Connect with us

SEO

20 Essential Technical SEO Tools For Agencies

Published

on

20 Essential Technical SEO Tools For Agencies

Technical SEO tools are plentiful.

However, tools are just part of the equation.

Tools are useless without an experienced technical SEO professional to guide the strategy and ensure successful results.

But, within the hands of an experienced professional, tools can do many wondrous things. From scaling a site’s SEO effortlessly to creating content, it’s possible to improve things with less effort (rather than more hard work).

Tools can increase efficiencies, including:

Advertisement
  • Identifying issues on-site, like crawling and indexing.
  • Diagnosing page speed issues.
  • Identifying missing or duplicate text and other elements.
  • Redirect issues.
  • And many others.

Your SEO tools arsenal, and how you use them, can mean the difference between great success and failure.

And indeed, there is no shortage of technical SEO tools for agencies.

Here are a few of the best you should consider.

1. Screaming Frog

Screenshot of Screaming Frog, December 2022

Screaming Frog is the crawler to have.

To create a substantial website audit, it is crucial to first perform a website crawl with this tool.

Depending on specific settings, it is possible to introduce false positives or errors into an audit that you otherwise would not know about.

Screaming Frog can help you identify the basics like:

  • Missing page titles.
  • Missing meta descriptions.
  • Missing meta keywords.
  • Large images.
  • Errored response codes.
  • Errors in URLs.
  • Errors in canonicals.

Advanced things Screaming Frog can help you do include:

  • Identifying issues with pagination.
  • Diagnosing international SEO implementation issues.
  • Taking a deep dive into a website’s architecture.

2. Google Search Console

Screenshot of Google Search Console showing the initial user interface upon logging in.Screenshot from Google Search Console, December 2022

The primary tool of any SEO pro should be the Google Search Console (GSC).

This critical tool has recently been overhauled to replace many old features while adding more data, features, and reports.

Advertisement

What makes this tool great for agencies? Setting up a reporting process.

For agencies that do SEO, good reporting is critical. If you have not already set up a reporting process, it is highly recommended that you do so.

This process can save you if you have an issue with website change-overs when GSC accounts can be wiped out. If your account is wiped out, it is possible to go back to all your GSC data, because you have been saving it for all these months.

Agency applications can also include utilizing the API for interfacing with other data usage as well.

3. Google Analytics

Where would we be without a solid analytics platform to analyze organic search performance?

While free, Google Analytics provides much in the way of information that can help you identify things like penalties, issues with traffic, and anything else that may come your way.

Advertisement

In much the same way as Google Search Console works, if you set up Google Analytics correctly, it’s ideal to have a monthly reporting process in place.

This process will help you save data for those situations where something unexpected happens to the client’s Google Analytics access.

At least, you won’t have a situation where you lose all data for your clients.

4. Web Developer Toolbar

Screenshot of the Web Developer Toolbar Google Chrome Extension.Screenshot from Web Developer Toolbar extension, December 2022

The web developer toolbar extension for Google Chrome can be downloaded here.

It is an official port of the Firefox web developer extension.

One of the primary uses for this extension is identifying issues with code, specifically JavaScript implementations with menus and the user interface.

Turning off JavaScript and CSS makes it possible to identify where these issues are occurring in the browser.

Advertisement

Your auditing is not just limited to JavaScript and CSS issues.

You can also see alt text, find broken images, and view meta tag information and response headers.

5. WebPageTest

Screenshot showing the user interface of the Webpagetest.org tool.Screenshot of WebPageTest, December 2022

Page speed has been a hot topic in recent years, and auditing website page speed brings you many useful tools.

To that end, WebPageTest is one of those essential SEO tools for your agency.

Cool things that you can do with WebPageTest include:

  • Waterfall speed tests.
  • Competitor speed tests.
  • Competitor speed videos.
  • Identifying how long it takes a site to load fully.
  • Time to first byte.
  • Start render time.
  • Document object model (DOM) elements.

This is useful for determining how a site’s technical elements interact to create the final result or display time.

6. Google PageSpeed Insights

Screenshot of the output of Google's Page Speed InsightsScreenshot of Google PageSpeed Insights, December 2022

Through a combination of speed metrics for both desktop and mobile, Google’s PageSpeed Insights is critical for agencies that want to get their website page speed ducks in a row.

It should not be used as the be-all, end-all of page metrics testing, but it is a good starting point.

Here’s why: PageSpeed Insights does not always use exact page speed. It uses approximations.

Advertisement

While you may get one result with Google PageSpeed, you may also get different results with other tools.

Remember that Google’s PageSpeed provides only part of the picture, and you need more complete data for an effective analysis. Use multiple tools for your analysis to get a full picture of your website’s performance.

7. Google Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool

Screenshot of the user interface of the Google Mobile Friendly testing tool user interface.Screenshot of Google Mobile-Friendly Testing tool, December 2022

Determining a website’s mobile technical aspects is also critical for any website audit.

When putting a website through its paces, Google’s Mobile-Friendly testing tool can give you insights into a website’s mobile implementation.

8. Google’s Rich Results Testing Tool

Screenshot showing the user interface of the Google Rich Results Testing Tool.

The Google Structured Data Testing Tool has been deprecated and replaced by the Google Rich Results Testing Tool.

This tool performs one function, and performs it well: it helps you test Schema structured data markup against the known data from Schema.org that Google supports.

This is a fantastic way to identify issues with your Schema coding before the code is implemented.

Advertisement

9. GTmetrix Page Speed Report

Screenshot of GTMetrix report showing its output of page speed performance.Screenshot of GTmetrix, December 2022

GTmetrix is a page speed report card that provides a different perspective on page speed.

By diving deep into page requests, CSS and JavaScript files that need to load, and other website elements, it is possible to clean up many elements that contribute to high page speed.

10. W3C Validator

Screenshot of the W3C validator showing its outputScreenshot of W3C Validator, December 2022

You may not normally think of a code validator like W3C Validator as an SEO tool, but it is important just the same.

Be careful! If you don’t know what you are doing, it is easy to misinterpret the results and actually make things worse.

For example, say you are validating code from a site that was developed in XHTML, but the code was ported over to WordPress.

Copying and pasting the entire code into WordPress during development does not change its document type automatically. If during testing, you run across pages that have thousands of errors across the entire document, that is likely why.

A website that was developed in this fashion is more likely to need a complete overhaul with new code, especially if the former code does not exist.

11. Semrush

Semrush toolScreenshot of Semrush, January 2022

Semrush’s greatest claim to fame is accurate data for keyword research and other technical research.

But what makes Semrush so valuable is its competitor analysis data.

Advertisement

You may not normally think of Semrush as a technical analysis tool.

However, if you go deep enough into a competitor analysis, the rankings data and market analysis data can reveal surprising information.

You can use these insights to better tailor your SEO strategy and gain an edge over your competitors.

12. Ahrefs

Ahrefs toolScreenshot of Ahrefs, January 2022

Ahrefs is considered by many to be a tool that is a critical component of modern technical link analysis.

By identifying certain patterns in a website’s link profile, you can figure out what a site is doing for its linking strategy.

It is possible to identify anchor text issues that may be impacting a site using its word cloud feature.

Also, you can identify the types of links linking back to the site – whether it’s a blog network, a high-risk link profile with many forum and Web 2.0 links, or other major issues.

Advertisement

Other abilities include identifying when a site’s backlinks started going missing, its linking patterns, and much more.

13. Majestic

Majestic is a long-standing tool in the SEO industry with unique linking insights.

Like Ahrefs, you can identify things like linking patterns by downloading reports of the site’s full link profile.

It is also possible to find things like bad neighborhoods and other domains a website owner owns.

Using this bad neighborhood report, you can diagnose issues with a site’s linking arising out of issues with the site’s website associations.

Like most tools, Majestic has its own values for calculating technical link attributes like Trust Flow, Citation Flow, and other linking elements contributing to trust, relevance, and authority.

Advertisement

It is also possible through its own link graphs to identify any issues occurring with the link profile over time.

Majestic is an exceptional tool in your link diagnostic process.

14. Moz Bar

It is hard to think of something like the MozBar, which lends itself to a little bit of whimsicality, as a serious technical SEO tool. But, there are many metrics that you can gain from detailed analysis.

Things like Moz’s Domain Authority and Page Authority, Google Caching status, other code like social open graph coding, and neat things like the page Metas at-a-glance while in the web browser.

Without diving deep into a crawl, you can also see other advanced elements like rel=”canonical” tags, page load time, Schema Markup, and even the page’s HTTP status.

This is useful for an initial survey of the site before diving deeper into a proper audit, and it can be a good idea to include the findings from this data in an actual audit.

Advertisement

15. Barracuda Panguin

Screenshot of Barracuda Panguin ToolScreenshot of Barracuda Panguin Tool, December 2022

If you are investigating a site for a penalty, the Barracuda Panguin tool should be a part of your workflow.

It works by connecting to the Google Analytics account of the site you are investigating. The overlay is intertwined with the GA data, and it will overlay data of when a penalty occurred with your GA data.

Using this overlay, it is possible to easily identify situations where potential penalties occur.

Now, it is important to note that there isn’t an exact science to this, and that correlation isn’t always causation.

It’s important to investigate all avenues of where data is potentially showing something happening, in order to rule out any potential penalty.

Using tools like this can help you zero in on approximations in data events as they occur, which can help for investigative reasons.

16. Google Search Console XML Sitemap Report

Screenshot of Google Search Console XML Sitemap reportScreenshot of Google Search Console XML Sitemap, December 2022

The Google Search Console XML Sitemap Report is one of those technical SEO tools that should be an important part of any agency’s reporting workflow.

Diagnosing sitemap issues is a critical part of any SEO audit, and this technical insight can help you achieve the all-important 1:1 ratio of URLs added to the site and the sitemap being updated.

Advertisement

For those who don’t know, it is considered an SEO best practice to ensure the following:

  • That a sitemap is supposed to contain all 200 OK URLs. No 4xx or 5xx URLs should be showing up in the sitemap.
  • There should be a 1:1 ratio of exact URLs in the sitemap as there are on the site. In other words, the sitemap should not have any orphaned pages that are not showing up in the Screaming Frog crawl.
  • Any parameter-laden URLs should be removed from the sitemap if they are not considered primary pages. Certain parameters will cause issues with XML sitemaps validating, so make sure that these parameters are not included in URLs.

17. BrightLocal

If you are operating a website for a local business, your SEO strategy should involve local SEO for a significant portion of its link acquisition efforts.

This is where BrightLocal comes in.

It is normally not thought of as a technical SEO tool, but its application can help you uncover technical issues with the site’s local SEO profile.

For example, you can audit the site’s local SEO citations with this tool. Then, you can move forward with identifying and submitting your site to the appropriate citations.

It works kind of like Yext, in that it has a pre-populated list of potential citations.

One of BrightLocal’s essential tools is that it lets you audit, clean, and build citations to the most common citation sites (and others that are less common).

Advertisement

BrightLocal also includes in-depth auditing of your Google Business Profile presence, including in-depth local SEO audits.

If your agency is heavy into local SEO, this is one of those tools that is a no-brainer, from a workflow perspective.

18. Whitespark

Whitespark is more in-depth when compared to BrightLocal.

Its local citation finder allows you to dive deeper into your site’s local SEO by finding where your site is across the competitor space.

To that end, it also lets you identify all of your competitor’s local SEO citations.

In addition, part of its auditing capabilities allows it to track rankings through detailed reporting focused on distinct Google local positions such as the local pack and local finder, as well as detailed organic rankings reports from both Google and Bing.

Advertisement

19. Botify

Botify is one of the most complete technical SEO tools available.

Its claim to fame includes the ability to reconcile search intent and technical SEO with its in-depth keywords analysis tool. You can tie things like crawl budget and technical SEO elements that map to searcher intent.

Not only that, but it’s also possible to identify all the technical SEO factors that are contributing to ranking through Botify’s detailed technical analysis.

In its detailed reporting, you can also use the tool to detect changes in how people are searching, regardless of the industry that you are focused on.

The powerful part of Botify includes its in-depth reports that are capable of tying data to information that you can really act on.

20. Excel

Technical SEO Tools - Excel TricksScreenshot by author, December 2022

Many SEO pros aren’t aware that Excel can be considered a technical SEO tool.

Surprising, right?

Advertisement

Well, there are a number of Excel super tricks that one can use to perform technical SEO audits. Tasks that would otherwise take a significantly long time manually can be accomplished much faster.

Let’s look at a few of these “super tricks.”

Super Trick #1: VLOOKUP

With VLOOKUP, it is possible to pull data from multiple sheets based on data that you want to populate in the primary sheet.

This function allows you to do things like perform a link analysis using data gathered from different tools.

If you gathered linking data from GSC’s “who links to you the most” report, other data from Ahrefs, and other data from Moz, you know that it is impossible to reconcile all the information together.

What if you wanted to determine which internal links are valuable in accordance with a site’s inbound linking strategy?

Advertisement

Using this VLOOKUP video, you can combine data from GSC’s report with data from Ahrefs’ report to get the entire picture of what’s happening here.

Super Trick #2: Easy XML Sitemaps

Coding XML Sitemaps manually is a pain, isn’t it?

Not anymore.

Using a process of coding that is implemented quickly, it is possible to code a sitemap in Excel in a matter of minutes – if you work smart.

See the video I created showing this process.

Advertisement

Super Trick #3: Conditional Formatting

Using conditional formatting, it is possible to reconcile long lists of information in Excel.

This is useful in many SEO situations where lists of information are compared daily.

Although Tools Create Efficiencies, They Do Not Replace Manual Work

For any SEO agency that wants a competitive edge, SEO tools run the gamut from crawling to auditing, data gathering, analysis, and much more.

You don’t want to leave your results up to chance.

The right tools can provide another dimension to your analysis that standard analysis might otherwise not provide.

They can also give you an edge in creating an output that will delight your clients and keep them coming back for years to come.

Advertisement

Which of these tools will you use to wow your customers?


Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal



Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

SEO

How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO

Published

on

Step-by-Step: How to Optimize Old Blog Posts for SEO

Quick question: What do you typically do with your old blog posts? Most likely, the answer is: Not much.

If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Many of us in SEO and content marketing tend to focus on continuously creating new content, rather than leveraging our existing blog posts.

However, here’s the reality—Google is becoming increasingly sophisticated in evaluating content quality, and we need to adapt accordingly. Just as it’s easier to encourage existing customers to make repeat purchases, updating old content on your website is a more efficient and sustainable strategy in the long run.

Ways to Optimize Older Content 

Some of your old content might not be optimized for SEO very well, rank for irrelevant keywords, or drive no traffic at all. If the quality is still decent, however, you should be able to optimize it properly with little effort. 

Advertisement

Refresh Content 

If your blog post contains a specific year or mentions current events, it may become outdated over time. If the rest of the content is still relevant (like if it’s targeting an evergreen topic), simply updating the date might be all you need to do.

Rewrite Old Blog Posts 

When the content quality is low (you might have greatly improved your writing skills since you’ve written the post) but the potential is still there, there’s not much you can do apart from rewriting an old blog post completely. 

This is not a waste—you’re saving time on brainstorming since the basic structure is already in place. Now, focus on improving the quality.

Delete Old Blog Posts 

You might find a blog post that just seems unusable. Should you delete your old content? It depends. If it’s completely outdated, of low quality, and irrelevant to any valuable keywords for your website, it’s better to remove it. 

Once you decide to delete the post, don’t forget to set up a 301 redirect to a related post or page, or to your homepage.

Promote Old Blog Posts 

Sometimes all your content needs is a bit of promotion to start ranking and getting traffic again. Share it on your social media, link to it from a new post – do something to get it discoverable again to your audience. This can give it the boost it needs to attract organic links too.

Advertisement

Which Blog Posts Should You Update?

Deciding when to update or rewrite blog posts is a decision that relies on one important thing: a content audit. 

Use your Google Analytics to find out which blog posts used to drive tons of traffic, but no longer have the same reach. You can also use Google Search Console to find out which of your blog posts have lost visibility in comparison to previous months. I have a guide on website analysis using Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can follow.

If you use keyword tracking tools like SE Ranking, you can also use the data it provides to come up with a list of blog posts that have dropped in the rankings. 

Make data-driven decisions to identify which blog posts would benefit from these updates – i.e., which ones still have the chance to recover their keyword rankings and organic traffic. 

With Google’s helpful content update, which emphasizes better user experiences, it’s crucial to ensure your content remains relevant, valuable, and up-to-date.

How To Update Old Blog Posts for SEO

Updating articles can be an involved process. Here are some tips and tactics to help you get it right.

Advertisement

Author’s Note: I have a Comprehensive On-Page SEO Checklist you might also be interested in following while you’re doing your content audit.

Conduct New Keyword Research

Updating your post without any guide won’t get you far. Always do your keyword research to understand how users are searching for your given topic. 

Proper research can also show you relevant questions and sections that can be added to the blog post you’re updating or rewriting. Make sure to take a look at the People Also Ask (PAA) section that shows up when you search for your target keyword. Check out other websites like Answer The Public, Reddit, and Quora to see what users are looking for too. 

Look for New Ranking Opportunities

When trying to revive an old blog post for SEO, keep an eye out for new SEO opportunities (e.g., AI Overview, featured snippets, and related search terms) that didn’t exist when you first wrote your blog post. Some of these features can be targeted by the new content you will add to your post, if you write with the aim to be eligible for it. 

Rewrite Headlines and Meta Tags

If you want to attract new readers, consider updating your headlines and meta tags. 

Your headlines and meta tags should fulfill these three things:

Advertisement
  1. Reflect the rewritten and new content you’ve added to the blog post.
  2. Be optimized for the new keywords it’s targeting (if any).
  3. Appeal to your target audience – who may have changed tastes from when the blog post was originally made. 

Remember that your meta tags in particular act like a brief advertisement for your blog post, since this is what the user first sees when your blog post is shown in the search results page. 

Take a look at your blog post’s click-through rate on Google Search Console – if it falls below 2%, it’s definitely time for new meta tags. 

Replace Outdated Information and Statistics

Updating blog content with current studies and statistics enhances the relevance and credibility of your post. By providing up-to-date information, you help your audience make better, well-informed decisions, while also showing that your content is trustworthy.

Tighten or Expand Ideas

Your old content might be too short to provide real value to users – or you might have rambled on and on in your post. It’s important to evaluate whether you need to make your content more concise, or if you need to elaborate more. 

Keep the following tips in mind as you refine your blog post’s ideas:

  • Evaluate Helpfulness: Measure how well your content addresses your readers’ pain points. Aim to follow the E-E-A-T model (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).
  • Identify Missing Context: Consider whether your content needs more detail or clarification. View it from your audience’s perspective and ask if the information is complete, or if more information is needed.
  • Interview Experts: Speak with industry experts or thought leaders to get fresh insights. This will help support your writing, and provide unique points that enhance the value of your content.
  • Use Better Examples: Examples help simplify complex concepts. Add new examples or improve existing ones to strengthen your points.
  • Add New Sections if Needed: If your content lacks depth or misses a key point, add new sections to cover these areas more thoroughly.
  • Remove Fluff: Every sentence should contribute to the overall narrative. Eliminate unnecessary content to make your post more concise.
  • Revise Listicles: Update listicle items based on SEO recommendations and content quality. Add or remove headings to stay competitive with higher-ranking posts.

Improve Visuals and Other Media

No doubt that there are tons of old graphics and photos in your blog posts that can be improved with the tools we have today. Make sure all of the visuals used in your content are appealing and high quality. 

Update Internal and External Links

Are your internal and external links up to date? They need to be for your SEO and user experience. Outdated links can lead to broken pages or irrelevant content, frustrating readers and hurting your site’s performance.

You need to check for any broken links on your old blog posts, and update them ASAP. Updating your old blog posts can also lead to new opportunities to link internally to other blog posts and pages, which may not have been available when the post was originally published.

Optimize for Conversions

When updating content, the ultimate goal is often to increase conversions. However, your conversion goals may have changed over the years. 

Advertisement

So here’s what you need to check in your updated blog post. First, does the call-to-action (CTA) still link to the products or services you want to promote? If not, update it to direct readers to the current solution or offer.

Second, consider where you can use different conversion strategies. Don’t just add a CTA at the end of the post. 

Last, make sure that the blog post leverages product-led content. It’s going to help you mention your products and services in a way that feels natural, without being too pushy. Being subtle can be a high ROI tactic for updated posts.

Key Takeaway

Reviving old blog articles for SEO is a powerful strategy that can breathe new life into your content and boost your website’s visibility. Instead of solely focusing on creating new posts, taking the time to refresh existing content can yield impressive results, both in terms of traffic and conversions. 

By implementing these strategies, you can transform old blog posts into valuable resources that attract new readers and retain existing ones. So, roll up your sleeves, dive into your archives, and start updating your content today—your audience and search rankings will thank you!

Advertisement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

SEO

How Compression Can Be Used To Detect Low Quality Pages

Published

on

By

Compression can be used by search engines to detect low-quality pages. Although not widely known, it's useful foundational knowledge for SEO.

The concept of Compressibility as a quality signal is not widely known, but SEOs should be aware of it. Search engines can use web page compressibility to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords, making it useful knowledge for SEO.

Although the following research paper demonstrates a successful use of on-page features for detecting spam, the deliberate lack of transparency by search engines makes it difficult to say with certainty if search engines are applying this or similar techniques.

What Is Compressibility?

In computing, compressibility refers to how much a file (data) can be reduced in size while retaining essential information, typically to maximize storage space or to allow more data to be transmitted over the Internet.

TL/DR Of Compression

Compression replaces repeated words and phrases with shorter references, reducing the file size by significant margins. Search engines typically compress indexed web pages to maximize storage space, reduce bandwidth, and improve retrieval speed, among other reasons.

This is a simplified explanation of how compression works:

  • Identify Patterns:
    A compression algorithm scans the text to find repeated words, patterns and phrases
  • Shorter Codes Take Up Less Space:
    The codes and symbols use less storage space then the original words and phrases, which results in a smaller file size.
  • Shorter References Use Less Bits:
    The “code” that essentially symbolizes the replaced words and phrases uses less data than the originals.

A bonus effect of using compression is that it can also be used to identify duplicate pages, doorway pages with similar content, and pages with repetitive keywords.

Research Paper About Detecting Spam

This research paper is significant because it was authored by distinguished computer scientists known for breakthroughs in AI, distributed computing, information retrieval, and other fields.

Advertisement

Marc Najork

One of the co-authors of the research paper is Marc Najork, a prominent research scientist who currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. He’s a co-author of the papers for TW-BERT, has contributed research for increasing the accuracy of using implicit user feedback like clicks, and worked on creating improved AI-based information retrieval (DSI++: Updating Transformer Memory with New Documents), among many other major breakthroughs in information retrieval.

Dennis Fetterly

Another of the co-authors is Dennis Fetterly, currently a software engineer at Google. He is listed as a co-inventor in a patent for a ranking algorithm that uses links, and is known for his research in distributed computing and information retrieval.

Those are just two of the distinguished researchers listed as co-authors of the 2006 Microsoft research paper about identifying spam through on-page content features. Among the several on-page content features the research paper analyzes is compressibility, which they discovered can be used as a classifier for indicating that a web page is spammy.

Detecting Spam Web Pages Through Content Analysis

Although the research paper was authored in 2006, its findings remain relevant to today.

Then, as now, people attempted to rank hundreds or thousands of location-based web pages that were essentially duplicate content aside from city, region, or state names. Then, as now, SEOs often created web pages for search engines by excessively repeating keywords within titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal anchor text, and within the content to improve rankings.

Section 4.6 of the research paper explains:

Advertisement

“Some search engines give higher weight to pages containing the query keywords several times. For example, for a given query term, a page that contains it ten times may be higher ranked than a page that contains it only once. To take advantage of such engines, some spam pages replicate their content several times in an attempt to rank higher.”

The research paper explains that search engines compress web pages and use the compressed version to reference the original web page. They note that excessive amounts of redundant words results in a higher level of compressibility. So they set about testing if there’s a correlation between a high level of compressibility and spam.

They write:

“Our approach in this section to locating redundant content within a page is to compress the page; to save space and disk time, search engines often compress web pages after indexing them, but before adding them to a page cache.

…We measure the redundancy of web pages by the compression ratio, the size of the uncompressed page divided by the size of the compressed page. We used GZIP …to compress pages, a fast and effective compression algorithm.”

High Compressibility Correlates To Spam

The results of the research showed that web pages with at least a compression ratio of 4.0 tended to be low quality web pages, spam. However, the highest rates of compressibility became less consistent because there were fewer data points, making it harder to interpret.

Figure 9: Prevalence of spam relative to compressibility of page.

The researchers concluded:

Advertisement

“70% of all sampled pages with a compression ratio of at least 4.0 were judged to be spam.”

But they also discovered that using the compression ratio by itself still resulted in false positives, where non-spam pages were incorrectly identified as spam:

“The compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6 fared best, correctly identifying 660 (27.9%) of the spam pages in our collection, while misidentifying 2, 068 (12.0%) of all judged pages.

Using all of the aforementioned features, the classification accuracy after the ten-fold cross validation process is encouraging:

95.4% of our judged pages were classified correctly, while 4.6% were classified incorrectly.

More specifically, for the spam class 1, 940 out of the 2, 364 pages, were classified correctly. For the non-spam class, 14, 440 out of the 14,804 pages were classified correctly. Consequently, 788 pages were classified incorrectly.”

The next section describes an interesting discovery about how to increase the accuracy of using on-page signals for identifying spam.

Insight Into Quality Rankings

The research paper examined multiple on-page signals, including compressibility. They discovered that each individual signal (classifier) was able to find some spam but that relying on any one signal on its own resulted in flagging non-spam pages for spam, which are commonly referred to as false positive.

Advertisement

The researchers made an important discovery that everyone interested in SEO should know, which is that using multiple classifiers increased the accuracy of detecting spam and decreased the likelihood of false positives. Just as important, the compressibility signal only identifies one kind of spam but not the full range of spam.

The takeaway is that compressibility is a good way to identify one kind of spam but there are other kinds of spam that aren’t caught with this one signal. Other kinds of spam were not caught with the compressibility signal.

This is the part that every SEO and publisher should be aware of:

“In the previous section, we presented a number of heuristics for assaying spam web pages. That is, we measured several characteristics of web pages, and found ranges of those characteristics which correlated with a page being spam. Nevertheless, when used individually, no technique uncovers most of the spam in our data set without flagging many non-spam pages as spam.

For example, considering the compression ratio heuristic described in Section 4.6, one of our most promising methods, the average probability of spam for ratios of 4.2 and higher is 72%. But only about 1.5% of all pages fall in this range. This number is far below the 13.8% of spam pages that we identified in our data set.”

So, even though compressibility was one of the better signals for identifying spam, it still was unable to uncover the full range of spam within the dataset the researchers used to test the signals.

Combining Multiple Signals

The above results indicated that individual signals of low quality are less accurate. So they tested using multiple signals. What they discovered was that combining multiple on-page signals for detecting spam resulted in a better accuracy rate with less pages misclassified as spam.

Advertisement

The researchers explained that they tested the use of multiple signals:

“One way of combining our heuristic methods is to view the spam detection problem as a classification problem. In this case, we want to create a classification model (or classifier) which, given a web page, will use the page’s features jointly in order to (correctly, we hope) classify it in one of two classes: spam and non-spam.”

These are their conclusions about using multiple signals:

“We have studied various aspects of content-based spam on the web using a real-world data set from the MSNSearch crawler. We have presented a number of heuristic methods for detecting content based spam. Some of our spam detection methods are more effective than others, however when used in isolation our methods may not identify all of the spam pages. For this reason, we combined our spam-detection methods to create a highly accurate C4.5 classifier. Our classifier can correctly identify 86.2% of all spam pages, while flagging very few legitimate pages as spam.”

Key Insight:

Misidentifying “very few legitimate pages as spam” was a significant breakthrough. The important insight that everyone involved with SEO should take away from this is that one signal by itself can result in false positives. Using multiple signals increases the accuracy.

What this means is that SEO tests of isolated ranking or quality signals will not yield reliable results that can be trusted for making strategy or business decisions.

Takeaways

We don’t know for certain if compressibility is used at the search engines but it’s an easy to use signal that combined with others could be used to catch simple kinds of spam like thousands of city name doorway pages with similar content. Yet even if the search engines don’t use this signal, it does show how easy it is to catch that kind of search engine manipulation and that it’s something search engines are well able to handle today.

Here are the key points of this article to keep in mind:

Advertisement
  • Doorway pages with duplicate content is easy to catch because they compress at a higher ratio than normal web pages.
  • Groups of web pages with a compression ratio above 4.0 were predominantly spam.
  • Negative quality signals used by themselves to catch spam can lead to false positives.
  • In this particular test, they discovered that on-page negative quality signals only catch specific types of spam.
  • When used alone, the compressibility signal only catches redundancy-type spam, fails to detect other forms of spam, and leads to false positives.
  • Combing quality signals improves spam detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
  • Search engines today have a higher accuracy of spam detection with the use of AI like Spam Brain.

Read the research paper, which is linked from the Google Scholar page of Marc Najork:

Detecting spam web pages through content analysis

Featured Image by Shutterstock/pathdoc

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

SEO

New Google Trends SEO Documentation

Published

on

By

Google publishes new documentation for how to use Google Trends for search marketing

Google Search Central published new documentation on Google Trends, explaining how to use it for search marketing. This guide serves as an easy to understand introduction for newcomers and a helpful refresher for experienced search marketers and publishers.

The new guide has six sections:

  1. About Google Trends
  2. Tutorial on monitoring trends
  3. How to do keyword research with the tool
  4. How to prioritize content with Trends data
  5. How to use Google Trends for competitor research
  6. How to use Google Trends for analyzing brand awareness and sentiment

The section about monitoring trends advises there are two kinds of rising trends, general and specific trends, which can be useful for developing content to publish on a site.

Using the Explore tool, you can leave the search box empty and view the current rising trends worldwide or use a drop down menu to focus on trends in a specific country. Users can further filter rising trends by time periods, categories and the type of search. The results show rising trends by topic and by keywords.

To search for specific trends users just need to enter the specific queries and then filter them by country, time, categories and type of search.

The section called Content Calendar describes how to use Google Trends to understand which content topics to prioritize.

Advertisement

Google explains:

“Google Trends can be helpful not only to get ideas on what to write, but also to prioritize when to publish it. To help you better prioritize which topics to focus on, try to find seasonal trends in the data. With that information, you can plan ahead to have high quality content available on your site a little before people are searching for it, so that when they do, your content is ready for them.”

Read the new Google Trends documentation:

Get started with Google Trends

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending