Intrusive Interstitials – User Experience Killer To Avoid

intrusive interstitial penalty

One of the user experience killers that every marketers and SEO practitioners need to avoid is interstitials. Interstitial is a type of emerging ad format that is being displayed before users can continue to the information they are looking for on that page.

The interstitials are typically designed to pitch exactly at the transition point in the flow towards the information so that it can get the high click through rate (CTR) with or without the user interest. So it has been considered as the form of interruption marketing and should be avoided to improve user metrics.

According to the google guidelines and SEO practice history, the common goal of any marketing should be facilitating the user with the information they search for without disrupting the user experience. On the basis of that, Google has explained different types of interstitials that would be the cause of penalty in near future, including;

  • Popup ads/images immediately after user landed on the pages coming from any channels
  • Standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before continuing to the main content
  • Application of interstitial on the above the fold portion of the page

However as Google always focus on user experience and correlated metrics to improve user behavior on the pages, the natural and organic approach of interstitials are still safe, including;

  • Interstitial pop-up for cookie usage
  • Standalone interstitial for age verification that is natural for the niche domain
  • Application of interstitial banner that users a reasonable amount of screen space without over-pitching and scope to avoid it

google interstitial guidelines

Considering all the scopes and limitations discussed above, it is highly recommended to identify and follow the user trend and different metrics along with the application of interstitials as the overall performance of the website including ranking is highly correlated with user metrics and facilitating the user without any disruption in organic way should be the top priority of any marketing campaigns.

Happy Marketing 🙂

What is Organic Sitelinks? Extended Results on SERPs

organic sitelinks

The organic sitelinks are the additional hyperlinks to the website subpages that appears under the Google search results listing. The sitelinks are the organic results by google itself through automated algorithm. According to the Google patents, sitelinks are derived from the user metrics, in particular, the number of times a page is visited, the amount spent on the page, bounce rate, content relevancy and other user behavior for that page.

user metrics

The idea of the sitelinks extension are to make user-friendly result and helps users to navigate the site to the most popular and related pages or links within the website listed.

Basically, sitelinks appear when the site is ranked on the first position on the first page of the SEPRs and it is also said to appear on some search results where google thinks one result is far more relevant that other results like navigational or brand related search queries.

fabulessly frugal

According to the google search console help,

We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.

At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future. There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks. For example, for your site’s internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that’s informative, relevant, compact, and avoids repetition and overstuffing.

How to improve your organic sitelinks extension?

  • Get a unique brand name and optimize to rank for the first position
  • Identify more keywords opportunities to rank on the first position on SERPs
  • Organize pages and relevant content through the easy navigation structure
  • Optimize pages with unique and informative title tag and meta description.
  • Focus optimizing your site for the users rather than robots.
  • Find more opportunities through data analysis to promote and strategize so that more sitelinks appears on the search engine results page

Domain Authority (DA) – A Reflection of SEO

domain authority and seo

What is Domain Authority (DA)?

Domain authority is a mathematical metric based on age, popularity and size of a website to identify the probability and potential for search engine ranking. Created by Moz, the value of domain authority lies between 1 to 100, 1 being the worst and 100 being the best case scenario for search engine results. Hence, higher the domain authority results in higher search engine ranking and DA is considered as one of the very important ranking factors for Google. If you look at the same idea for individual pages, then it is referred as Page Authority (PA).

 

How to Calculate Domain Authority?

As a creator, Moz offers a free domain authority checker with one of its services. You can submit your website link and get your latest DA score for your website. Though you can find many extensions and DA checker provided by different third party service providers.

Click here to check your DA score: https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/

 

How DA impacts on Search Engine Ranking?

To understand the impacts of DA on your search engine ranking, scan you competitor’s website. Acknowledging all other rankings signals of google, the site with higher domain authority is likely to rank higher in SERP {Search Engine Results Page} than one with lower DA value for your keywords. So if you DA score is improving with your SEO campaign then you can evaluate you overall SEO campaign is on the right track.

 

How to Grow Domain Authority?

As being one of the ranking signals for search results, it is high recommended to grow you DA value for the success of your online marketing efforts. If you are missing the following strategies for your campaign, then now it’s time to grab an opportunity to improve your DA score.

  • Inspect all technical, on-site and off-site factors for page
  • Focus on consistency and quality content updates for your site
  • Improve your link building campaign with high PR and trusted site
  • Be more active on social media cross promotion
  • Add additional content to the page, Blogging is the best practice and upgrade your site and navigation structure
  • Always perform a white hat SEO techniques

 

Looking to improve your website’s domain authority and ranking in google search results? Share me your site for a free SEO-audit and recommendation to improve your site performance. Send me an email at writetohemanta@gmail for add me on skype: hemantamaharjan for FREE consultation service.

What is a CDN? Impact on SEO and Website Performance

content delivery network

A CDN (Content delivery network or content distribution network) is a network of servers located in different locations. The CDN network stores your website files to ensure that the user surfing your web page can receive the copy from the nearest possible server for fast execution.

The main idea behind a CDN is there is a measurable amount of waiting time, also known as latency for those who is far away from your hosted server. This results in the slow response time to users and high changes that your user will bounce back without opening your site or spending much time. So Content delivery network capitalizes those routing issues and improves latency as per your technical performance and user metrics consideration.

A CDN can be the best scenario for a website that has heavy traffic from all over the World to facilitate their user by fastest loading time. It also helps to improve a performance of websites that stream large video files or processed high-resolution media files. Using a CDN for youtube is the best example as per application.

However the idea of Content delivery network can be discarded for small local business and if the site is targeted to one small geographic location.

 

CDN and Search Engine Optimization

When google has started using a page speed and user metrics as one of the important ranking factors to consider, the content distribution network is getting more popular and application of CDN is growing. As content delivery network allows faster loading time, it will be better user experience resulting more revisits, more impression, more clicks and ultimately more conversion. That means you have a good SEO score.

The best approach is to optimize your site for users, make your site mobile compatible, improve website’s page speed and consider a reputable content delivery network providers for your online business. Some of the reputable CDN companies are Cloudfare, Amazon CloudFront, Cachefly, Fastly, MaxCDN etc.

Content Strategy and Search Engine Optimization [SEO]

seo content development

In SEO industry, every SEO practitioner says that quality content is a key to Google Ranking and Content is the King. Everybody took content so seriously that content creation has been one of the biggest challenges for any online business now. Not only because of hype about content but the type of audience and their individual preferences.

Depending upon the content building strategy, creating in-depth quality content on the basis of keyword research and something readable plus useful content for users could be a best practice. The major search engines like google are focused on creating the best possible user experience, stated on latest update “Rankbrain” and so relevant and rich content is always considered more visibility through ranking.

Consider some these points for your content building strategy:

Audience
Knowing your audience is a core part of your content strategy. If you know your readers, then you can develop your content as per their preferences and hence the potential of your business conversion will be higher. Find your targeted audience, research on their preferences, identifying keywords that users type for with keyword research techniques and improve over time with your consistent content development.

Consistency
Consistency builds trust and boosts your online credibility. Users look forward to varied content on your page and again new, updated content every time they revisited. More in-depth and useful content you produce, more you’ll have an opportunity of your keywords to rank for. Develop content on regular basis and incorporate different elements in content such as text, images, videos, podcasts, infographics etc.

Optimization
Optimize your content with other SEO factors like title tags, meta description, header tags, alt tags, captions, rich snippet etc. Don’t over-optimize your content with overstuffing of keywords, rather use synonyms and LSI keywords for detailed structure and in-depth content. Integrate social share platform to reach more audience and drive more traffic to the website.

Remarketing
Consider remarketing concept for your content strategy on individual pages. Pitch through an attractive banner, offers, freebies and call to action on every level of the sales funnel. Know your top landing pages, improve with content structure/layout with actionable information and improve the chance for more conversion.

Analytics
Use analytics to understand user behavior for your content and identify scope to improve your content section. Consider user metrics like number or users, overall session, bounce rate, times on the site, returning visitors, users flow, drop-offs, social interactions, engagement etc. Don’t miss search analytics for impression, clicks and CTR for different pages too.

Looking for content development strategy?

Let’s have a chat to identify a scope for content building and to start up with SEO campaign for your business.

Google Sandbox in Search Engine Optimization [SEO]

google sandbox effect

The sandbox effect also known as aging delay in search engine optimization, is a hypothetical belief in SEO market that Google has a filter that places all new website under restriction for a certain amount of time to limit them from ranking their keywords in search results.

The main idea behind google sandbox is that google takes some time to consider all the technical aspects of the website, relevancy, consistency and search engine ranking signals to consider for ranking. When the Google is sure of all the aspects of ranking signals, then it will acknowledge the respective keywords for ranking.

Officially google didn’t confirm or deny the existence of the sandbox effect or amount of time it processed. However, as the behaviors of keywords in search analytics, the sandbox effect can be noticed for keywords in terms of ranking.

A reverse sandbox effect is also claimed to exist where new pages with unique content and keywords with less competition can rank in google in early phases. Can happen when the content is viral to reach to a large audience, more interaction and other user metrics that google consider for ranking.

As being a SEO practitioner since 2009, I would like to go for natural methodologies of SEO process for keyword ranking in google. Despite , considering unofficial google sandbox effect seriously, I would like to suggest to keep focus on your site for online reputation, growing traffic from various sources, relevant content development, maintain relationship with your users, optimizing for user metrics, using white hat techniques for ranking and working consistently with your SEO tasks considering all search engine guidelines and google updates so far.

If you are planning to grow your online business organically and naturally in a search engine and looking to identify more scope from your current website status, feel free to write to me at writetohemanta@gmail.com for free SEO audit report and consultation session. I would love to have an opportunity to discuss with you about your project.

What is White Hat SEO Technique?

white hat seo technique

White hat SEO technique in search engine optimization process is a practice of implementing optimization strategies that mainly focus on a human audience rather than search engine robotics mechanism and optimize the site in order to improve real clientele behavior under search engine guidelines, facts, rules and policies.

It refers to the statement “Google is Anti-SEO” and hence discard any exploitative and descriptive methods to improve keywords ranking in search results. So the idea of white hat SEO tactics is to promote a website without any tricks or black hat SEO techniques to facilitate users queries.

The white hat SEO routine should consider all google’s optimization guidelines, googles updates so far, penalties checklists and the foundation of google core algorithm.

If you are optimizing your site naturally and not pushing hard enough to manipulate results to grow your site over time, then for sure you are under control with white hat SEO optimization approach. Though here are some points to consider if you are looking for some ideas with white hat SEO procedures:

  • Using relevant title tags and description meta description as per the in-depth quality content.
  • Implementing keyword research techniques like applying LSI to develop content than keyword stuffing.
  • A good navigation practice to drive any user to corresponding pages.
  • Using different elements like text, video, images as a part of the content and optimize individually.
  • Accounting user metrics data for optimization including bounce rate, average time spent, new/returning visitors, overall session and traffic pattern from various sources.
  • Deploying call to action button rather than using push sales, pop-ups and advertisement above the fold
  • Not trying to fool your site visitors with exploitative methods.
  • Focusing on all channel from where a user can drive to the website such as direct traffic sources, organic traffic sources, referrals and social media accounts .
  • Applying organic link building strategies to all pages and working on natural variation than focusing on a single page or homepage and a single keyword for that page.

As google is so focused on its users and exact match relevant results for their queries, application of white hat techniques will always add value to your keywords ranking and overall website performance avoiding any risk whenever google came up with new updates.

If you are looking for white hat SEO technician or SEO analyst to improve your site performance organically, grow traffic from different sources naturally and improve numbers of potential keywords ranking on google, you can write to me at writetomehemanta@gmail.com or add me on skype: hemantamaharjan for free consultation to plan further to promote your business online.

What is Click Through Rate (CTR) in Search Analytics?

what is ctr?

In analytical term, click through rate is a measurement of a total number of clicks against the total number of an impression. More the clicks mean more users drive to the website and a high chance of business conversion. It is a machine learning user metrics to understand a scope to convert your traffic into the business goal and hence is one of the main factors to consider during data analytic and taka a reference for further optimization and changed strategy. For different campaigns with equal impression counts, CTR helps to determine which campaign is performing good and has more potential to success.

CTR can be either for search results page for google, yahoo or bing, facebook advert, google Adwords campaign in display/search network, email newsletter campaign, banner ads or any other marketing campaign that aim to provide an opportunity for any user to click on something they are looking for.

 

How to calculate CTR?

Mathematically, CTR is calculated as

CTR= (Total number of clicks/Total number of impression)x100%

For example: In search analytic, if total impression counts for one keyword is 150 and total number of clicks is 20, then, mathematically the CTR for that keyword is

CTR(Keyword)=20/150=13.33%

For advertisement, it would be

CTR= (Ad clicks/Ad Views)x100%

The Same rule applies for other keywords and marketing campaigns.

 

CTR and SEO

In Search engine optimization process, every online business aims to have the top position in search engine results for invaluable business opportunities. This is because the average impression counts and CTR for position 1-10 in the first phase are higher than in any other pages and the CTR decreases as we move to second, third and consequent pages. Even first, second and third position in the first page of search results has more average CTR than other position on the same page.

In SEO campaign, while working on keywords, people often target their main keywords to rank in top position. This is an ideal case but most of them miss a catch to identify other keywords including long tail keywords that have higher CTR despite low impression counts, low search volume, and low competitions .These keywords can take a huge share of business goals and could be enough to run a business.

For example, You can have some keywords with 1000 impression in search results and 25 clicks resulting 2.5% CTR. But you can also have some keywords with 50 impression counts and 25 clicks resulting 50% CTR. The summary is we should not miss the keywords that have 50% CTR despite only 50 search results impression counts and should optimize to grow more.

 

How to maximize your CTR?

Maximizing you CTR is not a one time job. It depends on user behavior, trending keywords and how you often optimize your campaign to grow your impression counts. Though here are some ideas to consider for CTR growth:

  • Increase your impression counts
  • Optimize your campaign for user
  • Focus on relevancy of content, images, tags etc
  • Use compelling headlines and text.
  • Apply call to action button
  • Check what your competitors are doing
  • Understand the behavior of users and re-optimize your campaign

If you not sure with your current CTR and looking for a more online business opportunity with search analytic, contact me for a free SEO consultation, analytic report, and suggestions to improve your CTR and grab an opportunity to get a business from potential keywords that have high CTR you might be missing.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) and SEO

Latent Semantic Indexing

LSI is a mathematical technique that google algorithm has incorporated to display search results by identifying the patterns in the relationship between terms and concepts with respect to the search queries made.

The approach of Google for LSI algorithm is to avoid repetition of same keywords all the way through the content yet having a relevant content under the given search queries. So using LSI keywords, it adds variation to your content and still get a score on those keywords for ranking without any risk of keyword stuffing penalty.

For example, if your main search keyword was “seo education,” the target should not be on single keywords like seo, education or seo education in relevant content. You should use LSI keywords such as “seo marketing education”, “learn search engine optimization”best seo education”, “seo training” ,”google free seo tools”, “learn seo free”, “seo for higher education”, “search engine education”, “seo learning”, “seo college” etc

There are different methodologies how you can identify and implement LSI keywords. Search results are one of the best sources to find LSI queries. When you try to find something on google, with entering your keywords in google search box, it will automatically display a number of semantic search terms at the bottom of your search engine results page.

lsi on serp

 

Another practice could be identifying from a google keyword planner tool that suggests the numbers of these semantic keyword options.

adwords LSI ideas

 

Apart from google sources, there are numbers of the free third party online LSI generator tools like LSIgraph.com from where you can undertake and implement these LSI terms to your website for optimization, content development, and link building.

LSI generator

 

Whatever the methodologies and practices you integrate to enhance your SEO campaign, the main keywords, and LSI keywords should come into place naturally and the focus should be always on facilitating the users experience with relevant contents that they are looking for.