SEO
5 Tips From An SEO Expert
Wish you knew the secrets to getting your written content seen and ranked faster?
Want to know what’s slowing it all down?
We can help you understand how your content gets noticed and crawled by Google so you can create naturally higher-ranking pages, blogs, and more.
Once you understand how Google sees your content, you can quickly determine how to get it live on the SERPs faster.
Real-time log file insights can become your secret ingredient to better content and SEO.
On May 18, I moderated a webinar by Steven Van Vessum, Director of Organic Marketing at ContentKing/Conductor.
He showed how you can easily use log file insights to improve crawling and indexing, leading to higher-ranked content.
Here is a summary of the webinar.
To access the entire presentation, complete the form.
How To Get Crawled & Ranked Faster
There’s a good chance that you’re facing these issues, as most companies do:
- Considerable delays in crawling and indexing.
- Churning out X number of content pieces a month.
- Inability to explain search engine behavior.
- Lack of leverage on data sources.
[Overcome these issues with our key insights] Instantly access this webinar →
Tip #1: Make Sure Your Content Has Great Discoverability.
Make life easy for search engines by:
- Updating your XML sitemaps.
- Providing relevant internal links.
- Promoting content successfully.
Tip #2: Prevent Roadblocks.
Avoid these roadblocks for search engines that try to crawl your site:
- Canonical tag issues.
- Robots directive issues.
- Robots.txt issues.
Tip #3: Get Relevant & Authoritative Backlinks.
To get content crawled, indexed, and ranked fast, find a way to obtain relevant and authoritative backlinks.
This will jumpstart the success of your content.
[Learn tips for building these backlinks] Instantly access this webinar →
Tip #4: Leverage Log Files.
What are log files?
They are text files containing records of:
- All the requests a server has received from both humans and crawlers.
- Your site’s responses to these requests.
They show crawlers’ actual behavior and are essential in understanding how they crawl your site.
[Find out what other gems are included in log files] Instantly access the webinar →
Companies need easy access to log file insights for content teams to succeed.
When you have those insights, you can start thinking critically and getting answers to questions like:
- Has Google crawled these new pages yet?
- Has Google refreshed the pages you updated?
- Has Google tried crawling pages while they had issues?
- How often do your pages get recrawled, on average?
Level Up Your SEO With Log Files
Log files traditionally are:
- Inefficient and time-consuming.
- Traditionally stored in silos as excel sheets, which makes insights hard to reach.
- Often only examined once a year.
[Discover how often you should be checking log files] Instantly access the webinar →
Fortunately, there are easier ways to get a hold of these log files than the traditional method.
The answer is in CDN Logs.
What Are CDN Logs?
CDN Logs are databases that are stored on services like CloudFlare’s CDN, which are basically networks across the globe that have copies of sites.
A lot of these CDN sites keep logs.
These logs are updated in real-time and are often available through a plug-and-play connector.
Connecting these log insights to your content inventory allows you to see data such as how often your newly published posts are crawled.
So, instead of sifting through excel sheets of data, you can quickly view log files this way.
Valuable Insights You Get With CDN Logs
When you use CDN logs to improve crawling and indexing, you’ll be able to get data that helps you answer these questions:
New Page CDN Log Insights
- How long does it take for search engines to crawl new pages?
- Can you speed up the time to crawl with improved content promotion or internal linking?
- Is there a correlation between crawl frequency and internal links?
- Can you move away from manually parsing raw logs to automatically extracted insights?
Updated Page CDN Log Insights
- Has Google already picked up your improvements?
- How soon does Google refresh pages after making updates?
- Is there increased crawl activity after making changes?
Robots.txt CDN Log Insights
- Has Google recrawled the new robots.txt directives?
XML Sitemaps CDN Log Insights
- Has Google recrawled my XML sitemap after it was updated?
Tip #5: Leverage Google Search Console.
Once you see the real-time log file insights and notice that the search engines haven’t crawled your newly published pages yet, it’s helpful to check Google Search Console.
This gives Google a nudge.
Make content discovery easy with CDN logs.
If you’re using one of them, you’ll be able to get access to these CDN log files and start up-leveling your SEO game.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
SEO
Google Declares It The “Gemini Era” As Revenue Grows 15%
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced its first quarter 2024 financial results today.
While Google reported double-digit growth in key revenue areas, the focus was on its AI developments, dubbed the “Gemini era” by CEO Sundar Pichai.
The Numbers: 15% Revenue Growth, Operating Margins Expand
Alphabet reported Q1 revenues of $80.5 billion, a 15% increase year-over-year, exceeding Wall Street’s projections.
Net income was $23.7 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.89. Operating margins expanded to 32%, up from 25% in the prior year.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s President and CFO, stated:
“Our strong financial results reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base.”
Google’s core advertising units, such as Search and YouTube, drove growth. Google advertising revenues hit $61.7 billion for the quarter.
The Cloud division also maintained momentum, with revenues of $9.6 billion, up 28% year-over-year.
Pichai highlighted that YouTube and Cloud are expected to exit 2024 at a combined $100 billion annual revenue run rate.
Generative AI Integration in Search
Google experimented with AI-powered features in Search Labs before recently introducing AI overviews into the main search results page.
Regarding the gradual rollout, Pichai states:
“We are being measured in how we do this, focusing on areas where gen AI can improve the Search experience, while also prioritizing traffic to websites and merchants.”
Pichai reports that Google’s generative AI features have answered over a billion queries already:
“We’ve already served billions of queries with our generative AI features. It’s enabling people to access new information, to ask questions in new ways, and to ask more complex questions.”
Google reports increased Search usage and user satisfaction among those interacting with the new AI overview results.
The company also highlighted its “Circle to Search” feature on Android, which allows users to circle objects on their screen or in videos to get instant AI-powered answers via Google Lens.
Reorganizing For The “Gemini Era”
As part of the AI roadmap, Alphabet is consolidating all teams building AI models under the Google DeepMind umbrella.
Pichai revealed that, through hardware and software improvements, the company has reduced machine costs associated with its generative AI search results by 80% over the past year.
He states:
“Our data centers are some of the most high-performing, secure, reliable and efficient in the world. We’ve developed new AI models and algorithms that are more than one hundred times more efficient than they were 18 months ago.
How Will Google Make Money With AI?
Alphabet sees opportunities to monetize AI through its advertising products, Cloud offerings, and subscription services.
Google is integrating Gemini into ad products like Performance Max. The company’s Cloud division is bringing “the best of Google AI” to enterprise customers worldwide.
Google One, the company’s subscription service, surpassed 100 million paid subscribers in Q1 and introduced a new premium plan featuring advanced generative AI capabilities powered by Gemini models.
Future Outlook
Pichai outlined six key advantages positioning Alphabet to lead the “next wave of AI innovation”:
- Research leadership in AI breakthroughs like the multimodal Gemini model
- Robust AI infrastructure and custom TPU chips
- Integrating generative AI into Search to enhance the user experience
- A global product footprint reaching billions
- Streamlined teams and improved execution velocity
- Multiple revenue streams to monetize AI through advertising and cloud
With upcoming events like Google I/O and Google Marketing Live, the company is expected to share further updates on its AI initiatives and product roadmap.
Featured Image: Sergei Elagin/Shutterstock
SEO
brightonSEO Live Blog
Hello everyone. It’s April again, so I’m back in Brighton for another two days of Being the introvert I am, my idea of fun isn’t hanging around our booth all day explaining we’ve run out of t-shirts (seriously, you need to be fast if you want swag!). So I decided to do something useful and live-blog the event instead.
Follow below for talk takeaways and (very) mildly humorous commentary. sun, sea, and SEO!
SEO
Google Further Postpones Third-Party Cookie Deprecation In Chrome
Google has again delayed its plan to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome web browser. The latest postponement comes after ongoing challenges in reconciling feedback from industry stakeholders and regulators.
The announcement was made in Google and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) joint quarterly report on the Privacy Sandbox initiative, scheduled for release on April 26.
Chrome’s Third-Party Cookie Phaseout Pushed To 2025
Google states it “will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4” this year as planned.
Instead, the tech giant aims to begin deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome “starting early next year,” assuming an agreement can be reached with the CMA and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The statement reads:
“We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence, including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June.”
Continued Engagement With Regulators
Google reiterated its commitment to “engaging closely with the CMA and ICO” throughout the process and hopes to conclude discussions this year.
This marks the third delay to Google’s plan to deprecate third-party cookies, initially aiming for a Q3 2023 phaseout before pushing it back to late 2024.
The postponements reflect the challenges in transitioning away from cross-site user tracking while balancing privacy and advertiser interests.
Transition Period & Impact
In January, Chrome began restricting third-party cookie access for 1% of users globally. This percentage was expected to gradually increase until 100% of users were covered by Q3 2024.
However, the latest delay gives websites and services more time to migrate away from third-party cookie dependencies through Google’s limited “deprecation trials” program.
The trials offer temporary cookie access extensions until December 27, 2024, for non-advertising use cases that can demonstrate direct user impact and functional breakage.
While easing the transition, the trials have strict eligibility rules. Advertising-related services are ineligible, and origins matching known ad-related domains are rejected.
Google states the program aims to address functional issues rather than relieve general data collection inconveniences.
Publisher & Advertiser Implications
The repeated delays highlight the potential disruption for digital publishers and advertisers relying on third-party cookie tracking.
Industry groups have raised concerns that restricting cross-site tracking could push websites toward more opaque privacy-invasive practices.
However, privacy advocates view the phaseout as crucial in preventing covert user profiling across the web.
With the latest postponement, all parties have more time to prepare for the eventual loss of third-party cookies and adopt Google’s proposed Privacy Sandbox APIs as replacements.
Featured Image: Novikov Aleksey/Shutterstock
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