Archive for the SEO News & Tips Category

On June 14, 2018, I noticed the new Video Carousel in desktop search results. This first rolled out to Mobile search results around the same time we discovered that Interesting Finds rolled out, in late May. Yes, videos have shown up in Google search results for a

No. Subdomains do not inherit the SEO authority of the root domain. If you have an existing site and then add a blog to it as a subdomain, the subdomain is going to perform like a brand new website and initially perform poorly in the search engines.

On Memorial Day, May 28, 2018, Google rolled out “interesting finds” in mobile search results. A second feature they are testing is “videos” in a carousel style format. There’s nothing new about videos being in organic search results, but the videos section is scrollable (left to right)

On Memorial Day, May 28, 2018, I saw something new in Google’s Mobile Search results which I found very interesting – a new feature called “interesting finds”! The new feature highlights content off of websites, including blogs on business websites. Here’s a screenshot of what the new

Sometimes vulnerable websites, such as outdated WordPress websites, become compromised. The hacked/hijacked websites can then be defaced, used to attempt to distribute malware, or used to steal people’s information. Google provides examples of this here. If Google notices this they will temporarily penalize a site in search

It’s hard to believe but I am writing an article about Meta Descriptions in 2018. Why? Google has, once again, changed the size of (most) snippets in search. If you read my article about 300 – 320 character snippets, you probably know that in December 2017, Google

Some webmasters have received the following message from Google Search Console which reads “Expired SSL/TLS certificate on https://www.example.com/”. Here’s a screenshot of what the email looks like: The email reads: Expired SSL/TLS certificate on https://www.example.com/ To: Webmaster of https://www.example.com/, Google has recently encountered an expired SSL/TLS certificate

On May 08, 2018, I spotted something interesting. It appears that Google has expanded upon video snippets shown in the SERPs for certain keywords. These are technically called Rich Snippet Video Previews or Rich Snippet Video Thumbnails. These little video snippets or video thumbnails have appeared for

April 2018 has been a crazy month, at least for weather. It’s still snowing in the northeast. It’s bone dry in the south central part of the country. Oklahoma has no tornadoes. Here in North Carolina, I just planted my big, epic garden today, weeks behind when

Shortly after Thanksgiving of 2017 Google made several tweaks to their search engine results pages. One of those changes was “Top Answer” showing up in search results when forums have a voting system in place. The feature has come and gone for some time but as of

Every day I get an email from someone trying to sell me a backlink from HuffPost.com and my clients do too. Should you purchase a backlink from HuffPost? No. History Lesson Up until 2017ish there was an easily accessible publisher network on Huffington Post. They got rid

On March 8, 2018, we published that a major algorithm change was on the way (technically that went live March 9 at 12:25AM). The tremors had been felt for days and one of my sources felt it could be days (or months) away. Then on Saturday, March

One of my sources has shown me that as of March 2018, Google is indeed testing an algorithm change. This is a change which is not evident to most people in the SEO world as the algorithm is being tested outside of the United States. In fact,

I was contacted by a new client in early March who had lost traffic in February 2018. They were wondering if they had been negatively impacted by an algorithm change such as a Penguin or Panda update. Indeed, there were many updates throughout the month of February,

In early 2018, many website owners began receiving a message from Google about a new version of Google Search Console. This edition is in beta and users can switch back and forth between the old version and the new version while the new version is being tested.

As of December 5, 2017, I’ve been able to get 300 character snippets in Google’s mobile search results. Google is now showing larger snippets in both desktop and mobile search results, and to better control the snippet displayed you can now use up to 300 character Meta

As of December 4, 2017, you can now create Meta Descriptions well over the previous 160 character limit. I have now run multiple tests, and while Google can indeed show its own Snippet in search results, you can influence the snippet shown by using a large, 300+

A few people have asked me: How long does it take to get a featured snippet? How long does it take to take someone else’s featured snippet? Featured Snipets in Google may be produced instantly, or within 1 second of a page going live on the Internet.

In a change which occurred in November 2017 that most people won’t notice until 2018, page descriptions in Google search results have recently become significantly larger. These page descriptions are technically called “snippets”, not to be confused with “featured snippets”. Most people know snippets as Meta Descriptions.

There are lots of searches where no Featured Snippet (aka Answer Box) exists, but the question is asked frequently enough that if someone put together content answering the search query specifically an answer box would instantly appear. For years, I thought this was common knowledge, but there