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Author: Tom Buckland

Tom Buckland is the founder of HQ SEO - A technical optimisation, link building and inbound marketing company based in Cardiff, UK - helping businesses grow explode their business through Google.

What Is Direct Traffic in Google Analytics and Why You Need to Take It More Seriously

Posted on by Tom Buckland

Google Analytics is fun.

If you are anything like me, you can relate to the sheer pleasure of watching numbers paint a picture for you.

The problem is – it’s not always a life-like, hyper-realistic 3D painting. In fact, more often than not, it’s a beautiful, muddled, chaotic, abstract masterpiece that makes you go ‘WTF is this?!’

It’s good to have fun – but we’ve got a job on our hand.

Showing an important client a Google Analytics report that says a whopping 25% of their traffic came from DIRECT/NONE is something like this. They are either going to think you don’t know what you’re talking about, or – worse – they are going to be happy thinking they’ve got a website that people just can’t help but visit.

So, yeah – the point is, direct traffic matters. It’s easy to just shove it under the carpet and feel good about organic/social/paid insights – but that’s what amateurs do.

If you can decode the mystery of direct traffic, you can almost always add more power to your other campaigns.

How?

Let’s see!

Continue reading “What Is Direct Traffic in Google Analytics and Why You Need to Take It More Seriously”

Doing An SEO Competitive Analysis The Right Way – Know What Your SEO Competitors Are Up To With This Free SEO Competitor Analysis Template

Posted on by Tom Buckland

SEO Competitive Analysis Template - SEO Competitor Analysis Guide

Here’s a simple piece of SEO advice you’ll never get from an average SEO – it’s all about common sense.

Sure, getting a website to rank for some juicy, volume-heavy, money keywords is a tough job – but I, for one, am totally against the idea of making shi!t sound more complicated than it usually is.

And all the SEO jargon you hear thrown around liberally starts right here – at SEO competitive analysis.

SEO competitive analysis is one of the favourite ‘tools’ for SEOs to land clients, because they twist and turn the numbers to instil fear – the strongest of business emotions.

I’ll be trying to put all that jazz to rest in this post while also trying to simplify SEO competitor analysis right down to its bare bones.

So, let’s get to it.

Continue reading “Doing An SEO Competitive Analysis The Right Way – Know What Your SEO Competitors Are Up To With This Free SEO Competitor Analysis Template”

Robots.txt – Is It Necessary? – Find Out If Your Website Needs A Robots.txt File

Posted on by Tom Buckland

Is Robots.Txt Necessary

There are multiple ways in which you can control, regulate and even manipulate the way your website is crawled, indexed and presented to end users in SERPs by search engine bots.

You usually don’t need to worry about these unless you’re operating a really large website that could benefit highly from advanced crawl budget optimisation techniques. It’s often enough to leave the default settings on – in most cases, at any rate.

But, for whatever reason, if you want to tweak things around here and there in terms of crawling, the best place to start is the robots.txt file.

In this post, we’ll be looking at what a robots.txt file is, what it does, when you need it (and, more importantly, when you don’t), the best robots.txt practices and some better, case-specific solutions.

Continue reading “Robots.txt – Is It Necessary? – Find Out If Your Website Needs A Robots.txt File”

What Is Link Anchor Text and Why It Matters for SEO (Understanding the Anchor Text SEO Relationship)

Posted on by Tom Buckland

First things first – the link anchor text is important for SEO. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise – not today, at any rate.

The real question is – how important?

It’s very, very easy to miss the mark, I’ve seen many professional SEOs do it all the time.

Like most things SEO, wrapping your precious backlinks AND internal links with good anchor texts is a balancing act between under and overoptimization.

Most of us know what not to do here – we don’t peddle every link with the brand name, we don’t let every link be anchored against generic, non-contextual text, either.

But what about the stuff we need to do? How do we really make sure that Google’s not looking at our backlinks with raised eyebrows because of sloppy anchors? Let’s discuss!

Continue reading “What Is Link Anchor Text and Why It Matters for SEO (Understanding the Anchor Text SEO Relationship)”

Google Updates Review Rich Results Guidelines – A Major Schema Update For Local Businesses

Posted on by Tom Buckland

Google Schema Rich Review Snippet Update September 2019

Structured markup has been there for quite some time now, and many of us have tried our best to put it to good use. There’s a reason why Google – among other search engines – has consistently backed structured markup. It makes their job infinitely easier. 

A couple of days ago, Google announced a major change to one of the most used schema items: reviews. 

Continue reading “Google Updates Review Rich Results Guidelines – A Major Schema Update For Local Businesses”

You Can Now Upload Product Updates Directly To SERPs In Real Time – Google’s New Product Search Policy To Strengthen Schema Adoption

Posted on by Tom Buckland
Google Merchant Center SEO News Structured Data Google, in a recently published blog post, announced that it will allow online retailers and manufacturers to update product information directly in their Merchant Center/Manufactuerer Center accounts. This small update means that millions of e-commerce websites can now better control how their products are displayed in search results. Continue reading “You Can Now Upload Product Updates Directly To SERPs In Real Time – Google’s New Product Search Policy To Strengthen Schema Adoption”

Google Webmaster Hangout With John Mueller – Video Sitemaps, Spammy Links, Crosslinking, Site Speed, AMP and More – February 2019

Posted on by Tom Buckland

Google Webmaster Hangout with John Mueller February 2019

 

Google’s latest Webmaster Hangout touched upon some interesting issues.

We have rounded up the important bits from the live stream for our readers.

Continue reading “Google Webmaster Hangout With John Mueller – Video Sitemaps, Spammy Links, Crosslinking, Site Speed, AMP and More – February 2019”

Now Submit 10,000 URLs Per Day – Thanks to Bing’s Latest ‘Fundamental Shift’ – Bing Webmaster Tools SEO News

Posted on by Tom Buckland

Bing Lets You Submit 10000 URLs Per Day - Bing SEO - Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Lets You Submit 10,000 URLs Per Day: What You Need to Know:

– Bing now lets webmasters submit up to 10,000 URLs per day.

– Cited as a ‘fundamental shift’, this could indicate a new ‘content discovery’ approach for search engines.

– The submission cap will depend on various factors – the site verified age being one of them.

– It’ll be interesting to see how Google reacts to this update.

Continue reading “Now Submit 10,000 URLs Per Day – Thanks to Bing’s Latest ‘Fundamental Shift’ – Bing Webmaster Tools SEO News”

SEO Image Optimisation Tricks – Going Beyond the Alt Attribute – A Complete Guide to Image SEO

Posted on by Tom Buckland

Image SEO Image Optimisation Alt Text Alt Tag Alt Attribute SEO

It’s hard enough to end up in search results AND have people click through to your website.

You don’t want to make them bounce by serving a thick wall of endless text. We don’t even need a case study or survey to tell us that text walls don’t work (but if you really need a proof, here’s one).

The best and probably the easiest way to make your website more appealing to visitors is to use images that talk to the visitor.

Image SEO is a short, sweet and extremely rewarding thing to learn. You probably know a thing or two about the alt text (aka alt attribute and alt tag), but in this image SEO guide, we’ll be going a little beyond the basics. So, stick around with me till the end – this stuff matters!

Continue reading “SEO Image Optimisation Tricks – Going Beyond the Alt Attribute – A Complete Guide to Image SEO”

Local SEO Guide and Checklist for Beginners – Is Your Local Business Ready for 2019?

Posted on by Tom Buckland

So, you’ve ended up on this page where we talk a lot about local SEO.

Local SEO isn’t exactly a juicy, popcorn-worthy topic. Therefore, this tells me that you either run a local business and are trying to get as many people to call you or show up at your door, or you’re a marketer looking for some easy to answers to difficult questions.

In either case, you’re doing at least one thing right – caring about local SEO. So, congratulations on that.

Local SEO is a funny little thing – it’s probably the youngest of all SEO brethren, and still the most powerful when it comes to immediate, tangible results that translate directly to cold, hard cash. That said, it is also a phenomenon that has bred countless myths and misconceptions.

I have been planning on creating a comprehensive, actionable local SEO guide for beginners for quite some time. With 2019 just a couple of weeks away, the time seems just right to finally get it out there.

Continue reading “Local SEO Guide and Checklist for Beginners – Is Your Local Business Ready for 2019?”

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