Today we are going to learn “how you/we can provide the access to Google webmaster OR add user to Google webmaster”. Firstly,  we will learn what is Google webmaster tool ?

Google Offered as a free service to anyone who owns a website, Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) “is also known as Google search console” is a conduit of information from the largest search engine in the world to you, offering insights into how it sees your website and helping you uncover issues that need fixing.

How Google webmaster tool works?

Google webmaster tool can help to monitor your website performance.
• It verifies that Google can actually access the content on your website. i;e Google will index the content of your website over search engines.
• GWT makes it possible to submit new pages and posts for Google to crawl and remove content you don’t want search engine users to discover. This tool is very helpful when you’re looking not to index content or pages .
• It helps you deliver and evaluate content that offers users a more visual experience.
• You can maintain your website without disrupting its presence in search results.
• It allows you to discover and eliminate malware or spam problems that may not be easily found through other means.

Are you stuck now! How to set up GWT (Google webmaster tool)- Google search console for website- Please check this link for more information:

Below is the reference steps to share Access to Your Google Webmaster Tools Account

Step1: Sign into Google Webmaster tools at Google.com/webmasters.

Step2:  Once signed in you’ll see your sites on left top search property bar, or a list of websites that have been verified using Google Webmaster Tools:

Step3: Go to Setting and choose Users and permissions to add new user

A list of Users and Site Owners will appear. There are two types of users that you can add to your Google Webmaster Tools account: Restricted and Full.

Site owners always have complete control over all settings in Webmaster Tools. A Full user can change most settings and take most site actions like submitting a new URL to Google’s search index. Restricted users in Google Webmaster Tools are generally restricted to view only permissions.

Step 4: Click Add a New User

Once you click the “Add User” link, a popup will appear where you will add the users email who you want to give access to.
Once added, their email address will show in the list of users who have access to that website’s Google Search Console Account.
It’s that easy to give someone access to your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data without giving them your password.

The post How to Give Access to Google Search Console appeared first on sansoft.

Most online businesses are practicing SEO. Small businesses and local businesses mainly rely on local SEO to build an online presence and increase exposure to more potential customers.

In this blog post today, you will learn how to utilize proven local marketing strategies to give your business a kick start on dominating local search in 2019.

The ways of how we search using search engines and the content delivered to us are always changing.

But one thing for sure is that search engines are clearly on a mission to provide users with the most relevant results for their query, personalized based on their location, search history, and browsing behavior.

This means that localized search results are not more important than ever, and if your business appears at the top of Google for keywords that are related to your business and its location, you will generate more leads and sales from your website.

So how do you optimize your site to conquer the local search results?

Local competition is heating up, and if you are not on top of your rankings yet, you had better take note of these eight practical local SEO tactics you can use to help your business rank higher, or your competitors will do so.

1) The Basics: Title And Meta Description

The title and meta descriptions tags are the HTML elements for you to describe your content appear in the SERPs.

Think of this as a preview of your content. Last year, Google increased the width of the main search results page to 600px. This means that there is now more spaces for you to write longer title and meta descriptions.

So take advantage of this update and use it wisely to increase your business exposure. Make sure that you do not go too long or your titles and meta descriptions will be truncated in the SERPs. The best way to avoid your title and meta descriptions being cut off in the SERPs is to put your keywords at the beginning of the sentence rather than the end.
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If you are not sure how your title and meta description tags will look or how many characters you can get away with, try using an emulator like the one from SEOPressor for WordPress.

In a sea of competing for search results, if your meta descriptions are not unique and descriptive, then you will have a low click-through rate (CTR). Always, always make your title and meta description impactful. Every character counts.

Especially now that you are optimizing for nearby searches, don’t forget to include the name of the city your business in. For example, SEO agency in New York City. When your business shows up in the search results, you will have more chances to get people to click to your website.

2) Online Directories Improve Local Search Engine Optimization

Google conducted a study and found that four out of five consumers use search engines to conduct local searches.

The issue is that many small businesses have not claimed their local business listing online. Imagine how many opportunities you have missed!

It is essential for local businesses to get their business listed correctly and consistently on top online business directories like Yelp. The major thing to not forget is getting your business’ name, address, and phone number (NAP) on the primary citation data aggregators like Infogroup and Factual.

Make sure that your company’s NAP is consistent in every directory.

Before publishing, don’t forget to check the spelling once again because misspellings, abbreviations or wrong phone number can create havoc when Google cannot determine which information is correct. When search engines are unsure, they may end up displaying incorrect information or not showing your business in SERPs at all.

3) Claim Your “Google My Business.”

It is super important for every local business to claim their Google My Businessand Bing Places for Business page. Don’t worry, these platforms are free, and you can get incredible exposure if you have optimized your business to show up in Google’s local listings.

However, if your business is already on Google My Business page, you can always claim your business. There will be a verification process that you will need to go through where Google will send a postcard with a PIN to your physical business location. After that, you just log in and key in the PIN to verify your business.

I know, you probably feel that it is troublesome to go through all these just to claim the business that is yours. However, think positively – the verification process is for Google to confirm that your business is legitimate and that you are the business owner. If they did not have this procedure, anyone could just claim it as their business and pretend to be the business owner.

Make sure that every relevant section of your listing is complete. Imagine being a customer seeing this incomplete information, would you trust this business? If you run into issues, contact Google My Business Listing Support.

4) Optimize “Google My Business” For local SEO Marketing

Once you have claimed your “Google My Business,” here comes the optimization part.

A study by Gybo showed that users are very much influenced by businesses with a complete listing before intending to visit a store or purchase from it.

When optimizing your Google My Business listing, pick the exact match of your business category. Many businesses think that choosing multiple category listings is better, but the truth is – it is not.

Google prefers businesses that categorize their listing under the most relevant category. For example, if you are an Italian restaurant, you should pick the category “Italian restaurant” instead of just “restaurant.” When optimizing Google My Business, don’t forget to:

• Write a solid description of your business.
• List your business in the right category.
• Update your business operating hours.
• Types of payments accepted.
• Upload the logo or the photo of your business for people to recognize it.
• Add at least ten quality photos of your products or services.
• Check the most popular times of the day and consider Google Adwords to drive visitors.
• Use the new Google Posts feature to stand out.

5) Get More Reviews From Your Customers

Reviews from customers are an essential element. Based on a survey done by Search Engine Journal, 88% of people trust online reviews.

80%+ of people are active on social media platforms, so it’s not difficult to get more reviews at all.

There are many social media management tools out there like Hootsuite that allows you to monitor your social media accounts all in one dashboard. So whenever you get a review from customers, you can respond to it right away.

It does not matter if it is a positive or negative review, be sure to respond to it because it shows your customers that you care about their feedback.

Based on experience, two places are necessary to focus the most are your Facebook page and Google My Business page.

These are the places where people search the most, especially when they are looking for your address. So you would want to pay more attention to this.

Even Google itself also said that positive reviews from customers would improve your business visibility. Shouldn’t we take this as a hint that reviews might be one of the factors in local ranking?

If you would like to get your gold stars review seen in the search results, go to the Google Developers Structured Data page to enable Rich Snippets for Reviews and Ratings.

6) Use Local Structured Data Markup

Many business owners do not realize this – schema markup or structured data markup is significant and it should be added to your website’s code for search engines to get more information about your business.

How do you add this to your website? It can be added to your existing HTML microdata, the same goes for other tags used on your other web pages.

If you set this up correctly, you will have a better chance to rank higher than your competitors. To check if your markup is implemented successfully, use Google’s Free Testing tool. From there, you can easily see if you are doing it right and let you know the errors in your structured data so that you can fix them.

With the rise of voice search in 2018, schema markup can help to optimize your website for voice search because more and more people are using virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Alexa (especially for local businesses).

Think about a query like “Where’s the nearest coffee shop?” Wouldn’t you want your business to appear on the search engines? Confused? Consider hiring a local SEO marketing company.

7) Publish More Locally Optimized Content

This is optional, but I do recommend this if you have the time to create more content for your website.

As you can see, people use search engines to look for more information. If your site can provide them the information, at the same time, giving them the location on where to get it, isn’t that very helpful?

Another way to say this is that you are providing every detail that users are looking for on your website.

So there’s no need for them to visit another website for more information.

Seeing that search engines prefer fresh content, this is an excellent opportunity to publish content to answer the questions people are looking for. Most importantly, don’t forget to include your keywords in your:

• Page title.
• Meta description.
• URL.
• H1, H2, and H3 tags.
• ALT text in the images.
• Anchor text.

Adding these on-page elements will help search engines to crawl your website and rank your site on Google.

8) Have A Mobile-Friendly Website For local search

I have mentioned this before, and I will say it again. Since 2007, mobile users have been increasing until today, and it has exceeded the number of people using a desktop.

With this, Google has taken websites that are mobile-friendly as a ranking factor. So if your website is still not mobile-friendly, think about how many potential customers you are losing.

Not just that, page speed is also another factor that should be taken into consideration when it comes to local SEO. With too many things loading on your website, it will slow things down and increases your bounce rate.

To avoid that from happening, optimize your images, enable Gzip compression, and remove all the unused plugins. If you are not sure what’s keeping your website slow, use the PageSpeed tools by Google Developers to find out what you can do.

Do you want to Grow your business? Contact us Today!

The post Local SEO Marketing In 2019 appeared first on sansoft.

Google announced it has launched “domain properties,” a feature that lets you see data from a whole domain in one view within Google Search Console. This can consolidate your http, https, www, non-www, m-dot, etc into a single property to get an aggregate view of your site’s performance and errors/warnings in a single Google Search Console property.

What is this? Domain properties is a way for Google Search Console to let site owners, webmasters, developers, and SEOs see a whole view of a domain name in one area. Google use to handle this with property sets, but Google announced on Tuesday that property sets is going away. So this morning, Google announced domain properties to replace it — a feature it tested back in November.

How it works. “Domain properties show data for all URLs under the domain name, including all protocols, subdomains, and paths,” said Google. A omaind property aggregates data for all subdomains, protocols, and subpaths. For example, if you define a domain property as “example.com”, the data includes example.com, any subdomains of example.com (for example, m.example.com, support.m.example.com, www.example.com, and so on), and any subpaths of any of those domains, on both http and https.

How do I use it? It may still be rolling out right now, so if you do not see it yet, check back tomorrow. But Google said “if you already have DNS verification set up, Search Console will automatically create new domain properties for you over the next few weeks, with data over all reports.” If you do not have DNS verification set up, which I suspect is most of you, Google said you click on the add new domain property, go to the property selector, add a new domain property, and use DNS verification.

I don’t want it. Since this is automated, Google said if you don’t want Google to aggregate the data and you want to segment Domain property data by subdomain, path, or protocol, use one of the following techniques:

(1) Add a page filter in the Performance report to see data for specific protocols or subdomains

(2) Create additional URL-prefix properties for segments of the Domain property; for example for the Domain property example.com, create additional properties for m.example.com, http://example.com, https://example.com/spain/, and so on.

Why it matters. Firstly, this brings back a feature that was going away with the old Search Console – specifically property sets. Secondly, since this is automated via DNS verification, it requires you to have access to your DNS records and understand how to change those records. You may need to consult your hosting provider when making DNS record changes.

Looking for Real SEO

The post Google Search Console gives us domain properties to replace property sets – Sansoft Blog appeared first on sansoft.

Google’s decision to end the popular service, which was launched in 2009, is part of the company’s efforts to shift gears toward Firebase Dynamic Links. FDLs are smart links meant to allow developers to redirect users to any location on a web page or within a mobile app. The company encouraged consumers who wanted to create new short links to either make use of its free FDL service or to use a link shortening service such as Bitly or Ow.ly.

For developers, however, the company strongly recommended that they make the switch over to FDL. Google told developers that unlike existing short links, FDLs would automatically detect the platform that is being used, and redirect users to a web page or mobile app depending on which service was best suited to their platform. Google also said that FDLs would be more likely to survive the app installation process than standard links, which would make it easier for new users to find the content they need.

Another possible benefit of the move towards FDLs is one of security. In 2016, it was reported that shortened URLs were more vulnerable to security flaws than standard links, though Google and Microsoft book took action to address those issues.

In addition to a focus on Firebase Dynamic Links, Google said that its decision to end goo.gl was due to the changing ways users navigate the web. The company said that when it launched the service in 2009, the majority of users used desktop web browsers to access the internet. That has changed a lot in the past nine years, with users using smartphones, apps, and digital assistants to access the web.

Get Complete SEO Solution For Your Business

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It’s that time of year to already start asking our marketing selves…

How can we begin 2019 with a pop, sizzle, or a bang?

Better yet, what can we do right now to ensure we get nothing but positively sparkling results (like the fizz in champagne) as we think about a new calendar year? Achieve the ROI we’ve been looking for? Make sure our online content hits the mark?

How about finally earn more killer organic Top Three spots in Google we’ve been hankering for, for months?

Today, I’m sharing with you five key SEO trends for 2019 that I think will be big.

In fact, I think they’ll play a major role in content ranking success (or failure). Follow along and let’s see what tactics, strategies, and more will help you have a banner year, including SEO tips from today that are still relevant.

5 Must-Do SEO Trends for 2019 to Follow Today

Unsurprisingly, SEO trends in 2019 are all about keeping up with technology, staying on top of Google’s latest developments, and reinforcing your commitment to content. Let’s get right to it.

1. Be Mobile-Ready for Mobile-First Indexing

Our first trend is one that’s continuing from recent SEO trends in 2018.

Back on March 26, 2018, Google announced they were rolling out mobile-first indexing on their Webmaster Central Blog.

Previously, Google web crawlers looked at the desktop version of your pages and content to populate the SERPs. However, with the switch to mobile-first, this means that Google will be looking at the mobile version of your pages for indexing and ranking.

So, what if you don’t have a mobile version of your website? (Oh, the horror.)

What happens?

Google will still look at your desktop site version to rank your pages.

HOWEVER:

Your pages probably won’t display properly for users on mobile devices (or they’ll be difficult to navigate, read, and use).

THUS:

Your page rankings will most likely suffer (if they haven’t already).

In other words, why haven’t you updated your website for mobile browsing yet?

To be as mobile-friendly as possible for all shapes, sizes, and types of devices, Google first and foremost recommends using responsive design.

However, if you have two versions of your website (a desktop version and a mobile version), the search engine has some best practices you can follow for good results (via the Google Developers guide):

These best practices include:

• Making sure your mobile and desktop sites have exactly the same primary content
• Including metadata like titles and descriptions on both site versions
• Including structured data for both site versionsFor best results, ensure you have all of the above items checked for your site. What worked for technical SEO in 2018 will roll over to 2019.Lastly, consider updating your site design so it’s responsive – it’s a better practice for the overall mobile user experience (UX).
  

  2. Featured Snippets Rankings Will Go Up in Value

  Overwhelmingly, featured snippets are taking over the top spot in Google rankings for lots of keywords.

This is a big deal – users see these results at the top of the page, where the #1 ranked piece of content used to appear. In other words, that prime real estate is no longer guaranteed. Many marketers are thus calling this highly desirable snippet spot “position zero.”

Naturally, you should want key pieces of your content to shoot to top placements in featured snippets – but how?

A. Create Content that Ranks on Page 1

Before you can even think about getting your content in featured snippets, first, you need it to rank on its own.

According to Ahrefs, most featured snippets come from content that ranks in the top 10 results, or on the first page.

In particular, the majority (90.1% of featured snippets) tend to get pulled from content pieces that rank in the top 5 positions.

It’s all about choosing the right keywords, writing great content for your audience, and providing value. (See trend #4).

B. Focus on Answers to Questions

According to a SEMrush/Ghergich & Co. study of 6.9 million featured snippets and 80 million keywords, only around 7% of generic keywords include featured snippets in the results.

In comparison, 41.59% of keywords with questions include featured snippets in the results – a 480% increase!

In particular, question keywords almost always include paragraph featured snippets. These types of snippets include a chunk of text that answers the question the user searched for (according to the study, these average out to about 46-84 words in length with a maximum of 370 characters).

You can thus earn your ranking content a featured snippet by framing short, succinct paragraphs of text as authoritative answers.

3. Create the Highest-Quality Content

In August 2018, Google confirmed a major core algorithmic update that took a full week to roll out.

According to SEOers like Barry Schwartz and Glen Gabe, this update was all about quality. It particularly affected sites that had low E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness).

Barry Schwartz studied over 300 affected sites and found that 41.5% of those belonged in the health, medical, wellness, and fitness industries. He nicknamed it the “medic” update as a result.

Why were these sites hit hard?

Most health pages belong in the YMYL category – pages that Google says can affect the health, income, happiness, or financial stability of users. Low-quality content on these pages can directly impact people’s lives.

With this update, Google underlined their commitment to serving users the highest-quality content. If you’re not creating the best of the best, you will miss the mark and end up on page 3, 4, 5… or worse.

4. Keep Voice Search on Your Radar

Another SEO tactic for 2018 that we need to keep on our radar for 2019 is voice search optimization.

As voice search technology improves and becomes more accessible, it will become even more common.

According to Stone Temple’s most recent voice usage trends survey, more people than ever are comfortable using voice commands and voice search on their mobile devices.

And, a study Google commissioned found that 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search multiple times a day, every day.

It’s pretty safe to assume these numbers will continue to go up as time goes on, too.

To stay ahead of the game, optimize your content for voice search where it makes sense.

A. Optimize for Local Search

Most voice searches are local. According to Bright Local’s Voice Search for Local Business Study, 46% of those who search via voice are looking for local businesseson a daily basis.

If it makes sense for your brand, use geo-targeted keywords, build up your positive customer reviews, and make sure your NAP (name, address, phone number) are consistent across all of your online business listings.

B. Use FAQ Pages

To rank for questions as well as answers, create high-quality FAQ pages to compile the most common ones you encounter regularly.

C. Make Sure You’re Mobile-Friendly

Finally, to rank for voice search queries, you have to make sure your pages are mobile-friendly. Google will not pull voice search answers from sites lacking in this area!

5. Improve Your UX (and Understand RankBrain) – a MAJOR SEO Trend for 2019

One of the major SEO trends for 2019 is the emphasis on RankBrain. This is the part of Google’s core algorithm that uses machine-learning to serve users better search results based on their search intent.

(Back in 2015, in an interview with Bloomberg, Google revealed that RankBrain is their third most important ranking signal.)

According to Danny Sullivan for Search Engine Land, it works like this:

RankBrain helps the algorithm interpret complex, long-tail search queries and the intent behind them. It can “see patterns between seemingly unconnected complex searches to understand how they’re actually similar to each other.” Additionally, it can “understand future complex searches and whether they’re related to particular topics.”

In other words, it’s smart, and the more data it collects, the smarter it gets about user search intent.

Specifically, RankBrain looks at the context of user searches.

• What are synonyms/related terms for the original search query, and which pages containing these synonyms have relevant information for the user’s search intent?

To figure out if the algorithm returns good search results, it looks at how users respond to them:

• Which user actions indicate the search results satisfy them?
  • Low bounce rates (users are staying on the page after clicking the link in the SERP)
  • Longer dwell times (users are staying to read more than the first few paragraphs)
  • Higher click-through rates (more users are clicking on results in the SERP)
• Which actions indicate the search is unsatisfying or the results are not what the user had in mind?
  • High bounce rates (users are bouncing back to the SERP after clicking on results)
  • Low dwell times (users aren’t staying on pages to read past the headline or introduction)
  • Low click-through rates (users aren’t clicking on results)

To simplify it further, let’s borrow a good comparison from Backlinko’s detailed RankBrain guide.

Before RankBrain, Google looked at instances of keywords on a page with zero context. It guessed at whether the results it returned were in the realm of what you meant:

After RankBrain, Google knows what you mean when you enter search queries that could have more than one meaning. It gets your intent behind the search:

Understanding RankBrain is one thing. Using that knowledge to your advantage is another. The savviest content marketers will be on top of this for their SEO strategy for 2019.

A. Optimize Your Metas and Headline to Be More Enticing

Since RankBrain looks at the actions and context surrounding a search, use that to help boost your rankings.

For example, what can you do to increase click-throughs on your search engine listings? Pay attention to your meta titles (your H1/main headers) and your meta descriptions for each page. If they’re descriptive and enticing, you may pull in more clicks, which can equal votes for your content in the SERPs.

B. Pay Attention to Page Usability

Once users click on your result in a search, you want them to stay on the page. One way to do that is to improve your page usability. In other words, make it as easy to use as possible.

To learn more about usability, user experience, and how to make it better, the resource Usability.gov is a great starting point.

SEO is constantly changing, so it’s important to stay updated – and stay relevant.

In 2019, some SEO trends will roll-over from 2018, but others are based on the future of technology and Google’s recent updates.

The post 5 Essential SEO Trends for 2019 You Can Put into Practice Immediately appeared first on sansoft.

Google is sending out a new type of notification to those who have verified properties in Google Search Console. The new messages inform site owners about really slow pages that take too long to load.

Oliver H.G. Mason posted a screenshot of this message on Twitter:

Google has a Google Speed update which is aimed at reducing the search rankings of really slow mobile pages. Google also had a speed factor in 2010.

This notice references how slow specific pages are with this specific website and how to fix the issue.

The post Google Search Console is sending notices for slow loading pages appeared first on sansoft.

Similar to other areas in the tech industry, SEO is constantly changing. The once fail-proof method of consistently landing atop SERPs (search engine results pages) became irrelevant within a few months. SEO practices that once dominated the industry quickly fell out of favor.

The Google algorithm itself changes constantly, sometimes with multiple changes happening within months. On top of that, the technology available to SEO professionals also constantly evolves, allowing us to stay abreast the seemingly daily changes of what it takes to dominate search.

While 2017 has brought about the dominance of Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), the rise of HTTPS, the importance of backlinks, the precaution of the overuse of 301 redirects and reformatting of rich snippets to accommodate the increasing popularity of voice search, some of these trends will continue into 2018 and some will fall away.

On the other hand, we expect many new trends to emerge in 2018.

While Google makes it near impossible to completely crack its page ranking algorithm code, constantly adjusting to accommodate a thousand different nuances will be the challenge for SEOers in 2018 and many years to come.

Whether you want to do away with 2017 and start anew or you want to build on the success of your 2017 SEO campaigns, here are some SEO trends to be on the lookout for in 2018:

1.  Increased Search Engine Results Page Features

It is the goal of any SEO professional to achieve and maintain a high volume of traffic to a given website. Ideally, this would be the result of reaching the top spot on a search engine results page. Not only is it important to achieve this coveted position, but to also maintain it as long as possible.

However, with the latest developments in the search engines, achieving this #1 ranking may no longer be enough to get the traffic you desire.

Gone are the days of the ten search results listings, highlighted in blue hypertext, and a couple of clearly marked ads. Now, when you look at a SERP, it is cluttered with images, videos, links, social media mentions, in-depth article listings, various widgets, and ads. It has become easy for a #1 result to get lost in the busy jumble of other page features.

While keyword and key phrase optimization are still important, you now have other offsite elements to consider.

Popular search engine results page features include AdWords, news block, featured snippets, local packs, reviews, tweets, video, image pack, shopping results and site links.

How can you rank and monitor your rankings for all of these? There are tools such as Rank Tracker that allow you to track your ranking and to show you possible keywords that are holding back potential traffic.

2.  Rich Snippet Will Need Careful Structuring

There are rich snippets and regular snippets. Both include a clickable title, a URL, and a meta description. Rich snippets have more condensed titles that include “|” instead of a dash (-), reviews and an image. How you structure the data, however is important in how search engines will display the information.

While the difference may seem insignificant, it has been shown that search results with properly formatted rich snippets receive more clicks and have a higher click through rate, which in turn increases potential sales.

If you’re not sure what properly structured rich snippet structure looks like, you can check out Schema.org which features a step-by-step data structure guide.

3.  Page Speed

In today’s fast-paced, on-demand society, people want things, including information, immediately.

Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a website that appears to answer your question exactly, only to have to wait for the page to load. If the page doesn’t load in 5 seconds, you’re off onto another website that can hopefully give you the answers you need.

People don’t like slow webpages. If your page is slow, your site traffic will suffer. Page speed is a user experience feature that is expected for all websites.

If you’re wondering how fast is fast enough, take Google’s recommendation of 3 seconds or less.

To see how the speed of your website stacks up, you can take Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

Speed has been a critical component for years, but moving into 2018, we’re going to see even more emphasis on it in the future.

|Get a free website report to see how your site it performing.|

4.  Increased Page Relevance

Google continues in its quest to provide the best web browsing experience to users. Besides offering users websites that are safe, Google searches for sites that best match the user’s search intent – even if that’s a little different from their actual query.

This means that search engines will evaluate the relevancy of the content on your website. One of the ways that Google assess the relevance of a website’s content is with Latent Semantic Indexing. Through Latent Semantic Indexing Google can gather content from billions of websites and parse through the content, scanning for related terms and words.

Latent Semantic Indexing also enables Google to determine whether the content on a website is “comprehensive” and flows well.

Google also has the ability to analyze top ranking pages as identify similarities and shared features among them.

How can you make your content relevant and comprehensive throughout 2018? You can start by researching the content of the top websites in your industry and look for commonalities among them. This, however, can take a long time, especially if you’re looking for particular terms or words. To speed up the process, you can make use of some of the free trials available with different website auditors.

5.  Voice Search is More Real Than Ever

Just like in 2017, voice search will continue to pick up steam. Many consumers prefer the convenience of speaking over typing. Not only is it faster, but the queries can also be more detailed.

More importantly, voice recognition software has reached the point where users are comfortable trusting it to understand their normal speech.

The increased detail of search queries means you’ll need to go beyond the simple keyword and phrases to rank and focus more on terms and phrases people are naturally going to say out loud. People speak differently than they type, so your SEO strategy should try using conversational terms and sentences.

6.  Mobile Will be Even More Important

Smartphones dominate the landscape and more and more web browsing is occurring on mobile devices. In fact, the amount of people using their smartphones to browse the Internet is higher than the number who browse on a traditional desktop computer.

It is no longer optional to have a mobile-friendly website. It is now required and expected by the search engines and the users.

In fact, mobile friendliness is now a search ranking factor.

This is nothing new, and something you’ve probably heard about in many other years, but as each new device comes out and includes some kind of voice search function, you are going to have to really think about it going into 2018.

7.  The Rise of “Linkless” Backlinks

Backlinks have been the bread and butter of SEO for many years. In the past, this linking from another source to bolster a webpage’s authority in the eyes of Google was abused, prompting Google come up with the Penguin algorithm in 2012.

Since then, it has become the best (and most ethical) practice for websites to try and get links from more reputable, outside sources.

While links from authoritative, outside sources gave websites some search ranking juice, the further sophistication of Google search robots are slowly taking away the coveted power of backlinks.

It’s not just about who and where your links come from, anymore. A simple link just isn’t going to stand out of the crowd.

Search engines now have the ability to associate mentions of brands, institutions, organizations and people without the need of linking to their corresponding webpages. While links are going to still carry some weight, the other content around the hyperlinked text is going to also be very important.

8.  SERPs Will Continue Getting Personal

Besides the traditional search ranking factors, such as page speed, content relevancy and page authority, search engines are also using information about the user, such as interests, browsing history and location, to provide a personalized search results list.

Google, along with some other search engines, have been utilizing personalized SERPs for many years.

An SEOer’s goal of getting to the top of search results will have larger implications. Pages that succeed in dominating search will not only get more initial traffic, but when a user clicks to their page, that business’s page will subsequently appear in future searches by that user.

This will give you a greater opportunity to dominate that user’s SERPs in the future.

There is nothing one can do to land on the top of a user’s personalized SERP except making sure your traffic data is accurate and testing your page’s rankings in private or incognito mode for unbiased results.

Optimize Your Strategies in 2018

SEO is an ever-changing industry. In 2018, Google will continue to enhance the web user’s experience by scanning the relevancy of a page’s content, using personalized search engine results and faster page speeds, and include additional results page features. It will also want to ensure that websites are mobile-friendly and full of normal, conversational terms and words.

It takes a lot of time and effort to stay up on all the updates. It also takes time and long-term care. If your company is small or new and it doesn’t have a designated internet marketing professional, SEO.com can help.

Get your website visible on major search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing by people in your area with our SEO service. Contact us now for more information.

The post Top SEO techniques that will dominate 2018 – Sansoft Blog appeared first on sansoft.

Google has announced a new feature in the beta Google Search Console that allows you to check a specific URL on your website to see the status of how Google search sees that URL. This feature is called the URL inspection tool and is now rolling out to Google Search Console users over the coming weeks.

This tool “provides detailed crawl, index, and serving information about your pages, directly from the Google index,” Google says. It will show the last crawl date, the status of that last crawl, any crawling or indexing errors and the canonical URL for that page. It will show if the page was successfully indexed, any AMP errors, structured data errors and indexing issues.

Here are screen shots:

You can enter in either AMP vs. non-AMP URLs as well.

There is a large help document that goes through all the features of this URL inspection tool.

This is still rolling out, and you won’t necessarily see it today, as the roll out can take a couple weeks.

The post Google Search Console releases URL inspection tool appeared first on sansoft.

After years of pushing for ‘secure by default’ web sites, Google will identify insecure sites in the Chrome browser beginning mid-Summer.

July is shaping up to be a big month for Google. Earlier this month, the company announced its Speed Update set to roll out in July, and today announced it will then also mark all sites that have not migrated to HTTPS as “not secure.”

This move will coincide with the release of Chrome 68 and will look like this in a user’s browser:

Google has been pushing webmasters to make the change to non-secure web sites a for years now – including hinting at small rankings boost to further incentivize the shift. The campaign has proved successful. According to their blog post:

• Over 68% of Chrome traffic on both Android and Windows is now protected
• Over 78% of Chrome traffic on both Chrome OS and Mac is now protected
• 81 of the top 100 sites on the web use HTTPS by default

Depending upon the size of a site and scope of the project, a migration from HTTP to HTTPS can be quite an undertaking. Check out the resources below for in depth guides to making this change on your or your client’s sites, along with resources for validation and dealing with mixed content issues.

The post Effective July 2018 appeared first on sansoft.