosting.

LongURL

Expand a shortened URL.

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Conclusion

You can greatly improve your efficiency and productivity by using these tools – that certainly has been my experience. I’m confident that you’ll find at least one tool on this list that will be beneficial to you. If you want to download an Excel spreadsheet containing all of these tools you, grab that here. I’m also confident you’ll know of a tool or two that is not listed here that you think should be, so feel free to share those with all of us in the comments below.

The post My (Insanely Large) List of SEO Tools & Other Useful Resources appeared first on Portent.

But what if you can’t? Implementing schema markup requires dev resources, coding skills, and file access that aren’t always the most available. Maybe you need something quick and dirty. Well, that’s where the Data Highlighter in Google Webmaster Tools comes in.

What is the Data Highlighter?

The Data Highlighter is your new shortcut to rich snippets in Google. If you haven’t played around with it, you definitely should.

Let’s say, for example, you have an event that you want to promote. You’re on a bit of a time crunch so you don’t have time to wait for resources to free up but you also know that this is only applicable for a few pages, so you shouldn’t have to derail an existing development project.

Simply log into Google Webmaster Tools and go to the “Data Highlighter”. Then select “Start Highlighting.”

Select item type:

Use your mouse to highlight text and notate it:

When you’re done, hit “Publish”:

You did it!

What data can I highlight?

The Data Highlighter isn’t nearly as robust as Schema.org, but it does offer its share of data types to markup.  You can do Articles, Events, Locations, Book Reviews, Movie Reviews, Products, Software, and a few others.

This is especially useful for small businesses who want to highlight their location pages:

Or for business that only have a few products to sell online:

What are problems with the Data Highlighter?

The Data Highlighter isn’t perfect, which is why it really is the quick and dirty method. First, if you change any aspect of the page’s coding, it will break the Data Highlighter project even if the content remains the same. In order to get pages to re-cache, you’ll need to delete the old project entirely and start from scratch.

Secondly, you can run into problems if you have a lot of pages. One of the Data Highlighter’s features is that it will try and guess what chunks of content go with what data item, and it’s pretty good at it, but not perfect. It leans pretty heavily on placement of text and images on the page. So if a specific item isn’t constantly located in roughly the same spot in the page as it is on others, the Highlighter will have difficulty finding the items to notate.

For example, it has no problem identifying the different items on this most pages when I set up the page set for the Portent blog, but when the featured image is removed, the guesses are completely off:

It also requires patterns in the URL structure to group pages together. For example, here it’s looking for URLs that contain the word “blog” in the file path.

You can use regex to refine this a bit, but at that point its probably worth going straight to Schema to markup the data on the pages, since that’s easier to implement on a template-level.

Lastly, it’s only visible to Google. Other search engines and sites that may crawl your site for data won’t be able to use the markup at all, so you aren’t communicating the data categories to Bing or anyone else.

When should I use the Data Highlighter?

You should use it when you have no other choice! Maybe you got an enormous development queue and want to start seeing rich snippets earlier. Or maybe you want to measure the impact of a rich snippet to see if implementing schema markup site wide is worth the effort. Perhaps you have limited coding resources and just need to markup a few things, like your product or physical location.

All in all, the Data Highlighter is what it is: a quick and dirty method for rich snippets. If you have the ability, you should absolutely use schema to markup your code directly. It’ll make a difference in the long run and is much easier to scale. But if you’re a small business or just have a few things to notate, the Data Highlighter might be the perfect solution for you.

Have you used the Data Highlighter before? Was it a headache or a revelation? Share your experiences in the comments below!

The post Google’s Data Highlighter: Your New Favorite Backup Plan appeared first on Portent.

From the SEO Strategist:

I hate to say it, but it’s not really good enough to be number one for organic search anymore; paid advertising needs to be a part of your search strategy. When a client says to me, “I want to be number 1 for all my keywords,” they actually mean they want to be number 4. There are at least 3 other listings that will steal upwards of 64% of the clicks – at least for keyword phrases with commercial intent. So, as an SEO Strategist, I’ve resigned to the fact that I should probably discuss with PPC Strategists about how the paid campaigns for my clients perform. I want to know if those clicks they’ve been stealing are converting or not. The PPC Strategist has a whole minefield of interesting insights at their fingertips, and figuring out which keywords work and which are duds are all part of my plan for world domination.

From the PPC Strategist:

While I’d like to think that PPC is awesome because it’s easy to control, takes effect quickly, and takes the top of the search result pages, it’s not the be all and end all of search marketing. Organic listings, and other information snippets appear on results page and drive on average 64% of visits to a web page. Clearly beating paid search as a traffic driver. Also, while paid search ads are accompanied by a little “ad” button designating it as a paid placement, SEO isn’t seen as advertising and is perceived as trustworthy by the public.

See that little ad bubble in the left hand corner of the PPC ad. Yes, that clearly designates it as an advertisement which dissuades some users from clicking on it. Sure internally I can know this is all above board, but it is like comparing your favorite garage band to an auto-tuned pop singer, one has a lot more authenticity.

Come Together, Right Now

With these views of SEO and PPC in mind we’re going to examine how the two departments can complement each other.

Keyword Research

Both PPC and SEO Strategists do keyword research before and during a campaign, so why not share those keyword insights with each other? Follow these steps to ensure clear keyword communication between departments: 1) The SEO specialist creates a “keyword map” report that details the keywords for which your site is already ranking and the corresponding landing pages for those keywords. This takes a bit of reverse-engineering in Google Analytics and other keyword data sources, but it is a necessary evil in this era of (not provided) keyword data loss. 2) The SEO Strategist also does some additional keyword research to find new keyword ranking opportunities and maps those keywords to the appropriate landing pages. 3) Then the SEO Strategist sends the keyword map to the PPC strategist. The PPC strategist can use this keyword map as a seed keyword list for building out campaigns. 4) After testing keywords to find over- and under-achievers, the PPC Strategist should send the results to the SEO. An SEO might try to rank for “keyword A” but if the PPC finds that “keyword B” is actually kicking ass, maybe the SEO would like to know that. This report which is pulled from the AdWords UI can be used to find out what queries are actually generating actions on a web site, but most importantly it can be used to find synonyms or other variations of keywords that were not included in the original keyword map or PPC campaign. With 20% of daily search queries being questions that have never been asked before, relying on a static keyword list leaves opportunities on the table. Review the search query report thoroughly to see what keywords could be added to a PPC account, or built out for SEO pages.

Improve Loading Speed and Overall Quality Score

Quality score is rated on a 1- 10 scale and determined by several factors such as keyword click-through rates and page loading times. If a page loads slowly, then your ads will cost more and your organic rankings will suffer. So the SEO and the PPC Strategists should do everything in their power to make the site as freakishly fast as possible. 1) The SEO Strategist should communicate with the PPC Strategist if they suspect that certain pages are suffering from slow load times. A PPC Strategist can then see if those pages have low quality scores.

2) The SEO Strategist can investigate page speed issues using Google PageSpeed Insights, YSlow, and other tools. 3) The SEO Strategist or a developer can then implement the fixes necessary. If a page loads slowly due to render-blocking JavaScript or CSS, then those should load asynchronously. Or maybe some static resources simply need to have expiry dates set so that browsers will load cached content. 4) Once page speed issues are addressed, the PPC should measure for improved click-through rates and higher quality scores.

Optimize a Landing Page Using PPC

Not only are the elements that drive clicks testable, but PPC can be harnessed to test post-click behavior as well. Since AdWords can send traffic to multiple landing pages via the same ad, a PPC Strategist can see what elements on a page influence KPIs for a particular keyword. For example, an ad group can be set up with two versions of the same ad that point to different landing pages. In this manner the page headline, call to action, layout, images, or other page elements can be tested. The findings from the PPC team can be used to inform SEO efforts. For example, if a PPC Strategist notices that Landing Page A is converting at a breakneck speed, then the SEO Strategist can take some cues and re-design the organic landing pages to follow suit.

Make Friends with AdWords and Webmaster Tools

When you link AdWords and Webmaster Tools together, beautiful things can happen. Have you ever wondered whether your organic listing is more effective if you also have a paid listing? Or if your paid listings are cannibalizing your organic listings? These questions can be answered by looking at the “Paid & Organic” dimension report within Google AdWords. This report pulls data from Google Webmaster Tools for organic searches, impressions, and click-through rates, and compares that data to AdWords keywords you’re bidding on. This helps you to look holistically at your integrated SEO and PPC campaigns. 1) The PPC Strategist should pull a monthly report of the “Paid & Organic” dimension report and send it to the SEO Strategist. The two strategists should look for insights such as the performance of keywords where both organic and paid ads show for a given keyword. 2) The PPC Strategist should determine if any changes need to be made in terms of bidding strategy based on the report. Look especially at keywords where “Organic only shown” as new keyword ideas. 3) The SEO Strategist should determine if any changes in SEO strategy should be made. Pay attention particularly to “Ad shown only” keywords where there were a significant number of clicks – this may indicate a qualified keyword to target.

Setting up Site Search

Setting up Google Site Search in Google Analytics allows PPC and SEO Strategists to see what users look for in the site search box. This can help you glean additional keyword info and help you understand what your users can’t find. For example, if 85% of users search for “blue penguin,” and you do, in fact, sell blue penguins but the product is buried under Blue Items > Penguins, then maybe it’s time to feature your blue penguins on the home page.

1) The PPC Strategist can use this information to bid on new keywords and drive them to a page that speaks to what they seek. 2) The SEO Strategist can use this information to determine which keywords are important to users that they can’t easily find, and then use that information to suggest on-page SEO improvements, new pages, and/or site structure revisions.

Testing Page Titles

One of the many benefits of PPC is that it allows marketers to test messaging. Use this if you launch new content and would like to see what messaging resonates most with your audience, or test specific offers, promotions, or value propositions. SEO Strategists can get in on the action too. Ask your PPC colleague to write two ads for a given term with the exact same copy except for the title. Then set Google AdWords to rotate the ads evenly until a winner is decided. Sit back and watch the results come in. In the AdWords interface you will be able to see which title performs better in terms of click-through rate. This indicates that there is more interest for this specific offer. Google Analytics can also assist in this effort too. Go to Analytics > AdWords > Campaign and set the secondary dimension to “ad content.” This way you will be able to see post-click metrics such as bounce rate time, time on site, and pages per session. Now you will be able to determine which ad after driving a user to a page actually kept them there. This isn’t possible with just SEO alone, but is a great example of how SEO Strategists can leverage the unique ability that AdWords offers PPC Strategists. As you can see from the example below Ad 1 had a significantly lower bounce rate and kept users on the site for a longer period of time. Consider utilizing the copy in Ad1’s headline in and SEO title tag.

Test New Geographic Markets and Demographics

And last but not least, PPC Strategists can help SEO Strategists by testing new markets and demographics with their laser sharp geo-targeting. PPC is helpful for businesses that are testing new markets to decide if there is enough demand for their products/services before they invest money and resources into new markets, and/or determine if your site would benefit from a long-term international SEO strategy. A properly executed international SEO strategy can take up a lot of time and resources. PPC in international markets, however, can be properly set up and executed within a few hours, if performed by an experienced PPC manager. 1) A PPC Strategist can set up a separate campaign for the country, region, city, or even ZIP code that you are interested in targeting. After testing the new campaign to see if you can achieve average or below-average CPA, the PPC Strategist can then send the findings to the SEO Strategist for implementation. 2) The SEO Strategist should not rely on estimated search volumes alone as an indicator of whether targeting a new region will be effective. Instead, wait until after a PPC campaign has launched to determine if targeting a new region will be successful.

SEO + PPC = Money

As you can see, there are several opportunities where SEO and PPC Strategists can work together to glean richer, more relevant data that can help them refine their search strategies.

This blog is a great example of the magic that can be made when two aspects of search marketing come together. The ironic thing is that this kind of inter-departmental information sharing rarely happens. Why? We think it is because it is possible to be successful within one’s own department. It is possible to carry out an effective SEO or PPC strategy without discussing these topics with a co-worker. And yet, as this article has pointed out, there are so many ways in which we  can teach and learn from each other! We hope this post inspires you to break out a six-pack and make yourself comfortable at your friendly SEO/PPC person’s desk and get to work. Also read this article about How to Use PPC to Bolster Your SEO, Inspired by Elizabeth Marsten’s Mozinar.

Although we can’t post this from two different people, this was a joint blog by both PPC Strategist, Laura Oden, and SEO, Kaitlin McMichael.

The post PPC and SEO — Shouldn’t They Get Along? appeared first on Portent.

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

The search results that you see within your browser are not the same as the others, each person is seeing different results. This is because those magic elves that place links on Google’s results pages knows that not everyone is that same and they customize your search results to better fit your needs. These personalized searches are created by multiple factors and from these sources, Google provides you with more relevant searches and gets you to the page you are looking for.

What affects my search results?

There are many factors that go into personalizing your search results, but here are some of the top ones:

Location

Google knows where you sleep. They also know where you work, go to school, and where you go on your weekends.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:


This is the location data Google has collected on me for the past 30 days.

Of course, I have an Android phone and take Google everywhere I go, but have a look here and find out if Google already knows what you did last weekend:
https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0

This precise location data allows Google to give you information based on your current location as well as the places you have visited in the past.

If you are not connected to Google via a mobile device, it will get your location based off your IP address of your internet connection. It may not be as precise as GPC, but it gives them the general area you are located.

This location data is used to help you find information on nearby restaurants or other local businesses. These custom results are very helpful to the user, but in my tests they caused the biggest fluctuation of the rankings.

You will also see local results from a couple different sources. One source is the content on your site. Google will look for the best content based on the location and the search query. These results will show up in the regular organic results (see the blue highlighted listings above).

There are still a section of local listings grouped within the search results. This data comes from Google My Business listings and finds local businesses near your location and places them on a map to help you find a store near you.

Search History

Google tracks the different terms that you search for to help understand the context of your search. Google first announced personalized search way back in 2005, which used your personal search history to influence your results. This was only available to users that had a Google account.

Then four years later, in 2009, Google announced that it was giving personalized search to everyone whether they were signed into their Google account or not.

 So you can see that Google remembers your other recent searches. The image below shows the same search query for ‘JavaScript,’ but you can see personalized results on the right based on previous searches.

In the search on the right I searched for ‘Programming Textbooks’ and ‘Books on HTML’ before I searched ‘JavaScript’. This changed the results by bringing in three book listings that were not on the original set of results at all.

Web History

If you are signed into a Google account and use Chrome or the Google Toolbar, your web history is being collected and stored in a vast Google data center somewhere. Google uses this web history to learn what kind of sites you like and base your search results on this.

When testing this, I saw Twitter rise in the rankings over Facebook since I tend to visit Twitter more often. Otherwise, I didn’t see any major changes.

Google+

When you create a Google+ account, you give Google a lot of demographic data on yourself including your age, sex, where you live, other places you used to live, where you work, who your friends are, what your favorite 80’s TV show is (mine is Misfits of Science).

You would think they would use this demographic data to target you, but during my tests I didn’t see any clear indications of this. The only major changes I saw based on Google+ was the additions of reviews or ratings by people I have in my circles.

I moved to Seattle about the same time that Johnathon Colman moved to California, but I have been followed by his ghost ever since. I have Johnathon in my Google+ circles and because of that he shows up every time I’m looking for local businesses.

I didn’t notice any of these reviews making changes in the position of the rankings, but they do make the site listing more visible which would likely increase the click through rate of that listing.

What does this mean to me?

There is no consistent search experience because of personalization. This means that you can track the keyword rankings for your site using generic non-personalized search results, but they don’t match up 1:1 to what your customers are seeing. It’s still OK to track your keywords, but you need to realize that it is not giving you the full picture of what is going on in the wild. You need to use these ranking to see how you are trending, not what place a specific keyword is ranking for this week.

When you are trying to increase the rankings of your site, it is best to take a holistic approach and include onsite and offsite optimization, localization, and social visibility. All of these factor into your rankings and will help you increase your search visibility in personalized and non-personalized search results.

The post Guide to Personalized Search Results appeared first on Portent.

That’s why we have full bands and, furthermore, the production and management crew that all help make a spectacular show possible. Portent is the same. Our strong team works together to provide our clients with fantastic full service that keeps them coming back for more!

As mentioned earlier, you can impress with a single display of amazing talent. However, with the right people alongside you, something greater can emerge and possibly go supernova! This doesn’t just apply to concerts and Portent. Everyone can benefit from solid teamwork.

The Band Members

The Front Man (or Woman)

The lead guitarist or singer is usually the first to be recognized or remembered in a typical rock band. These members are generally the “front man” who serves as the face and voice of the band.

Without a front man, there is an uncomfortable amount of room for a chance at a PR nightmare. Kind of sounds like an Account Manager, right?

We rely on Account Managers to clearly express who we are and what we’re doing for current and potential clients (who’re practically the audience).

The Drummer

When I ask non-musician friends what comes to mind when they think of rock drummers the response is often along the lines of “frantic people with sticks”. This is partially true.
While it may seem that drummers are just banging on drums and making noise, from experience I can tell you they are really the key to keeping in time and are crucial when it comes to determining where you are in a song.

Like the drummer, Project Managers are (while doing four things at once) keeping everyone at a steady pace.

The Producers and Accompaniment

Big bands often hire a very reputable producer or songwriter. It would be very overwhelming for any one person to write music for each instrument, the lyrics, and focus on mastering your part while teaching others. That is, unless they were already a master at their creative craft. That’s where these specialists come in.

They create the music for the band to perform for the audience. There are numerous famous bands out there that would cease to exist if it weren’t for their producers. There are, however, a good number of songwriters who still perform out there. That’s the kind of talent our subject matter experts have.

Whether it’s our PPC, SEO, or Content team, we’d be at a complete loss without them. Not only do we have them produce brilliant work, but they also act as consultants both to us and to our clients.

Band or business, there’d be nothing for anyone to do if there’s no substance or strategy to work with.

The Stage Production

Even if the music is great, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the show is going to be great. That’s where stage production comes into play. The stage production crew consists of artists, engineers, and directors who all work to incorporate a spectacular display and atmosphere in tandem with musicians. These range from light shows and motion graphics to stage props and costumes. This provides great assistance to the image and persona of the band.

Our Creative team is comprised of talented artists, engineers, and directors who specialize in a variety of trades and services. Just look at the Portent website, it’s pretty snazzy. When our clients need something that “wows” their target audiences, we have faith in our Creative team to do just that and more.

The Managers

Sometimes, being a master of your own craft is not enough to successfully turn it into a business. This is why we have managers. Gigs, budgets, and the big picture are what they provide their bands. Imagine what a manager could do if they were also experts in performing music. They’d be able to keep everyone on track with the long term goals and offer guidance.

We don’t have to imagine. Our leadership team consists of some of the most knowledgeable professionals in their industry. At the end of the day, they are the ones credited with keeping the band a cohesive unit.

The PR

Need to get word out about a new album? Want to make sure as many people as possible know about your book? Get PR on the line. These folks excel at the right kind of marketing, reputation, and public awareness. The results are bigger crowds, more sales, and more recommendations.

We have people who do that for us through means of social media with superb outreach. I present our social media team! Sure, Facebook is a product that millions of people know how to use, but how many people truly know the ins and outs and how that affects business? I can name a few off the top of my head because I see those folks here at Portent. I have personally learned how much more intricate social media can really be after speaking to the experts here. It goes beyond the stage AND the page.

The Roadies

Last but not least, I’d like to talk about what I believe relates closest to what I do here at portent. In all my time that I’ve performed as a guitarist, I was really lucky to have a roadie for a couple of months. Roadies are the backstage people who prepare things for the performers. These things include setting up the gear, assisting the sound and light masters, and providing support to the performers so they may rock the crowd as best as they can.

That’s where I come in. Whether it’s project support, technical support, or building a tool that can help background tasks running more efficiently. Although I’m not standing in the lime light, I get to watch the Portent teams “wow” their clients and have the satisfaction that I’m a key element of this band.

The post If Portent Were a Band: It’s All About the Hair appeared first on Portent.

How to unGoogle Yourself:

I used to manipulate the search query string itself in the URL bar to make it do what I wanted. Now, I’m too lazy for that, and there are ways to automate the process. But first, let’s look at the search query bar to learn what all the moving parts are:

You could technically just play around with this search bar until you get the results for the country and languages you’re targeting. But not everyone knows what the country and language codes are, and so here are some work-arounds.

There are a few methods to manually set this up:

• Sign out of all your Google accounts
• Clear your browser’s cache and cookies
• Change your location in Google using the Search Tools box. Note: you have to set your location according to the country-coded top-level domain that Google is currently using. So if you are on google.com, you can only select a location within the USA.
• Use the Incognito Browsing mode in Google Chrome. When you fire up Chrome, click the icon on the far right of the search box that looks like three horizontal bars, and then select Open New Incognito Window. You’ll know you’ve done it correctly when you see:

One of the easiest ways to automate this process is to go to http://www.impersonal.me, put in your site, and then select one of the presets that matches the country you want to target, or select Options in order to change the interface language, the TLD, and the location of the search. Then impersonal.me does the rest. An alternative is http://isearchfrom.com.

A more advanced option is to use a proxy, or alternatively, a VPN. Make sure you are using a trusted proxy, not one of the freebies.

Let’s Just Talk About Daniel Day-Lewis for a While

Why the British Daniel Day-Lewis was the unbelievably perfect role for Abraham Lincoln, my American brain will never understand. Anyway, I did some digging around between the US and UK Google search results to find some interesting results on my favorite actor.

The first thing I noticed is that, regardless of whether I was signed in or out of my Google accounts, nothing in the search results changed. This means that no one in my Google+ circle cares about Daniel Day-Lewis and hasn’t shared anything about him that Google thought I might like to see. In other words, my Google+ friends need to focus more on what really matters in life, like fine method acting.

The second thing I noticed while searching on Google.com, is that the 11th result (below the in-depth articles) was an article from the http://www.dailymail.co.uk titled “Daniel Day-Lewis to receive a knighthood,” which shouldn’t have surprised me because if Sir Elton John is a knight, Day-Lewis deserves to be one too.

This search result is puzzling because the rest of the first page results all come from US top-level domains, but not too puzzling when we remember that Day-Lewis is British so there’s bound to be some British articles that float to the top, even in the US.

Sure enough, when I switched over to GB (Great Britain) as my location, the dailymail.co.uk result was #2, behind the British newspaper The Guardian, which had also made an appearance at #7 in the In-Depth Articles section on the US results. The Guardian is a bit of an interesting exception because they recently migrated from .co.uk to .com, so I am assuming that Google thinks they swing both ways.

So, the 2 British sites that made it onto the first page in the US also dominate the search results in the UK. But other than those two results (and the resource box on the right), there is no other overlap in organic listings.

The US results:

The UK results:

The most important thing to notice here is that if you are searching from the US, you get a fairly different set of search results than if you search in the UK for the same thing. Also, it appears that in the US, search results are more oriented towards Daniel-Day Lewis as an actor, while in the UK, the search results are more oriented towards him as a person. Intriguing.

Tools for Tracking Keyword Rankings Globally

There are some great tools for tracking keyword rankings in different locations across the globe. Advanced Web Rankings and SEMRush are two that come to mind.

In Advanced Web Rankings, or AWR, you can use their online web app or their desktop tool to create custom reports. You can create a project in which you can designate websites to track, such as your website alongside your competitors, your targeted keywords, and specific search engines.  You can target search engines by country or by region, such as Google Organic USA (loc: salt lake city, ut), which means that AWR will look at keyword rankings specifically as if they were located in Salt Lake City. You can also select different languages for the search engines. For instance, German search results in Switzerland as opposed to French results in Switzerland.

In SEMRush, when you login to your online account, you can view the organic positions report and then click through the different country tabs to view your rankings in those regions. But you can’t select different languages, so you don’t have as much flexibility as with AWR.  SEMRush has 26 countries to select, while AWR has hundreds, including major search engine indexes in the main regional languages for each country. Besides, in AWR you can select multiple search engines per project, while in SEMRush you have to create a separate project for each search engine you want to track. So AWR wins this battle.

Parting Thoughts

People all over the world might be searching for your product or service and are probably seeing very different results based on their location. It would be a false sense of security to think that your global rankings are as good as the results in your neighborhood. In order to determine what your customers are most likely seeing on Google, you need to go incognito. This is just the first step in evaluating and tracking your SEO success on a global scale, but it’s a crucial one.

The post How to Go Incognito for International Search Queries – and Why appeared first on Portent.

Learn all about Local SEO best practices, including basic on-site SEO for businesses, business profiles, directory and citation providers, duplicate listings, reviews, and more in this free PortentU webinar.

Watch the full video:

Get the link bundle here.
See just the slidedeck here.

The post Get on that Map: Local SEO Best Practices [VIDEO WEBINAR] appeared first on Portent.

The demise of keywords and the rise of Not Provided have made our job more difficult, but it is not impossible. I am going to review various techniques I use to look at analytics to find how my SEO updates have improved the site. This will help your clients break through the mumbo jumbo and finally understand your worth.

Rankings… Not so much

Search rankings are the first thing asked about when trying to figure out how well your SEO is performing, but it is not that simple.

There are many factors that make rankings less than useful.

1. Personalization –  Search engines personalize your search results based on what they know about you. They know what you have searched for on the web, your web browsing history, who your friends are and where you live. Big brother anyone?

Even if you check your rankings with no personalization, it’s not the same as what you customers will see. Most of them will have some sort of personalized results.

2. Localization – Even if you clear all your personal information out of your browser, search engines still know where your computer is and provide you localized results so you can find the closest Starbucks. Also, if you are using a service to pull your rankings for you, they will use different IP addresses each time they scrape the search engine results pages. This means that Google will give you results based on the location of that IP. This causes fluctuations each time they grab your current rankings.

3. Not tracking the relevant keywords – You may be tracking 500+ keywords, but out of those, how many are actually sending traffic to your site and converting? With that many keywords you will likely be overwhelmed and confused. Instead, you want to keep it simple and focused.

First, figure out the broad keywords that are most important to your site. Then get more focused and find some of the more specific, mid to long-tail, keywords that directly relate to your content.

What you can use rankings for

All these factors make tracking rankings less accurate, but you can still use rankings to help you get a high-level view of how you are doing on certain keywords and see how your site is trending over time. You can also watch your rankings to alert you of major problems (like Google manual penalties). Just do us all a favor and don’t make them your main KPI.

Look for big trends in site traffic

One of the most important metrics you want to look at is the amount of traffic that you are bringing to the site through your SEO efforts. You can find this information on the Organic Search Traffic report in Google Analytics. The problem with this report is that it is hard to see what is going on with it just by looking at it. You can look at the graph at top to see if traffic is going up over time, but it doesn’t tell you what is going on. You need to dig deeper.

Compare date ranges

First, look for short term changes first by comparing this month with the previous month. Are you doing better than the previous month? How well are you doing compared to last year?

It’s great to see how you are improving from month to month, but you need to be careful when looking at this, since you will eventually run into seasonality issues. For example, if your site does well during the Christmas season and you compare traffic in January to December you are going to see your traffic numbers decrease, but this doesn’t mean that your SEO is doing bad. It would be better to look at improvement year over year.

Look for spikes and drops in traffic

Sometimes you will see abnormal increases or decreases in traffic during the month. These will stand out visually on the graph. You can usually find out what caused the spike by looking for the landing page that drove the additional traffic. Finding out what happened is important so you can let the client know what is going on and so you can continue to increase traffic in the future.

Look beyond Analytics

If you can’t figure out why there was increase traffic to a particular page or section by peering into the Google Analytics crystal ball, then it is time to put on that detective hat on, dive a little deeper, and look elsewhere for clues.

Here are some good places to start your search for clues:

1. Changes to the Site – Even small changes to the site can sometimes have big results. Find out what was changed and when. This can at least give you an idea of what pages to focus on.
2. Look for Holidays/Events/Seasonal Trends – Look at last year’s data to see if it had the same swing. If so, it might be a seasonal trend for your industry. Also look for big shopping holidays or for big industry or sporting events.
3. Social Media – Look at the social profiles of the site and see if there was any activity during that time. If you see a spike of social referrals it can help you pinpoint it to a certain event.
4. Sales/Specials – Is the company having a big sale or special? This often brings additional direct and organic traffic to the site.
5. Other Advertising –  Was there any old school advertising done? Radio, TV, newspaper, mailers, billboard ads, etc. are still effective. Look for spikes when that advertising campaign started.
6. News/Press – If there was any news about the company (good or bad) it can definitely send more people to the site.
7. Ask the Client – You don’t have to waste all your time chasing down everything. Go ahead and ask the client. They might actually know what is going on.

Filter results

After looking at the big picture and seeing the general trends you want to dig deeper and look for specific results related to your past optimization efforts. To find those pages you worked on you will have to look at them as a group and compare them to the rest of the site. One of the easiest ways to do this is by creating an segment that allows you to filter your results and see just want you want.

Creating an advanced segment

When looking for SEO changes, it is best to create a segment that looks at organic landing pages and whatever that visitor did afterwards.

1. Open the Advanced Segment panel and click the “Create New Segment” button
2. Write the name of your new segment
3. Define your filter to Include the pages that your segment matches
4. Set the segment to track Users which allows you to track multiple visits
5. Define Sequence Start to include the First User Interaction
6. Add Step 1 set the dimension to Landing Page and set the filter to “Matches Regex” and use a regular expression that matches the pages you want to track.
7. Add a filter to look only at visits whose Medium exactly matches Organic
8. Save the segment and test it out by looking at the Behavior >Site Content >Landing Pages report to see if the correct pages show up. If not, then adjust your regular expression or add other filters as necessary.

That’s it, now you have an Advanced Segment that shows only organic users that first landed on the pages you want to look at.

This segments helps you see how these pages helped bring people to the site and how well they converted. You can use it on almost all reports in GA.

Look at those landing pages

One nifty way to see your ongoing progress is to look at the number of organic landing pages that get at least one visit during the month. When you see this number going up, it means that your SERP visibility is growing and that you are generally improving your rankings.

To see this, look at the bottom of the Landing Page report and see how total many pages are included. Then you can compare this to the previous year or right before you started working on the site.

Not all keyword data is lost

Next, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to find out what keywords are ranking for what pages. This isn’t as good as the previous keyword data we used to have before Not Provided. Just know that this data is highly sampled, so don’t look at the traffic numbers too closely, just look what keywords each page is ranking for.

When looking at these keywords, it gives you an idea of what the page is currently optimized for. If you are still not seeing the keyword that you are targeting, then you know you have more work to do.

Track conversions

Getting more traffic is great, but if you are not selling more products or getting more transactions, then you need to take a look to what you are doing.

Pay attention to transactions and revenue to see if they are going up along with your traffic. If not, you may have some other problems. Also take a close look at your conversion rate, this can tell you if your are sending the right audience to the site or if you have other problems. If you are consistently increasing both traffic and revenue, your client will have no problems with sending you those checks.

You can also take a look at assisted conversions and other attributions models to get a fuller picture on how your organic traffic is affecting the site.

Do you have any other ways to track success of your SEO efforts? Please leave a comment below so we can discuss.

The post Rankings Aren’t All That: How to Really Track SEO Improvements appeared first on Portent.

The SEO’s favorite site speed tool is Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which I’ve written about before. We’ve all seen this among the suggestions:

CSS sprites. One tactic to improve site speed involves combining social media logos, navigational elements like arrows, and other small, repeated images or icons into single images or “sprites.” CSS then references only the relevant position and area of that sprite to display a specific image on the page. This can improve performance because the fewer images the browser has to request and the smaller the transfer size, the faster the page should load.

A Better Way

Now, I’m not a web developer, but it seems to me these are about as enjoyable to create, implement, and maintain as watching GEICO commercials on repeat. Whenever the color, size, style, or number of icons needs to change, the developer must update the sprite and re-compute the position values in the CSS by hand. Even if the hassle is automated with things like Grunt tasks, Compass, or tools like SpriteMe, there are a lot of moving parts.

More recently, the disadvantages of CSS sprites have been highlighted by the challenges of mobile-first, responsive web design: how can the same image render as well on very narrow screen widths as it does on super-wide desktop-size screen widths, as well as everything in between—including high-resolution retina displays?

The web development community has already solved this problem with icon fonts. Put simply, icon fonts are groups of vector graphics collected together as a custom font. Like SVG images, icon fonts scale well to any screen resolution and, since they behave just like normal fonts with CSS, styling them is much easier than updating a sprite.

There are dozens of icon fonts out there, such as Pictos, Symbolset, and IcoMoon, and CSS-Tricks offers a nice round-up. For non-developers, the easiest way I’ve found to start experimenting is Font Awesome. Since it’s hosted through the Bootstrap CDN, getting up and running with icon fonts is almost suspiciously simple.

Icons from Font Awesome

Why Should SEOs Care?

This is just one example of the changing nature of how websites are or could be built and SEOs need to understand it if we want to keep our clients. Often, the SEO community seems to fancy itself as a lone crusader for the details of websites that developers willfully ignore or discount, when in reality the web development community is way ahead of us on championing clean, semantic code, accessibility, user experience, and, of course, performance.

This is also one reason why you can’t blindly follow a checklist—even if it’s from Google. Some items that come up on the PageSpeed Insights report might actually hurt performance or, at the very least, create some unnecessary headaches for the developer on the other end of the client call. The tool, for example, often advises me to ensure a page serves properly sized images, but that recommendation also removes the images’ ability to scale as the screen width changes with responsive design. SEOs have to understand what they’re recommending—especially if their guidance could unwittingly work against the site.

Thinking beyond just performance advantages, what’s more exciting to me is the opportunity icon fonts present for easily creating slick, interactive content without the aid of a designer. While I’m no CSS master, my coding skills far outshine my Illustrator chops, so icon fonts are an easy way to present something a little more substantial than a blog post for a client or department head. One obvious example is using StateFace and GeoBats to display some geopolitical data, but you’re far more creative than that.

The Web Isn’t Slowing Down

The “use your brain” caveat can be added to anything in our industry. Icon fonts have their limitations, particularly if you need a prohibitively complex or multi-colored icon. There are also potential accessibility issues, covered exhaustively by Filament Group’s technique for “Bulletproof Accessible Icon Fonts.” In general, fonts will render differently across browsers, so that’s also something to pay attention to and test for. Depending on your situation, CSS sprites might actually be the way to go.

Anyone who works on the web should have a goal to improve it. Font icons came into popularity due to advancements in font embedding, browser support, and high-end displays. They’re a small part of a typical website, but it’s important for SEOs and marketers in general to be knowledgeable their context and why they’re significant. No one needs to be told that the web is changing, but we need to understand the evolving technologies and problems of the web in order to provide the best guidance for our clients and, most importantly, the best experience for our users.

Have you seen positive site speed results after implementing icon fonts? Do you have a favorite icon set? Let us know in the comments.

The post Why SEOs Should Dump CSS Sprites for Icon Fonts appeared first on Portent.