SEO

Four Takeaways from Google’s Updated Link Guidance

Published

1 year ago

February 17, 2023

Four Takeaways from Google's Updated Link Guidance

Google newly expanded guidance on best practices for links has surprising parallels with what we know about algorithms and the proper use of HTML.

Here are four takeaways found in Google’s updated SEO Link Best Practices.

1. Title Attribute Can Work Like an Anchor Text

Google can use the Title attribute if the anchor text is missing.

The title attribute applied to a link element can be used in place of an anchor text if the anchor text is missing.

For example, Google would use the title attribute in the following link as an anchor text:

Here’s a normal link with an anchor text:

<a href="https://www.example.com/">Example Anchor Text</a>

This is a link that’s missing an anchor text but has a title attribute:

<a href="https://www.example.com/" title="Example Anchor Text></a>

In the above example, the title element will be used by Google as if it’s an anchor text.

Proper Use of Title Attribute on a Link Element

Officially, the purpose of a title attribute when applied to a link element is to provide similar type of information that is in the anchor text of a link.

The HTML standards making body for HTML, the W3C, specifies the purpose of the title attribute applied to an anchor <a> element:

“For each anchor element that has a title attribute, check that the title attribute together with the link text describes the purpose of the link.”

Fun Fact:

The title attribute is not specific to the <a> element.

The title attribute is actually a Global Attribute, which means that it’s common to all elements.

That means one can place a title element on a paragraph <p>, italic <i>, and even on a heading <H1> element.

Using a title attribute on an element will cause a tooltip to pop up.

So if you add a title attribute to a heading element <h1>, <h2>,etc., a tooltip containing the words in the title attribute will pop up from the words in the heading element when a reader hovers of the heading.

2. Why Extra Long Anchor Text is Bad

Google’s new guidance on links states that long anchor text is considered a bad practice and recommends being concise (to the point).

That shouldn’t be surprising because the official purpose of the anchor text, according to the W3c, is to describe what the link is about.

“The objective of this technique is to describe the purpose of a link by providing descriptive text as the content of the a element.
The description lets a user distinguish this link from other links in the Web page and helps the user determine whether to follow the link.
The URI of the destination is generally not sufficiently descriptive.”

This highlights the importance of knowing the valid and proper use of HTML.

If it’s valid HTML, if the various elements and attributes are used as they are supposed to be used, then it’s likely that Google will respond positively to it.

This shows how important it is to know the correct use of HTML.

When in doubt, check the W3C or the Mozilla HTML Developer pages, which in my opinion is easier to use.

I prefer the Mozilla Developer pages because it’s better organized than the official W3C resource.

3. Context and Natural Language Important for Link Anchor Text

Using natural language is, in my opinion, important for making sure that content is properly search optimized.

Every AI and machine learning algorithm coming out of Google today is focused on understanding natural language.

Google’s algorithms don’t hand out “points” based on what keywords are in the content.

So if Google’s algorithms are interpreting text a certain way (looking at entities, verbs, context, etc.), then it makes sense to write clear and easy to understand content.

According to Google’s new guidance on links. Thinking about context and using natural language is a best practice for link anchor text.

The new guidance recommends:

“Write as naturally as possible, and resist the urge to cram every keyword that’s related to the page that you’re linking to (remember, keyword stuffing is a violation of our spam policies).
Ask yourself, does the reader need these keywords to understand the next page?
If it feels like you’re forcing keywords into the anchor text, then it’s probably too much.”

In the old days it used to be useful to cram keywords into the anchor text.

Because Google is using technologies like BERT to understand what sentences and phrases mean, then it makes sense to write natural anchor text that Google can understand.

Google uses more than BERT to understand search queries and webpages, I’m just using BERT as an example of why well-written natural language is important.

The official 2019 consumer-facing announcement of BERT stated how important context is for understanding natural language:

“Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like “for” and “to” matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query.
You can search in a way that feels natural for you.”

The official 2018 science-facing announcement of BERT talks about how “context” is important for understanding the meaning of content.

This is what it says:

“…Pre-trained representations can either be context-free or contextual, and contextual representations can further be unidirectional or bidirectional.
Context-free models such as word2vec or GloVe generate a single word embedding representation for each word in the vocabulary.
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For example, the word ‘bank’ would have the same context-free representation in ‘bank account’ and ‘bank of the river.’
Contextual models instead generate a representation of each word that is based on the other words in the sentence.
For example, in the sentence ‘I accessed the bank account,’ a unidirectional contextual model would represent ‘bank’ based on ‘I accessed the’ but not ‘account.’
However, BERT represents ‘bank’ using both its previous and next context — ‘I accessed the … account’ — starting from the very bottom of a deep neural network, making it deeply bidirectional.”

Clearly, context and natural language is important to Google’s algorithm. With what I just wrote about just one of Google’s algorithms, BERT, Google’s advice about how to write anchor text acquires an additional layer of meaning:

“Write as naturally as possible…”

4. Don’t Chain Links

Chaining links means when you add links close together so that each linked word does not adequately communicate what the linked page is about.

Additionally, the text that surrounds and provides context for a link is lost when you chain links.

Google’s new guidance explains:

“Don’t chain up links next to each other; it’s harder for your readers to distinguish between links, and you lose surrounding text for each link.”

This advice goes back to understanding what the proper use of HTML elements and titles in order to write valid HTML that Google understands.

Again, I highly recommend reading the Mozilla developer pages about HTML.

Search Optimized Links

There are a lot of interesting insights contained in Google’s newly expanded guidance on best practices for links.

It’s absolutely worth taking the time to read.

Read Google’s expanded guidance:

Link best practices for Google

Featured image by Shutterstock/Asier Romero

Related Topics:Googles Guidance Link seo Takeaways Updated

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SEO

Google Declares It The “Gemini Era” As Revenue Grows 15%

Published

17 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Max

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

Published

1 day ago

April 25, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Hello everyone. It’s April again, so I’m back in Brighton for another two days of ~~sun~~, sea, and SEO!

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.

SEO

Google Further Postpones Third-Party Cookie Deprecation In Chrome

Published

2 days ago

April 25, 2024

Max

Close-up of a document with a grid and a red stamp that reads "delayed" over the word "status" due to Chrome's deprecation of third-party cookies.

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