SEO
How To Stay Up-to-Date In The SEO Industry
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tricky field. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, Google goes and changes the algorithm and what used to work doesn’t work so well anymore. or there’s a new element to add to your SEO bag.
Though you may want to write this off as a “cost of doing business” in SEO, these constant changes are actually for a good reason: Google is always trying to develop a better understanding of how people use the internet.
Changes to search algorithms are made with the goal of providing better, more relevant information to users.
And while this is great for users, it also means SEO professionals must constantly stay up-to-date on the latest changes and best practices. And that can be a major time commitment by itself.
But never fear, we’re here to help.
Tips For Staying On Top Of SEO Trends
Whether you’re an experienced SEO professional or are just getting started in your career, here are some ways you can stay in the know about what’s happening in the industry.
Subscribe To Leading SEO Blogs And Email Newsletters
It’s no secret that Google is the top dog in the search engine field.
As of February 2022, it accounts for a whopping 92% of search engine market share – which is what you would probably expect for a company whose name has become a verb meaning “to look up.”
And because Google is such a giant in the field, any SEO pro worth his or her salt should make sure to check the Google Search Central Blog on a regular basis.
Run by the search engine giant itself; it’s where you can find official updates to the Google Search Core algorithm, announcements about new search features, and articles on SEO best practices.
While Google’s blog is the gospel search engine optimization is performed by, there are several other valuable resources on the internet written by digital marketing experts.
We’d be remiss, of course, if we didn’t list ourselves first. Search Engine Journal exists for the sole purpose of keeping busy SEO people in the loop.
And while we humbly consider ourselves a top resource, other blogs and email newsletters you should be reading include Kevin Indig’s, Moz, SEO Fomo and Yoast.
For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of 38 other resources you may find helpful.
Join Communities And Forums
SEO is a community and professionals love to share their knowledge. It was my participation in two or three communities that led to the launch of SEJ almost 19 years ago.
Gathering as much knowledge as you can ensures your strategies are effective and gives you the page rankings you want.
One of the best ways to do this is to read and participate in forums on the topic.
One of the most popular communities for SEO (and just about everything else) is on Reddit. Users can create posts, ask questions and share articles.
Content on this social platform is “upvoted” or “downvoted,” depending on the community’s opinion of it. This encourages quality posts to rise to the top, while poor-quality ones quickly disappear.
The SEO subreddit can be used for everything from job searching to troubleshooting, serving as a strategic sounding board to tracking new developments in the field.
For people with specific questions, Quora is an excellent resource.
Designed as a place to share knowledge, it allows users to ask questions, which are in turn answered by the community.
Update Your News Feed And Follow Thought Leaders On Social Media
Love it or hate it, there’s no question social media has changed the world.
And while the downside is it allows your, um, quirky uncle to share his thoughts on the connection between sasquatch, aliens, and the JFK assassination, it also allows you to connect with people like never before.
And if you’re not using this professionally, you’re missing a huge opportunity.
Twitter, LinkedIn, and yes, even Facebook, give you unparalleled access to professionals who have built their careers by sharing their experience.
With a few clicks, you can start receiving the SEO thoughts of people like Danny Sullivan and John Mueller. In addition to Danny & John, here are 202 SEO Experts who we feel that you should be following on Twitter and other social channels.
By updating your newsfeed to include these people, you’ll not only benefit from the immense level of knowledge they share, but you’ll ensure you stay in the know about any developments within the SEO world.
For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of top SEO experts you should be following here.
Listen To Podcasts
Do you have a lot of other commitments, and don’t always have hours to dedicate to perusing the internet to stay on top of the latest best practices?
Once again, modern technology to the rescue.
Podcasts are a great way to get trustworthy tips directly from notable industry experts.
And you can consume them anywhere from the train during your morning commute to the treadmill during your workout.
Not sure what podcasts you should be listening to? Don’t worry, we’ve put together a handy list of 17 of the best SEO podcasts in the business.
And no list would ever be complete without mentioning our very own Search Engine Journal Show, where we talk all things SEO, PPC, social media, content marketing, and digital marketing with the top industry experts and authorities.
Watch YouTube Videos And SEO Webinars
Are you old enough to remember what life was like before the internet?
If so, you probably remember the frustration that came with figuring things out on your own, rather than pulling up your phone and watching a quick tutorial video.
Luckily the bad old days are behind us, and we now have access to an unprecedented amount of information, including helpful videos on platforms like YouTube and webinars hosted by experts.
Many leaders in the field of SEO have YouTube channels where they regularly upload content.
These usually short videos are an excellent way to pick up quick tips and find solutions to problems you’re facing.
Channels worth following include The SEO Video Show, Ahrefs, Matt Diggity (more of a casual, Mr. Beast feel) and, of course, Search Engine Journal.
If you have a little more time to dedicate to your SEO education, webinars are a great way to expand your knowledge.
For top-quality SEO learning, there are three main contributors: Semrush, BrightEdge and, you guessed it, Search Engine Journal.
Usually available on-demand if you miss the live presentation, these are an effective way to stay up to date with what’s happening in the field.
Attend Conferences And Build Your Network
The most valuable resource for any organization is its people. That’s why there’s an entire division called “human resources.”
But, you don’t have to work in the same office, organization, or even country to benefit from the knowledge of other SEO professionals.
To ensure your continued success in the field of search engine optimization, it’s important to expand your network.
By getting acquainted with other people in the industry, you can mimic their successful strategies, learn from their failures, and stay on top of what’s trending – and one of the best places to do this is at SEO conferences.
In a pre-pandemic world, there was no better way to put your finger on the pulse of the world of search engine rankings and connect with industry leaders than on the floor of a summit or at the evening cocktail hour. And it was a great way to make new friends too.
Though Covid-19 put a temporary limit on in-person gatherings, they’re starting to pick up again, which means attendees are once again able to expand their networks and gain a deeper understanding of how top SEO professionals are getting results.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve read this far, hopefully, we’ve impressed upon you the importance of staying up to date on the constantly shifting world of search engine optimization and given you some resources you can use to do so.
But even if you’re someone who loves your job, you undoubtedly have other commitments in your life.
And staying abreast of the latest best practices can feel like a full-time job in itself.
You simply don’t have time to spend all day, every day tracking the latest trends and best practices. And even if you could, that wouldn’t give you the bandwidth to implement these new strategies.
But that’s why we created this piece: to show you the many ways you can learn and follow what’s happening in SEO.
Maybe it’s part of your morning routine, where after checking your email, you spend some time reading the latest articles.
Maybe you routinely listen to our podcast while stuck in traffic. Or maybe you prefer lunch-and-learns, where you watch webinars while you’re taking your lunch break.
There’s a wealth of SEO information out there from a lot of experts who can help you take your rankings to the next level.
It’s up to you how you’ll use their information, tips, and tricks to make the most out of them.
Featured Image: GaudiLab/Shutterstock
SEO
Google On Hyphens In Domain Names
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about why people don’t use hyphens with domains and if there was something to be concerned about that they were missing.
Domain Names With Hyphens For SEO
I’ve been working online for 25 years and I remember when using hyphens in domains was something that affiliates did for SEO when Google was still influenced by keywords in the domain, URL, and basically keywords anywhere on the webpage. It wasn’t something that everyone did, it was mainly something that was popular with some affiliate marketers.
Another reason for choosing domain names with keywords in them was that site visitors tended to convert at a higher rate because the keywords essentially prequalified the site visitor. I know from experience how useful two-keyword domains (and one word domain names) are for conversions, as long as they didn’t have hyphens in them.
A consideration that caused hyphenated domain names to fall out of favor is that they have an untrustworthy appearance and that can work against conversion rates because trustworthiness is an important factor for conversions.
Lastly, hyphenated domain names look tacky. Why go with tacky when a brandable domain is easier for building trust and conversions?
Domain Name Question Asked On Reddit
This is the question asked on Reddit:
“Why don’t people use a lot of domains with hyphens? Is there something concerning about it? I understand when you tell it out loud people make miss hyphen in search.”
And this is Mueller’s response:
“It used to be that domain names with a lot of hyphens were considered (by users? or by SEOs assuming users would? it’s been a while) to be less serious – since they could imply that you weren’t able to get the domain name with fewer hyphens. Nowadays there are a lot of top-level-domains so it’s less of a thing.
My main recommendation is to pick something for the long run (assuming that’s what you’re aiming for), and not to be overly keyword focused (because life is too short to box yourself into a corner – make good things, course-correct over time, don’t let a domain-name limit what you do online). The web is full of awkward, keyword-focused short-lived low-effort takes made for SEO — make something truly awesome that people will ask for by name. If that takes a hyphen in the name – go for it.”
Pick A Domain Name That Can Grow
Mueller is right about picking a domain name that won’t lock your site into one topic. When a site grows in popularity the natural growth path is to expand the range of topics the site coves. But that’s hard to do when the domain is locked into one rigid keyword phrase. That’s one of the downsides of picking a “Best + keyword + reviews” domain, too. Those domains can’t grow bigger and look tacky, too.
That’s why I’ve always recommended brandable domains that are memorable and encourage trust in some way.
Read the post on Reddit:
Read Mueller’s response here.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Benny Marty
SEO
Reddit Post Ranks On Google In 5 Minutes
Google’s Danny Sullivan disputed the assertions made in a Reddit discussion that Google is showing a preference for Reddit in the search results. But a Redditor’s example proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten of the search results within minutes and to actually improve rankings to position #2 a week later.
Discussion About Google Showing Preference To Reddit
A Redditor (gronetwork) complained that Google is sending so many visitors to Reddit that the server is struggling with the load and shared an example that proved that it can only take minutes for a Reddit post to rank in the top ten.
That post was part of a 79 post Reddit thread where many in the r/SEO subreddit were complaining about Google allegedly giving too much preference to Reddit over legit sites.
The person who did the test (gronetwork) wrote:
“…The website is already cracking (server down, double posts, comments not showing) because there are too many visitors.
…It only takes few minutes (you can test it) for a post on Reddit to appear in the top ten results of Google with keywords related to the post’s title… (while I have to wait months for an article on my site to be referenced). Do the math, the whole world is going to spam here. The loop is completed.”
Reddit Post Ranked Within Minutes
Another Redditor asked if they had tested if it takes “a few minutes” to rank in the top ten and gronetwork answered that they had tested it with a post titled, Google SGE Review.
gronetwork posted:
“Yes, I have created for example a post named “Google SGE Review” previously. After less than 5 minutes it was ranked 8th for Google SGE Review (no quotes). Just after Washingtonpost.com, 6 authoritative SEO websites and Google.com’s overview page for SGE (Search Generative Experience). It is ranked third for SGE Review.”
It’s true, not only does that specific post (Google SGE Review) rank in the top 10, the post started out in position 8 and it actually improved ranking, currently listed beneath the number one result for the search query “SGE Review”.
Screenshot Of Reddit Post That Ranked Within Minutes
Anecdotes Versus Anecdotes
Okay, the above is just one anecdote. But it’s a heck of an anecdote because it proves that it’s possible for a Reddit post to rank within minutes and get stuck in the top of the search results over other possibly more authoritative websites.
hankschrader79 shared that Reddit posts outrank Toyota Tacoma forums for a phrase related to mods for that truck.
Google’s Danny Sullivan responded to that post and the entire discussion to dispute that Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums.
Danny wrote:
“Reddit is not always prioritized over other forums. [super vhs to mac adapter] I did this week, it goes Apple Support Community, MacRumors Forum and further down, there’s Reddit. I also did [kumo cloud not working setup 5ghz] recently (it’s a nightmare) and it was the Netgear community, the SmartThings Community, GreenBuildingAdvisor before Reddit. Related to that was [disable 5g airport] which has Apple Support Community above Reddit. [how to open an 8 track tape] — really, it was the YouTube videos that helped me most, but it’s the Tapeheads community that comes before Reddit.
In your example for [toyota tacoma], I don’t even get Reddit in the top results. I get Toyota, Car & Driver, Wikipedia, Toyota again, three YouTube videos from different creators (not Toyota), Edmunds, a Top Stories unit. No Reddit, which doesn’t really support the notion of always wanting to drive traffic just to Reddit.
If I guess at the more specific query you might have done, maybe [overland mods for toyota tacoma], I get a YouTube video first, then Reddit, then Tacoma World at third — not near the bottom. So yes, Reddit is higher for that query — but it’s not first. It’s also not always first. And sometimes, it’s not even showing at all.”
hankschrader79 conceded that they were generalizing when they wrote that Google always prioritized Reddit. But they also insisted that that didn’t diminish what they said is a fact that Google’s “prioritization” forum content has benefitted Reddit more than actual forums.
Why Is The Reddit Post Ranked So High?
It’s possible that Google “tested” that Reddit post in position 8 within minutes and that user interaction signals indicated to Google’s algorithms that users prefer to see that Reddit post. If that’s the case then it’s not a matter of Google showing preference to Reddit post but rather it’s users that are showing the preference and the algorithm is responding to those preferences.
Nevertheless, an argument can be made that user preferences for Reddit can be a manifestation of Familiarity Bias. Familiarity Bias is when people show a preference for things that are familiar to them. If a person is familiar with a brand because of all the advertising they were exposed to then they may show a bias for the brand products over unfamiliar brands.
Users who are familiar with Reddit may choose Reddit because they don’t know the other sites in the search results or because they have a bias that Google ranks spammy and optimized websites and feel safer reading Reddit.
Google may be picking up on those user interaction signals that indicate a preference and satisfaction with the Reddit results but those results may simply be biases and not an indication that Reddit is trustworthy and authoritative.
Is Reddit Benefiting From A Self-Reinforcing Feedback Loop?
It may very well be that Google’s decision to prioritize user generated content may have started a self-reinforcing pattern that draws users in to Reddit through the search results and because the answers seem plausible those users start to prefer Reddit results. When they’re exposed to more Reddit posts their familiarity bias kicks in and they start to show a preference for Reddit. So what could be happening is that the users and Google’s algorithm are creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
Is it possible that Google’s decision to show more user generated content has kicked off a cycle where more users are exposed to Reddit which then feeds back into Google’s algorithm which in turn increases Reddit visibility, regardless of lack of expertise and authoritativeness?
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kues
SEO
WordPress Releases A Performance Plugin For “Near-Instant Load Times”
WordPress released an official plugin that adds support for a cutting edge technology called speculative loading that can help boost site performance and improve the user experience for site visitors.
Speculative Loading
Rendering means constructing the entire webpage so that it instantly displays (rendering). When your browser downloads the HTML, images, and other resources and puts it together into a webpage, that’s rendering. Prerendering is putting that webpage together (rendering it) in the background.
What this plugin does is to enable the browser to prerender the entire webpage that a user might navigate to next. The plugin does that by anticipating which webpage the user might navigate to based on where they are hovering.
Chrome lists a preference for only prerendering when there is an at least 80% probability of a user navigating to another webpage. The official Chrome support page for prerendering explains:
“Pages should only be prerendered when there is a high probability the page will be loaded by the user. This is why the Chrome address bar prerendering options only happen when there is such a high probability (greater than 80% of the time).
There is also a caveat in that same developer page that prerendering may not happen based on user settings, memory usage and other scenarios (more details below about how analytics handles prerendering).
The Speculative Loading API solves a problem that previous solutions could not because in the past they were simply prefetching resources like JavaScript and CSS but not actually prerendering the entire webpage.
The official WordPress announcement explains it like this:
Introducing the Speculation Rules API
The Speculation Rules API is a new web API that solves the above problems. It allows defining rules to dynamically prefetch and/or prerender URLs of certain structure based on user interaction, in JSON syntax—or in other words, speculatively preload those URLs before the navigation. This API can be used, for example, to prerender any links on a page whenever the user hovers over them.”
The official WordPress page about this new functionality describes it:
“The Speculation Rules API is a new web API… It allows defining rules to dynamically prefetch and/or prerender URLs of certain structure based on user interaction, in JSON syntax—or in other words, speculatively preload those URLs before the navigation.
This API can be used, for example, to prerender any links on a page whenever the user hovers over them. Also, with the Speculation Rules API, “prerender” actually means to prerender the entire page, including running JavaScript. This can lead to near-instant load times once the user clicks on the link as the page would have most likely already been loaded in its entirety. However that is only one of the possible configurations.”
The new WordPress plugin adds support for the Speculation Rules API. The Mozilla developer pages, a great resource for HTML technical understanding describes it like this:
“The Speculation Rules API is designed to improve performance for future navigations. It targets document URLs rather than specific resource files, and so makes sense for multi-page applications (MPAs) rather than single-page applications (SPAs).
The Speculation Rules API provides an alternative to the widely-available <link rel=”prefetch”> feature and is designed to supersede the Chrome-only deprecated <link rel=”prerender”> feature. It provides many improvements over these technologies, along with a more expressive, configurable syntax for specifying which documents should be prefetched or prerendered.”
See also: Are Websites Getting Faster? New Data Reveals Mixed Results
Performance Lab Plugin
The new plugin was developed by the official WordPress performance team which occasionally rolls out new plugins for users to test ahead of possible inclusion into the actual WordPress core. So it’s a good opportunity to be first to try out new performance technologies.
The new WordPress plugin is by default set to prerender “WordPress frontend URLs” which are pages, posts, and archive pages. How it works can be fine-tuned under the settings:
Settings > Reading > Speculative Loading
Browser Compatibility
The Speculative API is supported by Chrome 108 however the specific rules used by the new plugin require Chrome 121 or higher. Chrome 121 was released in early 2024.
Browsers that do not support will simply ignore the plugin and will have no effect on the user experience.
Check out the new Speculative Loading WordPress plugin developed by the official core WordPress performance team.
How Analytics Handles Prerendering
A WordPress developer commented with a question asking how Analytics would handle prerendering and someone else answered that it’s up to the Analytics provider to detect a prerender and not count it as a page load or site visit.
Fortunately both Google Analytics and Google Publisher Tags (GPT) both are able to handle prerenders. The Chrome developers support page has a note about how analytics handles prerendering:
“Google Analytics handles prerender by delaying until activation by default as of September 2023, and Google Publisher Tag (GPT) made a similar change to delay triggering advertisements until activation as of November 2023.”
Possible Conflict With Ad Blocker Extensions
There are a couple things to be aware of about this plugin, aside from the fact that it’s an experimental feature that requires Chrome 121 or higher.
A comment by a WordPress plugin developer that this feature may not work with browsers that are using the uBlock Origin ad blocking browser extension.
Download the plugin:
Speculative Loading Plugin by the WordPress Performance Team
Read the announcement at WordPress
Speculative Loading in WordPress
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