SEO

What Are Breadcrumbs & Why Do They Matter for SEO?

Published

6 days ago

August 12, 2024

What Are Breadcrumbs & Why Do They Matter for SEO?

Breadcrumbs are a navigational feature for your website, and they can greatly impact SEO and user experience.

Many websites still don’t implement breadcrumbs, which is a huge mistake. Not only do breadcrumbs impact SEO, but they are also pretty easy to implement.

Here’s what you need to know about breadcrumbs, how they impact SEO, and common mistakes to avoid.

What Are Breadcrumbs In SEO?

Breadcrumbs are automated internal links that allow users to track their location on a website and their distance from the homepage.

You’ll usually find them at the top of a website or just under the navigation bar.

Just like internal links, they help keep users on a website and help them find the information they are looking for. If they feel disoriented, they can use breadcrumbs links to go one level up and continue their journey on the website rather than clicking a browser’s back button.

Here’s an example of breadcrumbs from eBay’s website:

Screenshot from eBay, June 2024

It shows exactly what categories I clicked on to land on the page I am viewing.

The breadcrumbs make it easy to backtrack to a previous page if I need to.

4 Common Types Of Breadcrumbs

Not all breadcrumbs are created equal!

There are four main types of breadcrumbs, each with their own purpose.

Before adding breadcrumbs to your site, determine which type will be the best fit for user experience.

1. Hierarchy-Based Breadcrumbs (a.k.a., Location-Based Breadcrumbs)

The most common type of breadcrumbs that tell users where they are in the site structure and how to get back to the homepage.

For example: Home > California > San Francisco

Screenshot from cars.com, June 2024

2. Attribute-Based Breadcrumbs

These breadcrumbs are commonly used on ecommerce sites to show what attributes the user has clicked.

For example: Home > Shoes > Hiking > Womens

Screenshot from eBay, June 2024

Please note how smartly eBay handles breadcrumbs for attributes when the trail is too long.

It shows the last three items following the home page and truncates previous ones under a three-dot menu; you can see all previous items in the breadcrumbs upon clicking.

3. Forward Or Look-Ahead Breadcrumbs

This type of breadcrumb not only shows the user’s current path within a website’s hierarchy but also provides a preview of the next steps they can take.

Here is an example from the Statista website, which illustrates how useful it can be by giving users a preview of other sections of the subsection.

Statista's look ahead breadcrumbs example

Screenshot from Statista, June 2024

4. History-Based Breadcrumbs

This type of breadcrumb is rarely used and shows users what other pages on the site they have visited, similar to a browser history.

For example, if you were searching for SEO news and read three different articles, the breadcrumbs might look like this: Home > SEO article 1 > SEO article 2 > Current page.

But I recommend avoiding this because it may confuse users. Users may navigate to the same destination through different journeys, which means you will show a different breadcrumb structure each time, confusing users.

Additionally, you can’t markup with schema such as breadcrumbs and benefit from rich results because of its random nature.

3 Benefits of Using Breadcrumbs

This all sounds great, you’re thinking.

But what will breadcrumbs actually do?

If you’re unsure breadcrumbs are worth the hassle (spoiler, they totally are!), then you’ll want to read the section below.

1. Breadcrumbs Improve UX

Breadcrumbs make it easier for users to navigate a website and encourage them to browse other sections.

For example, if you want to learn more about Nestle, you head to its site and end up on the Nestle company history page.

Screenshot from Nestle, June 2024

Using its breadcrumbs, you can easily navigate back to About Us, History, or even its homepage.

It’s a handy way to help users easily find what they are looking for – and hopefully draw them deeper into your website.

2. Keep People Onsite Longer

Bounce rate is not a ranking factor. But keeping users from bouncing can still help SEO as it helps users click and navigate through the website, an engagement signal that Google uses for ranking purposes.

Say, you are looking for a new pair of sneakers on Adidas’s website.

Screenshot from Adidas, June 2024

Using Adidas’s breadcrumbs, you can easily navigate back to the boots category and look for a different pair.

This is great for Adidas because it will likely keep you from returning to Google and landing on another shoe website.

That’s the power of the humble breadcrumb!

A case study on Moz shows what happened when it added breadcrumbs to a site and made several other changes.

Sessions drastically increased in just a few months.

Screenshot from Moz, June 2024

Granted, they also added meta descriptions and eliminated a few other UX issues, but breadcrumbs also played a part.

3. Breadcrumbs Improve Internal Linking

Breadcrumbs are not just a navigational utility; they play a crucial role in enhancing a website’s internal linking structure. Google uses breadcrumbs to determine the relationship between different pages which are deeper in the site structure.

By implementing breadcrumbs’s structured data markup, you can help search engines understand the site’s architecture.

Read: Site Structure & Internal Linking in SEO: Why It’s Important

4. Rich Snippets In SERPs

As discussed, breadcrumbs make site navigation easier, but they do a lot more so as Google displays rich snippets in the search results.

Screenshot from Google.com

But this doesn’t happen until you markup your breadcrumbs with structured data so Google can pick it up and surface it in search engine results pages (SERP).

Here is a JSON-LD structured data code example for a breadcrumb that matched the rich snippet from the screenshot:

[{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#breadcrump", 
  "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
    "itemListElement": [
    {
       "@type": "ListItem",
       "position": 1,
       "item":   "@id": "https://www.example.com/",      
       "name": "Home"       
   },
   {
       "@type": "ListItem",
       "position": 2,
       "item": "https://www.example.com/real-estate/",
       "name": "Real estate"
  },
  {
       "@type": "ListItem",
       "position": 3,
       "item": "https://www.example.com/en/paris/",
       "name": "Paris"
  },
  {
      "@type": "ListItem",
      "position": 4,
      "item": "https://www.example.com/en/paris/apartment/",
      "name": "Apartment"
   },
  {
     "@type": "ListItem",
     "position": 5,
     "item": "https://www.example.com/en/paris/apartment/affordable",
     "name": "Affordable rentals Paris"      
    }
   ]
}]

Here is a breakdown of each attribute in the breadcrumb JSON-LD schema.

Attribute	Description
@context	This tells search engines where to find the definitions of the structured data
@type	Defines the type of schema used, in this case, “BreadcrumbList”
itemListElement	An array of list items representing a breadcrumb.
itemListElement[position]	Indicates the position of the breadcrumb in the list, starting from 1.
itemListElement[item]	The URL of the breadcrumb’s target page
itemListElement[name]	The visible name of the breadcrumb as it appears to users.

Please note that you can’t game Google by having structured data on the website without having an actual breadcrumb visible to users.

If Google detects such manipulations, violating Google’s guidelines, you may get a manual penalty. However, that doesn’t cause a drop in rankings, but your website will not be eligible for any kind of rich snippets in search results.

So, the golden rule is that every schema markup you have on the website has to exist on the page and be visible to users.

4 Common Mistakes When Using Breadcrumbs For SEO

Implementing breadcrumbs is a straightforward way to improve a site’s SEO and provide better UX.

However, sometimes, implementing breadcrumbs could cause more harm than good.

Here are a few breadcrumb mistakes you’ll want to avoid.

1. Don’t Go Too Big or Too Small – Aim For Just Right

Breadcrumbs should be easy to see but unobtrusive.

A slightly smaller font is fine, but too small text will be hard to see and hard to click on mobile devices.

Position them at the top of the page, beneath the hero image, or just above the H1 title so they are easy to find.

2. Don’t Just Repeat Your Navigation Bar

If the breadcrumbs just duplicate what is already in your navbar, they might not serve any additional purpose.

There’s no need to add more coding (and take up room!) if it doesn’t help.

3. Don’t Ditch Your Navigation Bar In Favor Of Breadcrumbs

While you don’t want to repeat navigation, you also don’t want to rely entirely on breadcrumbs.

They serve as a supplement, not a replacement for other navigational features.

4. Use The Right Type Of Breadcrumbs

Location breadcrumbs are the most common type, but they might not be the best choice for your site.

Don’t use location breadcrumbs if your site doesn’t use a nested structure where most pages fit under a few categories.

In that case, history-based breadcrumbs might be more beneficial.

How To Implement Breadcrumbs In WordPress

Breadcrumbs are an incredibly useful navigation element for both users and search engines — and they are easy to add to your site.

Here are a few ways to add these useful features to your site.

Screenshot from Yoast SEO, June 2024

Use Yoast SEO: If you already use Yoast, adding breadcrumbs will only take a few steps. Simply log in and follow these steps to implement breadcrumbs.
WordPress Plugins: If you use WordPress, there are several plugins that can add breadcrumbs in a few steps. I like Breadcrumb NavXT because it is easy to implement and generates locational breadcrumbs that can be customized as needed.
WooCommerce Breadcrumb Plugin: If you have an ecommerce site that uses Woocommerce, consider using their breadcrumb plugin, which allows you to restyle the built-in WooCommerce breadcrumbs.

Finally, your site builder or WordPress theme might have a built-in breadcrumb feature.

Shopify, Wix, or Squarespace sites have built-in features you can enable on their settings page.

Breadcrumbs Are An Easy-to-Grasp Way To Navigate Your Website

Think of breadcrumbs as the butter to your bread. The Kermit to your Miss Piggy. The animal sauce to your In N’ Out burger.

You get the point.

Breadcrumbs are a simple change that can help your site stand out on the search results page.

Though they won’t guarantee a significant boost to SERPs, they are helpful to users and search engines alike.

As an added bonus, breadcrumbs are easy to implement using a plugin like Yoast.

In just a few clicks, you could make your site easier to navigate and maybe rank higher in SERPs.

More resources:

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

Source link

SEO

A Complete Guide for Digital Marketers

Published

3 hours ago

August 18, 2024

Max

Imagine browsing your favorite blog and spotting a visually engaging ad that seamlessly fits the content and stands out just enough to grab your attention.

That’s the power of display advertising at work.

If you’re a digital marketing professional, you’ve likely heard of display networks as part of PPC advertising.

But are you using this channel to the best of your abilities?

In a world where advertising changes daily, it can be difficult to keep up with the best ways to optimize display ads.

In this in-depth guide, we’ll explain display advertising, its different types, and how it differs from search. We’ll also provide strategies and tools to help you take your display ads to the next level.

What Is Display Advertising?

Display advertising is a type of online advertising that typically uses images or videos to showcase your brand.

Thanks to responsive display ads, this ad format becomes much more personalized and can include elements like:

Text.
Images.
Videos.
Logos.

Potential customers see these ads while browsing the internet, using other mobile apps, social media platforms, or even connected TV devices.

Display ads are meant to capture the user’s attention in a way that doesn’t disrupt their experience. At the same time, they also encourage them to take action.

While display ads are typically associated with top-of-funnel marketing, advertisers use these ads across the buyer’s entire user journey. Brands can use display ads for:

Brand awareness.
Product-specific marketing.
Promotional sales.
Promoting specific content or services.
And much more.

Types Of Display Ads

By understanding the various types of display ads available, you can choose the right format to align with your marketing goals and effectively reach your target audience.

Each type offers unique advantages and can be used strategically to maximize engagement and conversions.

Responsive Display Ads

Unique to the Google Display Network, responsive display ads automatically adjust their size, appearance, and format to fit available ad spaces.

Advertisers provide assets such as images, headlines, logos, and descriptions, and Google uses machine learning to create the best possible combinations for different placements, unique to each user.

This flexibility allows responsive display ads to reach a broader audience and perform well across a wide range of devices and websites.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are considered a more traditional type of display advertising.

Banner ads appear across websites and apps and are placed at the top, bottom, or sides of webpages.

They’re typically static in format but can also use animation to catch the user’s eye without being too disruptive to their experience.

Interstitial Ads

Interstitial ads are full-screen ads that cover the whole screen of a webpage or an app.

They typically show up during natural transition points of a web session, like waiting for content to load or going between app screens.

They’re meant to be highly engaging but should be used strategically and sparingly to not overwhelm or annoy the user.

Rich Media Ads

Rich media display ads offer a more interactive experience with a potential customer.

What makes them interactive compared to the other display advertising types?

The beauty of this ad type is the combination of video, image, audio, and clickable elements to engage a user more fully.

Native Ads

The opposite of rich media ads would be native ads. This ad type is meant to blend seamlessly with the content and overall design of a webpage.

Native ads are meant to be non-disruptive to the user experience because they can match the look and feel of the content surrounding the ad.

By blending in more cohesively, it can help increase engagement rates.

Retargeting Ads

Retargeting display ads are intended to re-engage past website or app users who haven’t taken the desired action.

This ad type can look like any of the above-mentioned ad formats, or it could show dynamic content based on the user’s previous browsing history.

Unlike standard display ads, retargeting ads aren’t meant to scale broadly. They have a specific intended audience to invite them back to make a purchase.

Display Advertising Vs. Search Advertising

Display ads and search ads are both essential components of a sound digital marketing strategy.

However, they both serve different purposes and are meant to complement each other – not compete.

Below are the key main differentiators between display and search ads:

Targeting. While display ads typically use targeting like demographics, interests, and browsing behavior, search ads are primarily keyword-based and what they search for.
Intent. Display ads can help create demand by focusing on awareness and product consideration. Search ads, on the other hand, are intended to capture existing demand.
Ad format. Display ads are more visual in nature and utilize elements like images, videos, text, and logos. Search ads are primarily text-based with headlines and descriptions.
Reach. Display ads can reach broader audiences across the internet and are easier to scale. Search ads are limited to the specific search engines and their search partner networks, if applicable.

Display Advertising Examples

Display Ads come in many different shapes and sizes. Below are a few examples of ads found across the web in a variety of sizes.

Example: Leaderboard Display Ad

The example below was taken as I was browsing People.com. This ad for US Bank appeared at the top of the page before the hero content.

Example: Skyscraper Display Ad

This example was taken as I was browsing Business Insider. An ad for Oracle Netsuite showed on the right-hand side of the page on a desktop device.

A skyscraper ad example on a desktop site.

Source: Businessinsider.com, screenshot taken by author, July 2024

Example: Mobile Display Ad

I found this ad when reading a blog post on Southern Living on my mobile device. A display ad for Best Buy was inserted between paragraphs of the blog post.

Source; Southernliving.com, screenshot taken by author July 2024

Display Advertising Strategy

Just like any other campaign type, display advertising should be driven by a sound strategy.

Let’s take a look at some of the key components of crafting a display advertising strategy.

1. Define Clear Goals

It’s important to establish the objective of each display campaign, such as brand awareness, lead generation, or sales.

If you’re not sure where to start, take a step back and consider your overarching business needs and what you’re trying to achieve.

For example, are you looking to gain new customers or re-engage existing customers? Is brand awareness more important, or are you looking to drive sales of a new product?

In Google Ads, you’ll start the campaign creation by choosing from the following objectives and then choose the ‘Display’ campaign type after choosing an objective:

Google Ads objectives in new campaign creation.

Screenshot taken by author, July 2024

2. Choose Your Budget, Bidding Strategy, And Audience

Budgets and bid strategies are set at the campaign level.

The typical bid strategy pricing models for display ads are a cost-per-click (CPC) basis or a cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) model. You’ll want to choose the one that aligns with the campaign goal and your overall budget.

In this example, I chose “Awareness” as the campaign objective, so Google Ads recommends a Viewable impressions bid strategy.

Choosing bid strategies in Google Ads for display campaign.

Screenshot taken by author, July 2024.

Next is to refine the audience targeting for your campaigns.

If the goal is to attract new customers, you can use your own data on existing customers to build audience profiles to target.

Keep in mind the demographics, interests, and overall browsing behavior when putting together your target audience.

Screenshot taken by author, July 2024.

3. Choose Display Ad Type, Format, And Placements

The nice part about Google Ads is the ability to target (or exclude) specific website placements or apps to ensure your ads show up in the right place.

You may be tempted to choose a short list of very specific websites, but by doing so, you could end up limiting your reach immensely. It’s also not guaranteed that your ads will show on those placements if your budget or bid is not competitive enough.

At the beginning, use negative placements to your advantage to exclude sites where your content would be inappropriate.

Now, as for ad size and format, there are two options in Google Ads:

Uploaded display ads.
Utilize responsive display ads (RDAs).

The main benefit of using uploaded display ads is that you have full control over the design. However, not all websites utilize these formats, and you may be missing out on additional reach if you opt not to use RDAs.

The most typical banner sizes for uploaded display ads include:

728×90 (leaderboard).
300×250 (medium rectangle).
336×280 (large rectangle).
300×50 (mobile banner).
160×600 (skyscraper).

If you opt to use responsive display ads, Google takes the guesswork out of ad sizes for you.

Essentially, you’ll provide the basic elements, and Google will mix and match that content to create personalized ads for each user based on when and where they’re browsing.

Be sure to provide these essentials for a well-formatted ad:

Images.
Logos.
Brand name.
Headlines.
Descriptions.
Custom colors.
Call-to-action (CTA) text.

4. Focus On Creating Compelling Ad Content

Expanding on point #3 above, the visual design is your chance to capture the user’s attention.

A boring ad won’t stand out and can turn customers away. When designing ads, make sure to design visually appealing ads that align with your brand.

Additionally, make sure to test different elements and rotate out poor-performing elements.

It’s especially important to remain visually consistent if you’re marketing across different channels like social media. Consistent brand recognition across platforms can pay dividends over time.

5. Track And Optimize Performance

Once your display campaign is launched, you’ll want to monitor the key metrics chosen for the campaign objectives.

It may be tempting to make changes immediately, but it’s important to give the algorithm time to learn before making any major changes.

Unless something serious goes awry, like showing up on inappropriate placements, give the campaign time to run and then make tweaks based on the data coming in.

For example, if an ad shows a lot of impressions but few clicks, you may need to change the creative elements to capture the user’s attention more. Or, it could be the placements that need tweaking.

Or, if an ad is getting a ton of clicks but very few conversions, it may not be the ad itself; it could mean the landing page needs to be optimized. Try segmenting the ads by device to identify if the majority of clicks are coming from mobile and if the corresponding landing page is optimized for mobile delivery.

Ongoing campaign monitoring and optimization are vital for delivering optimal ROI to your display ads.

Read More:

Top Display Advertising Networks

Believe it or not, there’s a ton of different advertising networks to choose from as an alternative to Google.

Depending on your goal and usage of Display ads, you may need a different platform.

Some of the top Display ad network platforms include:

AdRoll
Amazon
StackAdapt
AirNow Media
Yahoo Ad Tech

You can find a full recommended list of Display Ad networks here.

Read More:

Display Advertising Tools

Depending on which stage you’re in for creating or running display ads, there are multiple tools to help take your display ads to the next level.

Ad Creation And Design Tools

If you’re looking to create display ads where you have full control, there are many user-friendly tools to help guide the ad creation process.

Google Web Designer: This is a free tool from Google that allows you to create HTML5 ads and motion graphics.
Canva: A more user-friendly option that has tons of templates to start from or the ability to create from scratch.
Bannersnack: This tool is specifically for creating banner ads, but it simplifies the design process with drag-and-drop components.

Ad Analysis And Optimization Tools

Analyzing display campaigns can be half the battle, and you need reliable tools to help optimize these campaigns to the fullest.

Google Analytics: This tool is essential for tracking and analyzing the performance of your campaigns. It can help marry the metrics like impressions and clicks to user purchase behavior to help you determine where to optimize further.
Google Ads Performance Planner: If you need help forecasting potential campaign changes, this tool is for you. It takes historical data and trends into considerations to help provide budget and bidding recommendations.
Hotjar: This is a user behavior tool that can provide session recordings, heatmaps, and more to understand how real users interact with your landing page and website.

Ad Management And Automation Tools

Google Ads Editor: This tool is great for managing multiple Google Ads campaigns offline, allowing for bulk changes and uploading changes on your own time.
Optmzyr: This platform offers more automation and streamlined workflow for PPC campaigns, including display ads.
Semrush: This platform can help with competitive analysis for display ads, which can help you refine your strategies.

Summary

Display ads are part of any comprehensive digital marketing strategy.

Because of their scalability and reach, display ads can cast a wide net to make potential customers aware of your brand and increase engagement and, ultimately, sales.

From traditional banner ads to innovative, responsive display ads, each type serves a unique purpose in capturing user attention and driving conversions.

By understanding the differences between display and search advertising, leveraging effective strategies, and utilizing various tools for ad creation, design, analysis, and optimization, you can maximize the impact of your display advertising campaigns.

More resources:

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

Source link

SEO

How You Can Measure Core Web Vitals

Published

23 hours ago

August 17, 2024

Max

Google has defined a set of metrics site owners should focus on when optimizing for page experience. Core Web Vitals metrics are part of Google’s page experience factors that all websites should strive to meet.

Users’ expectations for web experiences can vary according to site and context, but some remain consistent regardless of where they are on the web.

Specifically, Google identifies the core user experience needs such as loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

What Are Core Web Vitals Scores?

Google recommends site owners have CWV metrics under the ‘good’ threshold specified below:

Metric name	Good	Poor
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	≤2500ms	>4000ms
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)	≤2000ms	>500mx
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)	≤1	>0.25

Anything in between good and poor is considered as moderate, which should be improved.

Diagram showing three Core Web Vitals performance metrics

Google explains why these three metrics, in particular, are so important:

“All of these metrics capture important user-centric outcomes, are field measurable, and have supporting lab diagnostic metric equivalents and tooling.

For example, while Largest Contentful Paint is the topline loading metric, it is also highly dependent on First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time to First Byte (TTFB), which remain critical to monitor and improve.”

How Google Measures Core Web Vitals

Google CrUX report uses Chrome data when users browse websites to gather real-world user data from their devices. At least 75% of pageviews to the site should have ‘good’ scores for the website to meet CWV thresholds.

Please note it uses 75% of pageviews of the entire site, which means pages with poor CWV and less traffic will not impact the overall website score.

This is why you may find that websites with a ‘good’ score have pages with terrible CWVs and vice versa.

This method of measuring ensures that a low number of percentage visits due to slow network conditions doesn’t take down the entire website’s ‘good’ score.

Here’s how those metrics can be measured.

How To Measure Core Web Vitals

Google incorporates Core Web Vitals measurement capabilities into many of its existing tools.

Core Web Vitals can be measured using these free tools:

Let’s dive into how to use each of these free SEO tools to measure Core Web Vitals.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights allows you to measure Core Web Vitals with both lab and field data included in the reports.

The lab section of the report provides data gathered from real users’ devices in all geos and different network conditions, whereas the field section shows data from simulated devices using just one device.

Pagespeed insights report. Field vs. Lab data

If your pages have few visits or are new, there might be insufficient historical data for field data to show a report. In that case, the average field score for the entire website will be used as a fallback if available; otherwise, it will show no data.

Once you run reports you will have a list of recommendations on how to improve your scores underneath. You can read our guide on the PageSpeed Insights report to learn how to use it.

Web Vitals Extension

Using the PageSpeed Insights tool is always a great way to debug and audit performance, but it is often not convenient. You have to open a new tab in your browser and navigate away from the page, which is distracting.

Fortunately, there is an extension available to install from the Chrome Web Store that measures Core Web Vitals metrics in real-time during your browsing and also loads field data if available.

Core Web Vitals scores

Besides this standard UI, this addon also offers more granular debugging opportunities via the browser DevTools ‘console’ tab. Here is a quick video guide on how to do that.

Debugging the Interaction Next Paint metric is quite challenging as it may degrade at any point during the user interaction journey. In PageSpeed Insights, you get only an average value across all interactions, not which interaction on the specific element on the page was slow.

By using this extension, you can interact with the page and identify elements that degrade the INP metric by checking the console logs. For example, you can click on buttons and check the console to see how long the interaction took.

As soon as you identify which element is slow to respond, you can check your JavaScript code to see if any scripts are blocking the interaction.

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is an open-source tool you can use to audit your webpage’s performance, which is also available in Chrome’s DevTools.

All of the reports that Lighthouse powers are updated to reflect the latest version.

Example lighthouse report in chrome browser DevTools

One caveat to be aware of is that when running Lighthouse in your browser, it also loads many resources from your Chrome extensions, which can affect your metrics in the Lighthouse report.

Message indicating issues with the Lighthouse run, specifically mentioning that Chrome extensions negatively impacted the page's load performance.

The message indicated issues with the Lighthouse run and specifically mentioned that Chrome extensions negatively impacted the page’s load performance.

That’s why I suggest using Chrome Canary for debugging as a good practice. Chrome Canary has an isolated installation from your regular Chrome browser where you can access experimental features. This allows you to test your website with features that will be included in future Chrome releases.

I ran a quick experiment to see how drastically Lighthouse page speed scores can vary in the Canary clean installation vs. your browser with add-ons enabled.

Two screenshots of Google Chrome DevTools’ Lighthouse audit results. Left: Chrome stable version with add-ons and right: Canary without add-ons.

One important feature that Lighthouse enables is measuring scores while interacting with the webpage and measuring how certain interactions affect your scores, especially the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric.

Option timespan in Chrome Lighthouse DevTools

I suggest you dive deep and master how to use Lighthouse by reading our guide written by the two of most experienced technical SEO experts in the world.

CrUX Dashboard

CrUX report is a public dataset of real user experience data on millions of websites. The Chrome UX report measures field versions of all the Core Web Vitals, which means it reports real-world data rather than lab data.

With PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, or the Web Vital add-on we have discussed, you now know how to measure individual URL performance. But how do you see the whole picture for a website with thousands of URLs? What percentage of URLs have ‘good’ scores or scores from a few months ago to compare against?

This is where Google’s CrUX free Looker Studio dashboard helps. You can check segments and see your historical data.

To do that, simply copy and paste your domain into the CrUX dashboard launcher.

CrUX dashboard launcher

Then, enjoy beautiful reports for free. Here is an example report for Search Engine Journal in case you want to explore a real dashboard.

CrUX dashboard example for Search Engine Journal

In this dashboard, you can find much more besides the CWV metrics. If you fall short of CWV ‘good’ scores but lab data shows you are meeting all thresholds, it may be because your visitors have a bad connection.

This is where the connection distribution report is highly valuable: it can help you understand if your scores’ poor performance is due to network issues.

Connection Distribution in CrUX report

Unfortunately, this dashboard doesn’t give you a breakdown of CWV metrics by country, but there is a free tool, treo.sh, which you can use to check performance metrics by geos.

Break down of CWV metrics by geos which helps understand where they fall short of good scores

Search Console

GSC is another tool to see how your overall website CWV metrics.

A Google Search Console dashboard displaying “Core Web Vitals”

The report identifies groups of pages that require attention based on real-world data from the Chrome UX report. If you open the report by clicking on the top right corner link, you will see a breakdown of your issues.

Core Web Vitals report for Mobile in GSC

With this report, be aware that it pulls data from CruX, and URLs will be omitted if they do not have a minimum amount of reporting data, which means you may have pages with poor CWV metrics that are not reported here.

Web-Vitals.JS And GA4

web-vitals.js is an open-source library that accurately measures CWV metrics the same way Chrome or PageSpeed Insights does. The web vitals extension we discussed above actually uses this library for reporting and logging.

However, you can integrate it with Google Analytics 4 to get a detailed performance report at scale on a website with many pages. Below is a code sample for GA4’s gtag integration.

In the code sample, ‘value’ is a built-in parameter, and ‘metric_id’, ‘metric_value’, ‘metric_delta’, ‘metric_rating’, and ‘debug_target’ are optional custom dimensions you may want to include per your needs.

If you want to see these dimensions in GA4’s exploration reports, you need to add them in GA4’s admin of custom definitions. Otherwise, if you decide to send these parameters and not add them via admin you can access raw data via BigQuery only. This provides much more flexibility but requires SQL expertise.

If you decide to include ‘metric_id,’ which, in the case of websites with a lot of traffic, will have an indefinite number of unique values, it may cause cardinality issues in exploration reports.

So, you may want to enable those additional custom parameters for a short period to gather sample data for troubleshooting.

To send CWV metrics data via Google Tag Manager, refer to this guide created by Google’s marketing solution team. As a best practice, you should use GTM integration, and the code above (which is fully functional) demonstrates the fundamental mechanics of CWV data collection and reporting.

Other than what we have discussed, freemium or paid tools such as Debugbear, treo.sh, Oncrawl, Lumar, or Semrush may help you identify your scores on all pages at a scale in real time.

However, I would like to note that from the listed tools, Debugbear and treo.sh are highly specialized in CWV metrics and provide high-granularity insights with advanced segmentations.

What About Other Valuable Metrics?

As important as the Core Web Vitals are, they’re not the only page experience metrics to focus on.

Ensuring your site uses HTTPS, is mobile-friendly, avoids intrusive interstitials, and maintains a clear distinction between the website are crucial parts of page experience ranking factors.

So think of it also from a user-centric point of view, and not only because it is a ranking factor.

For example, from a conversions perspective, if you have a slow ecommerce website, your potential customers may churn, and it will cause revenue losses.

More resources:

Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

Source link

SEO

How I Rank #1 on Google

Published

1 day ago

August 17, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

SEO content is content optimized to rank high on search engines.

I’ve created plenty of them in my career. In fact, I’ve written 111 articles for this blog, of which ~80%—90% are SEO content.

Altogether, they receive an estimated 121,000 monthly search visits from Google.

Amount of organic search traffic I'm acquiring from my articles

Suffice it to say, I know a little something about writing SEO content. Follow along as I show you how I put together this article on how to create SEO content (meta, I know).

If we want to acquire search traffic, we need to target topics that people are searching for on Google. In this case, I’m targeting the keyword “seo content creation”.

How do I know people are searching for this keyword? Well, according to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, this keyword has a search volume of 500 and a traffic potential of 1,100.

Search volume and traffic potential for "seo content creation"

A search volume of 500 means on average, there are 500 searches per month for this keyword on Google. And a Traffic Potential (TP) of 1,100 means I could potentially acquire 1,100 monthly search traffic from targeting this keyword, if I manage to rank #1 on Google.

Sidenote.

Why the discrepancy? That’s because there are many ways to search for the same thing. Google understands that and ranks nearly the same pages for all variations. Therefore, your page could potentially rank for these different keywords and generate search traffic from all of them.

How did I find this keyword? I found it by analyzing what our competitors were ranking for. After all, if they rank for it, it’s likely relevant to us and something we can potentially rank for too.

To find what our competitors rank for, I entered our competitor’s website into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and went to the Top pages report.

This report shows which pages on our competitor’s website get the most organic search traffic. For example, SEMRush’s page on competitive analysis ranks for ~3,000 keywords and gets an estimated total of 24,000 monthly search visits. The #1 keyword sending them the most search traffic is “analyse competitors”, which they rank for in position one.

I went through the report and that’s where I found this keyword:

We want to rank high on Google, but we don’t want to do that for any random topic. We want to make sure we only target topics that can generate us sales eventually.

We do this by assigning a business potential score to every relevant topic we find. The business potential score is simply how easy it will be to pitch your product while covering a certain topic.

We want to prioritize topics that score at least a “2” and above.

In this case, I scored “seo content creation” a “2”—Our product isn’t essential, but boy is it a yuge timesaver.

To know what type of content I need to create, I need to figure out why searchers are searching for “seo content creation”. This is known as matching search intent.

Since Google’s aim is to rank relevant content, I can look at the SERPs to figure search intent. I did this by entering “seo content creation” into Keywords Explorer, scrolling down to SERP Overview, and clicking Identify intents.

Identify intents feature in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

I see that searchers want a step-by-step guide on how to create SEO content. And I also see that the main audience for this topic are beginners.

4. Put together an outline

I rarely head straight to drafting. I prefer starting with an outline. Various reasons:

I can see whether my ideas make sense first before committing to a few thousand words
It’s also easier for others to give feedback
I avoid blank page syndrome when it comes time to write

Everyone on the blog team has a preferred outline format, but here’s how mine looks like:

Target keyword
Search intent
Pitch/Angle
Potential titles
Outline (with H2s, H3s, and H4s)

For example, here’s my outline for this topic:

The first thing you’ll notice is that the outline is different from the post you’re reading. That’s our process at work. Let me explain:

Having identified search intent, I see that I likely need to create something along the lines of “a beginner’s guide to seo content creation (step-by-step)”.

My original thought was that I could simply repurpose one of my older posts. After all, I had just finished an article on how to combine SEO and content marketing. A significant portion of that post was on how to create SEO content.

Table of contents for an article on how to combine seo and content marketing

So, that was what I pitched to our Director of Content Marketing, Ryan Law.

Sidenote.

My outline looks bare because the majority of the talking points were previously explained.

Since I had something to work off on, I generated my outline based on the other post. But if you’re stuck on which subtopics to cover, an easy way is to check the top 3-5 pages in SERP Overview, click Open in, and choose Content gap.

Open in Content gap feature in Keywords Explorer

This opens the Content gap report, which shows the common keyword rankings amongst these pages. Some of them will be subtopics you might want to include. For example, I did this for “inbound marketing” and here’s what I see:

What is inbound marketing
Inbound marketing strategy
Inbound marketing examples
Inbound marketing tools

Content gap report for 'inbound marketing'

Ryan didn’t agree with my outline.

I thought the feedback was fair. After all, the goal of our content isn’t to just rank high on Google. It also needs to attract links and shares and build thought leadership for our brand. Efficiency is good, but not at the expense of high-quality, unique content. Otherwise, why build a content team? We can all just enter a couple of prompts into ChatGPT and publish the resulting draft.

But we don’t do that because we don’t want to make mediocre AI content that no one wants to read. We want to create content that is unique, stands out, and builds brand awareness. In this case, I have the experience of creating SEO content, so I have the opportunity to make something unique by weaving my experiences into the blog post.

If you’re writing about a topic where you don’t have experience or expertise, you can always interview other people who have them. Or if resources are available, go out and get some experience! For example, actually intermittently fast if you’re writing about that.

How to enrich common knowledge with new information and experiences

I want to be honest for a second. We have ideals, but we’re also realistic. We can’t devote massive resources to every article we publish. Sometimes, it makes sense to just repurpose. For example, I repurposed my post on PPC and SEO working together from my post on SEO vs PPC.

In this case, Ryan thought it was worth the extra effort for this topic, since it had a Traffic Potential of 1,100. So I took up Ryan’s suggestion.

Making SEO content is always a finely-tuned balance on when to be efficient and when you can afford to go the extra mile.

5. Write your draft

With the outline approved, it’s time to move on to the next step. This depends on what you’ve pitched.

For example, the unique angle for my post on the best marketing books was to get recommendations from other marketers. So, rather than dive right into drafting, bulk of the work involved reaching out to people on LinkedIn or email.

My outreach to marketers asking for their book recommendation

For this post, I’m writing from my lived experience, so it was more of a key-bashing-and-backspacing-session on Google Docs. (You can’t see it, but I backspaced a lot.)

Unfortunately, I’m no Anthony Trollope and don’t have a fixed routine for you to copy.

My one non-negotiable is a cup of coffee. I’m sure most people who write will agree with me. Otherwise, I’m all over the place. If I feel like Charles Darwin, I’ll set a 30-minute timer and start writing. Or I’ll go for a walk.

Sorry to disappoint you, but neither ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Llama feature here. Call me trad, but I still prefer to write, not generate content. Writing is thinking, after all. I often surprise myself by discovering things I never knew simply by writing.

Beyond the productivity advice, the things I try to do in my drafts (after getting whipped into shape by Ahrefs over the past five years) are:

Ensuring I’m including use cases of Ahrefs naturally within the narrative (this post is an example of how I’m doing this.)
Making sure every statement is as accurate as possible. No hype, no lying, qualifiers like “could”, “perhaps”, or “may” widely accepted.
Be clear. No fluff, and only use jargon when needed. Include images where possible.

Once I’m sufficiently satisfied with the draft, I tag Ryan on Basecamp (where we track the progress of drafts) for his feedback. Here’s his feedback for this post:

Since there are no major changes, it’s ready to be uploaded and published (after making the edits.)

Hol’ up, not so fast. Before we actually publish, I need to make sure the on-page SEO for this post is done. Matching search intent is 80% of the way, but there’s no harm in ensuring that Google clearly understands what your page is about.

Think of it like the icing on a cake. The cake is already edible, but the icing just makes it better and prettier.

On-page SEO is really a simple checklist, like:

Including the target keyword in the title, URL, H1, and the intro paragraph.
Writing an engaging meta description.
Linking to other useful pages on our website.
Adding alt text to all our images.

In my opinion, getting the title right is the most important. Beyond the SEO benefits, it’s the first thing any human sees. So it must do the job to convince them to click.

The title is the first thing a searcher sees

I follow Ryan’s advice when it comes to titles.

how to write endless titles for your blog post

titles don’t come naturally to me, so i’ve been working hard to write more – and better – titles for my articles

here’s my process, illustrated by this week’s @AnimalzCo article: pic.twitter.com/gIQDNmPQt2

— Ryan Law (@thinking_slow) January 26, 2022

I try to brainstorm at least ten titles in varying styles for every blog post I write. This takes up a lot of brain juice, so this is also where I introduce my best friend, ChatGPT:

I eventually stuck with my original title, but it’s a good exercise to get your ideas going.

Final thoughts

You might have been expecting some secret SEO tricks I use to rank, but unfortunately, there’s none of that. It’s really just a simple process of keyword research, matching search intent, making something unique, and adding that final touch of on-page SEO.

As this meme explains: